The Besties - Mario 3D World and the Infinite Sadness (of Bowser)

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

After a week of total chaos, most of the boys from your favorite video game club are back, joined by special guest Elyse Willems of Rooster Teeth & Fun Haus fame. At issue this week: Super Mario 3D World and prescisely the right way to say the name Mario (which is still up for debate!). 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!

Have you guys ever seen house bones before? They've had to, because of the awful things that have been happening in Texas, there have been people doing a smash in my house, and I can see the house bones before, like now, and it's crazy, man. It's like a skeleton, and you live inside a skeleton. Everybody lives inside a skeleton.

That is a terrifying image that i can't even fathom are they like do you think that was like as built like they were built designed to look like bones i think all houses are built to look like bones and then drywall is the flesh the meat the meat is the insulation is the meat The wiring is the nervous system. Yes. The plumbing is your digestive system. The house is a body. What are we?

We are amoebas. Oh, parasites. We're parasites living inside. This is a lot. I can't really picture it, but now I'm very terrified. You should be. Maybe you're not living in a house is what I'm saying. Oh, no.

It's actually a big frog. Yeah. Cool. Hello everybody and welcome to the besties. They're where the best friends play the best games. It's a game club for big kids. And I'm Griffin McElroy. Welcome to The Besties, a game club where we talk about the latest and greatest in gaming. And this week we're talking about Super Mario...

We gotta do the intro of everyone's names. Hey, and I'm here with a lot... My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. griffin mcroy and i know the best game of the week my name is christopher thomas plant and i know the best game of the week my name is ross farshing and i know the best game of the week at least you may as well just do it we've fucked this up so bad already my name is elise williams and i know the best game of the week and welcome to the besties we're the world's best friends talk about the world's best games and entertainment. And today we're talking about Super Mario 3D World.

And one of us is going to say the name wrong over and over again, and you need to be okay with that. They ding-dang snuck another game up in here, too. It's Bowser's Fury, and we're going to be talking about what that is also, because it's part of the same video gaming package. Justin is not with us. Thoughts and prayers. Chris, Christopher, what is Super Mario 3D World Bowser's Fury? It's two games in one.

The first one is Super Mario 3D World, and it came out for the Wii U. It's one of the best Mario games ever made, and nobody played it because it was on the Wii U. It has four-player co-op. It's 2.5D. The other one is Bowser's Fury. It's an open-world game, but not like Super Mario Odyssey. It's like just one big full open world. And there are lots of cats.

And if you get a little slow, like say you're just taking your time enjoying the environment, a big giant Bowser the size of a kaiju comes in and it kicks your ass yep it's the scariest Mario game and we're gonna talk about it right now because we no longer take a break here at least what is your um what is your your history with uh Mr. Mr's Mario and uh sort of their antics big Mario fan an anomaly I know but a big big mario fan super mario sunshine i would say is my favorite game in the mario verse we're not judging are you all judging is there not one of you that's an lr you came into our house and it's like you it's like you left your muddy boots on talking about super mario sunshine with such the house skeleton is spitting you out. The house skeleton hates it.

Who here had played Super Mario 3D World before? I had some of it. Russ, had you? I played it maybe like two or three levels very, very briefly. Yeah, I played through all of it with friends. I played through it all with four players, which I think is how it's sort of supposed to be ingested.

But you were playing locally, I'm sure. I mean, on Wii U, yes, there was no other option. I have not been able to log as much multiplayer time in with 3D World, but it kind of seems like the only way to play it. I did not nearly enjoy it as much by myself as I did in a room with people. That might just speak more to how much I miss being in a room with people, though,

and have less to do with Mario. Did anybody get multiplayer time in? I have. Okay. Which is why I wanted to clarify that you played it locally, because I also played it locally when it was on the Wii U. I'm one of the people that ran through a Target parking lot in my pajamas to get a wii u because on the you know after after the success of the wii i was like i am going to be an early

adopter of this i'm not missing out boy was i wrong but then i also had that were the pajamas a requirement yeah why did the target make you run in the parking lot i i had called target and said do you have any w U's in a haste? And they said, yes, we do. And I said to my husband, like, start the car. We're going to Target. We can talk shit as much as we want about the Wii U because that's our God-given right.

But when you got home with the Wii U after running through the Target parking lot and you popped in Nintendo Land and you played Nintendo Land with your friends, you were probably like, this fuck, this kicks ass. This is going to be the best console ever. It was a joyful experience. Yeah, and then nothing else came out ever.

No, and the prospect of what that gaming pad could do or mean in terms of asymmetrical play. So rad. Like talking with friends about, what if they made a D&D game and you could have your dungeon master on the gaming pad? But none of that, as we know, really came to fruition in any form that like all the second screen initiatives just failed catastrophically for sure but i i definitely was one of those

people that an early adopter of it thought i need i had that buyer's bias where i said okay well i need to double down on this right so when Mario 3D World came out, I said, this is coming off of New Super Mario Brothers, which was a great multiplayer Mario. I said, I need this. And locally, it was very fun. But playing it now, again, I was playing it online with friends. And maybe it's just my internet, but I had so many latency issues.

Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I had the same thing actually it made it virtually unplayable for me um because we were the the friends that were you know playing remotely on someone else's game but i still did have a blast though it was just pure chaos and constant death yeah it doesn't require quite as much twitchiness i would like is is easy i think this is one of the easier mario games or at least i don't know you get you can unlock like the wild bowser hell levels um that are certainly pretty difficult but i i don't think that latency is quite as big a deal

breaker as it is in like i didn't think it was bad as it was in mario maker 2 uh for the switch where it was and continues to be and will forever be like really really an unpleasant experience playing on online multiplayer yeah it's weird to me because yeah i think griffin you and i and plant and you and i played um spelunky 2 online when it finally came out and to have a platform experience that was like flawless online and then compare that to like a multi-billion dollar company in Nintendo.

Who just cannot shoot straight. Still can't seem to do it. I played online with Justin actually. This is before his power went out. And it's probably a good thing he's not on this episode because he was not having a good time in general. He enjoyed it. Yeah. good thing he's not on this episode because uh he was not having a good time he's never enjoyed it yeah yeah he was sort of miserable with it but uh specifically with online yeah there was definitely some input latency but i did play locally as well

and i played locally with my wife because i didn't have any other options and that had different issues that i was not expecting. Like? Those had household issues. Yeah. Specifically from a tension standpoint and from a us hating each other standpoint. Well, if I can say, Russ, you already introduced it as saying, I played with my wife because I had no other option. Which is not a great start. Off on a bad foot. Not a great start.

Well, yeah. I mean, it wasn't, well, I'll say this. So Alex loves Stardew Valley. She loves Don't Starve. She likes thoughtful, strategic, plan your way through a game kind of games. Yeah. This is not that, especially in multiplayer.

This turns into chaos real quick. Yes. And not only that, this game is extremely competitive. The game constantly throws like scoreboards at you to tell you how terrible you're doing the person that's winning gets a crown it's like a very much shoving your face into whether you lost yeah it's got this weird bell like upside down bell curve where playing it solo is fine and then i think playing it with two people who are not necessarily on even footing in terms of like fluency in 3d

platforming it's not great and then once you get up to four people it's fucking awesome again because then it does turn into a party game then it does turn into just constantly knocking each other into pits and like grabbing power-ups away from one another. It is so madcap and so, so, so much fun, but I think you gotta do it locally in just a few sittings is, I believe, the ideal way to experience this game. And if you can manage that, which is very difficult these days, obviously,

I think it's amazing. I think it's one of my favorite Mario experiences. I think why it works with 4 and not with 2 is probably because the blame keeps shifting to different people, whereas when I would accidentally kill my wife, there was no one else but me. Yeah.

I just want to make a bold claim. The Wii U was the best console for Mario games, full stop because new mario brothers no you're wrong is the best 2d mario game you're out of your fucking stop it is it is it is no it's it everybody what's your favorite what's your favorite weezer album chris uh oh i i don't like weezer because oh my god okay. Okay, well that's indicative. Sorry, Pinkerton was great until it no longer seems to be cool

because I can't get behind Rivers Quo anymore. Okay, all right. Let's get to it. Anyway, new Super Mario Bros. Wii U, best 2D game. And then new Super Mario Bros. 3D World, best summation of Mario character in places. it feels like they're just like taken from every corner and then odyssey which is not on wii u is like i think the best kind of collection of 3d games but like they went back to back to back like yeah just nailed it out of the park

on all of them your argument that wii u is the best mario platform does include a game that did not come out on wii u didn't come out on Switch. It only got one. They got one. But Wii U got two. If they release another jammer on the Switch, then sure. Well, in New Super Mario Bros., that was a DS game originally,

right? It got ported to Wii U? No, the Wii U version is an original game. And it's the one that adds all the multiplayer. Okay, because I definitely played that and enjoyed it, but I think to your point and to Griffin's point that Mario

3D on the Switch is a very cutthroat experience when you're playing multiplayer, whereas New Super Mario Bros., I mean, you could self bubble if you wanted to just kind of glide along, be carried. It was a very it was much more of a team team dynamic whereas when i'm playing 3d on the switch and you know there there are those challenge rooms i i don't know if you tackled many of those which i really enjoyed those

actually but like because they're they're timed and if you're messing up in those rooms and you are the weak link like you're gonna hear about it And if you're messing up in those rooms and you are the weak link, like you're going to hear about it. Yeah. People you're playing with. I think New Super Mario Brothers Wii U is a better game during the pandemic. Just from a safety perspective with your family and friends. Interesting. Because it brings you together.

Where 3D World, that's a gamble. You know? Yeah. As we saw with Freshick who hasn't spoken with his wife and yeah at least three weeks i will say uh from a production standpoint is a is a feast it's a delight this the soundtrack's incredible the the the game looks amazing uh it is one of it is a rare game that my son who like has no interest in in video games really he's he's four years old he delighted in watching particularly any level

that had the Cherry power-up, which is probably my favorite Mario power-up. It duplicates Mario, and now you're controlling multiples of them. Once you get six Marios all running around, Henry was cackling at that. I think it is just a very pleasant and approachable game, but I feel like that is also true of all the Mario games. Actually, maybe not so much Bowser's Fury for the sort of kaiju mechanic that was referenced before. Chris, you already kind of started walking us through Bowser's Fury. I feel like I had read about what Bowser's Fury was

and when I started playing it, I was still kind of surprised by what it was uh because it's tough to really describe what it's going for i think it is inspired the only thing is it's kind of a visually uh ugly so the way it works is you're in a big open world it's like a it's an archipelagio is that how you pronounce it series of archipelago archipelago there we go thank you um and uh each of those sets of islands is what would normally be kind of uh mario level not so unlike mario galaxy the issue is you know you can you can freely go between islands you have

plessy or whatever the loch ness monster friend is called yeah um and you can go between it all of that is great uh but from a visual standpoint it results in this really non-nintendo thing where the panoramas or the landscapes are just like random pieces of obstacles from other lands so it just looks it looks like just not thought out this kind of pays off so we So we mentioned that there's a giant kaiju Bowser. You collect star shines, which are effectively stars. They're actually cat shines. Oh, sorry, cat shines. Thank you. You collect these shines by accomplishing various tasks on these islands.

And once you have enough, you ring a bell, a cat bell, and you turn into a giant cat and then you fight giant bowser and these fights are not great they're like mario 64 style fights but the one novel thing is the environment all of the islands that you've been around is now like the barriers that can protect you from bowser which is neat. But not really taken to. I don't know. It feels like it could be taken a lot further. Than it actually is.

Just to put a pin on that thought. Nintendo's been farming out. Way more games than usual. To like outside studios. Like Koei Tecmo. Is that what they use for it? Yeah. And this is the first mario game where i was

playing it and i was like if you told me nintendo didn't make this and then another studio like was kind of riffing off the mario thing i would 100 believe it and that's not actually a slam on the game like i i really like bowser's fury a lot it just doesn't it feels scrappier and more like a rough draft and more experimental than nintendo usually lets itself be which is good and bad at least what did you think that that was the word experimental was exactly what came to mind like this feels like a prototype of nintendo testing some type of mode or format or template for a future game them saying like let's let's see how far we could push the boundaries of of super mario sunshine one of the greatest mario games ever made we all agree uh we could all agree i think um though i i would say like it doesn't have the same nuance or like

sense of self as super mario sunshine does its world. But I really liked the world. But it did feel like kind of like a Mario Lite game, where it doesn't feel like a full flesh game, like a Sunshine or an Odyssey, or, you know, even like Mario 64. My biggest takeaway was I liked that Nintendo was kind of playing at a survival game day-night cycle with Bowser. Yeah. It's like, you know, the zombies come out at night,

but they're like, Bowser's coming out at night. And I appreciated Nintendo saying, like, let's take the day-night cycle and do something fun and inventive for Nintendo, I guess. Yeah, and I also like the heavy metal, death metal soundtrack that blares whenever Bowser shows up with it is kind of the the little islands in in the archipelago are essentially cordoned off not cordoned off they are sectioned off like paintings in in Mario 64

or you know whatever where you can see sort of the task, the name of the task at least, like find the key or smash through the ice cubes or whatever, like to tell you this is what you have to do. Here's a hint at what to do. And when you are pursuing one of those and then it starts raining, which means the Bowser is going to pop out in like 15 seconds, there were a lot of times

where i was like not right not now bowser like i'm doing this this like mini game where i'm skating down a uh like a ski ramp trying to collect these coins can you not like jump out and start shooting fireballs at me right now like it was it it's very neat and very novel but also as is the case sometimes with new ideas like very annoying well i will say this though there are moments when you're doing that when you're in the middle of trying to collect a normal cat shine and bowser shows up and when you do collect the cat shine he will get like sent away yeah um so there is kind of an exciting moment where it's like i am inches away from getting this thing. Bowser shows up and I'm like dodging the fireballs to get this thing to like shoot him away for another 10 minutes or whatever it is. So that kind of works for me.

I'm actually into that dichotomy. Yeah. My favorite bit of that was there's one section where the platforms are invisible. Yeah. You like step on them. Oh, yeah. where the uh platforms are invisible um yeah you like step on them oh yeah and it's like this kind of like series of spiraling up and going through kind of a maze that you you can't see and about halfway through the giant kaiju bowser showed up and just started pummeling the area and that like

thrill of like i need to hurry but also i have literally no idea where to go because i can only see about two feet in front of me at any given moment was it was very good the um the density the density of the little islands i think is great because i they really do jam pack a lot of i while you were describing that i was thinking about sort of memorable experiences there's an early one where you have to fight those little bully ball guys that just charge at you on this arena where tiles are red and blue and they sort of switch every time you jump. So you have to kind of trick the guys into doing that. I was doing that challenge when Bowser attacked. And then all of a sudden, like now I can't just jump out of the way of Bowser's fireballs or else I may jump to a tile that's not going to be there anymore. Yeah,

they really don't waste your time, unless you do fall into the ocean and then have to, or, you know, either swim to shore or, you know, swim to the dinosaur and ride him back. I have an important question for Lise before we wrap up, which is how should we take the story between Bowser and Bowser Jr.

and how concerned should we be i like that i mean bowser jr has this kind of like wounded uh traumatized feel to him which i was like oh man when you're when it in the analogy of there's this kid that just he wants his bad dad to just be a little less bad is kind of a sad story um i love hero bad guy team team ups when you know the the long-running hero and bad guy there's an even worse villainous force so they need to pair so i did i did like that a lot um but this made me think to thousand year door which is my favorite paper mario where it's like you know your party is this this band of rogues and stuff so i i love the idea but yeah it it is a bit sad when you think about

intervention honestly yeah like bowser jr does help you and in multiplayer another player can control them to kind of do the usual um multiplayer stuff there is there is also in super mario 3d world if you're playing in handheld mode, because me and Henry did this, if you can touch the screen to do things like stun enemies or collect coins or smash open boxes. So, you know, it's not ideal having his grubby little four-year-old hands

still sticky with gummy bear residue just like pawing at the screen while I'm trying to jump around, you know, enemies or whatever. But it's a cool implementation. It did seem though that Bowser's Fury, even though it has multiplayer, unlike 3D World,

which is a very competitive multiplayer, Bowser's Fury is entirely like assist-based. Fully, yeah. Bowser Jr. cannot like really hinder you in any way. You could just help. So that seems like maybe not for a four-year-old, but for like a five or six-year-old, that'd be okay. Yeah, sure.

Cool. Well, why don't we go to a break and then we're going to do a lot of new skits and jokes and we can work on some sketches that are going to be funny, but they're also going to teach you a lot about the Bible. So we'll be right back. We got some new hot reviews coming in off the presses. Two of them. I mean, we've gotten more than two reviews. That would be bad if that was all we'd done. But these two are special because

when you look at them, there's a song inside of them. Do you know what, do you ever see that? Like you see some words, maybe a poem or whatever, and you're like, there's a song in there. Isn't that synesthesia? It is synesthetic, yeah. It's like when you look at a house and you think, bones. Yeah. That's going to eat me. Russ, why don't you go ahead and crack open the bones of this one review

and find the song within, and we'll try and figure out what video game tune it is your uh this review comes from thunder horse i like this podcast i like this podcast rust asked us to subscribe outside of spotify i thought a review would be nice too that's it that's it yeah then that was we've already done this game it's just a slightly different tune from the same game this is super mario brothers we just went underground yeah stage what one two one two we've done one one now we're doing i think we're gonna go through the whole game i think one thing is gonna be coming up pretty soon i I'm actually, for this next review, I'm going to skip ahead to my favorite

little piece of Mario music from Yoshi's Island. It's from Ian826. He says, This video game podcast is better than video games. I don't play video games, but I never miss an episode

of this podcast. I would listen to these guys talk about anything. My brother is more of a gamer and i blindly followed the recommendations of this podcast for a christmas present and he loved it keep it coming wow yeah that was my ringtone for a long time not me singing the review but the actual tune is it bob anybodyop? Anybody been playing anything else? Oh, man. I've got a great game to talk about, and Fresh loves it.

So, today we're going to talk about, we're going to spend probably the next hour talking about this one. It's called Spire Blast. I know, you're already into it. What if I told you it's sort of like Boom Blox and ad uh puzzle match game it's on mobile but but here's the big catch you have to have apple arcade oh but here's the other catch so many caveats it's it's it's clearly designed for in-app purchases but but but but here's the catch since it's on apple arcade they had to strip them out so it is completely unbalanced the first 12 levels are the hardest of 80 it only gets easier after the first 12 but but but but and this is the big catch if you like knocking things down it's a great game for you okay okay it's it's it is not boom blocks at plant said

boom blocks and i was like oh i'm in yeah and i was gonna give him big ups because steven spielberg's boom blocks yep oh thank you i believe he did he was very well involved it was was just like a delightful and fun little game especially if you're playing with other people sadly this one's actually much more like steven spielberg's unreleased xyz um real snobby asshole yeah that was that was a deep cut uh it is it is it is a fine game but i would say if you're gonna really go out there and recommend something on a precise platform as apple arcade it better be a jammer and this is not a jammer fine okay interesting spire i would have said release boom blocks for uh mobile yes before i before i would want to play this or that connect trebuchet game oh my god racketeer is that what

it was called where you like had to use your arms to pull back a uh like siege weapon and then launch it at a castle i had to review it i had to review so many art so many connect games uh while i was at joystick and polygon anyway uh at least have you been playing anything other than mario uh i've been playing little nightmares too oh yeah uh which i i love you know the merging of macabre and cute so I I was a big fan of the first game and I like you know it is more of the same of what we liked in that one they added the bent neck or not the bent neck the long neck lady yeah you're calling her the bent neck lady like from haunting a film house yeah uh but the lot but she you know the second she popped in I was like oh okay this is a whole other game yeah um which for an indie you know

side-scrolling platformer you don't say much yeah we we talked about it last was it last week last episode yeah last episode that we talked oh right we didn't record last week because of the apocalypse uh we talked about it you know two weeks ago that game i don't know if it's like this for you guys chris chris and Russ, that game has stuck with me in a weird way. And this happens sometimes when I finish games. Maybe it's just this sort of creepy vibe of it, or maybe it's the way that it ends.

But it's a game that I kind of can't stop thinking about, which I think is kind of noteworthy. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I thought it was a good game overall maybe i'll beat it russ and i have been playing the same game uh which is stardew valley with the big 1.5 update uh which i underestimated the scope of it that's a big that's practically dlc like it's practically

an expansion for stardew valley it adds a ton of stuff to the game yeah it's wild how much was added uh and the fact that he just keeps going back to it and throwing more stuff in because he has an extreme passion for making this game i'm right excited to see what he makes next but honestly like so i started i looked at my clock and my play clock had like 60 hours on the farm i was on and i'm now at like 80 85 and i'm not close to being done with it so there's definitely a lot there um it adds like a new island and a new dungeon and new characters and new like end game activities which is really smart um for people who have invested like hundreds of hours into this game like now there is actual kind of challenging stuff for them to do again

uh it's it's it's very cool it just hit consoles uh fortunately like two days before the big uh texas power outage so my switch kept me kept me company as we sort of bounced around living situations for a while uh yeah all right uh should we dive into some reader questions? Yeah. Cool. This first reader question comes from 57 Hertz. This is a good question. Is Bowser's Fury a peek at what the next big Mario game will look like? Would an Odyssey-sized open-world Mario even work with the hardware constraints on the Switch? Why does Russ say Mario like that? So sort of three questions uh there to tackle one one can

you also read because i'm curious and this kind of dovetails into it can you read the um question here from roland coons yeah there's a question here from roland coons how does russ say wario so you say wario you don't say wario yeah but you say mario. You don't say Wario. Yeah. But you say Mario, but not Mario. Right. Explain that now. Yeah. So with Mario, it's a me, Mario.

Fine. That's how he says it. With Wario, he says, it's a me, Wario. That's how he says it. So I'm just- You're under the impression that when Mario introduces himself, he says Mario and we are the ones who are wrong? Yeah. Mario. So you hear Mario saying Mario?

Mario. He kinda. Mario. It's me. Mario. No, guys. No. Mario.

It's like Berenstain Bears. It is. It's not that he says it's me, Mario. He doesn't say it's a mania. Like, what are you talking about? No, Wario does that. Wario's, Mario. So that is a Wario.

Okay, so this whole time, I thought it was just Russ standing in his wrong truth and like being sort of obstinate about it. But you're telling me you hear it. It comes from the source, directly from the plumber himself. I had a big argument with my household companion recently about this. Wow. It's interesting because when I.

It's been. Yeah, it's been tense. It's interesting because when I first played a Mario game, consider that like voice in a game was not an option. Like you were not going to hear a voice in the NES. Right. So the first person to say the word Mario was probably either a family member or a school mate of mine who was like,

hey, have you played the new Mario? Okay. So once it was baked in at a young age, I don't know there's any- Then you started hearing it wrong because that's how your brain, that's interesting. But we should talk about blue dress, white dress situation. Has Nintendo ever emphatically confirmed pronunciation?

Well, funny you should say that. I think I've told this story in the podcast before, but I'm gonna bring it up because it's my favorite story. I was interviewing Shigeru Miyamoto about eight or nine years ago for mtv and i said in one of my questions hey so with mario what do you do with blah blah whatever the question was and he stopped the interview and was like did you just say mario and he said that in english yeah to me that's that's that's fantastic. Did he slap you?

We could also, we could just call Charles Martinet and be like, what did you say? How did you say it? When you said it. Shake him. Just shake him

until the drink comes out. Okay. Is this a peek at what the next big Mario game will be like? I don't, I think the next big Mario game is going to be Odyssey 2.

I think Odyssey was such a slam, slam dunk in so many ways that in the many ways that in the same way that we got super mario galaxy 2 like i do not think that honestly i think the reason bowser's fury got this pack-in treatment is because of a certain amount of recognition that it's not enough for to be its own thing like i enjoyed it i've i've honestly i've played it more than 3d world at this point, but I don't, I don't,

if this had been the followup to super Mario odyssey, I would have been like pretty hugely disappointed. So I, I, I don't think that this is where it's going. I think the next one's going to be odyssey too. Well, I think the question isn't so much the like scale of this as it was like the

question about the structure is this structure of like an open world format for mario versus the level-based stuff is that where things are going i know i don't think there's a way in hell because of because of that finesse that you get from like open-ish worlds right right honestly pretty open world yeah it's just yeah it's hard for me to imagine them like having a full game that isn't so polished but that but i say that in galaxy one has the same issue and then galaxy two looks nice like galaxy one as we remember from when we did our episode on it the backgrounds outside of the worlds are just like png files of like a giant mario face it's like it's really not a it's not pretty at times yeah um so i don't i don't know but i i doubt it i think you're right that mario 2

uh or mario odyssey 2 is the right thing on bowser's fury specifically like i know we've been sort of like mixed on it i am shocked at how full featured it is for a pack-in game. So 3D World is like a $60 game with Bowser's Fury. So you get two of these. Bowser's Fury is like, I want to say, an eight-hour game, at least, if you're trying to 100% it. And it's fun. It's like a fun Mario game. Meanwhile, Nintendo is selling Skyward Sword in the summer,

which is an 11-year-old Wii game for $60 and no real bonus. I mean, they're changing the controllers, but no real bonus content. This seems like a pretty damn good deal, even if it's not the best fucking Mario experience ever. Yeah, this is actually a good game, unlike Skyward Sword. Between this and the 3D All-Stars collection

and Mario Maker 2, there is a truly bonkers amount of Mario content on the Switch right now. I guess we need to wrap up. Elise, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you and your great works? I'm on Funhaus almost every day, youtube.com slash funhaus and roosterteeth.com. And I also do some side stuff. A published author oh i i did in october i published a children's novel a night in halloween house which you know this march if uh you're wondering what month it is wonder no longer and just buy a halloween book

because this this year does not matter um but yeah that uh hopefully kids like i hope and uh and also i do some stuff at james williams stuff on youtube uh we can't change the name yeah so um and can i just say i think i think nintendo was testing something with that game whether it's the day night cycle or they're trying to make that that lighthouse hub a test. I think there's something they're doing. I'd be curious to know if there's ever a way to reimagine Mario to the level that Breath of the Wild was a total reimagining of what a Zelda game can be. I don't think this is that,

because the core of it is still very much traditional 3D Mario, but I do believe that there is a version of that reimagining that could come in the future. They made it. It's Alisa's favorite Mario game. I'm telling you guys. Thank you so much for having me. This is always a delight.

Next week, we're going to be deciding the very best Zelda game of all time, according to the show notes. Good luck with that. That'll be fucking fun. And how are we doing that? are we just like each picking one and arguing our case it should be

noted that this was justin's idea and then he went off the grid um and i think it's a good idea and i think we will still do it but i don't exactly know what he had in mind but i think we will figure it out we'll also probably talk about valheim sometime soon. Yeah, I need to learn what that is at some point, huh? Yeah, it's good. Can I suggest a randomized bracket? Oh. It's a very kill your darling situation and it forces you to make some choices

that you normally wouldn't. Oh, so the seeding is randomized. Yeah. Well, Elise, I don't know how much of our show you've listed to, but I would argue that some of our bracket-based content is among some of our worst content. I haven't heard any bracket stuff.

I think the sort of Royal Rumble style, let's throw all these links into a fucking box and see which one walks out is the way to go. I do like the idea that the CDI Zelda could come out on top with randomized seating. That is pretty exciting. Hearing us spend 20 minutes debating like Phantom Hourglass versus Spirit Tracks would be probably, we would get a Razzie four podcasts at that point.

okay. So that's going to do it for us this week on the besties. Thank you for listening. And there's probably stuff that Justin says here that I can't remember, but Hey, uh, like, and subscribe,

leave a review, tell your friends, uh, that, that would mean a remember. But hey, like and subscribe, leave a review, tell your friends. That would mean a lot. We're trying to find a way to keep the show going and ride the train into more financially viable waters. And that's not where trains usually go. Into the waters. But yeah, and thanks for listening.

And be sure to join us again next week for the best news, because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!