The Besties - Rolling Paper Mario

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

This week The Besties take a critical look at Paper Mario: The Origami King, the sixth installment of the Mario Paper series, and explore which power-up items in the Mario franchise they genuinely would want to eat. Plus, they read fan letters and answer who is the better Doctor: Mario or Waluigi? If you’d like to contact the show please reach out to [e-mail]. 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!

Russ and I, before you guys got on, we're just singing some of our favorite Beatles songs. Which we cannot do on the show because we will get sued into oblivion. Well, we can do parody. It's actually not a problem. It's actually not a problem because we can just tweak the lyrics. Oh, no. And so it won't be like a big problem. So I might be like,

ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I am the sea pig. Yep. You are the sea pig. I am the sea pig. Do do be do. Something like that. What's another one?

Hey, Scrooge. You're on a mountain. Hey, Scrooge. You're on a mountain. Hey, Scrooge. You could do like number six. Number six. Oh, yeah, that's good. That's good. No, it wasn't.

What about the dong and hiney toad? Come on. That was a little puerile humor for you. Yeah, I love that shit. I crave that shit. Jessica Phillips picks up the rice in the building where wedding

has been. That's good. I like that. This is good. We're really tapping into our Gen Z audience right here. We could be like not paperback

writer. If you just add not in front of it, they can't prove in court that you were talking about. my name is justin mcelroy and i know the best game of the week my name is griffin mcelroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I did, you can't say I didn't play a game this week. You say hello and I say goodbye, goodbye. Hello, my name is

Christopher Plant and I know the best game of the week. My! What was that, Justin? I was just trying to skip you. Justin forgot you were here, Russell. Remind me, Russ. Make me feel your presence my name is russ froschek and i know the best beatles song of the week hello and welcome to the beatles the beatles to this time about video games it's the besties where we talk about the latest and

greatest at home interactive entertainment uh we have come a long way since pac-man but not such a long way since mario which i decided i would get in front of the violence today we're talking about uh paper mario origami king i decided i would get ahead of the violence of hearing russ say mario all the time by i will say it also i noticed that i get acclimated i noticed that i was so happy sort of taking it out for a walk. How did it treat you, Jesse? You've done it a couple times now. A acrid mouthfeel is what I would say. Pungent.

Don't, yeah. Don't love it, I'll be honest. So what did you think of Popper Mario? Popper Mario is, this is like, I don't know. Okay, I'll just tell you. My experience with Popper Mario has, the Origami King, has been one where I have constantly felt on the cusp of it clicking for me. Like, almost like I'm about to get into a groove with this and then it just can't quite get there the mechanics for me are just too simplistic to really draw me in they have stripped out so many of the

rpg kind of mechanics to leave something that's neither rpg nor sort of like an action game for sure its own thing yeah it's its own thing can we start a little earlier and just like give people a rundown on like what the game is really quick? I think we can thread sort of both things that we were just talking about in that Paper Mario has become its own sort of genre

that I feel like you really can't go into this expecting a Mario and Luigi RPG game. And that covers like Superstar Saga, Bowser's Inside Story, the time travel one where they teamed up with them with their baby selves like those are those were those were RPGs in the vein of well they're their own vein right like those establish like their own thing. I was gonna say I think there is like a splitting point right so Paper Mario as a franchise started originally on the what was it N64 n64 right so it started originally

in 64 and it was an rpg no question about it it had all the like makings of an rpg with like you know mana points and hit points and everything that you expect from an rpg and they made two of those they made the first paper mario and they made paper mario a thousand year door on the gamecube and then there was a splitting point and the paper mario franchise sort of the rpg franchise sort of morphed into marion luigi which was on the handheld like game boy uh 3ds and stuff like that and those games are and those games are great bowser's inside story came out i think uh on 3ds weirdly last year uh and that game holds up it's very clever those games are hilarious and like they have pretty

solid rpg mechanics but uh yeah super super paper mario was on the wii and that's kind of where it started to go in more this like weird platformer adventure family turn-based combat family game and then with color splash which was that wii u i forget what Color Splash came out on. Color Splash, and then Sticker Star in the 3DS, and now Origami King. It's its own fucking thing that does like, there is turn-based combat, but it is actually, no wait, that's not even true anymore with Origami King. Now it's weird puzzle-based combat. I didn't like this game. I don't care for the new Paper Mario games, which is heartbreaking because I adore the traditional Mario and Luigi RPG games because I think the word I would use to describe

Origami King and Color Splash and Sticker Star is just gimmicky, which I don't think translates the same way that it does for other video games. I mean it like in this game, the combat feels like a one-trick pony and the exploration feels like a one-trick pony, and the exploration feels like a one-trick pony. The whole world is made out of paper,

and I feel like you really have to think that that is extremely cool and entertaining to get anything out of Origami King. I mean, it is cool. It's cool, it is. The visuals are very cool. But not so much that I was spending the whole game going like, whoa, paper waterfall, man.

You have a button where you can throw confetti out to like fill in these like holes in the paper mache environment and sometimes it'll reveal little hidden things and sometimes it'll just like allow you to go up a staircase that you couldn't go up before and that mechanic of like getting confetti and pressing a button to fill in a hole in the environment is not fun the first time that you do it and then like continues to not be fun and actually gets like kind of annoying when you're like oh fuck i'm out of confetti but i need to make this staircase so i guess i'll go hit some trees with my hammer like it's just it's so shallow and it's so it just it everything feels like uh somebody had

an idea but like didn't think of a way to like make it mean anything outside of just pressing a button to make confetti come yeah I think that the confetti thing that you're talking about is the perfect thing to kind of like drill into because I think you can compare it to Luigi's Mansion right which also has a thing that could be very tedious and boring which is the vacuum mechanic. It's easy to imagine a world in which a video game developer is like, okay, you press this button and then you spam it until the thing is caught in your vacuum. And the Nintendo magic is adding everything around it, that it feels good doing it, that the entire world is impacted by the vacuum, that you're like wrestling with the ghost to make it work and i can see a world i hate doing like how would i have designed this game i could see

a world where this game probably had more investment where there was something more pleasurable than just spamming a button and waiting for the spray confetti animation to repeat itself three times before a hole is filled. And then also waiting for the load animation of that new confetti floor to turn into normal ground, where somebody along the way is saying, okay, we quite simply cannot do this unless it is extremely pleasurable, because you're going to be doing it the whole game. I think the same applies to the combat, which I'll let somebody fresh, do you want to try to explain the combat? Okay, so the combat is basically the best I can describe it. It's a slide puzzle.

Traditionally, slide puzzles are like three by three blocks, but here you're rotating rings and shifting enemies around to basically line them up. And if you line up enemies in the right way, you get a big bonus in damage. You can basically one-shot all the enemies on the board. The problem is that puzzle that you're solving does not change for like 99 of the fights you do so you end up doing the same

slide puzzle over and over and over again about a hundred times before you get to any variation which are the boss fights which are quite good i actually enjoyed the boss fights but almost every other fight in the game is the same slide puzzle with slight variations of like oh the enemies are here instead of here but generally it's the same thing and you have no do you have no choice i mean the big thing that i like about the like classic paper mario rpgs and the mario and luigi rpgs is you're making choices of saying like oh i'm gonna use this power and i have to like you know play this little mini game to like get the most damage and stuff like that and oh i'm gonna use this power and i have to like you know play this little mini game to like get the most damage and stuff like that and oh this is going to cost a lot of

mana points but it's going to be worth it because it's going to knock everyone out and here the number of choices you have are really limited all you can do is like well do i want a hammer or i want to stomp on a guy do i want to use my slightly more powerful boots or the less powerful boots like the choices are not interesting those choices are also prescribed yeah answers based on how you arrange enemies on this circular arena uh because most of the time the puzzles if you want to think of them that way uh enemies show up on this field in groups of four because those uh you have four enemies in one of the chosen patterns which is a

straight line out from the center where you're standing and then you can jump on them uh for for maximum damage or you can arrange them in a two by two square right next to the center of the arena where you're at if you do it that way you can hit them with the hammer so really it's not much of a choice you're just arranging them based on the solution to the puzzle and then doing the attack that is then is what you do based on the shape that you made that they like that was the correct answer it's not good i just want to add one more irritant to the combat thing is that in addition to uh not being able to choose whether or not you use your hammer or your boots, really, for jumping, you also have these, like, upgraded versions of the boots and the hammer,

something that should feel cool, but instead they're consumable items, where if you use them a few times, they break, and then you have to go get more. And you have so much money that it's not an issue to go buy more it's just like you have to go trek back and buy more disposable shoes and hammer to use on the enemies and it's so just like it's not fun like you get a better hammer that should feel good it doesn't because every time you use it you're're like, well, it's going to break soon, so I've got to go back and use another one.

It's very unpleasurable. So here's kind of where my head is at with this game. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time dunking on it because it is not great. And I say not great. I know that we had mixed feelings on Last of us um and on ghost of tsushima right but those games are like well made and moment to moment enjoyable even if i like i have serious issues with the story of last of us or that i found ghost of tsushima overly familiar i can still play ghost for like 40 hours and like burn my time and and there's like still like meat on the bone in

terms of what to talk about critically y'all this game is just kind of a a mediocre game like it is there's not a lot to even break down with it i guess i'm saying this because i i've seen this from i've heard this feedback from our listeners and and I definitely feel it, too, of, like, it's almost, like, draining to, like, have to talk, to dunk on a game like this. So, I'm curious, was there anything that you liked? And also, beyond that, like, what great Mario game can people play on the Switch that isn't this one, right? Yeah, I will compliment the, I really, there is is most of the writing is bland some of the writing is very funny. Yes. And

the tone overall is like pleasant it's a little bit sardonic, not as hard as some of these games have leaned before like it's not like knowing wink wink, but there's just like you rescue these toads that are stuck in the environment by hitting with a hammer or pulling them out of the ground like they're folded up and you stuck in the environment by hitting with a hammer or

pulling them out of the ground like they're folded up and you have to unfold them by hitting them or pulling them out and some of them have some pretty good lines uh in fact most of them i would say are like at least like pleasant and some are genuinely very funny there was one where uh a paper toad had been folded into a grasshopper and i hit him with my hammer to turn him back to a toad and he said uh i was a grasshopper for 30 minutes and i didn't learn anything it was true i don't know why that one really hit my my funny spot but there's some good like little story and character moments like that and i also wanted to mention like i think the boss fight it takes you like five hours to get to the first boss fight which is a little bit odd but

once you get to the boss fight it's actually really like i found it actually quite engaging it changes did you describe the mechanics of that so it's also a slide puzzle so don't don't think it's that drastic but it's mechanically completely different where instead of lining enemies up you're basically building a path for mario to follow as he approaches like the boss and each boss has like different points so the first boss you fight is like a big turtle and you have to like hit all its feet and its tail to like make it flip over to expose the weak point so doing those steps and like making choices of like how the path is going to go i found really interesting and very satisfying when you actually do pull it off and you do like

a lot of damage on the boss so there is like there are good ideas in this game they're just not a lot of them uh the the bosses are also what is it the legion of stationary or something like that and the i'm not ruining anything that's like not in the trailers uh and the first boss that you fight is a uh container of colored pencils that like launches the colored pencils at you like a rocket launcher like that's fucking cool like it it's the lego movie uh like crazy glue being like this artifact of power like this item of in this world of paper here's a stapler that is like a demigod like that's great that's cool that's entertaining the reason i don't feel as bad about like dunking on this game is because there is so much uh history and there are so many examples

of this exact idea being done like really really well uh you mentioned the toads and that is like for for fans of like paper mario games and mario and luigi rbgs like uh i remember around the time sticker star came out like this frustration came about which is like most of the characters in this game most of the interactions that you have are with toads this game is like the characters in this game are like 98 toads uh and not like the kind of fun, colorful cast of characters that you would get from a different game, from a different developer. And it's just, it's kind of boring. Like you don't get a lot. The new characters you get are Olivia, who is your sprightly companion, who doesn't, I feel like have much character to her whatsoever and then the origami

king himself who is also like not that exciting the best character the best character i've experienced in this game is a fucking box of colored pencils who was very who was very cool but i you know like that's i i don't know i feel like it's very homogenous i should just mention as you get deeper into the game there are new party members that join you so like right after that first boss there's actually like a bob-omb who joins your party and actually appears in fights and slightly changes the way fights play out so there are other characters but it takes a while to get there so plant had the question about which other mario games to play on the switch i'm actually not going to recommend a mario game I am going to recommend a quasi Paper Mario game I think I talked about this

and Griffin has talked about it and it's called Bug Fables and it is 100% designed with the mindset of Paper Mario Thousand Year Door that era of Paper Mario RPG is Bug Fables obviously it doesn't have the Mario franchise or anything behind it

but if you want to sort of relive that era um yeah it's called bug fables it's on switch it's on pc i think it might be on other consoles um definitely check that out because it definitely checks that it's terrific good try wrong answer uh the best mario rpg on nintendo switch is mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. It is, no, it's good and it has RPG mechanics and it's full of joyful surprises. What are the RPG mechanics?

Have you not played it? No, I haven't played Mario and Sonic. Okay, so no, we're gonna save this for a very special episode sometime in the future because this game is truly bizarre and the Olympics aren't actually happening right now so i will make sure that you actually play this it is a deeply weird swing and maybe a miss at some of the atlas uh stuff of like mario sports games um i mean it

is a game where uh somebody was like i don't know here's a whole bunch of money and way too much time just keep adding things until we tell you to stop um and then they released it it's wonderful also you can see like uh their feet and they look so weird is it like on some camelot level rpg like the mario golf games like it's not a full story like that it's like it's like a mishmash it's like a whole bunch of different things all at once i played it i'll share it with you it's anyway anyone else have any other mario games that actually mario odyssey is really good yeah i've actually had a weird itching to go back and play mario odyssey these two subpar mario games that we've

been i was about to say enjoying but that's not the right word something like enjoying um what was the other one galaxy you mean uh galaxy 2 galaxy 2 is good okay i mean lots of things are good but i don't i just don't think it's good enough to play wow i don't know i don't really know uh i think i think what's wildest about uh paper mario as it is now is how bewildering it is like i don't know who it's for i don't know uh why they make the decisions that they make in making it like i get the urge to innovate and the urge to like differentiate it from its its past but it also feels like this formula this weird platform puzzle action very very light rpg mechanic genre that they've worked out is like not especially well liked by anyone so here's what i

wanted to mention so i after playing this i i did a little bit of research just because i hadn't played the other like the more recent paper mario games because they got so critically like hammered and i was looking back at it and the designer when it like switched uh over i think it was whatever that like transition game after thousand year door happened the designer was basically saying there's a quote that i read that was basically i wanted to make an rpg that had no experience points no leveling up and no. And that was my goal. And I think the intention, if I had to guess, was to design an RPG that, like, very, very young kids could play.

So, like, six-year-old, seven-year-old kids could play. But I think even then, they were underestimating what kids are capable of. Like, I was pretty young when I played Super Mario RPG, which is one of the hardest of the Mario RPG games, and I was able to hack it, and some of that is like, yeah, hand it to my older brother who can finish this part for me,

but that's satisfying to be able to finish a tough game. If that is the case, though, and I want to celebrate stuff like that, I will say that the open world, walking around, throwing around confetti and filling in holes is something my my five-year-old daughter actually really enjoyed so that was very easy for her to to glom onto but the slide puzzles were tough for me like i wouldn't be able to explain her to her like no you just turn that there was i mean literally like half the time i

was like i don't know i i you only get 30 seconds to do it which drives me crazy well you can buy more you can buy more you can buy more time with money but like but that's another thing where like it's similar to the degrading items just like well that's not fun like i'm spending my money to to buy more time like i don't get a sense of satisfaction from that like it's just i don't know and when you get one it's it's not bad like it feels pretty good but like to have to get additional time and and and you know kids could net like yeah no that that would be very tough for kids i think just to boil it down like it just doesn't have the like when we think of nintendo magic and i think uh luigi's mansion 3 is like the best

example of that best recent example of that when we think of nintendo magic this game does not have nintendo magic it has like glimmers like an outline of like moments of nintendo magic but the core gameplay and just everything it just doesn't have that spark um which is a bummer because we do not get very many exclusive Nintendo games. And especially right now, it is like a very clear schedule of no Nintendo games. So I was really looking forward to it. Yeah, I guess to wrap it up,

I've thought quite a bit about this. And Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 isn't as much of an RPG as I actually remember it. It's more of a series of mini games tied together by a time warping story mode that takes you back to the Olympics of 1964. Sure. I just want everybody to know that I take that

back but I still do recommend the game because it does have a time warping story mode set in 1964. Wasn't that the Munich Olympics? God, I hope not. Anyway. We're going to take a quick break and catch up on our history. And then when we get back, we'll talk about literally anything else. Okay.

This is a big question. Russ recommended this question. Welcome back, by the way. Russ recommended this question. I think it's so good. And I want to talk about it for a very long amount of time which is why we stopped talking about paper mario which mario power-up would you genuinely want to eat and why it's less about the powers and more about the

flavor discuss okay so and again it's important like you're not going to eat the mushroom because it makes you big you're going to eat the mushroom because damn that mushroom looks good that's the like gist of it okay but you are you are oh god this this whole fucking question is built upon like a a i think an enormous inescapable fallacy which is the idea that mario eats the power-ups to get their power he doesn't because okay let's talk it makes sense with mushroom it makes sense with mushroom yes and then end of list my man doesn't eat flowers he doesn't eat capes he doesn't eat tanuki suits he doesn't eat hammers he doesn't eat shells he doesn't eat boomerangs he doesn't eat shells. He doesn't eat boomerangs. He doesn't eat stars. Okay, but you're leaving out quite a few. You're leaving out dash peppers.

You're leaving out double cherries. You're leaving out frogs. Okay, I can get... You're leaving out ice skates. You're leaving out bells. You're leaving out... I think there's probably more. Oh, hearts.

Metal caps. Yeah. I don't think he eats them well that's what I would say maybe that narrows it down for you Griffin maybe you only have a few possible options I'm not sure there's a boring one okay there's one I would eat there's one I would eat that maybe I shouldn't

and that's the that's a P-Wing you dip that in some Frank's Red Hot oh boy I would eat a P-Wing I think a P-Wing. You dip that in some Frank's Red Hot. Oh boy. I would need a P-Wing. I think a P-Wing, I think a P-Wing you could get through. I think it would be challenging.

I think there'd be some, I think there'd be some gristle in there. But I think I could probably finish myself a P-Wing. What do you think? It's gamey? I think, no, I think it's like got bones.

Oh, okay. I think P-Wing's got bones. Yeah. And they're like hunted for sport. Whatever the P-Wing comes off of, I guess a P. Yeah, we don't talk about that, huh? What about like a tanuki suit? That's a clothing.

I don't want to eat the tanuki suit or the frog suit because it's like I'm not going to eat my pants and shirt and hat and gloves. What if they're made of fruit roll-ups? Well, yeah. Okay. What if the fucking fire flowers made out of fruit roll-ups? I could do that with anything.

But I think we could speculate. You know, I don't think the fire flowers made of fruit roll-ups. That would be ridiculous. But if you're talking about a suit, like something you could wear, certainly edible clothing exists. I feel like I'm being cross-examined right now. I have given my answer and now I'm moving on. Okay, Justin, do you have one?

Bee mushroom. What? That looks good. The bee mushroom from Galaxy. Remember, it's like a brown and yellow little confection with like, it looks like maybe a bit of honeycomb candy. It looks really tasty. Isn't it like furry? It has like the fur? Maybe it's a little bit. I mean, it looks like um maybe a bit of honeycomb candy it looks really furry it has like the fur maybe it's a little bit i mean it look no i mean it's like texturally like looks furry

but that's just like to throw you off because it's like it looks really good i would absolutely eat a bee do you think they're filled with honey or do you think it's like bees in there i think it's a crunchy honeycomb exterior sort of like have, have you ever had sea foam candy? Okay, I'm thinking like sea foam candy exterior inside just a choice honey. Yeah. I wanted to call out mine, which is one of the forgotten Mario power-ups, and it is the three-up moon. Obviously, there's the traditional Mario mushroom one 1-Up which I believe is green the 3-Up Moon is just a moon but it gives

you three lives I always thought it tastes like astronaut ice cream there's something like right? Is that because of it's sort of celestial nature? Yeah that's part of it and also just the like the color and the solidity of it I feel like you just like munch off a side of it

and your mouth would just be exploded with ice cream flavor is yoshi a power-up no he's a he's a creature you can't enslave yoshi and eat him no sure well i guess that conflicts with my answer so i assume that we're in kind of like a alive the movie alive scenario right like we're trapped on a mountain otherwise like why am i not just eating normal food right like it's like like i'm in the middle of nowhere some malicious being named russ is like okay you get one food item it's from this list and i'm like what you know terrible dimension have i found myself in right so what i would choose is the double cherry because the double

cherry on top of just tasting good it's a cherry right good it also makes a copy of mario now people might say no it clones mark like it clones whoever eats it but i choose to believe that it just creates more marios so if i eat the double cherry then i have a whole mario to eat oh so it's like a prestige situation and there's no ethic there's no like moral quandaries there he's not even real exactly exactly like i mean honestly it's the malicious god russ's fault for putting me in this situation to begin with the blood is on his hands okay so let me ask you let me first say that like even though i have put you in this situation it's more like a buffet spread that's laid out in front of you it's not

like a malicious thing it's it's really intended to be generous and my like being a benefactor to you yeah i'd still do this and then eat mario now the follow-up question i have is the double cherry how do you know that you're not the one being copied oh my god seriously like would i eat myself well every time you eat a double cherry it makes a copy but maybe you are the copy because it's copying over all your memories it has consciousness so it's a 50 50 shot of whether you get eaten or not you know what i would do i would ask myself hey what day were you born and then the one who knows they would both know it's a literal it's a copy it's a sort of copy clone got it got it no oh you know what i do is okay here no no no no no no this

makes sense right we'd keep eating the cherries until there was like a thousand of me, right? And then by the law of copy machines, you go to Kinko's, it would degrade. And then we would just... The ones that are like, they don't even know their fingers from their fist, we eat them because we know for a fact they are not real me.

Yeah. So this would be like like what you're describing is you why oh you gen x wow i hope that doesn't stay it's a multiplicity situation jelani what do you think I feel like it did because it's very good. And, may I say, witty and urbane in a level that this show is not accustomed to. Well, I think we did it, Frosh. Thanks for taking us down this road. Oh, it was my pleasure. It's not the road I expected to take in the morning. Yeah, you absolute monster.

Let's talk about some communique from the other side, from the listenership. Oh, yeah. Do you have anything? I got some questions. One second. side from the from the listenership uh oh yeah i got some questions one second uh we got this from shelby do you consider mario games like paper mario to be kids games that are fun for adults or approachable games that kids could play who do you think uh uh the audience is effectively my husband and i were debating this while we played while he played the other day yeah this sort of goes to what justin was saying earlier which is like i think they are striving for a kids game but weirdly make it too complicated for kids to play

so it's kind of both i think mario in general the if we're not talking about this specifically we're talking about the franchise i think what they're always striving for is the Pixar demo of like kids who are a little bit more refined plus adults who still have room for like some whimsy in their hearts. Like I feel like that is the, that is always the target for Mario games or at least the best.

I mean, its design is specifically, you know know you talked about i want to make an rpg without items or levels or whatever like it's explicitly trying to make an rpg for people who don't play rpgs because they are like not attracted to those specific mechanics so like it is i i think it's easy to say like it's a younger audience but i think more specifically it's people who don't play these types of games but love slide puzzles i fucking love slide puzzle that's it though like they it's so frustrating because they got it right already they already did it right so many times and this

the past three paper mario games have just not gotten it question from cassandra who do you think is more ruggedly handsome paper Paper Mario or Dr. Mario? Dr. Mario. Paper Mario looks like... Paper Mario is nothing. Yeah. Nothing. I agree. Paper Mario is nothing.

He's a little two-dimensional. Also, Dr. Mario is a doctor. Doctor. Smart. You can have great conversations. It should be noted that the Dr. Mario mobile game that's out right now has apparently given doctorates

to every single character in the Mario universe, including Baby Bowser, who absolutely should not be a doctor. Does not make sense. Unless it's like a Doogie Howser situation, which is possible. I mean, to be fair,

Dr. Mario is a doctor who matches colors of pills and says, that should do it. Good. You should be fine. Well, he also does it very, very fast, Justin. That's true.

Well, that's for his billing so he can get it and see as many patients as possible. Is he like reaching into someone's stomach and placing the pills himself? Is that what we're seeing? I think it's a jar. I think it's a jar. It's a giant pill bottle.

He's organizing. He's basically organizing his pills so he can get out there and get to work well i think he's like a research like scientist doctor who's like trying to find a cure for things he's not actually putting the pills inside okay so he's putting the germs inside of them then intentionally no he's people aren't he doesn't touch people dr mario's bedside manner is fucking atrocious, and so he puts the germs in a bottle and then tries to kill them so he can come up with the cure.

He's not, he doesn't interface with people at all. Wow. Not like Dr. Waluigi, who has incredible bedside manner. He's actually my son's pediatrician, and he's very nice. See, you think that's what he's actually my son's pediatrician and he's he's very nice see you think that's what he's like but that's just what he's like when he's fighting with his terrible brothers but when he's with

my son and he's like I'm gonna give you a little shot and then he'll sing he'll be like and he's already given him the shot and he doesn't cry. And the spider-like limbs don't terrify your son? He loves the spider limbs. He gets to hang things off of them.

Yeah, sure. He gets toys and yeah. Does he have like a prize chest that he can pick out? He's got a prize box. He let my son take two prizes out of it last time. He's like, don't tell daddy. He's so sweet. I love him. The prizes out of it last time. He's like, don't tell daddy. He's so sweet. I love him.

The prizes are all old TV guys. And empty cans of chewing tobacco. But still. You're a good boy. One final question. When you get the prize. From M. Stanton. If everyone's made of paper, are books made of their flesh?

Oh, no. This is like a card situation, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Or kind of like a Necronomicon. Okay. So you're saying, are books made of flesh? Are there books in the Paper Mario universe? Like, have we seen books?

I believe I saw a bookshelf in somebody's house. I mean, we do know that he does have confetti. Oh. So when he is throwing that, he's like, here you go, blood, skin. I'm having a skin party. I smashed up at this Goomba

and I took his skin. Let me throw his blood right on you. Oh, there's an eyeball. Oops, it is. This is canonical. Well, I think that wraps up our question segment of the show. It's all ghoulish.

We should mention we are, normally we would do like a what are we playing segment here. I don't know if there's any tiny, tiny things we can mention here, but we are going to be doing a big special next week about the best games you're not playing. So we're going to be highlighting a bunch special next week about the best games you're not playing so we're going to be highlighting a bunch of kind of uh deeper cut titles but is there anything tiny that anyone wants to mention no i've been playing uh aria of sorrow castlevania aria sorry i just did it i built a through uh gameboy advance sp and aria of sorrow is like pound for pound maybe my favorite

castlevania game i've played it like 10 times it's though it's like the first one with the soul capturing mechanic and has like it's like symphony of the night on gameboy advance it it absolutely kicks ass this kanami why i know you don't make video games anymore i get it it's fine but like just re-release all those castlevania nintendo games because they're all freaking awesome i don't understand why they why konami why dawn of sorrow dawn of sorrow 2 on the ds is like exceptionally good yeah they have those two in particular are like absolute classics that i think hold up much better than symphony of the night and they i do not think they get their uh their their recognition.

Even the lowest one, which is probably the first one that came out on Game Boy Advance. Circle of the Moon is still pretty good. They're all like eights and above, which is just outstanding for a series that was that consistently good and we have not seen a release of any

of them since they first came out, which is so weird. I'm just going to say, we won't talk about it because we'll save it for next week, but people should play Carry On. It's coming out on the Switch and PC and maybe consoles, I think. And we should say the game is carrying like a dead creature on the side of the road and not carry on. Or carry on.

Not that. Yeah. We'll talk more about it next week, but if people are waiting for us to talk about a game that we are extremely into, guess what? We'll be talking about a few of those next week. And I am really looking forward to it.

I'm so excited. That is going to do it for us. Make sure you fall and listen for free on Spotify, which you have likely done already, but still, we love it. If you want to get in contact with us, mail at besties.fan. I would say maybe if there's a real hot one that you played this summer that you think might have slipped under the radar, we'd love to hear from you.

Maybe we'll also give it a look. Try to give it a little pitch, not just a name. What is it? There's a lot to sort through. Just not a lot of big games, which is why we are where we are. At the Besties Pod is our Twitter address and I think there's also a pinned tweet there where you can sign up

for our mailing list, right? Chris Plant, is that correct? Yes, there is. I recommend people do it. Do it. Please help us share the show. Besties.fan is the link, but we have asked enough from you. So we will let you, we will release you back into the wild. Thank you so much for listening.

And until next week, be sure to join us again next time for the Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? The Besties is a Spotify original podcast in association with Fox Media. The show is edited by Jelani Carter and produced by Ben Hosley. And our theme song is by Ian Dorsch. Besties!