The Besties - Street Fighter 6 is Shockingly Absolutely Our Jam

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

We weren't really sure if we'd have much to say about Street Fighter 6, given our lack of experience in the fighting game scene. Fortunately for us, it features an open-world single player mode that is the most unapologetically goofy thing ever.We're chatting all about World Tour mode, as well as: Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Barry, Succession, And a Bunch of Arcade Classics 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!

If you had to kiss one Street Fighter. Why just one? Let's say you had to kiss, let's say kiss, date, marry. Okay. One Street Fighter. I like your version of this so, so, can I just say, the usual version of this game requires me to commit murder, perform adultery, and then also remarry.

I mean, I would argue that kissing is a form of adultery. It's all bad. It's all bad. It's all bad. It's all bad. It's all bad. This one's not going to put me in jail, you know? They'll put me in the doghouse.

All right. I think the kiss is an easy answer. Okay. Okay. Kiss. I gotta go with the most electric kiss in the bunch, Blanca. Blanca, kissing Blanca would be great. And you can't do any of the others with Blanca. You can't have sex with Blanca.

He'd destroy you. He'd rip you apart. He'd fucking smash you to pieces. You'd just get caught in that chest hair is what you would do. You would get lost in that chest hair and lost in those eyes. I would say Vega for kiss because that way I could do it on the mask and it wouldn't be oh wouldn't count as adultery that's a good that's beautiful next next trick next trap please i dodged sidestep that one okay date date akuma oh really no no he a bad person. He spent so much time tying that rope around his waist.

You know, after this game, I think I'd like to date Luke. He seems supportive. Holy fucking shit. I want to know how he, his, I want to know why his head and face and body ended up the way it did. And so there's probably a lot of great stories there. Yeah.

Great stories. Great on a first date stories great on a first date great this this man's forearms looks like one juicy thanksgiving turkey each each forearm it looks like he has megaman x busters but flesh he has flesh busters yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna crush this last category super quick okay m, Mary. The M stands for Mary. You got to marry M. Bison. Mary Bison, yeah. Mary Bison will protect you.

He will look out for you. You will rule alongside him. Well, here's the question. Are you going to try to change him? Never! The day you married M. Bison was the most beautiful day of your life. And it was also very beautiful for me because we're in a loving, committed relationship. And I will treasure the memory.

It was a Tuesday, but don't get it twisted. A really special Tuesday for M. Bison. I love you so much, Justin. What? I love you so much, Justin. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin Bison and I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Froschek and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home, interactive it is a video game club pals and just by listening uh i'm excited to announce that you've become a member uh today we're talking

about street fighter 6 chris plant is not with us currently uh so i would love to hear russ freshdick tell me what is street fighter 6 street fighter 6 is the sit i was gonna say sixth installment but it's not it's like the 63rd installment of the Street Fighter franchise, which if you're not interested in fighting games, hang tight, because it's got some weird shit in here that I think you might dig. Because guess what? We aren't either. Yes.

And we're still going to give a positive review of this. Yeah, we're still very jazzed about this game. So stay tuned. Get pumped. Oh, man. positive review yeah we're still very jazzed about this game so uh stay tuned uh get pumped oh man this thing is wild this thing is a wild experience that i was not ready for and i'm so glad it turned out i haven't looked into anything about this game no when it started i was like this what we should even take a step back and say there was a moment where we weren't even gonna do this game because we none of us felt prepared to talk about a fighting game we don't have any any and

that's still kind of true yeah that's not that hasn't changed um what is notable about street fighter 6 is how it is geared geared for folks folks like us at the very least in its completely bonkers uh open world single player campaign mode um which is we should say we did not have access to the online uh yeah we didn't play street fighter 6 against another human being so please take everything we're about to say with an enormous grain of salt if you are the type of person who plays fighting games just maybe even this one's this episode's not for you and there's lots of other ones i'm sure that are because we didn't play against other human beings and from what i understand fighting game freaks love that shit yeah they like fighting others we exclusively had access to the world tour uh is is that is that what it's called yeah maybe i'm confusing it confusing it with this. Yeah, it's just called World Tour.

I think it's just in one city, but yeah. No, baby. You go all over the world. You're out of your mind. Are you kidding? Did you not go to Jamaica? Did you not go to Brazil? Did you not go to fucking Italy? London? You went to Italy, right? You gotta go to Italy to see the Lions. You went to Italy. Tell me at least you went to Italy.

I blew it. I'm sorry. You must have really not played very much is Italy where Mario you meet Mario and he teaches you his moves unbelievable it is a okay when you're playing the game and you do the training you're just like a young pup

hanging out with Luke and he's like hey you want to get strong here's how you do it you can run on three axes and I was like that makes me want to barf that's crazy how you do it. You can run on three axes. And I was like, that makes me want to barf. That's crazy. That's crazy. Why can't I?

This is true for her. Why are you letting me do this? And then it turns out is because the single player campaign is like this big open world of fighting. Yeah. It's set in a parody of New York and you can go just run around and there's

people and they're like there's like a mime on the street and there's like someone drinking coffee and you can just run up to them and be like i'm gonna kick the shit out of you and they're gonna be like hell yeah and you have a fight and then you level up we should also mention it's not just a parody of new york. It's fucking Metro City, which is the setting of the Final Fight games. That's true. And Mike Hagar is still the mayor. Mike Hagar is the mayor.

He's still the mayor. We're building a statue in Mike Hagar's honor. Can you imagine if there was a statue of an existing mayor? He's been the mayor for 30 years. He's the greatest mayor we've ever had. He is a despot, but we love him we love

him we stand we stand this despotic leader stand this unproblematic despot um man okay so the the vibe of this game is fucking i would say a little bit of jet set radio new jack swing fucking persona six it reminded me of persona 5 rather it's like it's kind of like yakuza is what it reminds me of it reminds me of like intentional shinmu like an intentional shinmu like it's it's kind of the world is threadbare and like i think it's important to distinguish from like real open world games right yes yeah this is not a vibrant world filled with detail and living, breathing characters. If you think you can drive those

cars, you know no, you can't. No, you can't even jump, buddy. Well, you can uppercut to gain height. You can do a spinning bird kick to get from rooftop to rooftop. And to break signs. The first time

I went up to somebody who's like just a guy selling pizza and you can challenge someone to a fight but you can also just like spinning bird kick right into them and give yourself a tiny advantage and the fight has begun you can do that to almost anyone yeah it's very good um so funny so so you can fight most people in this city and when you do it immediately snaps to a 2d you know classic street classic street fighter style fight uh each character that you can fight against you can check out their like details and see every character has rewards that you can get from the fight by completing certain objectives. So it'll be like-

Oh, I don't think I knew that part. Oh, Jesus Christ, Russ. How much of this game did you play, pal? I mean, I saw that they were wearing hats and I wanted the hats, but I didn't know how to get the hats. Okay, okay. Okay.

Now think more like consumables usually. Oh yeah, I did get- I got some energy drinks and stuff. I got a garment one time, but- You can get XP, you can get zenny, which you spend on buying new clothes, which does have stat upgrades. There's leveling up and skill point.

Like there is some RPG, there's a lot of RPG trappings here. So, which is a little bit frustrating because then when you find Chun-Li and Chun-Li's like, let me teach you. You can be like, okay. And then you learn Chun-Li style, which you just equip to your character.

And all of a sudden you're my dude who was just a perfectly cylindrical beef boy. is moving like Chun-Li and has all of Chun-Li's moves, which is very, very good. But then you try to fight Chun-Li. She's like, let's spar. And she's level, like, 50, and she fucks you up, and you don't stand a chance, which is very not Street Fighter, it feels like. Okay, but this is – I want to talk about this because this is actually the change that made this work for me. Among many changes where this like actually clicked

were so many don't. When I have, I can still have a good experience, right? A good fighting experience where I can practice and not get overwhelmed. And the only change in so many of these games right like almost any other genre like this where you have like a narrative there is that power fantasy of like growing in strength right um and I think that being able to do that while you're practicing learning like the basics and stuff so you aren't constantly

frustrated and you can focus on building your skills without constantly worrying about like am i gonna win doesn't matter if i win this or lose this right i was what it put me in a much better headspace i think um and it also allows them to have these like big legendary street fighter characters in the game and you don't just like beat them up first time like they are going to beat you yeah it kind of stretches out the experience and and what's i think the the very satisfying thing of that growth curve is that as you're meeting these characters you're sort of doing a best of character where you're like picking and choosing the special moves from different folks yes that's the coolest part of this mode is is you have they're they're called masters and you learn from them you become their pupil and then you equip their style and that

basically informs like how your character moves and what their basic suite of moves is but as you level up your your like uh apprenticeship under these different masters you basically unlock their special moves uh and you know super moves to use when you are studying under a different master so you could have you know luke's crazy uppercut with chun lee's spinning bird kick uh and and being able to mix and match those is fucking fun it's really really good because every Street Fighter character has fun stuff they can do but I've never felt a particular attachment to to any um except maybe like E-Honda and original or Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo because I loved Thousand Hand Spping people uh but now you can do that

and have hadouken on the same well and also you could be it's regardless of like your character whatever body type so you can be this tiny little person doing the like head dive of the honda and it looks fucking hilarious so it's it it's so it's so fun i want to i want to actually talk about the character creation because i mean you guys are the experts of character creation well it's certainly extremely robust it's very robust the the i will say that making your body and head and face and tattoos and scars and all that jazz you could really get pretty nasty with it and it does give you that i'm looking forward to doing a monster factory on this because it's got a lot of fun buttons and sliders and switches it is hard to make someone that looks good and normal yes i will say i mean you can

use the presets and even if you're a coward but if you'd like to get in i know yeah you kind of if you want to get in there it gets rough real quick I basically made like a six and a half foot tall, incredibly strong me. I modeled him after sort of Adam Driver's shirtless scene in The Last Jedi. Oh, so high pants. This is a perfectly just sort of wide man. Yeah. But then I went to the fucking, I went i went to j crew and put a t-shirt on him and the way that clothes fit on any character just is cartoonishly bad and wrong

they don't want you to have clothes it's that's the that's my main issue is like when you start the game justin mccroy has this leather jacket that goes up to his ears. And no shirt. But that is the heartbreaking thing I would say about the character creator is that there's like 10 clothing options at the beginning of the game. And that has incentivized me to keep pounding through the story

and unlock more clothing stores. But I do wish that they gave you a little bit more keys to the kingdom. It's not like, you know, if you're expecting sort of soul caliber six level where you can you know put a fucking cube on a certain part of your man's like chest to make him look like pepsi man or whatever like that ain't that ain't it but it is silly and it is it it's as silly and doesn't take itself seriously as any other part of this world tour mode.

And that hits all the right notes for me. The silliness is, it's very self-aware. It seems to seriously ask the question, what would the Street Fighter world be like? What would it be like to live in Street Fighter world? And it's like, What would it be like to live in Street Fighter world? And it's like, it would be wild. And it is, like, everyone in it is thinking about fighting, usually, or talking about fighting.

Or there's one guy who you have to get a ticket. Griffin, did you do the thing where you have to get the ticket for drone delivery? No, I had not done that. Is that a subclass? It's like, hey, we have drone delivery, and and you can activate if you get a coupon and you go this large man he's tall and he's wearing a suit and he's like oh you want it right well guess how you're gonna get it and you're like all right here we go and he's like you're going to have to ask me nicely what you're like yeah you're gonna have to ask me nicely and he's like what did you think i

was gonna fight you not everyone who looks like me wants to fight some people are just trying to live their lives and you should stop judging people by their appearances and then your dialogue problem is like um can i please have a ticket he's like yeah no no problem. I ran into, outside the stadium, I ran into a guy named Kenny that was dressed like Ken. Yeah. He was like, I have all of his moves, except for the leg parts,

because my legs don't move, though. So good. The first big quest that you have to do is create a counterfeit uh bag like a counterfeit product bag and the way that you do that is you find a counterfeiter who can make it and then he's like i need two pieces of leather um the big burly dudes down in the alleyway have it and you go down there and one of them is just like wearing a leather jacket and leather pants and he's like you want some leather huh well then you're gonna have to strip it off my body after kicking my ass and then you do it and

you take the leather back to the guy and he's like now we need a buckle you need to fly to italy and get this special buckle from a special street fighter character who makes buckles and you fucking fly to italy and meet this new street fighter character who makes buckles and she kicks your ass really stomps you in the ground she's like you did good though here's a buckle do you want to learn how to fight strong uh it's it's so it stupid i will say it's very it's very judicious about how it uses the heavy hitters if you'll pardon the expression from street fighter i'm not someone who's been following this for me like my awareness of street fighter characters ends at two, right? And I think they know that as well, as a lot of people only know the Zangiefs and the M. Bisons of the world.

Well, they really, but I tell you, they really hold them close to the vest. I mean, it takes a long time. I mean, it takes a while before you meet Chun-Li. No, not that. You know, she's within a half hour, right? Right. she's the first you know she's the

she's within a half hour right right but then after that like it takes a good chunk until you meet another one of these like

big big beloved characters or at least they did for me do you think Ryu is like the shadow king of the town

that he's actually pulling the strings of Mike Hagar cause I've not seen hide nor hair of Mr. Ryu yeah

nor can nor I mean I haven't met hardly anybody. I mean, I've met Blanca and Chun-Li, that's it. Yeah. In terms of people, and Luke, who I guess is someone, but I don't know. Yeah, I didn't care for Luke at first,

and then he kind of grew on me. Now, is that because his facial features occupy the bottom 10% of his head real estate? I don't judge by looks it's more a more a vibe thing and i thought he had like a jake paul vibe at first but he was so positive about it that i was like ah it's kind of working for me very positive first thing he makes you do is you and your like accomplice uh who's supposed to like train and travel the world with you makes you guys go buy stupid fucking matching pink hats yeah you go to the clothing store and

it's like buy some clothes and then there's one hat for sale and it's like this is 500 i don't want this i don't want this you have to it's part of the training get strong i would like to talk very briefly about okay mechanically this is the area where i think the three of us are least equipped yeah to to answer the question this is a very specific kind of street fighter VI episode. If I could, though, I'd like to talk about the modern controls. Yeah, I'd love to talk about the modern controls.

Because that's what I've been using. Yes, me too. So basically, and I don't know, this may be old news. I feel like I've definitely heard or seen other systems, but basically you have a special attack button. Well, let me take a step back because i wanted to talk about what the old like the traditional yeah okay here the traditionally

and really the way it's worked for the last however many games is you've got three punch buttons and three kick buttons and each of those is you know light medium hard attack or fierce attack whatever so already that's six buttons and you're not even dealing with like blocking and special attacks and whatever it is that you're so when you think about like those arcade sticks in the in the arcades that's why there were so many goddamn buttons because every single input had its own button dedicated to it modern changes that modern changes that so with modern you have um there are like three main attacks light mid and heavy and then on those are like for on for

xbox controls are like x a b yeah and then on the y you've got uh a special attack and depending on what you are holding with that is what move you will do and smash smash brother style like yeah and it's special yeah yeah and it's programmed in the menu so you go in and you choose when i press down and y i want spinning bird kick to happen when i press what just why i want blanca's electric shock to happen um there is i i feel like a and maybe this is known but it feels like a little delay to kind of mimic the the pushing oh interesting yeah i didn't have it like instantly trigger every time i did it it could have been animation frames finishing um i guess but uh it was it was a little bit hit or miss for me that might make yeah that from a balancing

standpoint because your quarter circle button press wouldn't uh be quite that quick exactly right there's also a if you hold right trigger and use the attack buttons it will it does an assisted combo yeah and so you can also set those up in in like your uh like equipment screen for your character and you will sort of seamlessly you know combo your enemy but you can also make it so that you do a special attack at the end of the combo and you can set that or if you do if you hold right trigger and use like heavy attacks you'll do a bit of a heavy attack combo and end it with a super move if you have yeah the combo thing is crazy because combos have existed in street fighter forever but you really just had to remember oh if i hit punch punch kick mid kick

then that was like that would be like a good string of attacks that they wouldn't be able to react to and i i literally have never been able to remember any of those no and this is just hold the trigger down and hit a button a bunch of times and you will spit out what is an effective combo, which is super smart. Now, what is interesting about it, at least for me, is that it takes a lot of stuff off of the plate so that you can actually learn the stuff that you don't know and no games ever teach you.

And it's really smart about how it breaks down into like very small chunks it via side missions it's like i want you to do three uh you know air combos on me and do three moves that start with an air attack and then combo into regular attacks and you need to show that you can do it but by breaking it down to that level, I felt like I, I'll give you a good example. When they talked about the air attack thing, it said, wait until the last moment to do your air attack, and that will let you chain it to other attacks.

That's probably like 101 stuff that I have just never been exposed to. Like I've, have never been taught, have never been exposed to. Like I've have never been taught, have never been exposed to. And I feel like this is like one that I could actually, when I'm learning those like staples, you know, I don't need to be worrying about like quarter circle up, down, left, right. You know, like it, it, it takes a lot of that stuff off the plate. So you can learn how to use these things once you do know how to implement them.

And that's like, it's so much more rewarding for somebody who like hasn't been part of this scene. Like, I really feel like I can understand, at least chunk it out to where it's like, okay, when is a good time to like advance and retreat and block and, you know, that basic stuff. It's also designed specifically for an xbox controller which the traditional street fighter controllers or whatever a normal modern game controller because the traditional street fighter controller controls are not for that they require too many buttons

that you don't have and that's why a lot of people buy uh fight sticks and stuff like that but these modern controls specifically are designed around what a modern modern controller is now people might be saying oh that seems unfair that you've got the modern control option you don't have to remember all this stuff or whatever it is if you want to turn it off and have like a way higher skill ceiling for the pros i'm sure they turn it off because it gives them way more opportunities buttons and combos and whatever they want to do to mix people up you can do that but for me who's not going to be obsessed about frame timing and whatever it's been awesome it's been so good yeah as somebody who does not play a ton of i mean a a ton of fighting games

but also like we play different games every week almost here so i can't like invest the time uh but like this is just fun right away and and even if i never got into the um even if i never got into the the like versus stuff which i i you know i'm sure that i would instantly get my shop wrecked no questions i have no idea um but it's a very like rewarding single player experience it's really funny it looks nice like it's it's goofy the effects i mean sorry the effects look great the characters look it looks like a dreamcast game yeah yeah that's russ that's wild but um i understand what you're saying um the effects are cool i think that all the characters do look wild blanca is hysterical yeah blanca has like this huge it's like deadbeat dad energy that they brought to blanca which is just wild he looks like sean penn and fast times at richmond high

it is it is wild uh but did he always have overalls was that a thing i think so i i see i think torn pants yeah he used to have torn pants and now he's got kind of the overall look but there's like these special drive moves that you can do where you're like uh it becomes like a lot of like paint effects i guess would be yes how you would uh describe it but it is uh i the effects are cool i mean the world itself is is is pretty flat i would say have you encountered a drive move with a drive move yet a drive move is like it uses your special drive bar resource and and you can use that to i mean you use it up when you block i think uh

there's like several different ways that you use it and if it runs out it puts you in this vulnerable state but you can also use it to do a pretty strong move that uh i don't is it unblockable or it oh if they block it it like chunks their uh their own drive bar uh a bit so there's like a lot of sort of strategic ways to use it but the best thing you can do is if you see someone using a drive move on you you have like a split second where you can hit them back with your own drive move to cancel it and it looks fucking rad every single and it feels amazing every single time again this is one of those things where we haven't played the online multiplayer so i don't know how like effective that is against other human beings or how easy it is to pull off i

imagine much harder um but i am existing in this state of pure bliss in this in this single player mode that they have created which is like uh again we are this is not our genre always my favorite shit in in a fighting game yeah and there haven't been number one or whatever it's called or i i i love fighting games when they sort of stretch the boundaries of the genre. And this one stretches it a shocking amount. Yeah, Soul Calibur had a good one. Or one of those Soul Caliburs, two or three or something, had like a fun adventure through. But this is like way more robust than I think I've ever seen in a fighting game. Yeah, you also can sometimes when you're running along the street, like a crowd of like just ruffians with cardboard boxes on their face will rush you and

then all of a sudden you're fighting five people at the same time yeah okay that gets that gets annoying if i can say that does if you're just trying to get to a to b there are some alleyways that are littered with 20 people just stay out of those alleyways justin you got to be careful where you walk well some because there's no jumping, you gotta go find the ladder. That does get annoying. It is funny though, because you would expect there to be a point at which people are like, I'm not doing this anymore.

Look at him, he's level 20 and I'm level one and I'm not doing it. But still these idiots with the cardboard box helmets sprint up to you back, let's go. You're like okay pop oh no one punch you literally killed me with one punch like yeah yeah move on move on with your life one of the early missions you have to go to a barista and just get like an energy drink and i ran up there and this was before i understood that you could just fight anyone

and i hit the wrong button and i just started fighting him and kicked his ass like very quickly yeah and then when it came came back to the game he wasn't there and i was like oh shit how do i even progress and then out of the side of the screen he slowly wanders back in with like a glum look on his face it's so funny i i love it i did not i played this begrudgingly, fellas, because I thought, like, this ain't my jam. I'll play it enough to have something to talk about, I guess. Yeah. But I'm really, really enjoying it.

I can't put her into it. It's landing at an unfortunate time, I will say. If this had come out in the middle of a dead zone, I think I would be getting very very very into street fighter but with competition from zelda and diablo and you know there's a new final fantasy game coming out in like two weeks uh that that i don't know it may be one that i'm gonna come back to but even that is shocking to me it feels like if you're in a like a dorm environment and you can like have a lot of

people to play with and then when they're not around you could just like screw around in single player like that feels like a really good combo to me yeah and that combo is easy to pull off because street fighters punches punches all right we uh are going to take a break and then we'll be back with more discussion of uh great video games street fighter of course like probably as much as uh it's probably tied for first but like it feels like a very arcade experience like especially for people of a certain age seeing street fighter 2 machines in arcades was like practically ubiquitous like yeah i kind of want like if you go into a david busters now is there like a street fighter five cabinet you know i don't know that i've seen what david busters doesn't really specialize in

that most arcades these days do not have video games in them like it is very very rare to see a video game it's like gator golf and shit exactly yeah exactly um which is a shame are we going to talk about our arcade jams like our number yeah please i mean i grew up in honey to west virginia you had two options right back in the day there what do you remember griff tilt tilt okay but older than that do you remember gold mine yeah god if you can find pictures of gold mine it's so great they have like a rock it's a mall mall place right oh these are locations i thought you're naming video no no rocky i had like a rocky exterior pitch black on the inside just said gold mine outside in big letters could have been a strip club could have been fucking anything from the outside. But then you walk in and you see- I mean, maybe in the PM it is a strip club.

Maybe. I mean, this is an area where smoking was not only permitted, but I'd say encouraged. Oh my God, yes. Check it out. Did you find some pics? Yeah. Oh, okay. I'm going to show Russ this.

I love this. Russ, what was your childhood arcade growing up? Sure. My childhood arcade was a place called Sport Time USA in Westchester, New York. God, that's good. And it is everything you would ever want it to be. It is definitely the epitome of dump your kids off for three hours and not see them and come back and they're filled up with chicken fried whatever and completely broke

it was a delight um okay what was the what was the for me personally if i walked into an arcade and i had some buddies or bros literal bros with me and they had one of the konami multiplayer beat-em-ups whether it was x-men or simpsons or turtles uh that is usually where i'm gonna live yeah you guys could field almost an entire squad with just y'all yes yeah i mean i mean x-men arcade is like six player like it's It's outrageous. And also, what's funny is that those games haven't aged well for me, because the way that they are designed to kind of consume quarters has made it a somewhat unpleasant experience in any other environment. But I still harbor a great amount of fondness for for those for sure yeah that sounds great did you guys fight over like you know did justin get first dibs kind

of character characters uh i don't know i feel like i always got the character i wanted probably because i was a baby yeah i always wanted nightcrawler and so i got him because oh yeah nightcrawler was great uh you know it's funny we have like i the ones that stand out to me are the the weird ones like um dragon's lair the full-size mad dog mccree cabinet oh sure hugely like that's just a huge tv showing cowboys you could shoot um yeah there was a uh this old cowboy game that i recently found footage of where it's like a quick draw kind of thing and you're like quick drawing on this cowboy an animatronic cowboy um that was at the the billy bobs was our other arcade that had like tiny ferris wheels and a big ball pit

that everyone said a kid died in but you worked at the pub what the pub was another man we have a lot of arcade yeah the pub family fun center that was dope for me we would go there after church because it was really close and juice worked there and i remember a couple times i'd taken some of my church buddies and you could like crack a fuck. What was the like Monsters of the Deep or something? It was a Sega on rail shooter. I'm going to have to Google what that fucking is called. That was a cool. That was a cool on rail shooter.

Really killing squids and stuff. No, I was hired to be a DJ who would like get the party going on the weekend. It's like a 50s themed pizza place with that serve like beer and had an attached arcade. And I was hired to be a DJ to like really get the party going on the weekend it's like a 50s themed pizza place with um that served like beer and had an attached arcade and i was hired to be a dj to like really get the party going and i was terrible at it because i was so uncomfortable and i hated all the music they played and i hated everybody was there it was really miserable so you weren't so much a dj as like a hype man oh yeah it was a hype man but you would try to get like like you would go get a a hawaiian shirt on and try to get people to do the

ymca the best one that they ever did was they told me they said just the two guys that used to do this they would do a great blues brothers routine and we would love for you to do blues brothers and i said well um there's just one of me and they're like yeah we'd still like it so it's basically like this very enthusiastic irs agent that's like dancing around the pub trying to get the party started uh to soul man um that's brutal for kids mostly uh i wish it's for drunk adults to dislike me i think mainly probably the better option quite honestly um it was called the ocean hunter the ocean the ocean hunter the seven seas adventure fucking great i played a lot of simpsons oh simpsons is good yeah they got that we have a barcade in

huntington is old north uh up there in pullman square they've got um they've got the simpsons they got x-men they got die hard arcade which is a good one. Oh, Die Hard Rolls. I enjoy a light gun game, but I used to dig the House of the Dead, but even that became a little quarter chompy after a while. What about Revolution X? Yeah, absolutely. But for me, once Time Crisis integrated the foot pedal that let you pop in and out of cover,

that became my number one go-to, what I will drop drop quarters on uh yeah there is nothing that feels kind of cooler in an arcade than like stomping on that pedal you know dropping a few completely identical soldiers and then like ducking out of the way of a rocket before it comes and blasts you do you guys ever beat one you guys ever beat an arcade game i i think Turtles in Time I beat once. You know, I had it on SNES, so I beat it there. But in the arcade, I think I beat Turtles in Time. I mean, me and my boy Alex White beat The Ocean Hunter

that one time that you cracked that shit open and put like 99 credits on it. Yeah, Tommy Red and I beat Sunset Riders at Shawnee State University. Oh, that's a good one. Sunset Riders felt attainable. Like, you could beat Sunset Riders. I didn't know Sunset Riders was an arcade. A lot of course. Yeah, that's a good one. Sunset Riders felt attainable. Like you could beat Sunset Riders. I didn't know Sunset Riders was an arcade.

A lot of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. That game rolled. I do want to share my one gambling story. Okay. Please, yes. Okay, so Sport Time USA, there'd be like birthdays every weekend there.

Invariably, that's where the birthday would be. And obviously for a while, you'd go and they'd give you tokens whatever five dollars ten dollars worth of tokens where are we at are we are we in new york at this point yeah this is this is uh white plains new york i believe it is okay if i had to go off memory and and i think it still exists for what it's worth um the uh so you'd go and you play video games and i did that for a while and And then after a while, I was like, I'm not having the return that I want from this experience.

So I started drifting over to the galloping horses. You know that? Galloping goats? Where you roll the balls and you get it in the middle. Yeah. So that had prizes. So you could actually spend the free tokens you got from the birthday party for potential prizes and i remember one time i won like the first time trying a uh

roadrunner from you know looney tunes and i was like the only way to make this a perfect day is to win the coyote and i proceeded to go on the worst losing streak that's ever happened and i was basically like sad man at a horse racing facility just like crumbling into dust as i spent all my tokens and eventually i ran out i hadn't won and the poor like kid 16 year old kid was working the horse riding thing was like here you you go, kid. And I just felt, it was pity. It didn't feel like a win to me. It was a sad moment. That is, as somebody who has visited a lot of arcades

recently since I've had kids, that is like, it's sadly like the vast majority of arcade experiences now are like some version of gambling or some, i mean that's that is almost all like and there's some they're diabolical man there's a the series of where you like drop the coin in the slot it's pushing it has a shelf it's pushing the stuff there's like a marvel theme one and there's a spongebob theme one it drops these special cards there's a wizard of oz the one it's like you get one card it's great and if you get the whole set though you

get 2 000 tickets and there's only one toto in the whole deck so you gotta like watch for toto that's like a overwhelming number of of arcade games lately it seemed to be the yeah it's just carny like scammy carny games at this point. Yeah. Which, I mean, adapt. You have to adapt, right? Because it's tough for arcades to compete with home experiences. Yeah. Right. Yeah, you need a unique thing.

I mean, Big Fruit Ninja is pretty fun. I do like Big Fruit Ninja. Can I talk about an arcade game that- Big Space Invaders is fun. I like the big one. Oh, yeah. Those are fun. Have you played Big Space Invaders?

I haven't, no. That one's pretty fun. Big Patman's fun. like the big one oh yeah you played big space invaders that was pretty fun big pat man's fun all the big ones are fun um there's a game called lucky and wild that was a namco arcade machine that i've only seen in the wild one time uh and you play as two two of the just fucking douchiest uh miami vice style cops uh driving one player lucky uh is the wheel man so he's driving a car you have the wheel you got the pedals you got all that he also has a gun light gun uh that you'll also have to use while driving the box art the box art is the best the the everything about it is fucking wild wild speaking of is sits uh is riding shotgun which is appropriate because wild doesn't have to drive just has a light gun and the

two of you uh drive down streets dishing out sort of outrageously extrajudicial automotive justice uh while chasing down cars lucky has to drive and and keep it on the road and dodge obstacles, but both of you are just blasting away. And it boggled my mind, the first time I played this game, that you could do both things in one game, and also that nobody else was really doing it. Not until the fucking Starsky and Hutch PS2 video game,

which I remember because I bought it because it looked like Lucky and Wild. It is the only other game I know of ps2 video game which i remember because i bought it because it looked like lucky and wild it is the only other game i know of that sort of did this multi this multi-layer gameplay experience um but man what a what a what a treat that was what the first first and only time i found that i love lucky and wild's box art because it has a picture of lucky and wild in the front and center and beneath them it says lucky and wild the ultimate team and then at the top left it has a picture of Lucky and Wild in the front and center. And beneath them, it says Lucky and Wild, the ultimate team. And then at the top left, it has like zoomed in headshots of each of them

just to make it very clear which one is Lucky and which one is Wild. You would know in the dark. It was pitch black, like no noise. You would know which one is lucky from a thousand miles away and wild has a forehead that is like cone heads level it is amazing it's really good you can see them in the rearview mirror the whole time you're playing the game they're fucking stupid faces grimacing and smiling and looking worried or when they go to the there's a garage you go to between each level where you can spend the cash that you earned in the previous level

to fix up your car, where fucking babes like wait on you with cocktails and stuff like that. It is such a bizarre relic of its time. And I just, I can't believe they didn't make more, more games like it. Hey, can we talk about other video games?

Let's do it. Honorable mentions. Let's jump in. Iorable mentions. Let's jump in. I finished Zelda. Oh, God. You got a problem, bud. I finished it. I beat every shrine.

No, you didn't. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You did not. You have a child, Griffin. I finished Zelda. I beat every shrine. That game's been out for two and a half weeks. I think that's fully okay to do.

No, you're wrong. We went on tour. I played that game pretty much nonstop while we were on tour, which comprised, I would say, a majority of my playtime of this. A majora of your playtime. A majora of my playtime.

Did you just hit a point where, okay, I hit this point sometimes with games where if I'm really deeply into a game, it has a deleterious effect on other aspects of my life yeah yeah oh oh oh yeah baby yeah i i will sometimes like i'll be not just like basic stuff like oh it didn't really hit the hit the gym did it like like i was mean to my kids and wife all day because i would rather be playing selda like i get to i get to a point where it's like i'm gonna have to just poop sop this motherfucker so i did out of this i gotta i hit a point i hit

a point with this game i think i'm gonna do it where it's like i gotta get this fucker out of my life it's the only thing i get like i have to just go harder than i ever had the only way out is through right like yeah can i be can I be straight with you? Looking at June, I knew I was going to have to do that. For my own sort of mental well-being, I couldn't have this and Diablo and Final Fantasy in my life all at the same time, right?

Yeah. I can't wait for more people to finish this game. I can't wait to talk about the ending of this game. Can I just say, here's where I'm at with it. i know i've said this before i am still not looking anything up i'll give you a frame of reference to the fact i'm not looking anything up i've had only one piece of the climbing gear for like 35 hours or however long i've been never found the climbing gear i just found one piece and that's it and it's driving me a little nuts but that's fine

i'm still not looking anything up and because of that i have no i mean i have a vague frame of reference of how big the game is but i'm so far away from coming close to an ending yeah that cool it's fine with me because i'll be like oh just play for two hours and feel like i did something and then but i'm not like rushing to an ending. I know I could just do the story and get to the ending, but like, I want to get everything before I do that. And so I, this is good. I'm going to be playing this game for like,

probably six months. And that's fine with me. Some people do it in like two and a half weeks. I am worried that if I take too far away from it, there's so much. Yeah. I'm worried if I get too far away from it or spend enough time much. Yeah. I'm worried if I get too far away from it or spend enough time away from it,

I'll just sort of like, it'll all. Yeah, it's like a three hour, like rebooting your brain to remember how to play these games. So yeah, it definitely takes some time. I think it's the, I think it is. I don't know. I still need to sit with it.

I just finished it. Can I just ask this? So you found every shrine. You used the map, finished it can i just ask this so you found every shrine you you use the map right there's no way you like actively found every shrine on your own what do you mean like did you look online to find oh yeah i so there are a few shrines i would say maybe the last dozen or so yeah uh i got kind of tired of just kind of... Looping map. I built like a... I got my battery like way filled up and found this armor that let me use Zonai devices

for huge periods of time. So I would just build these flying machines and go to empty sort of areas of the map and then turn my shrine sensor on and fly around and find... There are lots of shrines that don't show up like that. You have to do like little quests. Yeah, the little crystal ones, I think, don't show up like that you have yeah like crystal ones i think well the little crystal ones are there were like maybe one of those that i didn't

find but most of them were like quests where you have to like talk to somebody and solve some puzzle or do something before the shrine will even appear um and so there were there were you know like i said maybe a dozen of those that i i had to had to go look up because again like i wanted to i reached a point where my enjoyment of the core loop was not um like vanishing but it was starting to feel a little bit like uh you know you've seen checkbox i'd seen it right yeah um and so i i just kind of wanted to kind of wanted to power through it um but yeah i'm having a good time now trying to craft the absolute cheapest like boat or car that i can craft i don't want tips in doing this but like if i put one wheel and then just like a shitty wooden wheel on this plank that i found is this going to be like

three zone night instead of nine zone night kind of thing and that's been really satisfying to me i'm just like trying to like hoard all my shit yeah i don't think there's a wrong i don't think there's a wrong way to to to play it right hey a lot of my concerns have been ameliorated as plant suggested last week he suggested i start duping some of the resources. And they patched that out, actually. What? They released the patch, which apparently removed all the duping strats. Yeah, but not updating. Thank you very much.

Nice try, Reggie. Nice try, Shigeru Miyamoto. Thank you. No dice for you. I don't know if I'm ready to make any grand judgments, but I it at like midnight one night because i knew i was like in the final stretch and i i wanted to see it through and i was like in my living room at midnight fucking cackling at the like at the the ending of this game it kicks it i don't know if it's my favorite zelda game right i don't know if it's the best Zelda game. It probably is. But it is without a doubt the coolest and best ending sequence by a huge, huge, huge fucking margin.

Wow. And I can't wait to talk more about it. I guess maybe at the end of the year once you guys have powered through. Yeah. I wonder if I'm going to find all the stuff before i actually finish the story up um i also want to give a shout out to barry finished barry and zelda in the same night which was very emotionally compromising uh just finishing a lot of really good shit um and succession just ended it's oh yeah succession that'll be mine um maybe the consistently best

show like in terms of like, there's shows I like more and there's shows that maybe hit higher highs, but like it's so well executed, so satisfying, does exactly what it needs to do, has a great sense of what it is from the beginning. If you've been waiting, like you should watch the session.

It is great. Did you finish Berry Juice? Because I know you were struggling. No, I haven't finished Berry yet. I had, I, it is, I'm close'm close yeah i'm like three episodes from the end as well so i'm i'm pretty close but it's i'm incredibly amazed at his uh

directing talent um bill haters yeah really just like he's gonna have a big i feel like he's gonna have a gigantic film career yeah i think he feels like the next like jordan style yeah yeah yeah for sure i i have to some of the shit steven root gets up to in the last few episodes is like if he does if that man does not win of something like don't watch the session griffin it's really hard unless you're watching both because there's some like i i will say this though even rude is also in succession by the way stevenot is my favorite actor. I've decided this, by the way. I think that's true, yeah.

I think Steven Root is my favorite actor on the planet. Like, I think Steven Root, I'll watch that motherfucker in eight different things. He's always brilliant. He's brilliant in True Blood, brilliant in News Radio. Obviously. I mean, obviously.

If you haven't seen him in News Radio, you haven't seen him. He's a genius. King of the Hill. Amazing voice actor. God, I love Steven Root so much. Steven Tobolowsky's my second, but anyway. radio you haven't seen him he's a genius king of the hill amazing voice actor steve god i love steven root yeah so much steven tobolosky's my second but anyway they gave him a lot to work with in the finale that is like very excited uh i can't wait that is exquisite uh russ do you have

anything russ yeah i mean it's just zelda for me i'm still like yeah my blind wandering through this world of you know craziness i've almost fully lit up the depths which has been a satisfying journey and i fought a big dragon that was exciting uh but yeah i don't know it's i i get excited when i finish a set and then i'm like oh i'm gonna upgrade this set and see what the set bonus is and there's some wild set bonuses in there yeah some really fun stuff um i just really really hope that they support this in the way they've supported fucking mario kart which is like an astonishing amount of dlc because i'd be thrilled to just keep coming back to this it's like oh here's a new already

is kind of dlc though you know it's more of like the same map yeah yeah yeah it rules uh i i hope more people play i was speaking to a friend of mine who doesn't play a ton of games but heard so much about zelda and jumped in and he found the initial island to be like very railroad-y and directed and wasn't into it so i would say if you feel the same way if you're listening uh keep going because i think once you get to the land and they give you way more freedom you might find the game that way that's that's how he experienced it so cool i think we did it uh i wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts we have mozart's goats ultra pads and nb time lord thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple podcasts.

I guess I'm also recapping the games we talked about. We talked about Street Fighter six. We also talked about some wild arcade games that we remember. We also talked about succession and Zelda tears of the kingdom and Barry, the television show. What are we doing next week? Next week, we're going to shout out the devil again with Diablo

4. I'm looking forward to it. Do we know what each of us is going to be starting as class-wise? Probably Barbarian. That's kind of my go-to jammer. I'll be Wizard. You're going to be Wizard? I'm going to be Necromancer because I think it matches my body type

that's interesting Russ well I'm looking forward to that conversation and I'm looking forward to you joining us please 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 Besties!