The Besties - We broke Crab Champions in the best way [Resties]

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Crab Champions is this season's unexpected Steam phenomenon. The $10 shooter-roguelike is based on a music video and delivers bluntly on the promise of its title. You play as a crab that seeks to be the champion by obliterating rival crustaceans and critters with a variety of military weaponry. The more you win, the more powerful you make your crab until you're reigning hellfire on these little unlikely targets. We broke the game on our first try. And that ruled. Plus, we dig deep into the mailbag to answer your questions!   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!

my name is christopher thomas my name is ross farshtick and welcome to the resties where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest this week we're talking about the best of the best The best of the best, Crab Champions, a crab game with guns. But before we get into that, we've got some other stuff, apparently. Yeah, well, I do have some other stuff. But while you were saying our tagline, the best of the rest, where the, what is it? Where the best of the rest, wait, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. While you were saying that, it almost had like a Mario rap beat to it, and it kind of made me wish that the Resties

had its own Mario-style rap, but we could table that for later. I realize that's not something we're going to come up with. Are you sure you don't want to try to just freestyle it right now? I'm not going to do it off the dome at this very moment. I'm going to give you a beat. No, I'm good. Thank you. Okay.

The thing I want to talk about before we jump into Crypt Champions, which is an excellent game, and I'm really looking forward to talking about it. I have a problem with the Hungry Caterpillar. The book, The Hungry Caterpillar. Well, the guy. The Caterpillar.

The actual Hungry Caterpillar that is hungry. Yeah. I recently bought, I guess there are spinoffs. Everyone knows the hungry caterpillar, the official, you know, he gets hungry. He eats like all sorts of junk food. He gets a tummy ache. He eats a leaf and then he turns into a butterfly. That's like the classic hungry caterpillar.

Hungry caterpillar, angry iguana, constipated chicken. Yeah. All very consistent. Sure. So they've done spinoffs since then. And just this weekend, I purchased one of the spinoffs for my young child who enjoys The Hungry Caterpillar OG. And the spinoff is The Hungry Caterpillar Eats Dinner. And the premise of the book is that it's a shapes book for kids who learn shapes.

And the premise of the book is that it's a shapes book for kids who are in shapes. So they talk about triangles and like, oh, the hungry caterpillar is eating a watermelon slice and a pizza, for example. That's all fine. You know, he likes the caterpillar. It's always had like a pretty good message of like, eat a bunch of junk food and you're fine so long as you have a salad after it. That's fine. And then it got to the rectangle page. Okay.

Now, when you're thinking rectangle meals, what immediately jumps to your head? Sub sandwich hot dogs. Okay. Interesting. I guess the hot dog bun is a rectangle. Yeah. And the sub sandwich is more of an oval oval i don't know what sort of okay

wait isn't a sub sandwich in the in the book no okay what's in the book is a corn on the cob that's the rectangle in the book is a corn on the cob now this is the bit this is what you brought i'm pissed about it i'm genuinely pissed the corn on the cob is a rectangle in what universe in a 2d universe which a book is yes imagine that you that you took a 2d slice of a corn on the cob what would you say it looked like okay but if you're trying to teach kids shapes and you say a fucking corn on the cob is a rectangle and then a kid sees a corn on the cob in reality don't you think that's not teaching them the right lesson you want to give them like a chocolate bar yeah or like a fucking rectangle yeah what other 2d foods are there it doesn't need to be 2d it just needs to be

what other rectangle foods are here's the issue is a according to you know what i want like an italian sandwich like what what are what are what are 2d no here's what i'm saying sorry the rectangle food the problem is corn on the cob is already a shape. It's already a shape that everyone acknowledges is a shape, and it's a cylinder, right? Yes. So. I have the answer. I'll say it's a casserole.

Okay. Oh, that's your answer? It's casserole? Yeah, casserole. That would be perfect. Or like a pizza. Yeah, casserole's fine. Don't say a pizza.

See, that's confusing. So then you're like oh you're like oh yeah it should be it should be a shapes book oh my gosh fresh we've got to make this oh and it's just pizza only pizzas i cut this pizza into a star shape it's star this is good this is this is where we get rich trapezoid pizza so long oh man this is what the people come to us for no this is good you start from a place of antagonism and you work your way to a billion dollar hey eric carl get fucked hey um also everybody else if you want this book uh look out for our kickstarter it's gonna be dropping any day now let's talk about video games okay so crab champions you're gonna have to help explain it to me because i i have played it i played it with you

i enjoyed it a lot and we're gonna get into that i don't understand how it is how how did it come to exist how is it so popular? How did it get made? Numerous questions. So if you could kick things off, other than it being it's a crab game. Yeah, no, I'm sure. Because there is a kind of opening to this game, which is very bizarre. game which is very bizarre um so there's a edm producer composer i guess named noise storm you probably the name might not ring a bell to you but the only edm i know is sandstorm that's darude sandstorm certainly no this is a different person noise storm created a song called crab rave in 2018 um and you might recall

seeing on youtube a cg music video wherein a bunch of crabs kind of dance on a beach in like a rave fashion and behind that is a very catchy edm tune called crab rave sure and that video let me check the current number last i checked it was about yeah okay so that video is at 158 million views right now so pretty big on a youtube scale and i guess for some, after it kind of blew up a variety of billboard charts, it peaked at number 14 on the dance electric charts in 2018. This person, Noise Storm, who is also known as, one second. Their real name is, oh boy, I'm going to screw this up. It's a Gaelic name. Oin O Broin.

Okay. Is how I'm going to attempt to say it. Good effort. This person went ahead and decided they are going to make their own video game featuring crabs off of the success of Crab Rave. Do you think this was kind of like a pandemic brain idea? So it's actually not a pandemic thing because the game was announced in 2019. And it was basically a game

that was announced as being solely developed by O'Brien. And the intention was to create a third-person shooter, a 3D platformer, a racing game, and a 3D fighting game all in one hell yeah um there's kind of a running joke with uh all of the crab rave slash crab champion stuff they always get announced or released on april 1st i guess it's like an april fools kind of thing but it's always real and in this case it's certainly real because we played crab champions which came out on april 1st 2023 and is currently absurdly well reviewed on steam maybe one of the most the highest reviewed indie games i've ever seen on steam right now it has

5 000 over 5 000 reviews and 98 of them are positive which is outrageous that's like half life 2 levels of like critical acclaim on steam use i guess they're not critics they're are fans but people reviewing it absolutely adore this game and i and i get it because the game is fucking dope and i think we should talk about what the game actually is okay so i'll try to explain the game okay it is a like rogue like shooter third person shooter you play as a crab on a on a bright sunny island for the most part there's some ice biomes i think some yeah lava biomes and your job is to shoot other crabs and kill them not exclusively crabs they're also like worms and furries sure other critters skulls that shoot fire and and then when you do that you like clear out an area then you move on to the next

area like a roguelite and then you clear that one out you move on to the next one and every so often you come across a store where you can use uh like the currency that you've accrued over the course of this buy power-ups or at the end of each um at the end of each level when you complete a level you also can choose from a variety of power-ups yeah and as yeah as the game goes on your weapons get stronger your power-ups get wilder and in the end you're just a crab with the ability to unleash hellfire yeah it follows a pretty traditional rogue like style like format um and that's totally fine because that format is tried and tested and allows for like a lot of replayability because everyone is dependent on what you get out of the rng boxes and what you buy from the store um so i guess i was like a little skeptical in terms of whether

i would dig it um just because i played a lot of these and i put it when it starts there's more reason to be skeptical because you start the game and there's like no menu you just the game just like boots yeah there's no there's no like welcome to grab you know like no splash screen or anything like that you're just suddenly on a beach and you're a crab running around yeah it feels like playing like an alpha of the game uh you know whenever we have to do that for the press and and you know it looks fine i mean it mostly looks like i don't know unreal assets i don't know how they what they used to make it but it doesn't look unique i would say in terms of its visual style or assets um it looks like largely out

of the box i don't know if that's true or not but it feels so good yeah it feels so good yeah so the crab as you're running, you have a number of abilities. You've got like a double jump. You've got dashes. You can slide on your, I guess, crab knees. And that's kind of like a sprint where it'll like dramatically increase your speed while you're sliding. And all of these, like all these mobility options really tie into you being able to maneuver around what are outrageously overwhelming odds as you move through the game you're fighting at times like dozens if not a hundred enemies at once

and they're all kind of swarming over you people that have played like risk of rain this is all very familiar like this is this is pretty well-worn territory again but i actually find the mobility stuff in this like for just very easy to jump into and welcoming and and very satisfying they'll just move around the world yeah it's i don't want to say bad game design is good game design because i have no idea what the intentionality behind this is it knows where not to overthink it so one of the things that we noticed like right away is your bullets seem to go on forever and have no drop and no like diminishing damage which in a lot of games like call of duty for example or battlefield right there's going to be a bullet drop or just your just your ammo kind of sprays in the general area.

It is not super precise. And in this, it felt like even with the starter gun, if I aimed at something across the screen and I had the dot on it, it was going to hit it and deal whatever damage it would have if it was two inches away from me. Yeah, I do think there is actually a bullet drop for what it's worth,

but I think it is very, very forgiving and very arcadey to the point where it feels more like you're playing doom than you are yeah like a battlefield where it's like realistic you know bullet physics or whatever which is funny to say in a game called crab champions where you play as a crab but i do agree that it feels rough in a good way insofar as it just like gets you into it a lot quicker than you normally would do with a multiplayer game like this. Yeah, well, and part of the pleasure

of mechanical video games is that you're one with the machine, is that when you tell the game to do something and it does exactly what you expected it to do, that feels really good. And there's a million reasons not to give exactly that sense of pleasure on every game, right? Like you want to create a sense of skill, or that the player is learning and evolving,

that they're not immediately rewarded with being perfect, or the game responding exactly as intended. But something about this game, at the very beginning, in that kind of open space that you're talking about, there are a variety of platforming prompts and it's like, jump up this thing, do your double jump. It's like a tutorial, basically.

Yeah, just a general tutorial. But the, I don't know a good way of describing this other than like it immediately felt spot on. You know, there's a lot of platforming games where, especially like a third person shooter, you kind of have to get a sense for the gravity, I guess, the sense of motion. And right away, I felt like, oh, I land exactly where I want to land. I guess, is there a lot of control of your movement in air?

There is. There's a ton. Yeah. That's probably a There's a ton. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably a huge part of it. Yeah. I think a large percentage of this development cycle is probably spent tuning the movement because they know how important it is, like, to make sure that that's right before you do anything else. And it feels great to, like, move around the world as it does in, like, in Mario 64 when you're running around Peach's Castle.

It needs to feel great. And it does indeed in Crab Champions as well. The other part about intentionality. So the game's like, we broke it on our first try. Yeah. And I love that. I love a game, especially these days, that knows what to let you break and what not to. And by that, I mean, I don't want a hard crash out of a game.

That sucks. I don't want the visuals breaking in some disturbing way that takes me out of the game. But every once in a while, having the power balance get completely out of whack, that's super fun. And holy shit, did we knock it out of whack. Yeah, so why don't you tell the people what exactly was done to break the game yeah so again like at the end of each stage you get a choice of a few upgrades right and they're very gradual and whatever whatever after like i don't know probably like six or seven stages i found a totem that it basically was called like a greed totem.

And it gave me effectively unlimited money, so much money that I could never run out of it. Yeah. Just millions and millions of crab dollars or whatever. And in return, though, it took my health down to I think what we're at, like four. Yeah. Four health. You were at four health. And for a point of comparison, I think, what were we at, like four? Yeah. Four health? You were at four health. And for a point of comparison, I think you start at like 300 health.

Yeah. Yeah. So four, it's just you get touched, you die. Yeah. But the good news is if you are playing on co-op, as long as you could get through, that could get us to the next shop. So we basically needed to get through i think like four islands to get to a shop where we could start spending money again and we we managed to do that and once i got to the next shop i bought out the store and then uh you showed me how to re-roll the

store and every time you re-roll it appears that it increases the odds of the reroll totem exploding. So you can't do it anymore. And we just got super lucky. And I think I got like 20 rerolls in a row. Like completely broke the game in an instant. So I was able to restore all of my health and more. Build up tons of shield. And yeah, once I did that, then it was easy peasy getting from one store to the next so basically i don't know what they're like probably six stores that we hit between then and

the end of the yeah you had gotten i want to say like hundreds of perk upgrades and stuff like that like probably 10x more than anyone playing normally would ever ever see in a run and you were just like an unstoppable killing machine basically yeah for the bosses we had a rule that fresh just couldn't attack he would we would just see like what damage i could do on my own the very final boss i think i shot it for two seconds yeah and it just died and it just died yeah and that was super fun i don't want the game to do that every time that obviously would not be great i think it would be next impossible for us to recreate that if we tried right a hundred percent yeah and i it does make me wonder so you know obviously i care a lot

about this genre i've played a ton of them over time as these especially with ones that are popular and this one certainly is it has a pretty huge following. They get, you know, new features and balance patches and all sorts of stuff like that. And eventually these games tend to settle into more of a, I guess, meta that is, while it has the potential to still be game breaking, you know, Binding of Isaac, you can break a run. But it also is very mindful to like not do that easily so like getting one item isn't necessarily the solve for breaking the entire game and i'll be interested to see whether this developer decides hey i'm gonna make this a little more serious which i think would kind of be a downer because there are honestly like so many serious like technical roguelites that require like very thoughtful selection of perks and stuff like that and this is that like you could still do that here but i i hope that they

continue to lean into the idea of like hey breaking the game is fun just like enjoy yourself because we had a blast it was really like a lot of fun and very silly it was so much fun um do you so again the game looks like it's mostly using like stuff from unreal i'm sure i'm sure there's custom work done here i i'm really not trying to undercut them i more want to get to the question of could do you think unreal being like effectively free to start to dig into or unity or whatever sure that that's the only reason something like this is possible and that we will see more games like this as those tools become one they're about as cheap as they can get now uh but two they become easier and easier to use yeah so so just a note for for clarity i know

you know this plant but just for people that don't know it at home you plants right like a lot of those tools unreal etc are free if you're selling something using those tools after a certain amount of revenue you have to kick them some percentage i don't know what the percentage is offhand but that's basically how unreal makes their money is like okay you're using our tools that's fine enjoy yourself but the second you make a certain amount of money we get a cut of that um and i think we are going to continue you know this has been happening for years now uh many years has it been free like that to start i think we're going to continue seeing more of this i think uh with the launch of fortnite uh it's called the unreal for fortnite creator or whatever just got updated where people can use those tools and create fortnite maps we're going to see stuff

that is like even more involved and creative than anyone has ever really made for like a fortnight map because they're making it all way more accessible and i think this kind of game is the sort of thing that you might see in like a fortnight for example because the tools are now reachable by anyone so yes i think it's going to be way more common to see this sort of thing. I would expect that for people that see this level of success, they might feel a little bit like, oh, Unreal is profiting off of my success, and maybe they would switch for a second game, switch to another platform that isn't taking as much of a cut.

Okay, so this is this is wild the unreal cut in the unreal engine eula is five percent royalties of a gross lifetime revenues if you exceed a million dollars that is nothing i mean most games are not even going to come i mean what 99 of games are not going to make over a million dollars. Yeah, no, that is 100% true. That's wild. And also it's waived for when you publish on Epic Game Store. Because there's a separate cut they would get there.

But that is nuts. Yeah. but that is nuts yeah i do i i'm like hesitant to say like that's it because i feel like there's more to it than that because like ea is paying more than five percent of their revenue to for the unreal engine presumably unlike star wars jedi survivor some yeah so i so i don't want to like say for sure what exactly the cut is, but I do agree with you. Like, I think for most creators, they probably are going to be able to make a game using unreal.

And given that you're not going to be making a ton of revenue, you probably won't have to kick anything back, which is great. It also bakes people into knowing unreal, learning unreal, and then only making games in unreal, which again is is sort of their profit model to begin with so i don't think it's bad by any means but people should be very careful about reading the fine print to make sure you know what you're doing um especially if you're planning on making a bunch of money yeah the other thing there is uh this is probably going to come with any engine you use unless you make your own engine.

Yeah. So, yes. But that good note. One more question on this, and it's kind of the scary question. Artificial intelligence, game design. Have you seen like the glut of new YouTube videos where it's like, I made a video game using AI and I don't even know how to code?

Yes. Oh, I've watched one. I AI and I don't even know how to code. Yes. Oh, I've watched one. I watched one where some guy made Flappy Bird using an AI to write the programming. Yes. Do you... I don't mean this to diminish this game because I don't think you can make literally this game with AI.

But there's something about games like this that are so rough around the edges, but are still wonderful and fun. They're just, they're rough, right? They're like, feel just like rough drafts of video games. And I don't even know if I want the full draft or the final draft. Do you think that that is close

to like what AI game development could accomplish? Are we like a decade away from even you know, someone using AI to code something like this? It depends on what you're using the AI for. So for example, right now today, you could type into an AI program, hey, I'm making a crab platformer. And I want the crab to move at such and such speed and I want it to be able to jump 10 pixels or whatever it is and can you please write that code I don't know if you need to say please it just seems nice and you can do that right now and it will spit something out and you could be like oh well that's pretty good but I feel like the crab is not jumping high enough

so maybe like you know double the height of the crab jump and it'll spit out new code and so i think right now where ai is at it is able to make very basic components of a game for like very traditional like you know code like a a shop menu for a vendor in my video game and it could like start to make the framework of that um i do think that it is like a long way away from like you're not going to type into ai like make a 3d crab beach based game with multiplayer and it's going to make it extra fun yeah and make it super duper fun uh yeah now we're we're very far, if ever, away from that. And honestly, like, if we ever get to that point, it will be the games that, like,

diverge from the norm that the AI is programmed off of that end up breaking out and being super successful and interesting because no one wants to play the fucking generated game that is using, like... I don't know. No, I agree with you.

And I also think, I mean, to go back to the first point you were making, I think it will be like GitHub now where like people go to GitHub and scroll for a type of code for a problem they're solving. Yes. And then, you know, plug it in.

But I would love, I know we have a number of people who make games listening to the show shoot a tweet to us or an email i i would be very curious to hear what your experience is in terms of will people buy um things that are generated off of what's already out there i think um there are plenty of vampire survivors you know clones that are making plenty of money that's so yeah i think i think it'll just kind of depend on what it is yeah i to go back to this game again i don't think this is made in ai i think this is like a passion project by this person who did a

very good job and like let me just say one more thing like i i praise fortnite a lot because it's very easy to jump into and play multiplayer with other people this too was like barrier to entry of like chris joining my beach as another crab was like 30 seconds it just was like boom and we're in a game and it didn't worry about like me playing more than he had played it was was just like instant fun. And for 10 bucks, like fucking pretty stellar. Yeah. Yeah.

I recommend it. I think people should try it. Do not mistake my questions about AI or in the box on real for any criticism of the game because it's definitely not. It is. It's just fucking silly.

And we need more games and the reason i brought up all the the engine and the ai stuff is i think it's exciting that somebody can make a game that's like this that that you don't have to over polish your game into oblivion whether you are a triple a dev or an indie dev because even indie games as devolver and raw fury and all these other studios dev. Because even indie games, as Devolver and Raw Fury and all these other studios become more dominant, even indie games have started to feel, I don't know, polished in a way

that is very different than what this is. And I get that this is early access, but I really hope it doesn't lose that kind of vibe. Yeah, I agree. I am optimistic. I think it's a very good start and i'm curious to see where it goes in like the next year okay should we take a break let's do it

okay welcome back um before we get into some other stuff i know we talked about it already the super mario brothers movie um while i was watching it i wanted to i guess what kept running through my head is like how does i don't think there's any doubt that there will be more mario movies and they will probably all fall in the same format as this mario movie did more or less tone whatever where do things go from here from a video game movie standpoint, are people going to basically follow this model of like kid friendly, very safe, very, uh,

familiar and, and, uh, approachable, or are we going to see movies that may be following the, in the footsteps of the excellent Castlevania anime series, where you try to do like a more mature approach to a video game franchise or is it just like both and and everything sort of gets i mean video games are just the ip now

that everyone are going to be pulling from yeah i think it's going to be like superheroes i think people have been asking the question of you know what is the next superheroes for the better part of a decade. And this is the easiest for Hollywood to look at and be like, yeah, this is it. Because you see Last of Us dominating TV, you see Super Mario dominating movies. It feels, I can see to them how it could feel like, oh yeah, it's one for one. Of course, it's not at all. The big difference with like why Marvel worked from the very beginning was they had this massive collection of established characters and story. And they could pick the very best of the best of all of that stuff. And it was just ready to go, right?

And that's the opposite with video games. You have a massive collection of IP, of iconic characters. You have a massive collection of IP of iconic characters. You are very much wanting for story that is like proven. And the example there is like Resident Evil, right? Like you can't. I love the Resident Evil games. There's some of my favorite games.

You cannot tell me that adapting any of the Resident Evil games into a movie would be a good idea well not not in a like official adaptation sense like you would have to wink and nudge your way through you know almost make it into a satire for it to work yeah or or just be like look at the story of resident evil 7 right like yeah maybe first hour. And then do you include the part where it's like the brother turns into bees or whatever? Or the entire ending? You know, with Resident Evil 8, how much time do you spend on the giant baby? You know? And all those things are awesome in a video game. They work.

And the story is good in a video game. It fits the medium. good in a video game it fits the the the medium but i don't think i don't think it's as transferable as a lot of people are going to think it is um well yeah because you don't have you're right you have the characters you don't have the story to back them up in a movie sense that's why last of us was such an aberration is because it was already essentially made with movie structure in mind so they're like basically was it was ready to go but i can't even think of that there are so few games that follow that same format i think what else we're going to see is a lot of movies based off of games that either nobody has cared about for a long time or even games that people haven't heard of, where people

from an indie studio are going to go in and pitch, you know, some mid-level Hollywood team on their indie game being the next great movie. And they'll have, I don't know, a few good reviews and some what looks like decent Steam sales or whatever, and say, yeah, this game is a major hit. You can get in on the video game gold rush for pretty cheap in terms of optioning this and you know rushing it to to screens yeah uh so can you explain to people what optioning is for people that aren't familiar yeah optioning the the short version of it is buying the option to turn that into a movie and then it's exclusive to you so if i said i want the option for the grapes of wrath then i could acquire it and then nobody else could make the

grapes of wrath until my option expired right uh and i obviously this has already happened for major game franchises like assassin's creed which eventually got made into a movie but bioshock for example has already been optioned and has been in like development hell forever i guess the question now is is there like a further gold rush and you kind of implied it with these indies that like like bud bug snacks for example obviously a smaller franchise not even a franchise it's just one game has like a following and was well received. And like, it's very cute and fun.

Like it wouldn't shock me if some studio went and like option bug snacks, because maybe Netflix wanted to turn it into like an animated series or something like that. I I'll put it this way. I have two different friends who are pitching video games to studios right now. Yeah. And I hadn't heard of either of pitching video games to studios right now yeah and i hadn't heard of either of the video games and i work at polygon and we have this show that and that's not to say that those games are bad a trillion video games come out every year yeah there are plenty of good ones

that we miss but that's like wild i don't know that many people who work in the industry yeah you know and and i do know a ton of games so i i think i don't know if it's all getting bought yet but you know people people can sense it it's in the air yeah and i think everybody's going to be trying to get one of these deals you know while they can i think sony is obviously best positioned sony already has a business tied to filmmaking that was i think that the plan that they wanted to do i don't know two decades ago and they're finally making good on it and they've built all their games to be um cinema friendly that said i'm i don't know like i know that um horizon zero dawn is in development and while that game is very cinematic i don't and it has a good world i don't know if i would want the

that script to be adapted i would probably want like an original script that's just in that world yeah and i think that's what you're gonna have to see is original scripts again i think last of us is the aberration here i think almost all of the scripts elsewhere for you know fucking skyrim yeah it's a good example like you need you need to bring in someone who's like a practice screenwriter that can turn this world or this ip or these characters into an actual story but it's so hard you don't in the case of mario maybe i was gonna say that's the problem though is what i'm i how you – that sounds completely true and completely logical. It's really hard.

Well, you also just imagine a studio going, well, what did Mario and Last of Us do? And you're like, well, they basically made it one for one. Yeah. And you're like, wait, wait. So now you're telling me that we should do it differently? And you're like, yeah, you know, like they've done it for the past 20 years and it didn't work. And it's like, well, no, those were just bad movies.

Like it's, the problem is the recent evidence seems to suggest that you should just make Horizon Zero Dawn and try to get as close to the game as possible when that's, I really don't think that's the right call. Yeah. I mean, who knows? I guess it depends on the script.

You can get a good screenwriter, maybe. That's true. They have a lot to cut. That's certainly true. Maybe that's the way of looking at it. There's so much clay. Surely they can find the masterpiece. Yeah, you can find two hours in there that's like gold.

Yeah, I think that's right. Just to close this out, in terms of next steps for the mario franchise do you think i kind of talked a little bit about this on besties do you think we're going to like they're going to treat it exactly like the mcu where it's just like a platform to slowly weave in all the nintendo ip they have into movie after movie after movie and then spin off after spin off and then like is that the the end goal here i and i said it on the show with donkey kong being a tv show the more i think about that the more i'm like that has to be the play because

all so many of these animation studios have their streaming service spinoffs, right? Yeah, sure. Like Boss Baby TV show or whatever is on Disney+. And what an incredible opportunity. If you wanted to create spinoffs, then the Mario game. Because, yeah, you make the Donkey Kong thing. You have the whole Donkey Kong family. game because yeah you you make the donkey kong thing you have all the whole donkey kong family you can do a kind of just mario and luigi i guess paper mario type of energy spin-off yeah i don't

think you're thinking big enough though because art at a certain point doesn't fucking link show up with zelda well i see that's where i wouldn't i i wouldn't touch it because you have at least you know probably three tv shows that you can spin off this movie and then then have the mega movie releases you know what every four years sure and then yeah if you're nintendo figure out zelda somewhere else oh so you wouldn't you wouldn't put it you wouldn't like jam it into this franchise no no no don't don't burn it and i don't think that they would either i think um i think i don't think that they want to create a super nintendo world effect i i don't know that that feels like not guided marvel yeah so successful but like i mean for

20 years i wouldn't i wouldn't rush to the end game, you know? Like, do 10 years of this, and then do 10 years of that if you need to. The reason I'm mentioning it is mostly because, like, I can't imagine what a Zelda movie would be if it's not, like, wink, wink, nudge, nudge in the tone of the Mario movie. Yeah. Well, I mean. Like, I can't imagine a serious Zelda movie. It would need to be i don't even know what studio does that sort of stuff yeah and i also think like they're gonna work with illumination until the sun burns out yeah now that it works yeah yeah i yeah i i

i don't think there's any reason to waste it you know who could do a zelda it would be like getting a really great anime studio like i mean that's that would be the dream i would like metroid yeah i know that you've wanted that one for a while or even like fucking like get you know there's an amazing i've talked about it before the there's an amazing dark souls manga like get those people to make a freaking dark souls anime count me in buddy i i hope that that i really hope that that's more we're we're leaning towards or at least that so the good the good thing about if we do go down the superhero rabbit hole is we will run into a bunch of trash and a bunch of junk but it's kind of like a great

um financial experiment to find other interesting things you can do with game property that's true like if if such an idea does exist like hey let's do dark souls anime it it will get funded you know like we'll see a ton of junk and we will see some things that are just absolutely awesome and it would have never happened if not for everybody being desperate and trying a little bit of everything 100 um i i have like one thing just to talk about i'm trying to finish video games okay again we've talked about this before too about it a lot like i'm not and i've mocked you somewhat this is part of it you don't finish games it's in my head and i don't finish games because i don't have that much time sure and i have to be very purposeful with it and every time i decide to finish a video game

that's like seven smaller games i'm just not trying sure right so that part stings um but i i do want to try to commit to games that i'm that i'm that i'm loving and not um bouncing off purely because i feel an obligation to bounce off. And by that, I mean, I'm, you know, talking, I'm playing through Resident Evil 4 still playing through Octopath still. My only fear, though, is like, what if I don't have one of those done before Zelda? What do I do then? What happens basically when the really big game that I am wanting to complete comes up against somehow an even bigger fish

that's going to swallow it whole? I'll tell you what I do. First of all, I know it doesn't seem like it, but I do pick my battles, and I don't finish a ton of games every year, especially not these days. With besties and resties, it's very difficult to finish games. So I do focus on

specific things i make ample use of um how long to beat.com i believe it is and i uh always look up like how long is this game going to take me and obviously i'm not playing games to the end unless i really like them like it needs to be something that i'm really enjoying um so i guess in that situation i mean my instinct would be to look how much time i have you know zelda comes out in a month um i know how long octopath takes to beat and i basically like math it out and figure okay if i play you know five hours a week or whatever it is it'll be done by the time Zelda's out. Which is maybe more analytical than, I mean, you're pretty analytical with your time. Yeah, I keep my spreadsheet.

See, the spreadsheet is actually what has, like, kept me away from doing this. Because I know that if, like, oh, listen, these are this many hundreds of hours of games I play a year, right? And I play, you know, two 50, 60-hour games. Is that like a third of my total game time? I don't know the exact number of hours in either direction. But when I can see it like that, that freaks me out. Though, I'm trying to think of other things that i can cut away from like are there are there things that i don't enjoy as much or like i watch a ton of movies

am i getting diminishing returns like probably maybe i should watch a few less um i i you know it's been like a good three years of like really going hard. Yeah. But yeah, maybe, maybe put a little bit more time into it. What is your like good to bad ratio in terms of movies you see? Pretty, pretty solid. Like I have like on Letterboxd, you can see a grading curve. Yeah. And it's just like kind of just a healthy grading curve. Like a seven.

It looks like, yeah, like a seven it looks like yeah like a you know yeah a little bell curve um yeah i mean it look i'll tell you for me beating games uh you know a it puts like a a bow on it so i feel like okay it's done i feel like i can speak to the game holistically like i understand the full arc of it but there are a lot of games that like don't have a lot of new things to really show you or tell you towards the let's say the second 20 hours of the game they might be repeating themselves and in those situations i'll feel like hey that was a waste of time i'm not happy that i uh spent all that time on this game that like didn't really have any curveballs to it so yeah i again i think you have to pick your battles and be mindful if this is a

game that you really enjoy if it's octopath and you really want to know how all the octos come together in one giant force to fight the big bad guy at the end i'm sure that's how it ends um then stick with it um and but i think you know always evaluating whether your time is being adequately spent or or whether it's being wasted you know elden ring i think is the perfect example i do not regret a second of the 150 hours i spent in eldering because it constantly is throwing you new stuff yeah there's never a moment where it's like oh i have to do this grind out this thing i mean you can grind if you want to but there's really not a reason to you're constantly like oh there's a new dungeon oh there's a new whatever item to chase or something like that this new uh area that i just got in is like fucking bizarre and it has an amazing lore behind it so i don't know i that's

not a game that's a game that i spent a ton of time in and don't regret a second of it but there are also games that like don't necessarily deserve that amount of time even though that's how much it might take to beat so to kind of decide for yourself i guess that's true um should we get into any final questions? Yeah, I think one or two and then we'll wrap it up. Cool. Here's one from a solar powered brick. What was the first game you remember finishing on your own as a kid? Mine was The Little Mermaid on NES when I was seven. I still carry a twinge of pride.

That's great. Wow. Good question. Mine's great. Wow, good question. Mine's super boring. The original Super Mario Brothers. That's interesting because I, yeah, I don't, I think mine was probably Super Mario 3. Really?

I think that's of the ones that I beat because I was a little intimidated by the original Super Mario Brothers. And it's interesting that you would, you know, because you're a little bit younger than me, so it's interesting that you would gravitate towards that one. How old were you when you started playing games?

I was probably like seven. Oh, this is it. My parents started me very, very, very early. According to them, I started playing games when I was three. Wow. But I don't, I don't, I, I, I. Playing what? What were you playing when you were three? The NES. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. I don't. We had an Intellivision in our house, but I didn't really play it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We had some Atari that didn't get used. But my parents were very obsessed with tinkering. They liked getting things and breaking them open and seeing how they worked. Which is weird because they're not, especially technical people, otherwise. And yeah, they got into NES because they just couldn't believe it. And then they immediately got bored of it because they had no interest in games. And then they thought like, well, get our money's worth. We'll put our kid in front of it because they had no interest in games and then they thought like well get our money's worth we'll put our kid in front of it yeah um and my mom who's a hairstylist would it was a way for her to work nights she would you know have people come to the house to cut their

hair to like make some extra money and put me in front of the nes and i that's that that's like again like earliest video game memories. Yeah. Some of mine are also like, because I was the younger sibling and in classic younger sibling fashion, I would be like the backseat, like, hey, did you try this person? on the SNES fighting Dracula and getting his ass kicked and having the idea that if you whip the like bats, the Dracula shoots out and it turns into like chicken that heals you. And that was like the game changer moment. So yeah, good job.

Do you, are you, are you going to wait till your kids seven to get them on games? No, not seven. Yeah. Uh, probably like four.? No, not seven. Yeah. Probably like four. Yeah, that seems healthy. Yeah.

We'll start with Splatterhouse and go from there. Fresh is giving an actual example of a thing I did with my child by accident. Cool. Let's see. Let's do one more. Oh, here, here's, here's one. Um, from Basil, Basil. Have you done a question from Basil or Basil before? I feel like I've said that.

Maybe. Anyway, sorry for movie questions. I just got one of those unlimited movie passes so I can see an insane amount of movies and theaters. Oh boy. It's like Chris Plant. I highly recommend it. Favorite movie that's come out this year so far.

Any movies you're especially excited for? Oh, have I seen any new movies that came out this year apart from the Mario movie? I don't think I have. Oh, I saw Creed 3. Okay. Which I thought was fine. It's fine. But not amazing.

Yeah, so I think I will defer to you who has seen many more movies of new stuff that has come out this year and not black and white or french i mean i don't even like that much um man i don't know the new this year is tough it's tough just because early in the year they generally that's where the bad stuff tends to come out is January, February. That's just like how it goes. Yeah. So there hasn't been a lot of time for the like real bangers to come out. It would be like the stuff that

that was like Oscar contenders in December but didn't come out until early this year like after Sun. I really thought that was pretty good. I liked Megan the horror movie with the robot doll. People really like that actually. Yeah thought that was pretty good i like i liked megan the horror movie with the oh yeah the robot yeah people really like that actually yeah that was great um and then i'm trying to think of like anything that's coming out what what are you excited oh wait

when we talked about on the other show i saw the dnd movie and i thought that was like so much better than i could have possibly hoped is that your favorite movie of the movies you've seen this year? Honestly, yes. Yeah, right on. I'm really excited to see it. Someone described it as following the structure of Paddington. Paddington 2 specifically. And I was like, fuck yeah.

Yeah. Love Paddington 2. And if I need to be like what people assume me to be, there's a new Haruki Murakami adaptation called Blind Willow Sleeping Woman that is by a French composer. Booyah. I know. It's pretty good. What's that runtime? What's that runtime at?

It can't be more than, it's animated. So it must be, I think it was like an hour and a half. It's good. If you read, it's named Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, which is a short story collection. But it's actually largely a different short story collection called After the Quake. So for people who love Murakami and know exactly what that means,

you'll probably be like, good, that's a more enjoyable watch. The Murakami-verse. Hey, this movie really suggests that it's possible. Unfortunately, I don't think the money's there. Do you have a thing coming up that you're excited for? I like James Gunn's stuff, so I am genuinely interested in Guardians 3, even though I think the Marvel efforts since the snap

have been kind of tepid. But I think James Gunn makes good good shit so i'm curious to see that i want that mission impossible movie you know oh does he have a pitch for a mission impossible movie no no you mean the new one yeah it's coming out and i oh i'm dying to see that movie yeah um oh and the new evil dead oh yeah i forgot about that yeah it looks good who's directing that I don't know but it looks really upsetting it's not Raimi it's Lee Cronin

but I think Raimi was a producer on it and then also Polite Society which is just like awesome looking teen action movie cool yeah very very excited all that's like coming up up in the next few weeks. Jeez. Yeah, movies are about to get good.

Anything else before we wrap? No, I think we did it. We did it again. Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. I realize we didn't do a recommendation of the week, but that's kind of what that final question was. We really did. We recommended a lot of things.

That's it. we did it another episode of the resties uh thank you so much for listening we hope you check out crab champions it's like eight bucks on steam right now 10 bucks on steam no longer on sale i guess and uh and that's it this has been the resties. I'm Chris plant. He's rushed. Fresh stick. We're the resties. We're the rest of the best. Discuss the best of the rest and give multiple endings and false starts to the end of an episode.

Goodbye. Resties.