The Besties - You, Mii, and Chris P

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Now that we've entered the peak video game release season, it's time to dive into ... a Switch re-release of a 3DS exclusive featuring Hank Hill. Griffin, Russ, and Chris take a trip back in time to the early 2010s for some 3DS reminicence while discussing Miitopia on Nintendo Switch. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

So my big son, the bigger of my sons, my large son, Henry is his name, he's four and a half, which means that he's YouTube's son now. Now he, like most children that are alive these days, he belongs to YouTube. And that never stops once you crack that can. That's it. I know, I know, I'm a 34-year-old man.

I belong in part to YouTube, Once he cracked that can. That's it. I know. I know. I'm a 34-year-old man. I belong in part to YouTube, but it's nothing like my son, who was stolen away like the Goblin King through a window. YouTube came and entranced him with a bubble and took him away. And on one of his sojourns into that accursed platform, he started to watch some Cuphead Let's Play. Oh. Like, fortunately, a commentary-free one,

because I would be way too nervous to... Yeah. ...allow the sweet nothings of a real gamer into his... Fuck that rocket asshole. Yeah, exactly. So he was watching a Cuphead playthrough playthrough and he got really into cuphead like the care and he wants to like play like cuphead i played the game in front of him and i you know i've i'm i'm i don't perform at the level that he needs me to perform at and cuphead um but he does like to play he plays pretend like constantly and he wants to play pretend cuphead and mugman sure so cuphead mugman go around

and you know uh they use their what your finger gun your thumb and your forefinger right and that's and we'll have to curtail that before it's going back to daycare because that's going to be frowned upon but so um uh there's one problem with his Cuphead fascination. Okay. And that is the way he describes Cuphead and Mugman's means of attack. I'm going to try and play a clip I recorded on my phone yesterday. I'll try and play that now. So what do you call it when Mugman and Cuphead fight the bad guys?

What do they use finger blasts oh no oh no he won't stop running around the house and yelling let's finger blast that big dragon let's oh no big teddy bear's coming we gotta finger blast that big dragon. Let's, oh no, a big teddy bear's coming. We gotta finger blast him. I mean, he's generous. What can you say? You can't say, don't say that, because then he says, why?

And I don't know what to say to the why. Because he's so little, guys. He's so little, and he shouldn't say finger blast, but he says it a hundred times a day. And really, the two words separate are fine. Totally fine. If he says, let's blast them with their finger, no, it's still pretty bad.

I don't talk about my son very much on the podcast, but he discovered that you can put a mickey mouse uh like appearance on my apple watch but he calls my apple watch a clock and he always asks if he can borrow it except for he has trouble pronouncing l's um so it's been a very brutal time around uh no not in around Nona and Pa. Yeah. Deeply confused and, yeah. I can't wait for these two kids to hang out again in front of your Nona and Pa, just talking about finger blasting and borrowing cocks. Uh-oh. my name is griffin mackroy and i know the best game of the week my name is christopher thomas

plant and i know the best game of the week. I don't like this. I don't either. I don't like what's going on here, because quite honestly, I built a brand, and it's a very strong brand, and it might only be one sentence, but it is my sentence. And I listened to the beginning of last week's episode, too, and y'all did the same thing, and I don't like it. Oh, did we? No, no, no, no, no, no.

Last weekend, I was like, my name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week no last weekend I was like my name is Christopher Thomas Glenn and I know the best game of the week yeah he was doing like a happy birthday Bob Dylan oh sure

birthday congrats well I don't all the passion is gone now I don't even know if I can actually wait well then just say

go ahead just say your name my name is the world's best game of the week see no one can do it let nobody does it better this is welcome to the best kid in the world. See, no one can do it like nobody does it better.

This is Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in, wait, it's a video game book club. Lots of references for people over the age of 50. Yeah. Who here likes wings? We're not bringing back the books. I'm sorry. Okay.

I mean, a recent twitter poll has sort of okay okay yeah no you the customer is always wrong uh justin is away this week but the three of us are going to be talking about uh sort of a strange entry into the besties canon which is the nintendo switch re-release of the nintendo 3ds me based rpg meetopia uh which is they just did damn put it right back on this nintendo platform and charged a full 50 for it and look why not look here's why not here's the deal when we look at may we think about major game releases you know rockstar would always put out their big, big releases in May. It's like a ten-pole month.

There are people trying to get the biggest releases out before summer and the doldrums. And here, perfect example, we have the Switch re-release of a 3DS exclusive, Miitopia. We're going to talk about a few different things this episode, but we're going to focus on Miitopia. Before we launch into it, Chris, do you want to set up what Miitopia was and now is? I mean, I think you nailed it. It's a very simple and straightforward role-playing game, kind of in the guise almost of like Costume Quest in its turn-based simplicity. The real fun of it...

Even simpler. Even simpler. I would say it's more early Dragon Quest inspired. The appeal of the game is that you can make Miis look like your friends in theory, or you can steal all of the Miis from Griffin's Switch somehow and have the entire game star the Pringles man, a big baby, and my villain, who is Hank Hill. Yeah, Hank Hill is my wise sage who provides guidance.

Chorolata is my wise sage, which I think. Oh, one other thing about it. I think, and fresh, you can confirm this for me just with a strong yes or no, You can confirm this for me just with a strong yes or no. It's inspired by that free game that came with the Nintendo 3DS. Yes? Oh, Find Me, I believe is what you're talking about. Oh, yeah. I think you're right.

I think that is sort of its origin story was Find Me. So that's it. We did it. We have a lot to discuss, I feel like. We're going to do a deep dive into 3DS history on today's episode. We are. So, Miitopia on the 3DS. If you never picked up a 3DS, first of all, do that.

Go buy a Nintendo 3DS because it's probably my favorite video game handheld ever. The 3DS library is so stacked yeah the library is so good i don't think the actual hardware was that great in my person i mean i you're talking to a person who owned every iteration of the 3ds hardware because i i i like video game hardware as you guys know uh and and that sort of peaked with the 3ds the i my favorite was the new nintendo 3ds not the xl but the one that you could customize the face plates on yeah boy howdy i really got into that um but there were a lot of games that used me's which exist on the switch mostly as like a profile picture like you can make a me that represents sort of you that you use a profile picture for

like you know your friends to see or when you launch a game you know you select whatever user but it is not integrated or essential to the hardware in the way that it was for we and we you and 3ds um and so with the 3ds there was the street pass plaza where like you could walk by other people with 3ds and their me's would travel to your 3ds and you could like play little games with them find me was one of those which was just a very simple turn-based rpg that meetopia is an evolution of and yet like that game really like totally grasped me because I would go to things like E3 and, you know, all the fucking dorks at E3 would have their 3DS on in like passive mode. And I'd get back to the media room and like my me would my my 3DS would just get filled and filled with all these like random people that some of which I knew, some of which I didn't. Reggie showed up like 16 times over the course of three days uh yeah i uh i just i had mine running pretty much around the

clock when i went to uh tgs to the tokyo game show and it wasn't just limited to the tokyo game show at that point like i would turn on my 3ds and you could only get a max of 10 me's at a time in your system before you had to like check them in and then get 10 more. Literally, like I would be on a train and I would like get the notification that I had filled up my Mii Plaza and I would say hi to all of them and I would close it, put it back in my pocket. And like five minutes later, I would have 10 more, like it was nonstop. Anyway, all of that is to say that Miis were integrated into all these different games. The Mii Plaza had, I think at the end of its life cycle, over a dozen different games that you could play.

There was a Shmup and a bunch of different ones. And so Miitopia is one of a couple games that were standalone, including Tomodachi Life, which is sort of a really wild very comedy centric uh pseudo life sim really it was just sort of a weird fun game that you cast me's in uh that one has not made the jump to switch yet but me topia has and i think the first thing that like is i i have actually been enjoying me to me too largely i've been i've been playing it with my son who uh which is great because it gets him away from the the disgusting influence of cuphead um but also like you know i made me and him and uh rachel and our our baby is our mage in our party. And like, it tickles him to no end, like watching us, you know, run through a kingdom

and battle a bunch of bad guys. And then we get to an inn and he's like, give me the money so I can get some armor. Like he's really into it because little kids are very narcissistic. But it's so strange. It's such a strange choice to bring this game or any sort of me based thing onto the

switch which does not have the integrated like me technology integrated like me because when you turn on me topia for the first time your street pass plaza mine had fucking like 1100 me's to like choose from from the jump and when i turned meetopia on it was just my profile picture griffin and nothing else right but you but you can pull from like the creations that other people have made sometimes so so yeah well you can do that when you cast individual me's and it's not like an online service what it is is a list of popular me's from the 3ds version that nintendo just like lifted from the 3ds version and put in the wii version these are not that hank hill that me and chris plant chose was a hank hill that somebody made in the 3ds version that just got

put whole wholesale into the Switch version. Yeah, I thought you could also connect online. Maybe I was misreading it. You can. You need, like, access codes or, yeah, if it's a friend's system. There are certain friends that showed up in mine. Like, I saw Griffin and two other people.

And for certain characters, you can only either create your own or pull from friends. And then there are other characters where you can use this like yeah the greatest popular is what it's called so yeah it was i i was lucky in that griffin had already stacked his roster with so many of the greatest hits that i kind of could choose from it either way he didn't have hatsune miku um no who i did have to pick uh separately at a later point in the game i mean mean, you could just create your own.

You can, and it's more robust this time because the Mii creator is essentially unchanged from the 3DS version. It's more involved. Well, no. I mean, it is the same, but what they have added is wigs, highly customizable wigs.

I think they added like, there's like facial details as well. Yes, there's also a makeup face paint sort of feature that you can do now. But I started out like going on my, like surfing the web, like, is there any way to bring all these me's that I have on the 3DS over to the Switch? And there is, and it's so archaic and weird, like you have to get an amiibo,

which I happen to have a few of. What a shock. And you can like register a me on your 3DS as the owner of that amiibo, and then you can use the amiibo to like bring them into your Switch ecosystem. So I of that amiibo and then you can use the amiibo to like bring them into your switch ecosystem so i did that with a few of my means but all all of this is to say like the it's not like turnkey like it was on the 3ds because me's are not important on

the switch like at all uh so it's just like a strange choice at all i wonder if this is the beginning of like them introducing more of that to switch maybe like that's the rationale for bringing us into a weird game over i you know maybe something you said earlier that didn't really click with me until relatively recently and it wasn't with this game it was with pokemon snap as some people may know i play like 95 of my time on Switch is in handheld mode. I very, very rarely play on TV. And a lot of times that works for me because like I'd rather just play when I have free time and it's fine.

I don't take over the TV. But for games like this and for Pokemon Snap, these games are really made with an audience in mind, even if they are single player games. Pokemon Snap, like my wife and I play on the couch and we'll like scream at each other when like Chimchar runs across the street. And you do not get that from the handheld experience at all. like hilarious like oh there's my aunt or whatever running across casting a spell or dropping shit into a frying pan um that you don't get if you're playing handled and solo like i don't know that this game as like a i'm gonna like grind out this game work like is that engaging but as like an entertainment product that you just like throw up on the screen for like a kid or like you know a family member

that doesn't play a ton of games yeah kind of great i mean should we talk about the the actual like the actual gameplay is very dragon quest yeah it's very simple you create your character you uh go through essentially the levels are like these linear paths that you can branch off from from time to time and as you run you know your characters will you know say stuff to each other and there will be like occasional random events like oh i found some buried treasure here's a treasure chest or um hey this bush is rustling do you want to take a look inside of it like all these different things but then there are also random battles uh which you can only control your main character on yeah uh when you're in there the other three party members that you can get do their own thing uh and they do that

thing based on their class and their personality um so there's different quirks with your personality if you pick a character who is airheaded like sometimes they'll forget what they were doing and do something else instead uh if you have a character who is cautious sometimes they'll wait until the very end of the turn to do their attack and it'll be a little bit more powerful yeah i like that idea of like an ant farm style rpg of i've actually turned my main character to auto mode also. So now it's just like, whatever gear you have and whatever your relationships are with each other and whatever your personality is, you're going to do what you're going to do in battle. And then you, the player, can interact with it with different sort of kind of interesting systems. There's one

called a safe spot. So if you're in a battle and one of your characters gets this negative effect, which isn't like poison in this game because it's silly it's like they're crying yeah or they're laughing hysterically you can pick them up and put them in a safe spot so they can't be attacked and they'll recover faster but they can't act which is kind of an interesting thing but you also have sprinkles that you can pour on your characters to like recover a little bit of hit points or a little bit of mp or bring them back to life once uh and so you have to use those very sparingly. I don't know. It's,

it is not deep at all, but it's just enough for me to like stay engaged and stay interested in it and, and like want to chase the progression stuff that exists in the game as limited as it is. What is your, what are your thoughts on it? I mean,

it feels like a high res port port of a TI-83 game. I played Street Fighter II on my TI-83, for the record. What? Yeah, it was awesome. Oh my gosh. Yeah, no, I mean, there's not a lot of game in the game. On top of this extremely simplistic combat system, there is the in-between stuff where you go to a village,

but there's not really much to do, or you go to it in and you have the option to buy gear, but it's randomized and it's whatever the characters are interested in. At least that's where it's at with me right now. Maybe that changes. It gets a bit more complicated. It gets a bit more than that, yeah. You can go on outings with them,

or you can play rock, paper, scissors with them. But again, everything is so simple. It has that just very, I don't know, a better way of describing it than a calculator game. That said, I was not into the game game part of it, just like very i don't know a better way of describing it than a calculator game that said i was like not into the game game part of it but the like meme part of it yeah yeah starts ironic and then quickly becomes not ironic we're like my my um group is me and then sonic the hedgehog who is my energetic thief uh Hatsune Miku.

And we are inspired by Iwata. We are fighting Hank Hill. And my character is slowly falling in love with Sonic the Hedgehog. And the game is pretty clear. They are in love. Sure. They sleep in the same room together. They love to go to the beach together.

They are slowly becoming a romantic pair is wonderful i i find it so charming and hilarious man if you like that i don't know if you ever played tomodachi life but tomodachi life is that times a thousand without all the rpg shit like it is just it is just so strange that game and it it is my preferred title, I would say, of these two, and the one that I wish had come over. Although that one is so dependent on you having a bunch of memes that look like your buddies. Didn't a version of that come to iOS? Kind of like it?

Wait, yes, you're right. There was like a social... It was like the first Nintendo mobile game, yeah. Yeah, it had a brief moment. It was like Nintendo's first iOS game. And for a moment, we're all like... Because it had like a funny text-to-speech thing that like...

I remember that, like playing with all the Polygon people playing when really it was just like you would go to their house and they would be like, you know, they would just say meme shit. Yeah. Robot voices. It's too bad the game we're talking about this week is like full price.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't usually like being a part of that conversation. But $50 for a re-release of what is already like a pretty bare bones yeah and it doesn't even work as well with like the best features because the game really it is best when you are invested in these characters whether they are your friends or like that that is the gimmick of the game um and yeah it's a shame because as a nintendo game i doubt it will ever come down in price um but as much as it's like doesn't really click with me gameplay wise i say that and then each day i pick it up and i put like another

15 minutes into it because it's like well this is kind of funny and then i get bored of it pretty quickly and then i turn it off and then the next day i do the same thing so i but i i would also ask this question for for parents on the call. Don't you think that this might be like the only RPG you could give like a five-year-old or a six-year-old? Absolutely, yeah. I can't think of another one. Costume Quest is the one that I would do before. But I mean, yeah, I guess so. I mean, I don't know.

I've never played Costume Quest, so I shouldn't comment on it. But like, you don't need to be able to read like i read the stuff to henry that they say in in metopia and it's like very it's not extended like discussions it's like a quip and then a quip in response to the quip and like that's it and so that's very it's very digestible henry's been really enjoying it that has been sort of he has asked to play uh the adventure game which is what he calls it uh and and you know i'm always a huge fan of that and there's a there's a there's a place for this game like it's a such a unique thing and i i think that there could have been if it had not been a re-release like if they'd done something more yeah with it and if they had had a better system for um like accessing a live online database of me's i'll i'll attach this addendum i'm pretty

sure that i'm right in saying that it's just stuff in the 3ds that they pulled over and not a live database i'm pretty sure that's what it said so forgive me if i'm like wicked wrong for some reason but i don't know they could have done a lot more like if you're gonna if you're gonna put this game back out on a new platform like put in the a little bit more work into it if you're gonna charge as much as you're charging for it i i don't know it's it's it could have it's it it is enjoyable enough but i feel like it could have been something like kind of special and and and great if it had been just a little more robust yeah and i i on top of the uh don't talk about whether it's worth the money thing i'm gonna do another thing that i don't usually like to do but i really wish it was a muso game or uh something else like well there was a there was a muso game

in the uh in the meepas plaza i think there was something you should you should tell the people what that means like uh dynasty strikers it's like the most recent one is dynasty warriors yeah like games where you just so just like killing a thousand guys in a crowd yeah exactly and like anything that plays with this idea of taking, you know, lots of me faces and characters from across the Internet or just lets you like feel like you are inside the game. I think like for me, that's the appeal of this gimmick is like it's you or it's your friends or it's these characters and you're there. And I don't know. On one hand, I guess a role playing game a lot of sense because role-playing games are about like taking over the identity but the game is so hands-off that i never i never got that like that high that i wanted from it yeah yeah yeah it's weird i wish i could i i i wish i could recommend this game to people but i don't know that it's really a good 50 purchase and like you said it's

a heartbreaker that like i think grez did grezzo do this one i think they did the original 3ds version grezzo did like a ton of really amazing 3ds games and ports and stuff and i think they may have done this switch version but but it's a Nintendo product. And so, yeah, the chances of it being discounted are pretty slim. I mean, there's some Dogecoin millionaires out there. Sure, it's fine. Yeah, if you're one of those crypto whales, then yeah, maybe it's worth it.

But it's fun. And if you have kids who are at that age where they're, you know, starting to read a little bit and are interested in stuff like this, uh, you know, it's, I've,

I've, I've been enjoying my time with it, but I just wish it was more. That is me. Topia. It's available on the switch. You've said the price a few times. If you're interested.

Um, it's available on 3ds. If you don't have a 3ds, pick it up. You could probably get a dirt cheap. I bet on 3ds. Uh, it's available on 3DS. If you don't have a 3DS, pick it up on 3DS. You could probably get a dirt cheap, I bet, on 3DS. There you go. It's pretty much the same game.

Speaking of 3DS, we're going to take a quick break, but when we are back, we're going to talk about some 3DS games that we would like to see get the Miitopia treatment and appear on the Switch. Okay, who wants to start? I think we were all pretty big in the 3ds scene uh so i'm i'm excited for this conversation i'll go first yeah so you know as i said at the top of the show i the 3ds as a piece of hardware is not my favorite mostly just because i really really hated the

analog stick i thought it was like just not fun to use the games were great as griffin alluded to but i do think that by bringing games over to the switch which is obviously a much much better piece of hardware and obviously you could have hd graphics and and make it look all pretty while also having like a good controller opens up a lot of potential and one game that i absolutely adored on 3ds that would find a much better home on switch is metroid samus returns interesting this is a game that came out uh pretty late in the 3ds's life cycle one of the swan songs it was like one of the last and um it's obviously a metroid game it's a uh remake of um metroid 2 which came out on the game boy originally and rather than being like a straight remake it's more like a final fantasy

remake which is to say like they fully redid the entire game graphics controls how you progress upgrades all that stuff so it's basically a whole new game with like the spirit of metroid 2 intact and it's really honestly one of my favorite metroid games that's ever been released um incredible like art design this really interesting like melee combat system a lock-on system that's like metroid primey but one of the big downsides to it was that it was on the 3ds and it was hugely reliant on the analog stick for aiming it had like 360 aiming and all sorts of like really complex controls and it just felt like it didn't um really work as well as it could have on that platform not to mention the fact that like the game is visually like super interesting it it is obviously

inspired by metroid but takes a slightly more like anime or um just like stylized like art style that would look absolutely fucking stunning on switch with hd graphics like it would scale up so well um i i just really love it i you know i do think that it sort of got a little bit forgotten because of how late in the 3ds's life cycle it came out but it was really just tremendous and i think it would find like a really good home on switch that is a very good pick thank you how about you griffin yeah i've got like five uh the fact that there's not a pilot wings game on switch is kind of heartbreaking the uh pilot wings resort was i think a launch game on 3ds oh yeah it's like the only good 3ds launch game uh but i have a lot of fondness in my heart for that one i would say oh there was

an e-shop title called attack of the friday monsters yeah yes attack of the Friday Monsters? Yeah, yeah. Yes, Attack of the Friday Monsters, A Tokyo Tale, which I remember I got assigned to review, and it was one of my first reviews that I wrote for, I don't remember if it was Joystick or Polygon, but I was like, ah, what is this game? This doesn't look like a real game, and it was so charming and delightful.

It's like a weird kind of narrative adventure game, but also there's like a rock, paper, scissors style thing. And you're a little kid living in Tokyo and you're obsessed with Ultraman style action TV shows. And then also kaiju show up in your town. It is very charming and great. That one was published by Level 5, who's one of my favorite video game companies,

full stop. They did the Layton games and Dark Cloud 1 and 2, which are some of my favorite video games ever made. They also had a title on 3DS that I think is worth reviving called fantasy life uh which is such a weird game that it's one of the few games i can think of that i am so nostalgic for that i did not think was a very good game when it came out it was essentially

kind of a life sim style game in the vein of harvest moon or more specifically rune factory which is like the um fantasy action rpg harvest moon uh where you could take on these different professions some were more action oriented like you know you could be a wizard or a fighter or an archer or like all these different things uh or you could be like a tailor and like make clothes or you can be a miner and like each of these jobs has like a whole storyline attached to it and like all of these different systems are very interconnected and it's one of those things where it's like a mile wide and an inch deep where like it's you know there's so many different systems and all these different things to do and explore but none of them are particularly like engaging or rich but like it was such a neat game uh that i think about a lot um and and i think

would be exciting to have uh on the switch but my my number one the one that i like think about all the time and i want so bad was the best game freak game the best game that game freak has made in a long time and it's not pokemon wow it's pocket card jockey yeah y'all know about pocket card jockey tell the people did i take oh you were gonna do it's okay it's okay i have other feelings but you should tell people about it pocket card jockey is the world's premier horse racing and also solitaire game. It is you play a horse breeder slash jockey who has a stable and a fledgling sort of horse racing business where you get a horse and then you race them by playing solitaire uh and it's basic solitaire rules you have you know cards and you have to put them on uh ascending or descending order of opposite color cards right as solitaire you all know what solitaire is and you

get you know your your speed and your performance in the race is determined by like how much of the pile you can clear before, you know, you run out of opportunities in the solitaire fashion. And then if you win races, you get more money that you can spend on, you know, upgrading your horse with different like better food or training regimens. And then eventually they get old and you have to retire them and you breed them to make a new horse. And the cycle begins again. And it was so like, I spent so much time playing Pocket Card Jockey.

And I thought like, this is the beginning of something big. There's going to be, but it wasn't. It was just the one title on 3DS eShop. And I think about it all the time it's just a good ass game and uh sometimes i will pick my 3ds back up just to play pocket card jockey it is it is that good so like i'm amazed it hasn't come to ios like that is bonkers to me

but having like a little horse raising business that then you played solitaire with was just a perfect little perfect little combination uh and is is the game that i think about uh a whole a whole bunch and and tomodachi life would be would be fun to get back on switch yeah that was five uh my answer is uh nothing i mean other than pocket card jockey i don't think we actually need 3DS games to come to Switch because pretty much everything that came out on 3DS, we've gotten better versions of on Switch already. No, Chris has a point because I was looking at a lot of the old 3DS titles

and a lot of them have already made the sort of Switch jump. Yeah, Fire Emblem is better on Switch. It pains me to say this because Mario Kart 7 is the second best Mario Kart game, but Mario Kart is better on Switch. Super Mario Maker is better on Switch. And then there's stuff that just got straight-up ported. Okay, there's actually one incorrect answer, and I'm kind of embarrassed for both of you that you didn't say it.

I'm waiting for it. Zelda, Link Between Worlds. Yes, that is what i was waiting for i didn't want to say because i yeah no don't worry don't worry i i got one right here but i will say this about about 3ds i i guess i'm the one who didn't love it as much because i love the like justin i'll speak on his behalf since he's not here the the like uh run to the litter games the really weird stuff that nintendo puts by and the run to the litter stuff on switch isn't that great it or not on switch on 3ds is not that great um it is project steam just didn't click detective Diver wasn't that great the fresh swings

that they took on 3DS, bringing back Kid Icarus I liked the Kid Icarus game, the weird on rails RPG thing that said the entries in the big

name franchises are fantastic I just think they're either already available on switch or they're done better on switch um except for obviously like we said uh maybe the best zelda game contrary yeah after our zelda uh tournament that we did i went back and replayed all of link between worlds over the course of like a few days that game absolutely kicks ass yeah but it's also one of those things where like it's fine on 3d like it's it's it's fine on 3ds yeah but you know like it will continue to get harder and harder for people to be able to play 3ds games over time sure so yeah um oh one other game yeah i did not play it i wanted on switch just so i can finally

play it uh zero escape virtue's last reward i mean it's it's i mean it's everywhere that game is that whole series is is on so many different platforms not on my switch i can't play it on the go i guess so that was what i was going to say is like there's a lot of games sort of like that that have found life on iOS also, right? So like a lot of the Ace Attorney games, a lot of the Phoenix Wright games are on iOS now. I think they're also on Switch at this point. Ghost Trick is like a really cool, like was it really cool 3DS game that is now I believe on iOS. There's the Layton games are starting to come out on ios and that's i've replayed them on ios and they're fantastic more level five joints um yeah a lot

it's it's the 3ds is like a really stellar like handheld and there's been, like, Nintendo has had hardware that has not had the, like, library that stands up to the test of time. The DS was, like, you know, obviously Nintendo's, like, huge smash hit reversal of fortune sort of piece of hardware. But going back, like, I would be hard-pressed to think of a lot of Nintendo DS games that I would, like, kill to go back and play. But the 3DS is just, like, so great. There are a lot of Nintendo DS games that I would like kill to go back and play. But the 3DS is just like so. There are a lot of amazing. The 3DS also has some very good hardcore games that like I just have not gotten into

though I want to try them like the Shin Megami Tensei games and Echirin Odyssey, which. Yeah. So I mean, there's stuff there. It just was not the stuff that I, I was always intimidated by it to be honest. So maybe that's i should be on switch maybe i can finally play atrium odyssey and have like a better map system so i'm not totally lost when i try it well no i mean the

3ds was okay i can't believe i'm going to bat for fucking atrium odyssey in 2021 but like that there were certain games that worked better that I believe will never be more appropriate for a piece of hardware than the two-screened 3DS because Etrian Odyssey is all about drawing maps while exploring a world, which works a lot better when you have one dedicated screen for map drawing. That game was designed for what the 3DS could do.

Wii U, baby. Yeah, the Wii U. The Wii baby. Yeah, the Wii U. The Wii U. Absolutely the Wii U. That's a good list, though. Do we have any emails about Miitopia? We didn't do a call this week. We're going to save listener questions and thoughts for next week

because next week we have a big topic but i'll save that and just see are y'all playing anything else right now i'm still playing resident evil um you haven't finished it yet no no i've finished the story it was not a long game uh that's fine i i thought it was a perfect length i mentioned mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, but I talked about how good the post game features are and they are great. The mercenaries mode, which is a mode that's been in a bunch of Resident Evil games for a while, is like super fun and arcadey. And you just like run through the maps you're familiar with, but like keeping track of score and combos and picking up like perks and all sorts of gun upgrades and stuff like that uh it's just like pretty amazing how much they sort of jammed in in terms of post post finishing the game uh features uh so yeah

it's still been my jam um i mentioned final fantasy 14 last week and uh i just they just put it on playstation 5 and you can get like a free upgrade to it if you own the game on ps4 which i do um so i put that on ps5 mostly because i just like hadn't played my ps5 and like sense demons souls um and it works it works really well on ps5 and it looks fantastic uh but the big thing is that the ps5 uh remote play feature is a lot better than it was on ps4 like a lot we talked about that i think when when we were talking about demon souls and stuff that um i i have that that backbone one which i cannot evangelize for enough uh and then i will just remote play final fantasy 14 and my uh our newborn is uh killing us uh really putting us through the ringer because

he's he's sleeping in like uh 20 to 25 minute increments which is abysmal but it's also about the exact amount of time that you need to get through like a quest in final fantasy 14 or uh a boss fight in final fantasy 14 um that game is i have played so much of that game and there are still huge swaths of like really cool shit in that game that i haven't even touched like and stuff that i didn't even know was there there's a whole um at some point they added a whole evilese like uh world with like different raids and dungeons and boss fights and stuff in it so that incorporates like evilese was like a connected world in a lot of different final fantasy games but mostly mostly Final Fantasy XII, which I love, and Final Fantasy Tactics. So like, you can hang out with Ramza and like get their armor. So like there's gear,

just in the same way that there was a whole Nier Automata sort of branch where you can get gear from Nier Automata and like put that on your character. There's that for Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics. And it's like, that's why, final fantasy tactics and it's like that's why like i didn't even know that that was in there uh so like that game continues to surprise me that game continues to like i don't know i i feel like i every time i play it i'm just like uh an archaeologist just like digging up some update from six years ago that like adds something to the game that is just incredible i just started to play triple triad the card game from uh final fantasy eight or nine i forget which one introduced triple triad but like there's a whole triple triad system that you play in the

gold saucer which has like all these different mini like all this shit that i still haven't even touched and done yet but it's kind of perfect for remote play, just like little tiny increments. So that's what I've been playing. And it's a good-ass game, man. I've been playing a lot more Clap Hands Golf. Yeah. I'm just obsessed with it. And I've got a character that looks like a bad cartoon

of my boy Russ Frushtick. I dress him up as a superhero now. The second I saw that costume pop up i was like i'm gonna move heaven and earth to make sure that i can get that costume wise do you feel invested in like the character progression i feel like if i could get invested in the character progression stuff that game would have me like locked down uh kind of i mean i just upgrade all of them equally so i'm uh in like each day It gives you like the little bonuses. If you like check in, it makes it easier to upgrade them.

I mean, I've definitely hit the point where like upgrading any further is going to be slow. And that's I think about halfway through their upgrade pass. And I'm also at the point where like I don't just win everything anymore. And it's not because I'm not even doing well. It's like people are shooting on PR. Yeah. It's just gotten harder. But that said, it's been slow enough that I'm kind of sticking with it for now.

Man, it just feels so good. The more I, like, it really rewards practice and, like, committing to it for committing to it for a few minutes every day. I actually feel like I'm getting better at the game, which is like something I haven't done with the sports game in a long time. I would say this, and I'm very aware of this right on the heels of Mario Golf coming out next month. I do wish it had the three tap meter for aiming and hitting the ball we talked about that last week it you get used to it like i actually really like the touch-based like system that they have now i find it a lot easier to like hook the ball in the way that i want to hook it when when i'm using this this new sort of also uh fresh i would try plugging in your

backbone because i believe every game on apple arcade has to have controls yeah i i did try it actually and it still uses that thing but it uses the right analog stick instead of uh touch which is not it's touches better than the analog stick it's definitely worse so i'd much rather i don't know just like update it dogs it can't be that hard y'all already programmed that shit about 16 games ago um okay next week next week do we want to talk about what we're doing froschick you want to tell them yeah i'll do it so next week we are doing a Resident Evil bracket. We've done the bracket before. We are deciding the very best Resident Evil game, which games will be included.

The good ones, the main ones, not Raccoon City, not Resident Evil Gaiden on the Game Boy Color. Yeah, so we're going to be doing that. I think it's going to be really interesting just because of how different each Resident Evil game is from one another. We obviously a couple of weeks ago talked about Resident Evil Village and how much of a departure that was from seven. And that is really just like the tip of the iceberg in terms of how much they've ranged. So super, super psyched. Get pumped for that.

Justin will be back and we will have a brawl to further clarify the main ones is still a little confusing that's 10 games even though we are at resident evil 8 because the main series also includes resident evil 0 and resident evil code veronica code veronica yeah it's it's uh it's uh not we'll Yeah. Yeah. And also, we won't be discussing 5 and 6 because those games are dog shit. No, we're going to be discussing 5 and 6. We have to talk about Volcano. Those will be quick rounds. That's fine.

Because those are pretty bad games. Wait, which one has the Wesker boss fight in a volcano? That would be a 5. Yeah. All right, 5. 5 can hang. 5. Well, no, just the last boss fight of five can hang. There was some bad stuff.

Yeah. Okay. So that's the show. You can listen to us, as always, for free on any of your podcast services of choice. Though we do ask that you go to that Apple podcast and leave a review. Nice five stars. Goes a long way for us. Takes us to the top, baby.

You can also find out more about our show at The Besties Pod on Twitter. And that is where we post prompts for any questions or thoughts you'd like to share in each episode. And that is it. We actually have to run. Frustic's construction has truly gotten out of hand.

There is now a giraffe wearing a New York Yankees construction hat, just grinning as he jackhammers outside the window in the back. Hey, also McElroy merch, we have a bestie shirt you can get. And just show everyone your love for

this program where we talk about ancient 3DS games for an hour and a half. We might also have more stuff coming in the near future so stay tuned in terms of merch twist that's it thank you for listening until next time uh this has been the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best days. Besties!