Crubcast

Hello, everybody, welcome to this week's edition of the Crubcast, your weekly dose of Control the Chaos in podcast form.

My name is Kevin, I'm here with three of the sexiest co-crubbers on the face of this planet, famous Twitch streamer JTart9.

Famous.

Famous Wolfkaosaun, Sean.

Hi, I'm famous now, I guess, hi.

Famous Hollow Knight silk song denier, Brody.

I'm finally back after a month of not being on the podcast because I was banished for bringing a VTuber to show and tell.

I think same.

I think I was also banished for you bringing a VTuber.

So today we have an interesting slate of things to talk about in our little chaos chat.

So Justin, do you want to kind of give an idea of what we're gonna hit on today?

Sure.

Our overarching guide through this episode is going to be games that prioritize story over gameplay.

Games that you're not going to suggest these games to someone who really wants to have a fulfilling gameplay experience, but someone who wants to kind of kick back and enjoy a nice story along with their middling gameplay to just excuse the fact that it's not really a game.

If you were to give one example, Justin, what would that example be first?

Oh, well, it's got to be a game that's coming out very similar, very soon as of recording this episode, it would be Ace Attorney.

Ace Attorney games are, they are the new age version of point-and-click adventure games where you go and explore an investigation scene and you turn everything over and try and find clues to either exonerate or convict a murder.

And in the case of the current one, they're re-releasing the investigations games, which were two games where, for those that know Ace Attorney, you would play as Miles Edgeworth, best name of all time, and you're the prosecutor, except I think you are always in the field investigating people, so you just convict them of crimes in the field.

Without the crime, without the courts.

Yeah, without courts.

Yeah, so basically, you're an actual 2D character running around a whole environment.

You're not just looking at a still image like most Ace Attorney games.

And you are finding the clues and then using a section, like a separate menu, to intuit things and connect them to put the crime scene into your head, and then Edgeworth prosecutes.

It is pretty much Sherlock, the Cumberbat show.

It's pretty much that, but before that.

Yeah, so that sounds a little more like an actual point and click than the regular.

Yeah, because the regular Ace Attorney games is almost like you do the point and click part, and then you take all of that into the novel part.

Yeah, a little bit.

And it's like.

And no, I was going to say, in the Edgeworth games, I played the first one, loved it on the DS when it first came out, and then we never got the second one in America, and we're finally getting the second one in America now.

English release, which is really cool.

That's the last game that didn't come out in English.

That's getting ported now or localized now, rather.

You said it's coming out soon.

Do you know what else is coming out soon?

Your like and comment on this video or your review on the podcast in the audio realm, if you're listening to the audio realm, make sure to leave a like, leave a comment.

Those things really do help out the podcast as we grow and take over the world slowly but surely.

We are on our way to being the number one podcast in Norway and also coming soon.

Today, if you're listening to this, the day that this podcast drops is a thing that Brody wants to mention live on our Twitch at twitch.tv/crubunderscoredofficial, where we also stream our podcasts.

If you want to watch us do some some poop posting in the pre and post show live, you can do that.

Brody, what was it that you wanted to hit on that's coming out on September 6th?

Thanks, Kevin.

I'm Brody Maple Syrup and VTubers.

Yes, in one week from today at 7 p.m.

Eastern Time on the Twitch link that Kevin already said, where we, myself and a few other crubbers are going to be ranking the not the best video game fish, but I don't want to give away the exact criteria by which we will be ranking video game fish.

If you missed it and you have access to the Patreon, you can find me and Chris actually going through the preliminary rounds to whittle that number down from 81 fish to 27 fish.

That's a real thing.

Yeah, that's a real thing we did for three hours.

It was necessary.

OK, it was required.

But why is it an odd number though?

27.

Well, because the brackets are 9x9x9, so I multiplied that out by 9 for like a maximum amount of fish I was allowed to add.

I've created a monster.

Sean, do you want to hit on the first or the most notable of the games that you want to hit on after I finish the plug that Brody started?

I should finish that.

Yeah, so that's today at the time of recording.

What time was that, Brody?

7pm.

7pm at the time you're listening to this, if you're listening to this in a week, on the 6th, on September 6th.

If not, you can find it on the Patreon, at patreon.com/crub, if you want to help support the Crubcast as we continue to take over the world again.

And Norway.

And Norway, specifically Norway.

We want Norway to go down.

That insinuates that Norway isn't part of the world, which I think says how powerful they are.

Yeah, listen, all I'm saying is I met two people in Japan.

I gave them stickers from the Crubcast and they then we had two downloads from Japan.

So we're working.

That's true.

We're on our way to becoming Japan's number one podcast as well, which I am excited for.

Sean, what's the first game that you want to hit on where you you want to highlight this, the presence of story over gameplay?

Well, going, you know, going off of what Justin just talked about, I immediately thought of Danganronpa, because that's also like a point and click adventure plus investigation.

It's very anime.

So it's definitely not a game that I would tell everyone to play.

But if you're into like the investigations and you love if you love mystery novels with a bunch of plot twists, this is the game for you, because something that like I realized with Ace Attorney is like you find out like what happened during your investigation, whereas in Danganronpa, you do the investigation.

And then there's a trial that you have where you have to find out who's the one who committed a murder, because guess what?

It's a murder mystery.

And you watch as all the friends that you make die, because, boy, is it sad.

People live at the end, don't get me wrong, but boy, there's some gut punches.

And it's very, very much a game that is like, again, I can't tell everyone to play it, but there are certain people that I know would be so into the story, because it's a very good story in Danganronpa 1, 2, V, 3.

They're great stories, they're great mysteries, they're great plot twists.

Danganronpa 2 has one of the best plot twists I have ever experienced in all of media.

That's not just video games.

That's including movies, TV shows, books.

It's one of the best plot twists I've ever experienced in my entire life.

It is so good.

But that gameplay is really just, all right, let's click that.

Let's read through the visual novel now.

Cool.

And you can't really tell everyone to play it.

Like there's a specific group that will enjoy it.

And I could see like even a lot of non-gamers being into it because it's very, it's very falling back at the same time.

It's not you're not going to get lost in the gameplay sauce.

There is the shooter one, right?

There's like a shooter.

Yeah.

It's called Ultra Despair Girls.

Yeah.

Which do not play until you play the first two Danganronpa games.

It's very weird.

Gotcha.

I love the idea that the shooter spinoff spoils the mainline story.

That's how it should be.

I mean, if you think about Ratchet Deadlock spoils the end of Up Your Arsenal.

Yeah.

I guess so.

Yeah.

I'll bounce off really quickly to hit on the one that I wanted to hit on, the only one I wrote down for today's episode, which is in a similar vein of a visual novel mystery investigation sort of game.

That's Thirteen Sentinels, a game that Chris and I have mentioned a few times here on the Crubcast.

Really, really, really good game with pretty much zero gameplay.

It is just there are 13 protagonists, they each have their own time travel lead type story, you're not really sure.

And you can go through each of them in more or less any order.

Each chapter, you do chapter one of one character, you might unlock chapter one of the next character.

And no person's playthrough is going to be the same as anyone else's because there's so many infinite permutations of how you unveil the story.

Like the story is always the same, but how you consume it will be completely different playthrough to playthrough, person to person, because you might say, well, I want to see this character all the way through.

And you can get up to like, you know, chapter five or whatever, and then you're locked.

And you have to wait until you progress in other people's stories to unlock the next key to that character's continuing story.

It's really, really cool.

And it's such a mind F of a game to go through.

And I know when I was playing it, I was just sitting here.

I've told Justin many times to play it, because when Chris was playing it, I don't remember if we were playing at the exact same time, or I think I was a little ahead of him.

He would just tell me a plot point, and I'd be like, yeah.

And I would just wait, like live vicariously through him, through the same like, what is going on?

And so we've been waiting for Justin to play the game for forever, because we know he will love that kind of game.

Because it has anime girls, and that's Justin's niche.

That's very much like how I felt with Danganronpa.

I had a, gosh, I had an ex-partner of mine.

Like we were playing the game.

I played through them all, and we were playing Danganronpa, and I will never forget this for the rest of my life.

It was one of the best moments in like gaming because it was hilarious.

They were like, you know what?

I didn't really like any of these characters, but I'm really starting to like so-and-so.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, they're great.

Well, no, they were like, I was like, oh, yeah, they're cool.

And they hit the X button to continue the story.

Boom, dead body right there.

Immediately, I was like, ah.

That's so good.

So, Prodi.

Let's bounce over to you.

What's one of the games that you wanted to highlight in your, I know you have the biggest list of all of us, so.

Yeah, I mean, I have seven that I wrote down here.

Some of them, I feel like apply.

Some of them are a bit of not quite as applicable because of reasons.

But like so you all three of you, I think, have mentioned either some form of point and click adventure or visual novel.

And like I said briefly in the pre show, like that's kind of I was tossing it right to you with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When you think of like games where story matters more, like those are the most obvious ones because it's like virtually speaking, there's almost no gameplay.

Like, sure, a point and click can have like puzzles in it.

But the actual like moment to moment of what you're doing, you're just pointing and clicking on shit.

So like I could say, oh, you know, I love the humongous games, right?

I love Pajama Sam, Spy Fox, Freddy Fish, Putt Putt.

Or I could say that the Telltale games are great or, you know, the Quantic Dream games are fun to laugh at or any any kind like that.

But I wanted to.

Yeah, I wanted to get ones that didn't exactly fall into those two kinds of categories because I feel like there's other games that have gameplay where it's it's almost it's superfluous or it takes a backseat or it's just not as good as the story.

And so the first one I have on my list actually here is Fallout New Vegas.

And one of the reasons I have it there is because recently I've tried going back to it.

And, you know, when when the PS3 was out and the only first person shooter I had ever played prior was like Borderlands and maybe Mag, right?

To play New Vegas was to Mag.

Yeah, shout out to Mag.

To play New Vegas was to be like, OK, yeah, it's a little clunky, but whatever.

I actually bounced off of it.

I didn't get past the Starter Town for the first time I played it.

And then I came back months later or I was like, OK, I'll give it a second chance.

And that's when that's great to me.

Everybody's Fallout experience for New Vegas is that it's exactly you play a little bit.

You might beat it once and be like, yeah, that was OK.

It wasn't as good as three.

You come back a little while later and you're like, oh, this is the best game ever.

Yeah, exactly.

Once you really get into the meat of how that game reacts to your choices narratively and things like that's what you're there for.

And that's like, that's awesome.

It's such a good game to just go through and experience and be in that world if if you can get past what is undoubtedly dated gameplay, even for the time that it came out.

I think this hits on a larger point that I think maybe is more valuable to the audience than us talking about individual games, which is what is it about a story driven game that's more about the story than gameplay that pushes us to want to consume those games?

Because visual novels have existed since the dawn of time essentially as far as story driven games have gone.

It's interesting with a game like New Vegas, and I'm going to bounce this into another thought, because in New Vegas, a lot of the gameplay, obviously there's the shooting, exploring, but in New Vegas in particular, a lot of it is the gameplay of talking to people, because that is a facet of gameplay.

It is hearing dialogue or reading it or skimming it or skipping it in some people's cases and deciding what you want your character to be, you know, any role playing game.

And that's what I want to bounce into.

The wider genre of role playing games, because for such a long time, RPGs were and still can be a conduit for you to get story with some token gameplay element that ideally ties in but doesn't necessarily tie in.

So, you know, the Final Fantasy games are a great example.

They may use their game mechanics in a way to facilitate story beats sometimes.

But broadly, they're very disparate things.

There is the story and there is the combat.

Persona was that way for a long time, I really think until Tokyo Mirage Sessions, in my opinion.

I do.

I think so as well.

Simply because, and Justin, I'll toss this to you, but to finish my point out, I think it's interesting how RPGs were that way for such a long time and then as games got more complex and people started wanting more out of their story-driven game experiences, it turned into a sort of, it shifted into third-person talkie games, you know, your PlayStation specials, your new God of War, the new The Last of Us.

The influence of D&D and other tabletop games starting to hit just video games themselves.

Which I really like.

You can even go to a game like Disco Elysium, which is very much so, just like-

Hey, that's on my list!

Yeah, just rolling dice to make it happen.

But I picked that game up purely because it was pitched to me as, it is a narrative RPG game with no combat.

There is no combat, you will, there is a health system by which you can take damage based on your choices, or a psych health system by which you can take damage based on your choices.

So you do have to still play the game in a way where you have to not die.

But there's no combat in that game.

And that is what was so striking to me of like, that's kind of exactly what I want in a narrative RPG like that, where, like, again, I don't need the shooty bits of Fallout to enjoy New Vegas.

Yeah.

And to jump into that before I before I throw it to you, Justin, for Tokyo Mirage specifically, because I think you'll be a great explainer of what I was getting at there.

It's sort of like, you know, no one, there are people that do this, but broadly, no one is playing The Last of Us for the thrilling Resident Evil 4 knockoff gameplay.

They are playing The Last of Us doing the gameplay to get from story beat to story beat.

A big critique of Last of Us 2, not that one, is that the amount of actual combat gameplay, if you play the combat scenarios in that micro chapter select where you just do combat encounters, if you do all of them in a row, it's like three hours of a 30 hour game.

And for the wide majority of people that played that game that aren't us and aren't online talking about this sort of stuff, that was okay because it's about those small character moments of doing the token exploration of going to, I don't know, say a corner and seeing that there's no collectible there and seeing a story beat instead.

Something like that.

I don't know.

Yeah.

But Justin, to hit on persona, I've played four, I know a lot of you guys have all played more than that one, but I've played four and I played a little bit of three and I have two copies of five that are sealed.

Keep them that way.

My opinion of Four Golden was very much, I really like the story beats, I love the synergizing between characters, but I played that after Tokyo Mirage Sessions, which I thought was one of the coolest ways to integrate characters' synergy levels directly to the combat, which I know Five then expanded upon.

It stole it from Tokyo Mirage.

They did it in Tokyo Mirage and then Five just did it, and then Five Royal took the exact everything from Tokyo Mirage and put it into Persona.

The only thing they still haven't taken from Tokyo Mirage is the sessions, where in Tokyo Mirage, if you hit someone's weakness, you might chain attack to someone else and they'll immediately do an attack follow up, and it'll become a whole thing where you can now get specific weapons that say, okay, your character will now start following up after an electric attack happens.

So, every time you use an electric attack, you know that a fire attack is going to follow up.

And it becomes a whole stage play of combat, which is the whole point of Tokyo Mirage, which is why Tokyo Mirage is so good.

It's not just your party either.

It's like you have an active party, but you have seven characters by the end of the game.

And it's based on the direct synergies from the attacker to somebody spinning off the attacker.

So, let's say Justin and I have high synergy.

Justin does a fire attack.

I might have an ability because I bounce off of fire attacks that I do an axe attack or whatever.

Sean, you may be my best friend in the game now.

So, you see that and your character automatically goes, I'm going to do this.

So, it becomes a mechanical representation of the bonds that you're forging, which wasn't really like Persona for a long time had, here's the high school slice of life and here's going into dungeons and killing things.

It wasn't really until Tokyo Mirage that those fully started manifesting together into, well, why don't we make those bonds matter?

And funnily, games like Xenoblade and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth both took a lot of that stuff from Persona as time has gone on now, because they saw that and said, oh, we should do that.

Sean, what were you going to say?

Sorry.

No, I was going to say I had no idea that that came from Tokyo Mirage.

I owned that game, and I was like, okay, I played it for like 10 minutes, never got back to it.

You don't get to any of that stuff until you really start getting into the meat and potatoes of Tokyo Mirage.

It's the usual RPG.

But to know that that's where, because I've played Persona 5, Persona 5 Royal, and like those are like top 10, top 20 games for me.

So to know that that came from Tokyo Mirage really makes me like want to check it out, because the combat in like Royal, it's all right.

You know, there's a couple like actual difficult bosses and fights and whatnot.

But like overall, it's just like, OK, I know your weakness and boom, boom, boom.

All right, cool.

Go to the next thing.

Whatever.

But to know that it came from that is really interesting to me.

And this idea came up earlier as already you were talking about fallout.

A game that I just thought of that, like the story matters a lot more than gameplay to me, which might be a hot take.

Is Red Dead Redemption 2.

I would have not played that game if it weren't for the story.

That's correct.

I didn't play that game because of the gameplay.

Yeah.

Like, it was very much like, like the gameplay was okay, but like I didn't really see more reason to keep going.

Like, sure, there's some places to venture off to, but like in the beginning, it was just very okay, whatever.

This is when does the fun begin?

And the fun doesn't really begin.

It's just like, oh, now I'm actually caring about these characters and I want to see how the story goes.

And usually I'm the kind of person who likes to go do side quests.

And I would do some side quests, but it was very much like, no I want to finish this story, because the story is really all I care about in this game.

You got Stockholm Syndrome into finishing it.

And let me posit a question to you two specifically here.

What is, if there is one, or if you want to use an example of one, what is a threshold of a game where you get to the point of, I will see through for the story regardless of whether I'm in love with the gameplay or not?

Give me what you think of that.

Because Red Dead sounds like that's what it kind of was for me, because I did not enjoy a lot of Red Dead's gameplay.

We've talked about that for two, that is.

But I stuck it through for the story.

And also, honestly, in that game's case, there's a lot of really great atmosphere to that game.

Like that game's volumetric fog is incredible.

It was the best I had seen on the PS4.

That was probably the best-looking game up until 2020 with Last of Us and Ghost of Tsushima kind of starting to edge it out a little.

Yeah.

While you're thinking, Sean, Brody, do you have one you want to hit on?

Or a point, a threshold?

Yeah.

So, like, there's...

It's tough because there are many cases where I will boot up a game that I'm just like not sure of and maybe I downloaded it free from PS Plus or something so I don't have like an investment or like buyer's remorse or anything to like keep playing.

It literally happened last night where I booted up a game called Call of the Sea, which I guess is like this walking sim puzzle game.

But like the moment my character got onto the island, I'm like, the walking speed is too slow and I deleted the game.

Like, immediately.

So that's it.

Yeah.

Like I was immediately like, no, I can't put up with this.

Absolutely not happening.

So I just I just forgo because I went for it because I had just finished playing Dredge and I was like, I kind of want more Lovecraftian, more like oceanic type stuff.

And that was there.

Call of Cthulhu also, which I haven't started yet.

But I just immediately I was like, no, no, thank you.

But if a game can if a game could hook me with either its its literal story hook of like maybe it's a, you know, murder mystery or something and I want to, you know, figure it out.

Or if it can hook me with the characters, then I'll I'll probably stick it through.

A weirdly good example is actually Zenless Zone Zero, because for a while there, I was like, man, I don't really care for like the dungeon mechanics in this game.

I kind of would rather just like there's a couple of missions in the game where you actually are just like on foot with your characters the whole time.

And I'm like, man, I wish the game was more of that.

And eventually, I think I stock homed myself into liking the dungeoning aspects of it, because I was just like, well, I got to do them.

So I may as well see the good in the ones that are there.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly, exactly.

But obviously, the actual gameplay of that game I like, so I didn't really consider it for this episode.

But like, going to the New Vegas example, right?

I bounced off that game.

I didn't make it past Goodsprings.

Another like another one where a game that I considered for this, but didn't really know if I could say confidently that it fit the idea was Outer Wilds, because I started Outer Wilds.

And the first time I played it, I bounced off of it in maybe 30 minutes.

I didn't get off planet.

I didn't I didn't even like I basically didn't complete the tutorial.

But I was walking around.

And there's a little part where you can like control like a jet pack.

That's basically a facsimile of your spacecraft.

But I didn't know that you would be in the spacecraft and it would make a lot more sense when you're like sitting in the cockpit.

So it was just this really like awkward, like third person static camera thing.

And I was like this.

I don't know.

I'm not vibing with this at all.

But the more I would eventually I went back to it and I gave it more of a chance because I'd heard so many people that I've talked to that have played it.

They're like, oh, it's one of the best games of the time.

You've got to play.

You go back, give it a chance.

Now, there's an interesting question here, and this is one you can't really answer due to the inherent spoilery nature of that game.

But is it, in that game's case, and this isn't to say that this is off topic, but in that game's case, is it more the exploration and organic discovery aspect than the story itself that drives you?

Um, I would say both.

I would say both the exploration and discovery and also putting together the story, because they kind of go hand in hand.

It's like I wouldn't put a game, like I wouldn't say like a raw puzzle game, like Portal or Talos Principle necessarily counts for this, even though Talos Principle, I do think the story is almost so good that it outweighs how good the puzzle gameplay is already.

Like the story is the star of the show in Talos, but the puzzles are also really, really fun and also still their own star in their own way.

Whereas with Outer Wilds, you're not solving like room to room puzzles.

You're you're solving these like it like the entire world.

Yeah, they're like macros, sciencey puzzles.

Exactly.

Macro puzzles is a perfect way to put it.

If you're putting pieces together, you're making you're making conclusion, you're drawing conclusions and figuring out things in that way and piecing together the lore of this world, which gives you answers to things that you can use to then further explore more of it and get to where you need to go.

Now, the raw moment to moment gameplay of that is a walking simulator with a jet pack.

And that's all it is.

But everything else about it is so integral to experiencing the story of that game that it I would consider it a game where the story takes precedence over the gameplay, even though the gameplay is so intertwined.

Yeah.

And that's exactly what I wanted.

I was trying to see if if we could get there, because I was curious before we jumped to Sean.

I don't know if you have one yet, but I'm going to throw it to you in a sec.

I want to say a lot of this discussion reminds me, in a way, of what we do every month over at BookCrub, over at our Discord.

You can go to crub.org/join to join the Discord.

BookCrub is a patron event that we do, so if you're a Patreon member or if you're a YouTube channel member or if you're a Twitch subscriber even, you get access to the BookCrub room.

We pick a game every month, and we all play it like a book club, essentially.

That's what it's BookCrub.

We play it, we talk about it, and we bring all of the people that have played it in the community on and talk about it.

Justin, you just did your first with Zenless Zone Zero, so I wanted to ask you what your experience was with that.

With BookCrub or Zenless Zone Zero?

Because you haven't done it yet, so I'm curious.

It was fun.

It was fun.

We just kind of hung out.

We talk about the game, and then we kind of just talk about our experiences with it.

Zenless is a game that you could really get into like, oh, how are your pulls?

Who's your favorite character?

Because at the end of the day, the gameplay, it revolves around the characters that you want to play and the characters that you have an attachment to.

I play a lot of Genshin Impact.

Same developer as Zenless Zone Zero, same kind of concept applies.

I don't play Genshin for the gameplay.

I play Genshin because I like the characters in the story, and I am more than happy to put up with the gameplay because I want to see what cool scene comes up next.

Because for some reason, Hoyoverse decides to actually make a good story.

And it's weird.

But they'll never finish it because they need to get more money so they can't really finish it.

So like you kind of just kind of equal you get strung along.

Yeah, you know.

And I will say zone zero should be Zenless Zone 2.

I will say as far as Bookrub goes, the games we tend to pick are always free on some service or another, at least as of right now.

So you don't have to worry about, you know, joining the Patreon or joining the community.

And then also buy the game.

But you can also just join and hang out and listen to it.

We don't record them or anything.

It's just kind of a little fun.

We sit around and talk.

We do with the Crub community.

Plus you get to talk to us too, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, like we'll invite you in.

It's like, hey, you know, talk to us about, you know, your experience if you want to come in.

And it's very, the thing I really like about it is it's very much just us talking.

Yeah, it's just a Discord hangout.

It's one of these discussions, but in audio form instead of, you know, there's not a video element that we do for Bookrub.

Yeah.

But Sean, sometimes someone will stream the game if they're playing it.

But yeah.

Yeah.

What was the game that came to you as far as the threshold of I will put up with the gameplay because the story?

I was trying to think of like other games and I was like, OK, this, this, this.

But the one that always kept coming to mind that I'm surprised I didn't think of before.

It's not Kingdom Hearts.

We know.

We didn't play it.

Anyway, got him.

I have pain, suffering, agony even.

But the Last Guardian.

That's a good one.

That's a really good one.

The gameplay is just so.

What is the Last Guardian for those that may be unfamiliar?

So the Last Guardian is a game created by the people who may share the losses in ICO.

It is very much you are a young boy who is trapped with this creature who's a basically it's a cat slash dog slash bird slash colossus.

Yeah, they're huge and pretty much like what the game is is you're trying to escape this area.

You don't really know what's going on exactly, but like the atmosphere is very moody.

It's very dark.

And you're trying to get this pet that you just met to trust you.

And it's a little I'll be honest, it is a little frustrating to try to get this animal to like you.

But it's very much how it is to, you know, get a pet to actually trust you, because sometimes you'll tell them to do something.

He's going to look at you like this and start like licking himself right then and there like a cat would.

But as the game progresses, there's more trust that builds up.

And the other thing that like was kind of bothersome, I can imagine this to be bothersome for a lot of other people too, but like the controls were very PlayStation 2-esque.

It wasn't like your typical like, oh, I should hold this to do that.

No, it was very much like, Oh, it makes sense because it was a PS2 game in development.

Yes.

And then they didn't change the buttons, which is whatever.

But like The Last Guardian, the gameplay again, there's going to be moments where Trico is just going to look at you and just like, I don't care, die.

And that's it.

Or like, he'll eat you, which you will also die.

I know I've described it as a mixture of both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus because you can climb on to Trico.

Yes.

Much like you would in Shadow of the Colossus.

And you have to do nonverbal single player co-op in a way where you have to get this other person or in this case creature to listen to you and follow your commands.

Yeah.

And it does take a lot of time and there's a good puzzle element to it.

But the reason that I kept playing was there were so many moments with the environmental storytelling where I was like, what do these eyes mean?

Why are these these weird eyes?

Why was this creature down here locked up?

And there were so many things that made me want to keep going because I was questioning everything.

I was like, is this a sequel to the games that I played?

Is this a whole totally different thing?

I mean, there were so many questions, so many things that I wanted to figure out that made me want to keep going.

And the gameplay got, I wouldn't say better, but like, you know, Trico started trusting me or I started to care more about this animal, which I care for every animal.

But eventually it was like, if this creature dies, I'm going to cry.

I'm going to cry a lot.

But The Last Guardian is very much one of those games that I don't think is for everybody, but for those special few, this is going to be I think it'll be like a life changing experience for quite a few people.

I'll be honest, it's also a game that like if you play it, especially if you have Ico and Shadow of the Colossus under your belt already and you're playing is like whether or not it's it's I don't think it's a sequel per se, but it is definitely I can't say universe somewhere on the timeline.

And when you're invested in that world, you kind of go.

Yeah, I will.

I will.

I will put up with this dog.

Yeah, me for five hours.

Yeah, to see where this goes.

I was going to say even in the, you know, it's not going to be for everyone, but it could really change your perspective in a lot of ways.

And in a lot of ways, that makes it a strand type game.

God.

That's a game.

Oh, gosh.

I do have another thought because I thought back to New Vegas a moment ago.

And there's a good counter to New Vegas in terms of you do put up with the gameplay a little bit to get through the story in that game's case.

Fallout 4 is a game where you put up with the story to enjoy the much better gameplay.

And that is why I fell off of that game so hard, because once I realized the story wasn't going to ever live up to what I wanted it to, I just I fell out.

I was like, well, I really I like the more borderlands eluded shooter gameplay.

But that's not what I'm playing Fallout 4.

You know, it's like when we played it for Book Crub, we played Fallout 76 and Chris and I played for about an hour and we hated it.

We hated every moment of it.

It was trash.

That was that was obviously one of my favorite experiences of the Crub.

Again, this is part of Book Crub, but like a bunch of us got on one night and just played Fallout 76.

There was like a group of four of us.

And instead of us, like, you know, deciding, oh, we should be this group, this group, this group, three of us just decided to be like brawn people.

We just walked around with machetes and stabbed everybody.

And there was one medic and the medic can only heal themselves, they can't heal everyone else.

So we're just running around like stabbing everybody the entire time.

Like, oh, that's a robot, stab, stab, stab.

But like, it was honestly, it was just fun because, you know, we're just running around.

There was no story.

I mean, there was.

Yeah, that's a fun kind of game for sure.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, Sea of Thieves.

Very Sea of Thieves, which yeah, yeah, talk about it.

Talk about a game that I love.

That game is trash.

That was a fun stream.

I have one to throw out to you, Kevin.

Yeah.

Origami King.

Oh, you know, I don't.

For which for which version of this, for putting up with the story for gameplay or for putting up with the gameplay for story?

For putting up with the gameplay for story.

I...

I genuinely like Origami King.

Like, like, like, holistically?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

I mean, like, it's...

Like, Color Splash, you put up with the...

you put up with a little bit of each for a little bit of each, actually.

Because there's not really a great story there, but the gameplay is kind of interesting, and there's not really a lot of gameplay there, but there's still at least a little bit of story nugget that you get in terms of characterization with the paint can.

With Origami King, I don't think I got attached to the story until Chapter 2, for that moment, that I'm not going to talk about.

But for those that don't know, Origami King was the most recent new Paper Mario game.

They just remade Thousand Year Door, in part because of the continued response to Paper Mario stuff, because they went from story RPG to story RPG to entirely story, but it's a platformer with Super Paper Mario.

And then Miyamoto got involved and said, well, Mario doesn't have stories, is what we understand it to be.

And so they just wiped out the story and the gameplay and went more for an action platformer sort of game.

And they made Sticker Star.

With Sticker Star.

And Sticker Star is one of the worst things ever made.

A trash game.

Genuinely, I tried to give it a shot.

It is garbage.

I'm curious.

It is bad.

I want to see, like, did Thousand Year Door sell more than Sticker Star and Origami King?

So, I think it is...

I think it outsold Origami King so far, in terms of aligned sales, but I don't think it's up to what...

Because Super is the biggest, the best selling one.

But while Sean looks at it...

Which makes sense.

Yeah, it was a weekend.

Biggest install base, yeah.

I'm glad that they're starting to let the game...

They're trying to, like, ease the idea of Mario having story out again with Mario RPG remake and Thousand Year Door remake.

I'm excited for Brothership in that regard.

I think it's just a matter of...

They realized the mistake, and also it's good to have Mario have a story because there's movies now.

Even if it's not the same storytelling structure.

But what I was getting at was, they went from heavy story for the first three games, to no story in Sticker Star, and then they crawled out from that.

And I remember around when Origami King came out and I think also when the Wii U game Color Splash came out, there were reporters and journalists that asked, have you thought about doing something in the vein of Thousand Year Door?

And it was just a matter of the team.

The teams involved are A, mostly Japanese speaking, of course.

So they don't necessarily see how huge of a fan base there is here for those games.

And B, they didn't work on those games.

They're just like, we didn't know people wanted them.

Like we got hired at Intelligent Systems for Fire Emblem or whatever.

And then they were also making Paper Mario.

But what I was saying about Origami King was, I really enjoyed the fact that that game is a structurally a Paper Zelda.

That is a Zelda game with dungeons and puzzles and it's a lot of fun.

And then there's also actually turn based combat because it's all in a wheel.

And I think that's really fun and stupid.

I enjoyed the boss fights mostly, like they weren't hard.

They were just kind of like a fun twist on the same sort of gameplay.

The boss fights is where the gameplay shined for me.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

I liked the bite sized switch core sort of the switch core sort of combat for the regular enemies, because it's just like there's five of them and you just line them up and you kill them.

And I think that that's a cool thing.

Oh, yeah.

I think my thing with that is whenever I would encounter a new enemy and it would be like, OK, how do you take them down within the mechanics?

That was fun.

But then fighting five of them in a row, you're like, OK, that's just kind of an RPG, though.

That is absolutely fair.

That is completely fair.

But then at a point, Origami King turned around into, oh, they're telling stories with these companions in a way that, yes, there aren't permanent companions that you can swap out like the prior earlier games were.

But then you start realizing, no, they're telling you stories by way of these contextual characters even if they don't stick around the whole game.

And I think I even said it to you when we played through it, Kevin, I was just like, I feel like this is them getting as close as they can to making Thousand Year Door in the confines and restrictions that have been placed on them.

Yeah, 100%.

I genuinely think that's the case.

And I think it was, I want to say it was the Color Splash director who also then I think went on to produce or direct Origami King, who was asked, I think she was asked, or maybe it was an assistant director.

She was asked during Color Splash and then said, oh, we didn't really know people wanted that.

Because also the Gamecube isn't a successful system.

I know people like to like to work on that.

But it's not like, let me let me level with you.

Let me level with you, listener slash viewer.

If they dropped the price of the Wii U to the same extent they had the Gamecube, the Wii U would have outsold the Gamecube.

That's how bad the Gamecube did, because the Gamecube within three months of launch was $50 off.

It was $150.

The Wii U was still $300 the whole run.

They never made it cheaper.

The entire run.

They got rid of the cheaper model too.

Within two years, the Gamecube was $50.

Yeah, it's wild.

It was $100 within, I think, a year.

Give or take.

Like, they had to give that shit away for cheaper or the same price as games.

I guess that was the era.

Like, that was the era of video games where people were like, yeah, Wind Waker sucks because it looks so kitty and cartoony, which was basically the Gamecube's bread and butter.

Well, it was also that.

And also, like, you have a PlayStation 2 that also counts as a DVD player.

Yeah, I mean, that was the default win for the PS2.

Yeah.

I love watching UMD movies on my PSP.

But it was, oh, yeah.

There was also the disc size.

Like, you couldn't really fix those discs in like a normal, like, disc.

Oh, in the cleaners, yeah.

Yeah, you couldn't really do that with Gamecube games.

That was to me.

And I don't mean this as an insult necessarily.

And I've talked to the I've talked behind the scenes about this, both on pre and post shows and to you guys.

Talk to Miyamoto.

I've talked to Miyamoto.

He thanked me for Croc.

I've talked about the fact that I'm doing a project covering the Gamecube in a larger macro capacity because I'm not a Gamecube guy.

And I don't want this to seem like bias when I say I think the Gamecube was probably the height of Nintendo's hubris.

Like the Wii U is close.

The Wii U is close.

Do not get me wrong.

But the PS3, like you're talking about the PS3 hubris, right?

Like, yeah, because the PS3 is the peak of Sony's hubris.

I think the Gamecube was, well, we're not going to go all the way into the disc era.

I believe part of it was they also didn't want to have to pay Sony for the licensing for DVDs, because they weren't part of the DVD commission, the mega corporation that was like the conglomerate, rather.

Because I think there was something about that as well, but it was just them continuing to stay behind the times in a way that continued to sort of bite them for a long time to come.

Obviously, the Wii was absurdly successful.

I was like, yeah, they did it again with the Wii, where they made it intentionally under power.

Well, and they're still doing that with the Switch.

There's no knock on that part.

It's not about it being under power.

It's a more powerful system than the PS2.

But they handicapped it by giving it the smallest disk capacity.

They left a lot of water back then.

And on top of that, they were doing a lot of experimental stuff.

You launch that system without a proper Mario game right away.

There are three games.

And you're like, let's do Luigi.

There are three games at launch.

Three games at launch in Japan.

It came out, I think, August in Japan, or maybe June 2001 in Japan.

And it came out with, I can look at them over there, Luigi's Mansion, Super Monkey Ball, and Wave Race.

Wave Race, Blue Storm.

Those are the three games it came out with in Japan.

They then delayed it two months in the US from September to November because they said, well, unlike those guys at Sony, we're not going to make the mistake of not having enough games at launch and not having enough systems ready because the PS2 was notoriously hard to find for the first year because they underestimated demand and couldn't produce enough.

So Nintendo said, we're not going to make that mistake.

We're going to delay it to produce more consoles.

Which then, the funny part in the console work behind the scenes of this, was then Sony said, oh, well, you and Microsoft both just launched your systems.

We're going to drop the PS2's price because we've been out a year, so we can still make money on this.

Which forced them both to drop their prices and compete and lose money in the process.

It was very a rare good business move as far as Sony goes.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

It was one of those like, it's interesting to me to like, because I was looking back on like even like the Sega Genesis and like the Super Nintendo like console wars to see like the moments where Nintendo isn't expecting their competition to really take that step forward because like back in like, I think it was 91 or 92, like Nintendo didn't really think anything at Sega Genesis until the Sega Genesis sold more in the US.

I think it was 92 that they did that, and that's whenever Nintendo actually started taking them seriously.

It was like, OK, we got to we got to change our market strategy.

We got to change some things here and there because like there's even a fun way.

To talk about, again, the hubris that existed at times with Nintendo and all three of these companies have fallen into this Sega as well.

Everyone has at some point.

But there was a thing that I was reading from during the PS1 and 64 era where Nintendo was like, oh, we're not worried about the PS1 when we launched the N64.

We're going to blow that out of the water.

And the N64 led to higher PS1 sales.

Sales went up because it was like, oh, well, now there's now we can choose.

And sales went up for the PS1.

Yeah, I remember that.

It's so interesting to look back on that stuff.

Nowadays, it's just like, hey, do you want an Xbox, a PlayStation, a Nintendo or a PC?

I don't know.

I want Amazon Luna.

Back then, it was just so interesting because everybody was throwing so much stuff out there.

I'm all in for the ooh-yah, baby.

To close out my thought about the hubris thing.

No, you're good.

The thing I want to hit on is, I do think there was a lot of hubris in the Wii U, but I think a lot of that is also just a lot of the precursor to what we're seeing throughout this whole console generation and the past one of these companies producing things just slightly too late and getting completely blasted for it in terms of perception.

Because the Wii U comes out, I think about, is announced, I think about a year after the iPad comes out, give or take.

It wasn't a bad idea.

It was just that then it came out and it was too expensive and there weren't really games for it because Nintendo was still struggling with, well, we now have to make games in HD, which is not just twice as much work.

It is like four times as much work because of the expectation of fidelity.

So you have that.

You have having to display it on two screens at once, potentially.

You have, we're also making 3DS games.

So all of their development teams are split across two different teams.

And they're doing completely different gimmicks.

Yep, completely different things.

And they can't really cross over, which is why the entire Wii U era, there were Wii U years and there were 3DS years.

Yeah, it was wild.

And that's the whole reason the Switch exists.

It was a solution to both of those problems at once.

And there's a reason it did so well, because that's the genius idea that they didn't have at the time, because it wasn't possible at the time.

And you weren't fitting that much form factor into a Wii U gamepad back then.

I think a Wii U gamepad is bigger than a Steam Deck, I'm pretty sure.

Oh, yeah, it's huge.

It's pretty close.

I think the Steam Deck is longer, but the Wii, the gamepad is fatter.

Yeah.

And like that was your controller.

That was like the biggest thing that bothered me.

To be clear, I love my Wii U.

I don't use it, but I love it.

Yeah, it was one of those, like if I was playing, like say I was playing like Wind Waker, which bring it to the Switch.

But like as I'm playing it, I'm like, man, I really wish the controller were smaller.

Like, well, I'm like, sure, like all the items are like, you know, on the gamepad and you like go to the map and stuff.

But it's like, I just wish I could, like, you know, have a normal controller, which eventually you could do.

But it's just so.

There is a moment.

The pro controller was like separated for player two because you could never use it as the player one controller because you needed the gamepad.

Yeah, a whole lot of, again, complex ideas.

But it also makes that thing the best way to play DS games.

Because we're doing touch screen and big screen on a TV anyway.

Yeah, there is a moment that I remember when I was like, oh, the switch.

I mean, I knew the switch was a good idea.

Obviously, we all did immediately.

But.

There was a moment that I was like, oh, this is a good idea.

And it was one of my buddies didn't have a switch yet, because it was still year one.

So, he wanted to play Splatoon 1.

So, we were playing Splatoon 1 online together.

And I think I was passing it back and forth with another friend, because we were playing online.

And then also, my roommate was with me.

So, we were like passing the switch, the gamepad back and forth.

And I think I was holding my switch in the meantime, and he handed me the gamepad.

And I said, I don't want to go back.

And it was not as a joke, just genuinely came out of my mouth.

And I was like, oh, this thing is going to do bonkers.

That was the break.

We're gonna do bonkers.

To close one thread out, Sean, what was the sales thing for Origami King?

Origami King from the last time it was looked at, which was December...

Let me double check.

Probably December last year.

December...

Where is it?

December 31st, 2022, Origami King sold $3.47 million...

Copies...

.

in two and a half years.

Yes.

Whereas Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door, in only a month and seven days, sold 1.76 million copies.

That's still better than the original game did, I'm pretty sure.

I think the original Thousand Year Door was in the 1.8 million range, I think.

I could be wrong.

Correct me if I'm wrong in the comments.

And just so you know, that sold more than Fire Emblem Engage.

Deservedly so.

And Kirby's Return to Dreamland.

Also deservedly so, to be fair.

And Astral Chain.

Well, Astral Chain doesn't matter.

Yeah.

Yeah, there you go.

Even Nintendo tries to make believe that Astral Chain exists, and everyone's like, no, it doesn't.

That's not a real game.

That's not a thing.

Yeah.

Fire Emblem Engage.

I love Fire Emblem Engage, man.

That game is a game with no story.

That game is a game with that.

That is all gameplay.

That's all gameplay, no story.

You put up with the story.

You put up with the gameplay.

Yeah.

To get to the story.

To get to the story.

Although I still enjoyed the gameplay.

I just as a Fire Emblem purist, it didn't have enough strategy in it for me because no, there was no weapon triangle.

So it was just you throw the strongest enemy, the strongest unit at the strongest enemy and then they just die.

You know, guard baby.

I remember it was funny.

I remember you complained about the maps in Three Houses being kind of bland, too.

And I recently played the first Gamecube game, the first Ike game rather.

No, I never complained about that.

I complained that they always reuse the maps from route to route.

The maps themselves were fine.

It's just that you played the same maps on every route.

Well, so I was like, I played this three times already.

I mean, yes, that is a correct thing to have issue with, although you're not supposed to play the game four times in a row.

True.

Oh, gosh.

But I remember I thought that was the complaint you had.

So when I was playing the first Ike game, Path of Radiance, I was like, man, these maps are kind of bland as hell.

Like they're all this kind of flat.

There's not really anything to them.

There's not really much going on.

Like there's that one map that I remember and there's only one map I remember in Path of Radiance, and it's the one where you're trying to protect the castle and then there's like two forking paths.

Yeah, it sucked.

Now, I do want to bounce over to something kind of related to the idea of a Thousand Year Door remake or the idea of Justin's ideal Fire Emblem game, which is our Patreon, the Crubscriber Question of the Week.

Once again, if you go to patreon.com/crub, you can join even as low as the $2 Ask Us Questions tier.

If you want to ask us as many questions as you want, there's a Google form just loaded up and we'll answer your question and others on air, either in one of these podcasts or in a big Q&A episode that we will do once we've overflown with questions.

So this question is from Urkman, who asks, if you could snap your fingers and make any video game exist, what would your dream game be?

Remaster, remake or brand new?

It doesn't matter.

If I snap my fingers, is like a game being destroyed and another one's taking his place or just like a game.

You can press this button to get your dream game, but somewhere in the world, another game will die.

Yes.

It'll be it'll be retconned from history.

So I'll give you I'll give you one that I would pick, but I'm not going to.

And then one that I will pick.

OK, the one that I would pick is PlayStation All-Stars 2.

Yo, I would pick that because that would be a banger of a game.

You know, if developed right, make it a Smash Bros.

game.

Hell, make it what Concord is now, but with PlayStation characters.

PlayStation's crossover hero shooter is something that could genuinely.

Not anymore.

Not now.

Well, yeah.

Concord ruined that.

So I would pick PlayStation All-Stars 2 in the form of a Smash Bros.

game, because I think, A, we're at the point now as a gaming society, which is a phrase I never want to use again.

Never say that again.

I think we're at the point where Smash fans can accept the fact and encourage the fact that there are other Smash games now.

In 2012, that was not the case.

In 2012, it was very much, you are copying Nintendo.

How dare you?

Now it's like, oh, wait, no, this would actually be cool if we had more of these.

Yeah.

Like multiverses.

Cool.

Give it a shot.

Especially since Sony partially owns Evo.

So PlayStation All-Stars would be at Evo every year.

True.

But I think that in the current state of how the Internet reacts to anything PlayStation, I selfishly I don't want that game now, because I would just see so much garbage online that would annoy me.

And so as much as I want the game, and as much as I can tune that out, because it is our job to get bad comments at us every week for individual channels, not for Crub as much, because the Crubbers are all the coolest people that listen to podcasts in the world.

True, true.

I think, I don't know, there'd be a lot of toxicity because there'd be, you know, Joel would be a character, there'd probably be old and new Kratos would be kind of rad, honestly.

You'd still have-

Just like good and evil Cole.

You still have two Coles.

Yeah.

I want a pre-wheelchair and post-wheelchair Bentley as their own.

Oh, absolutely.

And also I want Bentley's hack pack Bentley.

I want the one of him and the buff shooter.

Yeah, yeah, three Bentley's.

Just three.

No, but I think now, like I've said in my PlayStation All-Stars documentary, I think that that game is partially responsible for the unification of the PlayStation brand in the way that Nintendo has always had it.

Because it's after that that you start seeing everything congeal around, given the same sort of third-person semi-open-world-at-times story-driven game.

Obviously, Uncharted existed first.

Obviously, God of War was already sometimes that anyway.

But it's after that that you see The Last of Us hits a lot differently than any of those games did in terms of sales.

And it starts to shift the general PlayStation player base, because people bought PS4s for The Last of Us Remastered.

Like 30% of people jumped over from Xbox to PlayStation 4 for games like that.

And I think it'd be really cool to have that game.

But because a lot of the games that Sony makes are now just that, I think you'd have a different issue of on top of they're not being Crash and Spyro.

Well, now there's 40 The Last of Us characters, even if they're not all from The Last of Us, and people would bitch about it.

And it would be annoying because no one can be happy online.

Where's Umjammer Lammy?

So, the game I will say instead...

The game I will say instead is The Legend of Dragoon Remake, or two, or reboot, I don't care.

Give me a very expensive, high-budget Final Fantasy VII remake-styled semi-hackin slash RPG with The Legend of Dragoon.

I will give you money.

I will give so much money for that.

It will never happen.

There is zero chance of it happening, but that's the one I would die on that hill.

Valid.

Who wants to go next?

I'll go, because I'll say that one of the possible answers I could have given almost existed and we just found out it got cancelled.

That's true!

So there's that.

Because ever since I was a wee lad, all I wanted was a game where Crash Bandicoot rode Spyro like pure or polar and they went around with a dual move set where you could spin and breathe fire and charge and all that.

And that was gonna happen.

And then they cancelled it!

It's not!

It's not existing!

We made it 58 minutes without a swear jar.

And then you just-

I think I said shit earlier, but that's okay.

Yeah, she was fine.

But then-

So that's not the answer, because it could have existed and now doesn't.

A quick answer would simply be something like Outer Wilds 2 or just another game that gives me the feeling that Outer Wilds gave me because I'm chasing that dragon constantly.

But it's not something that I can describe, because inherently, I have to basically know nothing about it going in, because that is the beauty of Outer Wilds.

So what I will say, my actual answer is it doesn't matter what IP, like it would probably be like a 3D platforming collect-a-thon game of some kind.

But I want a game that like utilizes like the PlayStation 5's ability to just like load things really quickly.

And like essentially imagine like Mario Odyssey, but every single world in that game is like layered on top of one another in sort of a dimensional space that you can traverse almost like an MC.

Escher sort, because the thing I love most in games is getting lost.

And so to then to take all of that game, to take all of the of a game that I already love, like a Mario Odyssey or like a like a Spyro or any of those like kind of 3D, open-ish world collectathon games, to then layer them together in sort of dimensional space where it's like, oh, okay, this, you know, let's say like the pyramid in the Odyssey's desert level and the building in New Donk City, they actually occupy the same like latitude, longitudinal space, but they exist in sort of a fourth dimensional, like you have to shift between.

It's weird.

It's hard to explain.

It's hard to explain what I want.

I've been holding my tongue for a second here.

I, we did say if you could snap your fingers and make a game.

So let's be clear that that is valid.

I cannot imagine the amount of work that would go into making a non-Euclidean multidimensional platformer.

Yes.

Metroidvania.

Because that's what this is about.

That's exactly what I want.

Yes, absolutely.

The same thought, but I've always, because this is the scenario, because this is not usually the scenario, I've never thought about, oh man, I would snap my fingers and make that.

I've always thought, man, that is impossible to make.

Which is exactly why it's my answer for this question.

That is a great answer.

If you could make Mario Odyssey, but with essentially it's like with the Ratchet and Clank Rift apart, and other games have done this, but that or like a portal mechanic where you can press a button and flip to a different dimension, and you're in a different space, but hopefully you're not inside of geometry.

Like, it would be incredible.

And it is now doable, like you said, because that is kind of what Rift Apart teased doing.

Yeah.

But exactly, like it's when I saw-

So much work would go into that, it'd be incredible.

Yeah.

When I saw the PS5 and like when they were showing off the instant loading and what it's capable of, like immediately it came to mind of like, yeah, I want this MC Escher non-Euclidean space game.

And I think the easiest way to describe it quickly would just be if you took Click Clock Wood from Banjo-Kazooie and layered all four versions of that level on top of each other, rather than having to switch between them manually through a hub.

But a lot more complex than that, obviously.

Let me take that further.

Let's do Click Clock Wood from Donkey Kong 64.

Except, instead of it being just that all four seasons are layered on top of each other, you have a Mario 3D world double cherry, and you are playing as two different Kongs in two different dimensions at the same time, collecting each of their disparate bananas.

At the same time, on one screen, since it's Donkey Kong 64, obviously you can only collect the yellow bananas, but on the right side, you only collect the red bananas.

So at the same time, you're playing as two different characters, you're getting double the work done.

There you go.

Sean, what would your game be besides Kingdom Hearts?

Yeah, I was waiting for that.

And also, the other one would have been, you know, Danger 3, that makes a lot of sense.

But here's one that, like, the more I thought about, the more I think would really work.

Star Fox Adventures 2 returned to Dinosaur Planet and have it be not necessarily like a huge open world like Breath of the Wild, but like have it big enough where you can go to these different like puzzle areas, dinosaurs are running around.

Just just bring back Star Fox and, you know, just do something a little different.

Why not?

Screw it.

The thing I hate about that is the fact that I can see all of the thumbnails from all of the 35 year old Switchtubers out there that are like, Oh my God, this game is war.

And it would sell well because it's on the Switch.

It would make its money back because it's on the Switch, not because it's necessarily a good game.

Obviously, if we're snapping a game into existence, it's going to be good.

Yeah.

But and then they would actually make another Star Fox game, which is going to be another reboot of Star Fox 64 for the seventh time.

They could port Star Fox Adventures one to one right now.

And it would outsell most games on the Wii U.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just by the fact of it being on the Switch, I have to agree with you.

Like, yeah, because you see what happens when a game goes from the Wii U to the Switch.

You just see the sales bump.

Where is my Xenobladex, my beloved?

Where is it?

It's the only one left.

I thought that Twikium Mirage was going to be stuck on the Wii U and then it actually got ported.

Of all the games, I do think my hunch is that Xenobladex would be like a Switch 2 early, early window game.

Because they're not going to have a Breath of the Wild.

And Xenobladex is the reason Breath of the Wild works like that.

Like that is the team that made Xenobladex, obviously also made Xenoblade 1.

And Nintendo saw that and said, you, we need you to help us make Zelda right now.

Yeah, because this shit ain't working.

We need you.

Xenobladex is wild.

Obviously, you're playing on a small planet, but, and Justin, you've played some of this game.

Yep.

You, it's a five-continent planet.

You can traverse the globe.

Yeah, it went up.

My first time playing that game, I just swam from one content to the other just because I could.

Yep.

Same.

That game is wild.

And I was like, I just I just want to see it.

I just want to see it happen.

And then it happened right in front of me.

And I was like, oh, my God.

Yeah.

This is real.

It is insane.

Justin, what was what would your game be?

Mine?

I have two.

One, I just want melee HD just because I want to be able to take melee off of the Gamecube.

That game is too good.

It doesn't deserve to still be on the Gamecube.

It's fair.

The other game that I actually want.

It's a weird one.

So have you ever seen BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle?

Yes.

I would like that game with all those characters throw Guilty Gear into the mix there.

And I'd like to see them make a persona game out of it.

I was going to say, what about Dregmo Fighters?

But now I see where you're going.

So a persona five arena.

Cross Tag Battle.

Kind of, but I want like the BlazBlue characters in there.

I want the Guilty Gear characters in there.

I want the Ruby characters in there.

I want all of them in there interacting with each other, because I love to see the little interactions that each character has in the game.

I love seeing all those, but they're always designated to the one story mode where most of the characters didn't exist in the story mode, because the story mode came out before all the DLC.

And the...

And like little interactions, like at the end of every battle, where it's like Adachi talking to...

Hakumen.

Like Hakumen from BlazBlue.

Adachi talking to Nannika.

Just two characters from the same game, who do speak to each other.

I just want to see that, man.

I just want to see two characters from Persona 4 interact in the fifth game in a row.

In a totally different game.

That would be great, Justin, because from...

I have very little experience with those kinds of fighting games, but I've played the most recent Guilty Gear.

And the thing that really...

Being unfamiliar with the series...

I like the characters in the game.

Yeah, I really like the characters.

But the thing that really struck me, two things.

One, there is a quote-unquote story mode in that game, and it's not...

You don't...

It's no gameplay.

It's literally just like episodes of a 3D animated anime.

Like, multiple episodes of it.

That's the story mode.

But also, not only that, there is like an encyclopedia compendium that tells you the entire lore of the whole series and like this like connected web.

And it is impassable.

Like, it is nonsense to the nth degree.

It's amazingly like I want.

So it was was it Clement who made the thing for Tekken?

Yes, Clement made the lore videos.

Yes.

Can he do the one for Guilty Gear?

Because someone needs to explain that to me.

He definitely knows Guilty Gear.

I'll have to message him, because he's definitely got it on his list.

But yeah, please do, because that like Brody's right.

If you look at the encyclopedia, it's like Guilty Gear 1.

There's like three characters that are all intertwined, whatever.

You get to Guilty Gear, Exard, and it's literally an entire spiderweb of bullshit.

And it's like it's like it's a spiderweb plus like conflicting timelines, plus different character motivations and things that are happening.

And like you go and you play the fighting game and it's like, oh, May's fun.

She goes, Totsugeki, and I win, I win.

Like there's such a talk about games where the story and the gameplay are so disparate like.

Yeah, like and then and then all the characters that matter in Guilty Gear, their names are Soul, Bad Guy, and That Man.

So the guy's name is That Man.

Let me let me throw out an idea to to add on to your idea, Justin.

In the same vein that a game like Dragon Ball Fighters requires you to play the whole 13 hour story to unlock a character that is competitively viable, in that same vein, I would like for you to have to grind social links with each character for the tag battle system so that you can do 5% more damage with each character's special moves or unlock special super combo special attack, grab attack, whatever.

It sounds funny.

Because with 75 characters, you have to social link.

75 characters?

75, what's the exclamation point?

What's the name of that?

Factorial.

Yeah, factorial.

75 factorial.

And you know some people would do that, because it would be one of those competitively viable.

We would snap this into being competitively viable, and force you to spend thousands of hours min-maxing your Pokemon IVs, but they're now social links between characters.

And it's like, I really want to see the Hyde and the Chie Satonaka social link, so I gotta do it.

I want that Nanako Adachi social link to be maxed so that Nanako and Super goes bussin.

I'll take that and just say that I would love return to when Smash Bros was like, these characters, like, yeah, you can get them by playing like an X amount of battles, but there's generally speaking a different way to get them within the story mode, arcade mode, whatever it is.

Like, there's a secret way to unlock them.

And on top of that, they are secret.

So when you unlock them, you go, oh, my God.

And you didn't just like see the early press release trailer that tells you characters in the game.

You should also make it randomly generated how to unlock them.

Like, it's always different for every every file.

Let me take that further.

OK, it's not randomly generated.

But how you unlock them?

Every copy of the game is personalized.

There are different characters that you can or cannot unlock, forcing you to buy the game again.

You have to trade them with other players.

Forcing you to buy the game again.

If you want a, if you want, this is just a gacha game at this point.

If you want a five-star pole Nanako with spirit bomb.

Five-star.

With a spirit bomb from Dragon Ball.

Like she's about to throw out the Junes Bomb at you.

And it...

Oh, I love it.

I love it.

Did you, did you know that they actually...

So Arc System Works, when they made Persona 4 Arena, they wanted to put Nanako in as a fighter.

That would have been so good.

And Atlas replied to Arc System Works' request by saying, why would you ever think to do?

Why not?

Look, we have kid Goku, we can have kid Nanako.

Nanako.

Well, Nanako...

Yeah, yeah, actually, they should.

They should have done that.

Yeah, I want to see Nanako beat the piss out of Krillin.

She would be able to beat the crap out of Krillin.

She would beat his ass.

Just beating a grown man while his child is over there watching him get beat up.

She would like, she would grab him by the arms, I don't know, wrestling reference here, she would grab him by the arms like Bryan Danielson, and go to stomp his face in over and over again, and stare down Crillin's kid and say, I want you to watch while stomping Crillin to death.

Don't look away.

So, is Nanako now just canonically Christian?

Yes.

For those of you that don't know who Nanako is, she is the little cousin character in Persona 4.

Basically a little sister.

Basically a little sister.

She is like seven, and all she does is watch grocery store commercials.

She lives a very sad life.

Her dad's never home, she's like, I'm just gonna watch this Junes commercial, because I really want to visit there.

Meanwhile, it's like two blocks away.

It's just like them going there on like a Saturday is like the most important vacation she's ever had in her entire life.

Imagine a seven-year-old girl popping off for Walmart commercials.

Like, that's literally what this is.

Just watching JG.

Whitworth, and like it's like, I want to go there.

I want cash now.

So you're saying like she's the kind of person that would play the Walmart Roblox add-on?

She would definitely hang out at Sheetz at like 3am.

She would definitely hang out at Sheetz at 3am.

I don't like this.

That felt like a call out.

Oh man.

She'd go there for a milkshake and just sit there, and her friends would skateboard, and she'd just sit there and start singing June S.

Go hard.

Every day is great.

They should make this on the floor, but in Ohio.

Yeah, they should.

Make it in Dayton, Ohio.

I almost thought about ending the episode right there.

Skibbity June S?

Did you say skibbity June S?

Sure did.

Okay, we should end everything.

Yeah, no, I think that's a good place to end this.

Thank you so much for watching or listening.

Again, if you haven't hit the thumbs up button or left us a review, make sure you do so.

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Go to the other one and do that as well.

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Leave us a comment about which game you want to see Nanako Dojima be the final boss of.

Goodbye.