Metroid's Growth, Bungie Layoffs, PlayStation VR2 Dead? | Game Junction Podcast 94

The Game Junction Podcast Episode 94 featuring Brandon Hurles and Marky Mark has a ton of gaming & pop culture news this past week, and ThunderStash Gaming joins us as a guest co-host!

How did the Game Boy revolutionize gaming, and what’s next for iconic franchises like Mario and Sonic? Join us as we celebrate the Game Boy's 35th anniversary. We’ll unravel the emotional rollercoaster of Bungie layoffs, get hyped for "Avengers: Dooms Day" starring Robert Downey Jr., and look at the latest developments in the Mario and Sonic universes. 

What’s the real impact of character design backlash in games like "Star Wars Outlaw," and how does it shape the gaming experience?  Our conversation also touches on the fragmented vision of the Star Wars sequels and the cohesive storytelling that made "The Mandalorian" a fan favorite. As we look ahead, we discuss the exciting potential of the Nintendo Switch 2, the future of PlayStation VR gaming, and the influence of shareholders on game development.

We cover everything from nostalgic GameCube memories to the evolving landscape of indie games. Listen to our thoughts on the bittersweet shutdown of fan translation sites and the critical role of modding in preserving gaming history. We also explore the challenges of balancing AAA and indie game releases, the impact of curr

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Chapters

• 0:33 Star Wars and Gaming Discussion
• 8:33 Star Wars and Gaming Discussion
• 20:31 Upcoming Xbox Gamescom Live Broadcast
• 24:09 Gaming Industry Future and Leak Prevention
• 33:35 Indie Games Discussion and Advertising Failures
• 46:11 Gaming Release Overload and Stream Scheduling
• 50:12 Impact of Shareholders on Game Development
• 59:08 Evolution and Influence of Japanese Gaming
• 1:05:34 Game Pre-Order Bonuses and Release Plans
• 1:14:46 Nintendo Switch Sales and Future Outlook
• 1:25:44 Switch Modding and Switch 2 Specs
• 1:33:24 Nintendo Switch 2 DLSS Speculation
• 1:38:49 Speculating on Switch 2 Potential
• 1:52:19 Metroid Marketing and Growth Strategy
• 2:05:01 Gaming Platforms and Preferences
• 2:17:55 Bungie CEO Controversy and Fallout
• 2:30:43 Fantastic Four Reboot and GameCube Memories
• 2:40:46 Future of Playstation VR Gaming
• 2:51:03 Rom Hacking and Game Informer Shutdown

Transcript

Mark Trobough: 0:33

Thank you. This week's episode got some new content and stuff like that and some new reels coming up on the socials as well. Uh, I think brandon just posted one on the game boy over. On what is it? Instagram everything or on everything? Yeah, about the 35th anniversary for the game boy. One on the Game Boy over on what is it? Instagram On everything.

Mark Trobough: 0:46

About the 35th anniversary for the Game Boy. Hard to think it's that old, yeah, but no, obviously got a lot going on on Facebook X, instagram threads, then obviously here on both YouTube and Twitch. Obviously, this week we got some neat stuff going on as far as stuff we're talking about. Obviously we have some more news as far as far as stuff we're talking about. Obviously we have some more news as far as, like, bungie layoffs, uh, you know, avengers, doom day, dooms day was announced. Doom day, I like that better. Yeah, doom day. I don't know, I can't speak all of a sudden, uh, with robert robert downey jr. Obviously coming in. It was during the san diego comic-con that was announced. Uh, some news about, you know, mario and sonic. We got some new stuff about the new terminator show coming to netflix and a bunch of other fun stuff that we're definitely going to get into. But obviously we're uh here with our new guests for this week. Uh, the thunderstache gaming. So do you have anything you want to say before we get into it?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:44

Yeah, uh, thanks for having me on. Guys Happy to be here. A lot of great stuff to talk about. Took a look at the show notes. You guys should be excited for all the exciting things. There was actually a lot of news this week. A lot of stuff came up in the last two days, actually in the last few hours, so really excited to be here few hours. So really excited to be here. Um, as kyle mentioned, you can find me on youtube at thunder stash gaming and that's spelled s-t-a-s-h and I do retro and new video game reviews. So new releases, old games. I've been gaming my whole life. I'm almost 40, born in 85, so I've been doing this a long time, playing video games since I was three with my older brothers. Pretty much have not put a controller down since. Love video games. Very excited to hang out with you guys today. Thanks for having me.

Mark Trobough: 2:41

Definitely appreciate you coming on for sure. Is there anything you want to say? No, you haven't got to say anything yet, brandon.

Brandon Hurles: 2:47

No, we just got a lot going on this week with news, obviously. Yeah, like he was saying, there's stuff that's coming out hours before we talked about before the show. It seems that right before the podcast, during the podcast and right after all, the news floods on Always. Yeah, so that's what's going on this week. I guess we'll just go ahead and kind of dive into it and get started with we got Star Wars Outlaw. So the director said that something about bad faith discourse. I know, mark, you know a little bit more about what's been going on with this than I do, because I know you've been following it a good bit. Do you know what's going on here?

Mark Trobough: 3:26

I mean, obviously I know a little bit. It obviously digs into the whole culture stuff that's going on, especially in games between fans and studios and media and stuff like that. But from what I understood it was explicitly on the main character, blink, it's Kay, the way she, the, the character design, the way she's dressed and stuff like that. People kind of criticizing the whole. Uh, I don't want to say boyish, I was trying to remember the, the word that I definitely lost uh, essentially the, the, the androgynous looks. What I was thinking of, obviously, uh, of her compared to you know, some other games and stuff like that. And it's been an ongoing, I know it's been an ongoing criticism from some people saying, you know, as far as, like Western games, saying some of the you know female characters look to androgynous, or two boys, they look more masculine, they do feminine be probably a good way to address it. And I think he's just coming out and saying that he's just going to ignore it, not even address the criticisms outright.

Brandon Hurles: 4:27

What does bad faith people mean? Exactly Negative people or something like that? Or is that like what he's trying to say here?

Mark Trobough: 4:35

I think you deal with it. You come like you're saying that he's not willing to have a discussion from when he says bad faith or at the very least, how it's perceived as people that are not having a conversation or discussion in in good faith or they're coming at it from they're intentionally trying to attack you. There's no, there's no substance or perceived legitimate substance from what they're. They're criticizing you for probably the best way to describe that so basically it's just like more political culture stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 5:01

So we've known about some of that. I thought it was kind of interesting, came out and said something, but I guess when I was looking there's quite a few people that were putting out like negative tweets. So I that's what he's addressing there, it seems. Yeah, more, yeah, I I'm not to be honest with you, just like we were talking about with the mcu. Star wars has lost me completely and I hate it because I love franchise itself but I don't love anything that's been done with it outside the animated stuff from disney and what rogue one.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 5:36

I like rogue one but yeah I think everyone can agree that rogue one was great. We all enjoyed it. And, as you were saying, man, I hear the same things too. I will say, kind of share the same thoughts is that a lot's changed in the Star Wars universe, sadly.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 5:57

I was there for Episode 7, for the marathon, so it was seven movies straight. They did one theater and all of arizona did it, and then when episode nine came out, they did a marathon again with all of the movies. It was like a 20, 22 hour marathon, girlfriend, and I went. We had a great time, uh. But you know, after all the hype of seeing the final movie and everything kind of sinks in and you just look at where we're at today and the shows that have been coming out, it's not looking good, it's really not. And you, I'm sure you guys know or have discussed it on your podcast all the backlash, without getting into, of course, too many details here, but you know they're, they're almost going down a dark path you may not want to go down and they're, they're already. I feel like they're already three-fourths of the way down that path. Like, are they gonna backpedal?

Mark Trobough: 7:03

gotta wonder it's kind of hard. Obviously everyone criticizes disney and then the face of of star wars. With disney it's been kathleen kennedy, so she's taken a lot of the, the criticisms, but I mean, I think a lot of people they like the, like the franchise. It's just you know, some of the writing and some of the shows and movies can be can be criticized. As far as the movies, uh, to me specifically it was the with the sequel, you know three movies uh, other than uh, seven was okay.

Mark Trobough: 7:34

I didn't completely hate the eighth movie, um, I didn't. I wasn't a fan of you know kind of how the, the second half of it, or uh, the what's the hyper jump scene, yeah, where they jump destroys all the ship, uh, because I'm not an expert but I know it definitely contradicted some up into that point, established lore as far as like how the hyperspace is kind of supposed to work. Obviously it's space magic, so it's obviously not reality. Uh, but really, what lost to me was the, the ninth movie, uh, the whole Skywalker saga, the conclusion to it. I just thought the movie had no cohesive story, nothing from the other movies that kind of led up to it. So I think it started there where they clearly went to a. They wanted to do hey, let's do another, the Standard Three movies, another trilogy. But there was clearly no you know format for an overarching story. They were kind of supposed to follow at least one. That made sense to me when I watched it on a either you two kind of felt the same.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 8:32

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. I don't think there was a cohesive vision, right? Yeah, because obviously there there's more than one director and I I think it would have been better Just one example of you had one director that had the same vision with the same story that wants to be told. Because with Episode 8 and then Episode 9, it's like Episode 9 was trying to almost fix things in Episode 8. Yeah, and it's like it's already been done. And then you spent so much of the movie trying to rewrite things in in episode nine and obviously the handling of luke's character. You know, even even mark hamill wasn't happy about it. Mm, hmm.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 9:24

Yeah, I didn't expect that and it's OK, I think, to watch a movie and see something you don't expect, and that's it. That's a great thing about the movies, right? But I also don't think that many fans expect it to see Luke like that either. So it was, it was tough. It's tough to see the direction it's going in. I, on a positive note, I do. I do like the mandalorian. That's been enjoyable. I liked season one yeah, I hear that a lot too.

Mark Trobough: 9:55

I was kind of in that same boat. It kind of just feels like it went a whole different direction.

Brandon Hurles: 10:00

As far as that wasn't a different director for season two, even like one that somebody else, that or was it individual directors for episodes? I, I don't, I don't remember. I didn't get that deep into it, but it was individual directors for each episode okay, that makes more sense. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what really lost me. I can't really tell you right now.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 10:23

I watched the whole thing and I just it's like, uh, it's fine, like I didn't hate it, but I just thought it was meh, you know yeah, I know, and I gotta wonder, obviously with, with the game we're talking about here, star wars outlaws if, if, and how much influence disney has on some of that game's direction because of it obviously being their ip. Ubisoft has some stuff in common with disney, for sure when it comes to, yeah, they're handling. So, yeah, maybe maybe they're on the same page. Uh, as far as the character, though, I know what you guys are talking about. I've been following the discourse, um on, you know, twitter, youtube, reddit and me, me personally. I don't care how the character looks. I understand what people are saying and I can see what they're saying. I can see their point, but is it going to affect gameplay? And the answer is obviously no, it's not. But I understand what you're saying. I don't need the character to be attractive. I do see that yeah.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 11:38

I see that that she definitely, uh, looks a little masculine, and you know what? That's what they're trying to push in a lot of different areas of society and again, do I agree with it? I don't but it doesn't.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 11:57

I'm not going to let it bother me, right? I'm not going to let it change the way I live, change the way I enjoy good video games, right? So if the game's great, it's going to get played, regardless of if good video games, right. So if the game's great, it's going to get played, regardless of if she's attractive.

Brandon Hurles: 12:09

Right, yeah, I mean, that's where, that's where I'm at. I don't play a game. I was talking with Lucas about this. Mark, I have never even paid attention to what a woman really looks like in a game, unless it's absurd. So like there's a few games that are kind of like some anime out there where you know you can't not notice it type of thing. Oh that the whole discourse around stellar blade.

Mark Trobough: 12:34

Well yeah, I was thinking of that too yeah, I don't know.

Brandon Hurles: 12:38

I just it's not something I've ever paid attention to and I just don't care. I don't care, I don't have time. I don't have time to care about stuff like that.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 12:45

It's stupid right exactly, and I you know what for what everyone said about stellar blade and about the, the character's, uh, attractiveness. Right, it's like, yeah, I agree with you, the character is created that way. So what bottom line is it a good game? And you guys I'm sure saw that the funniest part about that, because that studio got all this backlash and then I I think maybe it was the game's director was like that's my wife did you guys see that oh yeah, who did like design the character and a lot of the, a lot of the korean?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 13:22

model. It showed her doing the mocap yeah it's like that's his wife I didn't see that part, she, she looks exactly like the character and he's getting criticized for, you know, putting this super pretty woman in the game. Unrealistic, you know to to uh make you know the younger male demographic by it and it's like no dude, that's, this is literally my wife. It's like you guys are so far out of bounds on this one, was it I?

Mark Trobough: 13:50

was happy to hear oh my god, was it his wife? That was the, because I thought they used a separate model for the character design, but his wife was one of like the lead uh designers in the game itself or something like that of like how the actual character ended up looking.

Brandon Hurles: 14:03

I, I thought there was a korean model that she looked like right, wasn't it korean model that you showed me for?

Mark Trobough: 14:10

the mocap portion, what the character was kind of modeled after and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 14:14

But as far as like a lot of the other design, the, the actual design and the costumes.

Mark Trobough: 14:18

I thought was done by his wife, but I might be wrong.

Brandon Hurles: 14:21

It's been a few months since we actually dug into it yeah, I did pick that game up, by the way, and it's pretty dang good.

Mark Trobough: 14:28

So I mean I'll say this I got it for 30 bucks for stellar blade because I did play through it and beat the game, at least on the first playthrough. Uh, it grabs your attention, uh, with the character design, how she looks and stuff like that, but that's not why you stay and continue to play the game. I mean, at points the story left a lot to be desired. Near near the end, it kind of felt like they were kind of set up for a potential sequel. I feel like a lot of answers were left up in the air.

Mark Trobough: 14:54

But obviously, for that game specifically, it was the gameplay that that kept me going to come around. The gameplay and the music and stuff like that Cause, because when you're actually playing the game like that, you're not even pay attention to the character. There's a lot going on on screen, a lot of action, uh outside of cut scenes, and some downtime, essentially, but kind of like with this I think the for outlaws, I'm like, yeah, kind of she kind of looks like she was based off a more 70s era, you know that's what I see.

Game Junction: 15:21

I don't think that's definitely what I saw but I think it's coming from Ubisoft.

Mark Trobough: 15:25

People have assumptions of what's going on behind the scenes. They see what else Disney specifically has done with Star Wars and they're kind of thinking, oh, did this? We're expecting this out of the story. So you know, we're going into it with a lot of preconceived notions based off what's been done with other IPs.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 15:43

You're exactly right. I think people are on edge about it and they're anticipating dealing with that kind of stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 15:52

You're either on one extreme or the other with that stuff. There's nobody in the middle, or at least not that many people. It's very few People outraged on one end or the other.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 16:03

Yeah, it's very few people. The same can be said for God. So many things in the world, right, there's very few that can kind of see both sides, and it's in so many spheres we see it with, obviously, with gaming and the console wars, it's like come on, man, this ain't Sega and Super Nintendointendo days.

Brandon Hurles: 16:25

This doesn't need to exist, like like it was spoiled we can enjoy it all it was cool then and it works because the marketing forced it so realistically. Nintendo and sega force us mostly on sega side, but nintendo did stuff too. Uh, sega stuff was absurd. You know the the whole Nintendo and all that jazz.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 16:46

It was great yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 16:48

It was good then when they were the dominant consoles, but now you've got 3 and you've got PC, which is bigger than ever, and it's just like who cares? Just play the game. How you can play it. A lot of games out there.

Mark Trobough: 17:00

If you're an adult.

Brandon Hurles: 17:01

You can get all the consoles if you want. Who cares?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 17:07

I thought about this the other day and I think what the kind of the younger, maybe the younger generation I say younger, but it's people of all ages who want to participate in these console wars? Yeah, but let's just say that the people that are, it's like I don't think that they understand. Growing up in the 90s it was a luxury to own a video game console, and if you did, you only owned one so you have to choose today, you don't have to choose yeah.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 17:42

Today kids have PlayStation, Xbox and Switch, but back then it was different and so it made more sense like, well, this is my console, this is the only one I'm getting. My parents said you're lucky to even get this. So you stood behind it because that is what you got and you knew you weren't getting anything else until you got a job, until you're old enough to to legally work. Yeah, and this generation, I think now doesn't understand that.

Brandon Hurles: 18:09

That's probably where it came from oh yeah, plus you know your kids, kids just engine or brutal yeah, I mean, if you're a kid, like I, definitely did that as a kid man, I, you know for sure I did that as a kid, but I I can't remember what I would have said like I just I don't care, man, just play how you can play. But uh, we've got a bunch of games coming to, uh, amazon Prime Gaming, a whole crap, ton of them. I think there's 20, 22 games total for August. So we got SteamWorld, heist, deus Ex, mankind Divided, tomb Raider, the Angel of Darkness, tomb Raider, the Last Revelation, plus Chronicles, gravity Circuit, south of the Circle, loop Hero, trek to Yami, which is a really good indie game, kraken Academy, baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced, enhanced edition, beholder 3, hard west 2 and guard a stray gods, a role-playing musical grime, definitive edition. Kiwi I've got for some reason, have that on ps5 and switch, I don't remember why. Uh, spells and secrets, young souls, arcade paradise and industrious. That isn't a jam-packed August for Prime Gaming.

Brandon Hurles: 19:28

I gotta say that service man, I don't hear a ton of people talk about it. You know, I hear people talk about it, but not as much as I would expect. It gets a lot of games, man, you get a lot of games on there. Prime pays for itself, I think, with just these games. Yeah, every month there's a lot of games, man, yeah, a lot of games on there. Prime pays for itself, I think, with just these games. Yeah, every month there's a couple like garbage ones. I'm like, why is this on here? Like what is this? But it's like through another website and stuff like that, so like just ignore it. But there's some pretty good ones on here Tomb Raider ones. They're not the greatest games ever.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 20:07

I'll put it that way. But there's older ones not older ones aren't as good. The reboot, the reboot trilogy was fantastic.

Brandon Hurles: 20:11

Yeah, I thought so too, but steamworld heist is really good. The deus ex game is good, and if you have played Baldur's Gate 2, I mean I think it's essential to play that if you like those type of games, like it's a must play for that genre. I love Boulder State 2, yeah, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 20:28

I think this is decent because it also gives a lot of love. Some of these are on the Amazon games app, some it's a GOG code. I don't think any of these ones are. Some are like, some are on Epic and stuff like that. So it's not like you all have to be stuck on the Amazon games app plus. But I mean, if you have pc you can just have them all, so it's not really that much of an issue yeah, those are some solid releases, though.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 20:51

Uh, steam world heist is, of course, the sequel reviews just dropped, I believe yesterday, day before steam world ice 2, so makes sense they're getting that in. Uh, another one though gravity circuit. That's on there. Yeah, I guess I haven't played that.

Brandon Hurles: 21:08

That's a fantastic I have to look at excellent game.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 21:12

Yeah, I was happy to see that on there and uh, hard west 2 is is pretty cool as well yeah, that's the games you mentioned very good.

Brandon Hurles: 21:21

oh, gravity circuit. I've seen this game. Yeah, who put the physical out for this? Didn't one of the I have it preordered.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 21:29

I'm trying to remember who put it out, though it wasn't limited run. I thought it was one of the limited companies but but.

Brandon Hurles: 21:36

I think it was. Yeah, ok, it might have been. Was it premium? Oh, red art games? Ok, was it Premium Edition? Oh, red Art Games? Okay, yeah, I saw this go up. So, yeah, it looks really really cool. So it's basically a Mega man game, right, yeah, yeah, that's my favorite series.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 21:52

Yeah, I love Mega man.

Mark Trobough: 21:53

Yeah, it looks like it was put out by what's it? Pixin Love?

Brandon Hurles: 21:58

Pixin Love did it too.

Mark Trobough: 21:59

Yeah, I believe that's what popped up for it. I believe that's the one that did it, huh.

Brandon Hurles: 22:04

Well, interesting. Yeah, it looks like a cool one. I'll have to check it out. Yeah, it looks cool. So, yeah, some good stuff there with that. Did anybody see anything else they wanted to point out on that?

Mark Trobough: 22:19

To be fair, like 90% of these, I've never heard before, so that's where you find the gems, though honestly, I mean, this is definitely.

Brandon Hurles: 22:26

It was on Prime Gaming. Get some weird stuff too, but you can definitely find I've discovered a lot of really good indies from Prime.

Mark Trobough: 22:33

Gaming. Yeah, I mean especially if you're already paying for the service. It's like oh well, it's a free game, give it a shot.

Brandon Hurles: 22:39

Most people aren't paying for the service for Prime Gaming anyway. They're paying for it to get their stuff for their house and things like that. It's a mixture of Prime Video and because I like the free fast shipping. All right, what do we got next, Mark?

Mark Trobough: 22:57

Let me back out real quick. We got some stuff for the Xbox. Gamescom for later this year. Yeah, oh, they've got a what's a three day live broadcast for Xbox Gamescom.

Brandon Hurles: 23:12

Yeah, we got a kind of an update to this too. Like just a few hours ago I sent to him. But yeah, three days. So did we stream something with Gamescom last year or the year before, I can't remember if it was Gamescom or something else. To be fair, I can't remember either, but yeah, it's three days. They put out like kind of a roadmap for everything they've got going on, which I'm pulling up now. So apparently it's.

Mark Trobough: 23:43

Wednesday through Friday, of the 21st to the 23rd, so in about three weeks and every day it's supposed to be Gamescom for the first half and then Bethesda Mainstream, the second half every day.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 23:57

Yeah, and I noticed that they listed the games they're going to be talking about for Xbox, but Bethesda there's nothing listed. So obviously you know I'm curious what will be there.

Mark Trobough: 24:09

Elder Scrolls 6. I mean, well, bethesda, if it's Bethesda, I assume it's the main Bethesda, not just the BSG, but even you can think of what games it realistically could be, or the handful of IPs that that studio explicitly owns. Probably going gonna get something elder scrolls, because you got eso something. Fallout with fallout 76 might get something doom related, we assume. Obviously we're probably still a few years out from elder scrolls 6, but probably gonna get something from that.

Mark Trobough: 24:40

Uh, right, the logo, yeah, and then the other handful of potentially a whole other other bunch of games that they could talk about, but yeah, well, we their their roadmap, uh, that they put out on x.

Brandon Hurles: 24:54

Basically it's stuff that we already knew about. We avowed, got delayed to 2025. Not shocked about that at all. World of Warcraft, the War Within, age of Mythology, retold Era History, untold these are all ones that I think we've already gone over and talked about before. But they got the release dates for everything except South of Midnight, doom of the Dark Ages and Fable. They just put 2025 for all those and then they put Andamore, so they do got some other stuff to show, apparently. I see at least one announcement, but they closed. How many Bethesda Studios down? Or Bethesda, what would you call them? Developers? Is that right? Is that what you would say? Yeah, because they shut down the Tango Works that did Hi-Fi Rush, but I think there was like four. Because they shut down the tango works, uh, that did hi-fi rush, but I think there was like four that they closed yeah it, I was trying to pull it up real quick.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 25:51

It's four. It was, uh, arcane, austin. Yeah, tango game works, of course. So the guys that did what?

Mark Trobough: 26:02

hi-fi, rush, ghostwire, tokyo evil, within which was a great game yeah, it looked like they said uh alpha dog studios or alpha dog games uh, and then they merged roundhouse studios with uh cinemax online interesting, yeah, yeah, a lot of casualties, a lot, a lot man.

Brandon Hurles: 26:22

It's just, you know, I I was thinking about this the other day and I've thought this because there was um a stretch of at least mark, I don't know at least 10 episodes straight, or something like that, where every single week, oh, yeah announced early in the year yeah, at least 10 podcasts in a row every week. There were people that you know lost their jobs. So then we finally got like a two-week break and there would be another one and just be kind of sporadic from there.

Brandon Hurles: 26:51

But, um, yeah, it sucks, and I don't know what person their right mind would want to get into video games as a profession in 2024 and that sucks because it's like we want these games to keep coming and we want people that are making them to be excited about making games, so we get games that we enjoy. You know good games that come from a good place.

Brandon Hurles: 27:18

I just don't know who's going to want to be the future of gaming other than indie developers, which is great yeah but you still I mean, as much as I don't necessarily like how the landscape of gaming is you still have to have triple a games to balance everything out. You still gotta have big, massive, as much as like I don't like most of them that come out, it seems like like um, but you still gotta have it. You still gotta have that to balance everything out. It's the same thing in music and movies. And you gotta have the. You gotta have the big dogs doing something that have all the money you know, yeah.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 27:54

So yeah, absolutely. You gotta have the the movies at the film festivals, and then you got out the summer blockbusters the summer blockbusters Yep, yep and the big Thanksgiving blockbusters. You need, you need everything to really uh be it's. You know, your, your strength.

Brandon Hurles: 28:12

Yeah, for sure, and so I I just hope that, you know I I want things to go good with Xbox, but it seems like we're maybe heading in a direction where there's going to be a big shift for xbox. Um, sony's going to have to learn to adapt. We're going to talk about something later where, if sony would have just did it from the beginning, they would have sold like gangbusters. Um, some of these companies are just so stuck in their ways too with stuff and it just kind of sucks. Kind of sucks, man. Yeah oh go ahead.

Mark Trobough: 28:44

No, you can go.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 28:46

I was going to say I am pretty excited that we're going to get an update on Stalker 2. Harder to know on day one. That game has been in development since 2018. And I think, of course, it's partially from what I read as well. Casualty of covid and then the war the ukraine war they're they're affected by that too, I read, and it's been a long time coming. So I'm happy to finally see that game coming out and that the other game they're talking about on the first day is atomfall.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 29:26

And I went back and re-watched the trailer from the xbox game showcase and this game looks very interesting and, based on the trailer, like you can't tell what kind of game it's going to be. So, yeah, I went on the website, did a little research. It's actually a single player survival game, survival action game, but just by looking at the trailer, it almost looks like it could be a multiplayer focused game and, to my surprise actually, when I saw it was a single player survival game, I'm like, okay, like I'm actually a little bit more hyped for that now it's. It's definitely on my radar now because of that, so that that should be interesting. I'm actually a little bit more hyped for that now it's, it's definitely on my radar now, because of that so that that should be interesting.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 30:08

I'm looking forward to getting an update on that game for xbox's first day of the conference yeah, I'm looking forward to it too.

Brandon Hurles: 30:20

Gamescom is, you know, it's like a, a mid-tier show, I would say. I think we get some good stuff there. Sometimes it just depends like some years have been better than others. I looked up some of the announcements of previous years and there's some big stuff that got announced. So yeah, yeah, I feel like it's getting bigger.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 30:37

I feel like it's actually growing, and especially with e3. Yeah, with e3 being gone, I feel like there's a void that can be filled, not just through Summer Game Fest with Keeley.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 30:51

I think some of the other shows throughout the year that are scheduled can become bigger now too because of that void of E3. And I think Gamescom is going to be most likely one of them. I mean, we got probably the the best, juiciest switch to rumor that came out of gamescom last year, apparently behind closed doors, so I'm hoping we'll get some more of that this year.

Mark Trobough: 31:17

Yeah, that'd be nice, any trickle truth, yeah, especially after, uh, the big nintendo leaker kind of got got found out yeah, yeah, I forget which one that was.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 31:28

Are you talking about puro? Puro yeah I think so yeah, that's his name, puro.

Brandon Hurles: 31:35

I I don't know how to say it, but it's. I used to say pyro, uh, but I think it's puro. I heard somebody else say that, so I'm just gonna roll with it. Yeah, you know what's crazy about that? You know what happened with that? Right, like it was actually a Google employee. They're checking. They can access anything, man. Yep, they're accessing people's voice data in your child's room and they can dive into any of that. A Google employee is leaking out all this stuff.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 32:03

That's absurd, and it was through a google or I don't remember what it was like through that he was able to access it yeah, yeah, they're able to see the, the source code and the private videos that were being uploaded to the accounts, and so, obviously, if you can see the private videos, Crazy man. Yeah, you know what's going to be shown. So, yeah, that was pretty wild. Yeah, definitely it's crazy.

Mark Trobough: 32:31

There's a lot of ways, you know, if you know you have a leak, ways you can go out and address it, Because I think one of the more creative ways or simpler ways as far as like leakers was with what Elon Musk did with X a few years ago, like, oh, we sent out the same email, but there was slightly different. You know changes like an extra space here, or something like that.

Mark Trobough: 32:50

You know, essentially, given each like for if you're leaking emails, each one is specific id, so you can like find somebody or yeah somebody. You know just being careless, you know, put it on a google drive, it's like, well, yeah, but there's, you know there's a trail, potentially google drive.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 33:04

It's like well, yeah, but there's, you know there's a trail potentially.

Brandon Hurles: 33:06

Yeah, that was very clever, yeah, definitely I. I remember saying mark, oh, yeah, he's definitely from japan, because you know they put out the tweet that said osaka, um. So we're like, oh, he's from japan, he's a nintendo employee, it's like I know that.

Mark Trobough: 33:20

that's what the assumption was. Yeah, I mean, so it could have been from Japan. You know, google's got offices over there.

Brandon Hurles: 33:27

Yeah, he could be, but what's the likelihood that he's not using VPN or you know? Alright. So we also got PlayStation Monthly Games. We got League of Star Wars, the Skywalker Saga, which is actually really good, really really good. Five Nights at Freddy's Security Breach, ender, ender, lily's Quietus of the Nights Excellent game.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 33:53

It is Excellent game, honestly. The sequel was shown at the last Nintendo Direct, which is Ender Magnolia. It's currently in steam early access right now and it's scheduled, of course, to come to consoles later this year. So, like once again, though, you looked at the amazon games and you had steam world heist, with the sequel coming out, here will playstation plus smaller indie studio, you got got Ender Lilies, the first game, with, of course, the sequel coming out very soon this year. So it's good to see these games getting the spotlight on the premium services like PlayStation Plus, because it's going to give them an opportunity to sell better. And, believe it or not, ender Lilies sold.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 34:45

I was looking at this, I was impressed sold 1.5 million copies, oh dang it's impressive between switch playstation I believe it's on xbox as well and and steam, and that's since 2022, so only in two years, 1.5 mil and it'sa action rpg right yeah, it's an action rpg and if some people call it a metroidvania, it has elements of both it's like a dark doesn't have dark souls elements. Yeah, it has souls, elements too, like there's a lot going on there. I remember the.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 35:18

I remember this game yeah, I'm I'm pretty excited actually for the sequel. I was happy to see that at the Nintendo Direct because, you know, obviously I knew Nintendo needed to fill out their calendar for the rest of the year, so I was happy to see that. But yeah, if you guys haven't played it everyone listening to the show if you guys have not played Ender Lilies, I highly suggest it.

Brandon Hurles: 35:44

Heck, yeah, I remember them showing the sequel and then I just remember this game when they first showed it. It looks really cool. I need to play it Definitely. Need to add it to my list to check out because it looks really cool. I was just watching a trailer on it again.

Mark Trobough: 36:00

Yeah, and if you're curious, it's just because it's easier for me to pull it up on Steam. It's not on sale, but it's a twenty five dollar game, so it's not not terribly expensive for an indie game.

Brandon Hurles: 36:14

Yeah yeah, that's cool. I'm going to check it out. I like the, the art style of it too.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 36:19

Yeah, I do too. Actually, that's what originally drew me to the game. I think one of the indie YouTube channels it might be a I dream of indie games or I dream of indie and they were showing indie, actually Metroidvania games. I remember seeing it on there. I'm like, oh, this game looks very interesting. So then I did my own research on it and ended up buying it. And yeah, the rest is history. Great game. I'm own research on it and ended up buying it and yeah, the rest is history.

Brandon Hurles: 36:47

Great game. I'm excited for the sequel. Yeah, it looks really cool. I'm definitely gonna check it out. I just added it to my list, so, uh, next we got a braid anniversary edition sold like dog shit. Developer jonathan below says I think this is interesting.

Brandon Hurles: 37:01

Braid is a really good game. I didn't know about this anniversary edition. It doesn't look like it's a good game, but the time it came out, it was like a special time for indie games. We're getting indie games like that and this was like, dare I say, at the very top during that time period of indie games coming out. It's phenomenal. I think the game is great, but I don't know anything about the anniversary edition of it and what else comes with it. I assume just more content, uh, but it was announced in 2020 and it came out 2008, so so it's an old game. Um, definitely good though. Man, it's really really good. Looks like they may have like remastered it, based on what I'm seeing here with screenshots, because it definitely looks more clean. I actually think it makes it look kind of weird with the character he looks like too, uh, too much like a doll, if you will. It reminds me of slappy from goosebumps oh yeah, I remember that classic.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 38:01

Um, yeah, it's. It's unfortunate that it didn't sell well, because obviously, like when braid came out, like you were saying brandon, you're, you're dead on, it was like the crown jewel of indie titles back then and that's when indies were pretty new actually new yeah, especially like uh, entering the consoles with xbox.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 38:24

this was one of those xbox arcade games, if I recall, xbox live arcade, and you didn't expect much from xbox live arcade back then, and so when you got a game like braid, that was actually really good. Uh it, everyone playing it, everyone was talking about it, and, again, as you mentioned, the thing is, though, is that that scene has changed so much since then. Indie games are really One. There's a ton of great games, but they're highly respected now. Yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 39:05

Yeah, I mean you've got so many games coming out. You look at the switch e-shop and the amount of absolute I will say absolute garbage it comes out on there a lot of shovelware a lot of shovelware. A lot of ai put together stuff of like poker games. You know where they got a pretty girl in the front of it.

Brandon Hurles: 39:23

But it's just a poker game, oh yeah, stuff like that. So it's a different landscape for Indy now. I mean, it's a good that we're getting more stuff, but there's also, along with that, more crap comes to and that's just the way that it goes. And everything Music like you know, music I'm I'm into like a lot of the scenes with that are bigger than ever, but everything sounds the same. So you got to dig through music to find a band that stands out. It's like all this has been done. This was done 25 years ago better than you're doing it. You know what I mean like that type of stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 39:56

So indie stuff's pretty new, like you were saying. Like that was pretty, you know there. There has been other indie stuff. So anybody that comes at me in the comments later. There's been other indie stuff throughout the years, but that was like really kind of the, the new period where we were getting, you know, like some really really great indie stuff. That's like stood the test of time. But I think that this one I I don't know I haven't heard anybody talk about Braid since that time. Yeah, so I don't know if it's that. I can't tell you one person that's mentioned Braid to me until I saw this article, but it's a phenomenal game, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 40:35

I just haven't heard anybody talk about it.

Mark Trobough: 40:37

And I saw it in the chat as well and I kind of brought it up. Do you feel like this wasn't properly advertised as it should have been?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 40:48

Because just wasn't properly advertised as it should have been, because I don't ever remember hearing about this. It may have been advertised, but it's just like you see it once and then you forget about it. Yeah, okay, so to me it was not advertised and I agree with chat. Uh, mr mccaffey, mr radar there said it was poorly advertised 100, it was poorly advertised. I only knew about it because at the beginning of the year, actually like december last year, I had an excel sheet up and I'm like literally filling out my excel sheet with the calendar releases for the year, just so I can kind of like figure out. Okay, I know for sure I'm going to be doing this game at that point. And I, I saw braid and I like that you do that.

Brandon Hurles: 41:26

I just want to point that out, cause that's my make note of that. Maybe I should do that too, yeah.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 41:32

Over my Excel. I got that in there. I have my backlog. I have all the games, how long they take to beat, based on how long to beatcom, so you can sort it. I got all the stuff there to try and be as efficient as possible because backlogs you know how they are, man yeah, they don't stop growing, even if we try. But sometimes you just got to get a game when you when it's a game you've been waiting years for you're not gonna wait longer yeah, uh, but yeah, I'd seen, I'd seen braid anniversary edition and that is the only reason I knew about parade coming out.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 42:12

Yeah, and I see the news every day, just like you guys do, so if none of us saw anything outside of me happening, to see it on a release calendar, that tells you that the advertising was terrible, which is unfortunate now I might be off base on this.

Brandon Hurles: 42:29

I don't remember which indie director, if it was a braid or if it was that game where I can't I don't know why, I can't think of the name of it. People loved it too. But I remember the developer of that game. It was one person, it was just the one guy. The game was like, right at the time, verge no, this, this would have been before, I think even that, um, this was around 2008. So I think there was like super meat boy, there was this and there was another that was like kind of the holy trinity of of indie games at that time like stood. It was at the top of everyone's list for a couple of years during that time I can't remember what it's called. He like goes from 2d to 3d. It's like a puzzle game.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 43:10

Anyway uh, mutant, was it mutant buds?

Brandon Hurles: 43:14

no, I know I love that game though. Yeah, um, I I'll have to to look here in a minute, but anyway, it was either this guy or them, but they were at an absolute. They were like a prick guy was a prick. Um, I listened to interviews with him in like a conference where he went to go speak and he's just like an a-hole. And it might not have been this guy, it might have been the other guy, I can't remember yeah, just the face.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 43:41

He's know he looks not nice I don't know anything about him, but I did see in comments on twitter, like about this article. People in the comments were saying that it's deserved because this guy is a jerk yep fez is the game, but yeah, I remember that. Yeah, that was a good one. Uh, yeah, so apparently, I mean obviously just with his name. I'm sure you can gather that people were making a lot of jokes yeah yeah, and they basically said it was deserved, which is unfortunate yeah but you know, so you gotta, you gotta.

Brandon Hurles: 44:23

Treat everyone right, treat people good man he was not very nice to people in interviews. He was like just an a-hole. I just remember that there was a lot of stuff where people were talking in forums during that time and I absolutely hated the guy. They loved the game but couldn't stand the developer of it.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 44:41

So it is unfortunate, but I just gotta say I didn't know that howlongtobeatcom existed, so I just went there and made an account it's such a great I, I kid you not, it is a great website, and it really helps you to kind of plan what to play. I mean, if you play a game, that's say an rpg, that's 50 or 60 hours, right, yeah, usually I like to, after that, play a game that's a little bit shorter, you know, before I jump into another huge game, and sometimes, though, you'll play the next game and you think it's shorter, and then, suddenly, you're like this isn't shorter, I thought it was and you're like 20, 30 hours in, and obviously I didn't like that, because, like you know, I'm trying to structure this a certain way. How long to beat truly allows you to do that. It's very cool, and it shows you how long to just roll the credits, how long to do a lot of these side quests but not all all and then how long to basically 100% complete the game, and it's all based on user submissions and data. Yeah.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 45:51

So it pulls like your PlayStation data if you're signed up through PlayStation and it'll, I believe it might pull your like trophy data as well, if you allow it to. But at any rate, it's very helpful. Hope you enjoy it. Yeah, that's, it's very helpful hope you enjoy it.

Brandon Hurles: 46:06

Yeah, that's a cool tool, definitely for people that are listening and watching. Uh, definitely check that out because that's pretty neat. I mean, that does come in handy because you know, we're trying to fit in time for stuff I was talking about. I think it was last week mark, I may have mentioned it. Um, I, super mario rpg remake came out. I bought that. Uh, not super princess peach, uh, princess peach showtime. There's a bunch of stuff, nintendo stuff and some other things all came out pretty close together, a little too close, where it's hard for me to keep up. Yeah, uh, and super mario rpg. I played two hours meanwhile.

Brandon Hurles: 46:42

I love the original. I beat it probably at least 10 times. I love it, but there's just too much coming out. I just don't have time. I mean, like I, sometimes it's hard to fit in a couple hours a week.

Brandon Hurles: 46:55

You know, I don't, I don't really have days where I got a couple of hours to play games. Sometimes that happens, not often, um, and it sucks because I definitely don't play as much as I probably should be able to. It's just it's hard to keep up. You know, I can't tell you the last time I sat down and played a game for three hours. It's been at least a year I've sat down and played a game for an hour. You know it's hard for some games to only be able to play an hour of the game. You don't make much progress sitting down, getting started trying to remember the controls real quick and yeah, yeah all that trying to remember the controls, what the what you did last what you were planning to do next, and it's like you have to make the most out of whatever window of game time you have yeah and so I I get it.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 47:45

And when I was working 60, 70 plus hours in the mortgage business, that's actually when I created this excel spreadsheet. This wasn't even when I was doing youtube. It was more or less like, hey, when I have time to game, I need to make the most of it.

Speaker 5: 48:03

Yeah, absolutely, and this is going to help me make the most of it.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 48:05

Yeah, absolutely, and this is going to help me make the most of it. So I was just trying to get in that game time in any way that could help me. So I totally get it, man, totally.

Brandon Hurles: 48:17

Yeah, and then I just wanted to shout out a couple people there in the comments. We got KP, the Beard man, popped in Palmer Froggy guy he's been in here for a little while, our one and only mr coffee, mr radar, he's with us every single week got brayden my, my cousin, or my nephew, my nephew. Uh, sorry about that.

Mark Trobough: 48:38

Um, yeah, so that's everybody's popped in the chat uh, yeah, I just wanted to say, as far as, like the on the twitch side, because we're obviously hitting both we had, uh, what's it a fragile masculinity come in because we had a opus 1974 uh, coming with the raid. Uh, what's it a jedi kai o2 was in here, obviously opus 1974 as well, and then, uh, the real one, penguin, popped in as well. I just want to appreciate it, but that's uh, that's watching.

Brandon Hurles: 49:06

Yeah, definitely those are the ones that I told you. I've been hanging out with me for the last basically five days of streaming. Um, so yeah, it's, it's cool. I got. I did two one-hour streams not super exciting, but hey, you know, just getting in what you can.

Brandon Hurles: 49:22

So yeah, the thing, about scheduling a stream is that you force it in. So do you know what I in, what you can? So, yeah, the thing about scheduling a stream is that you force it in. So do you know what I mean? You schedule it ahead of time, so you're you're kind of stuck and tethered to that schedule. You make the schedule and it's there, so that that's what I get to play games the most. Uh, you might, it might only be an hour, but hey, at least you get to get something in. So, exactly, not not too bad, uh. Next we've got, um, what do I have here? Mario and sonic olympic games is apparently dead. Uh, so I saw this come out earlier in the week. People were asking on x why we didn't have another one coming out with the olympics going on and, uh, they basically kind of said it's like dead in the water. Um, it's kind of interesting because, like these games have never done very well. Uh, I want to say the first one, like it sold pretty good yes, they're not the first one's.

Mark Trobough: 50:12

All the way back on the weed for the 08 uh beijing olympics is when it first started yeah, it was like a big deal, so people bought into that.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 50:21

Yeah, you know well, it was cool. I think it was novel because you had mario and sonic, who obviously were bitter rivals. But they were past that because we we had the game cube era with sonic adventure one and two, and you had other sega games like monkey ball and billy hatcher and the giant egg. You had all these great sega games, so water under the bridge, but it was still cool to see like sonic and mario pitted against each other deal yeah, and you know what?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 50:54

I don't care for the games, I do not, but I respect it, what they were doing and I liked the idea of it and I felt like there was definitely a market for this. Uh, I think, with the game being data, the most unfortunate part about this is the circumstances behind why it was dropped, and that, to me, is mind-boggling, that the reason there's no longer a mario and sonic is because the olympic the olympics wanted to make their own game yeah oh my god stuff geez it's, that's ridiculous.

Brandon Hurles: 51:34

I mean that's absurd and they didn't want to buy into that.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 51:37

So it's horrible because think about this, guys, a olympic mobile game where you're opening up packs of cards essentially gotcha packs, yeah to get nfts. So you're not guaranteed anything, just like if you're playing ultimate mode or or nba 2k and you're you're spending real world money to get NFTs and you, you, you have no idea, probably, what the odds are. Uh, I took a look at some of the pricing. You got packs NFTs where you get maybe five entities, 20 bucks. Could you?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 52:17

imagine this, like if if your kid was buying this stuff it's crazy, yeah, absurd, absolutely absurd, the NFT stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 52:24

I it's crazy, yeah, absurd, absolutely absurd, the NFT stuff. I thought we were kind of done with that. I thought we were kind of over the NFT thing. But apparently there. You know, I don't think it would have did like anything they expected it to do. I feel like they are. This is maybe I hate to even say development, but maybe like an idea in development for a while and they were kind of sitting on it. Obviously, with the Olympics, you got to wait until it comes around.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 52:50

Yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 52:50

So I don't. I don't know what's going on, but these companies are so delayed with their thinking and with the strategy of what type of games these are and what's chasing trends. They're chasing trends. That trend is was dead six months ago.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 53:06

You know, yeah, yeah, uh, who? Obviously we had suicide squad. That was it. That was a casualty. We got concord coming up, which you know uh, I don't know if it'll be good or not, but the feedback amongst the gaming community is that it looks like just a another generic looter shooter and everyone's just playing copycat here, trying to cash in. It's like marvel rivals. Yeah, when, when your game design is based around how you can make the most money, you're not going to make a good game. It has to come from a better place than money. That can't be your fuel, because when you do it the right way, you will make money. Yes, it's unfortunate that so many of these, these companies, don't see that it's like come on, dude, that's not how it works.

Brandon Hurles: 53:56

Go make a great game and the money will follow I swear to god, if I ran a uh, I don't know if I ran a music company and then like a gaming studio, like I wouldn't be buying into the trends at all. Like, keep me away from the trends because all that does is create garbage and floods. You know good games coming out because they made, you know, this stupid Concord game. There could have been another game in its place. That was a 10 out of 10 and, you know, was leaving a mark in gaming history. Um, yeah, just, you, don't chase trends. That's, that's the idea here. I don't know why they don't get that. Don't chase trends. The trends die too quick, quicker than the game will be, you know, coming out. You, it takes four years to develop the game. The trend is hot right now for this one week, you know know.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 54:43

Yeah right, exactly, that's the thing. Is the game development. We all know it's taking so much longer now. And developers have been very open about that and you know the studios that games are taking much longer now. So if a game is taking off, a certain game, why would you try and make that game today, knowing it's not coming out till fall of 2028 best case scenario yeah I just don't get it.

Mark Trobough: 55:11

That's. I think it's just a bigger problem of you know investments and being behold the to the stock market and your investors and stuff like that chasing profit. So, hey, overwatch, yeah, overwatch made a lot of money. Just make another clone. We'll hopefully overtake it, we're confident it will. And then it bombs and it's, you know, you're at a bunch of money and your live service game, you know, within a year doesn't even exist anymore.

Brandon Hurles: 55:33

You can't play it I want to sit in on some of these board meetings and wonder what they're thinking. You know you got 18 people here in this board meeting and nobody you know stands up and says, hey, this is a terrible idea, let's not do this. This game will be out in six, seven, eight years. You know who knows? It could be a metroid prime. You know four situation it could be a duke nukem forever situation where that was like 12 years or something crazy. Oh yeah, um, you never know. Development hell is real. We all know that.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 56:02

So it is. And, kyle, you bring a good point, though, about the, the shareholders and their, their ideas and suggestions, I think, sometimes messing with the whole game development situation here. I think that's unfortunate too. Is that, uh, like you should listen to your shareholders, right, but they should not be making the games? Yeah, otherwise they would. They would become game designers to go to school and figure out how to do it and then go do it. So it's just like come on, man, you can't let. You can't let that happen yeah, plus you know nintendo doesn't let it happen we know

Brandon Hurles: 56:44

that I mean nintendo. I praise them all the time for being the one to not do that. They don't chase trends with that. Now they're. They're sometimes stuff that comes out right, like the mobile department with pick, the pikmin game and stuff like that, but in general with their consoles they don't necessarily do that. I mean, you know a game comes out and it it does. Well, you know it might not be like some big explosion, but like it sticks to a formula and doesn't chase trends right, and that's why they're still around and they are. You know the size of disney and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 57:18

So yeah, they've always been the innovators yeah, whether it's you know good or bad for some things like they, they do their own thing. You know whether it's the way you not have an hd out and oh yeah, there's.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 57:31

There's plenty of examples, for sure, yeah, and then.

Mark Trobough: 57:34

I just wanted to mention it because I it's killing I can't remember, uh what who I was watching, so it was youtube video. But as far as, like investors, like there's a lot of people in the investors and space shareholders that don't care about the long-term health and security of the the industry. They're in it for short-term profit. They make their money, then they're going to pull their money out. All they care about is short-term games. They don't care if the studio ends up being closed. People lose their jobs. As long as they make more money that they put in the pulling out. Essentially that's all they care about and they're going to move on to to the next investment yeah, there's no loyalty to the company it's about.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 58:11

It's about making money. That's that's what they're interested in. And so, in turn, some of these studios are taking on that same mindset. That well, I gotta appease them, because if I don't, then we might not be able to make games anymore, we might not have the money to, so I have to do this, and then they release something that they're not even proud of. And I feel bad for some of those developers because they they don't have complete control over their, their approach. Unfortunately very little, if any, scenarios, yeah, outside like the indie suits.

Mark Trobough: 58:47

You know, if you've got bad management, you're gonna probably pump out a bad game that's gonna lose money, and then you are gonna be the one that gets the axe while you know your bosses get a pay raise yeah, just like anywhere in the real world, right, any business, there's a lot of that stuff going on.

Brandon Hurles: 59:00

We're gonna be talking about some of it tonight. Some pretty scummy stuff. But mark, what do we got going on with the trail series?

Mark Trobough: 59:08

yeah. So I saw this as less of a. I just kind of saw it's kind of curious, uh, because obviously the trails is a several games I think it's over, maybe it over a dozen at this point off top man, I can't remember, but there's a lot. But they apparently in a recent interview, uh, they said, uh, obviously, as of right now there's a lot. But they apparently in a recent interview, uh, they said, uh, obviously, as of right now, there's about 710 hours worth of story.

Mark Trobough: 59:29

And they say, uh, essentially, when they started back when they were in their 20s making these games early on, they didn't have the necessary life experience to essentially properly in the saga, assuming I'm hopefully nothing was lost in translation from some of these developers. But it's like you know where we started and we're at now, like the games that we're making now would have been impossible, you know, 20 years ago, just because we didn't have, you know, the experience mixture of like between life experience and just developing games in general, which I thought was a very interesting take on a on a series that's really popular, especially in the jrpg oh yeah, have you, I think no, no, sorry, I was gonna say I was just gonna say I think that's really interesting.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:14

uh, like, that's very unique way to put it. Yeah, hopefully nothing was lost in translation, but that's cool to think about it that way to say. You know, I didn't properly develop as a person yet. So, like you know, these characters I'm making I can't properly make these characters are, in this particular story, the way I want to right now. So that's pretty cool, definitely different, definitely different way to put it.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:00:37

Oh, yeah, I respect the heck out of the take. I do. Oh yeah, and I know what you're talking about and I did read that when that came out. I I feel like it wasn't too long ago. Yeah, when Falcom they they've been putting out quality stuff. Oh yeah, I mean the trails and the ease series yeah. And if you look at like the origin right Of the ease series to where it is today, I mean mean when ease nordics uh went up for pre-order.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:01:10

I snatched that right, I snatched it up immediately and then when the ease uh memoir game that's coming out, same thing. I pre-ordered that. So obviously we got.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:01:21

I got two ease games right now pre-ordered and those games have come a long way and between ease and trails those are some of the best jrpgs out there which is awesome, and I I think it comes from attitudes like that, though, where you can actually take a look in the mirror and say, hey, I don't think we could have made this game back then, because I wasn't even fully developed as a person. I've grown a lot since then. I've gained wisdom not just about game design, but in life in general, and now we make better games because of those experiences. That's cool. I like to see that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:02

That's what's really cool about these japanese studios and developers? Uh, just their mindset with everything. It's just a complete 180 from the way western developed this. Let me let me say this because I actually talked about this this week. I said the problem with playstation is when they moved away from being a Japanese-focused company completely to shifting to now being a Western-focused company, and you can pinpoint it right to that point is when the problems with PlayStation really started, like when they started focusing on the Western side of things and making Western games, whatever that means. There was actually stories that were coming out like that. That's where the problems with PlayStation really started. You think back to the PS1, ps2, how many different, unique type of games were coming out on those consoles. You got a game where you play as a mosquito sucking blood out of people. What's that crazy game that has that absurd accessory for it?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:03:07

uh zez or something I always think of. Uh parappa, the rapper, oh, I mean like a game like that wouldn't exist they would never do that now.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:18

But I mean never do that now I think you see it now in games. But I mean, you go back 20 years, even when they started making these games, like games that came out of, like you know, xbox or just western studios in general. You can tell 20 years ago they were making games because they loved to make games and it's definitely gone the way of corporate profits above all else.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:03:36

Like we don't, there's no heart or soul in a lot of these games anymore yeah, I just see a ton of that, a ton of that, and I think you're right, brandon, also about when it all probably happened. Right is when they decided to become more Western, and I think as a whole and I don't have data to back it up, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say this, but I'm pretty sure it's right is that the japanese studios that are in japan. They have far, far less turnover. When you work there, you work there for a very, very long time oh yeah it's like an extension of family.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:04:19

There's, there's. You don't hear about layoffs out there in Japan Very rare, but it's different out there and you know Japan's where it all started. Obviously, yeah, the sales, the most sales, are coming out of the US, because you know what the US consumes the most Japan's realistically not that big of a country too is another thing. The population's pretty different, but that's still. The heart of video games is japan.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:04:49

Like I have plans to go there for my 40th birthday in may and I'm very excited to you know, go see the nintendo museum. I, I, uh, I think we're gonna stay in osaka, but I'm excited to go to like the video game stores I'm so jealous yeah, I'm really excited.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:07

It's my, it's literally my dream to go there and has been since I was like 10 years old same here.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:13

I've always dreamed of just like waking up there yeah, I always that was a kid yeah, it's it and realistically it is because of video games, kind of to start like we knew, you know, everything was pretty much there, everything we loved, all the Nintendo and PlayStation at the time. It's a shame, man, to see what's happening with PlayStation 2 because, like, it's just a lot of negative. A lot of negative with these companies but you don't hear as much of that with Nintendo. So, and that's, I think that's why, yeah, I think it really generally different mindsets. It's a different landscape. People treat them, treat each other differently um you know the negativity isn't there as much.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:05:58

Sure, you got the yakuza, but you know it's gonna be a little bit something everywhere so, yeah, you see that too, with the company heads, though, full playstation and xbox and then nintendo right even before, before doug bowser, though you know, you had, uh, jim ryan over a playstation and you had uncle phil and, of course, reggiegie and the way the, the way their community Bashes. Unfortunately, a lot of the PlayStation fans bash Jim Ryan and they bash Phil Spencer, but you never saw anyone bashing Reggie, you really didn't. Everyone loves the dude.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:06:42

My body is ready, yeah, and I'm just saying like I'm not saying one's better than the other, because you guys know I, everyone loves the dude. My body is ready, yeah, and I'm just saying like I'm not saying one's better than the other, because you guys know I play all the games. But what I'm saying is I wish that playstation and xbox had that too, to where, like, you actually respect it, your company heads, instead of bashing all the time on on social media, and I think that's a lot of the western stuff, though, getting in the way yeah, yeah, and you don't even see that as much.

Brandon Hurles: 1:07:13

The social media stuff in japan, like you don't see a lot of negative bullcrap coming out. You don't hear stuff about their government, you don't hear. You know what I mean. Like the stuff that's coming out here is the polar opposite of anything you hear about there. Like, yeah, the landscape of politics and stuff here and where people are so divided, man, like it is brutal. You would never, you're never gonna catch me putting out a political tweet on twitter. I'm telling you because I I don't need that negativity in my life no, there's a lot of toxicity out there.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:07:45

And I always said the same thing I won't talk politics, I don't. I unfortunately don't believe a large majority of our country is mature enough to talk about the subject and have a, have a good conversation where we can see all sides and be respectful, and I don't think that's going to change, so therefore, you'll never hear me talk about it yeah yeah, and that way I don't have to deal with it. It works out good yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:08:16

It's a shame, man. It's a shame how different it is.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:18

Yeah I just want to say before we moved on, I just wanted actually for the, the condo, the president, some of the stuff that he'd actually said when they talked with him back earlier this year during Anime Expo, some of the stuff that he'd said. I cut out some of it. He says I'm almost 50 now and I've seen good things and bad things in life, unjust situations and unfair outcomes, and we wanted to create a game that speaks to those changes and challenges we experienced. We wouldn't have been able to write a story like this in our 20s simply because we didn't have the necessary life experience. He said also everyone has their own way of living in their own lives and we should just try to make our way through the world as best we can given the circumstances we have to deal with. I think it definitely shows in some of their games. It's just kind of like where we're at in our 20s, when we first make a game is one way and then the games change as we mature and change both in game design and how you write a story and stuff like that, which I think is it says a lot yeah no it really does

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:15

very wise and I mean I can say, you know, I was definitely a different person in my 20s uh, especially, you know, early 20s and stuff like that. Like definitely you change.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:25

You know, once your brain starts developing or is finished developing when you're 25, you know things are different yeah, but I mean just your, our own life experiences and stuff that we go through is gonna, you know, change us people absolutely what we got next.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:39

I gotta drop my dang remote for this uh yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:42

So this is, you know, something small. Obviously, we know the uh legends of zelda echoes of wisdom is coming out pretty uh, pretty quickly uh. But as far as pre-orders, uh, gamestop just announced some of the stuff that they were doing for their pre-orders. Essentially, obviously, it's nothing, nothing big, but a, they say, a large fabric poster. Uh, yeah, as a essentially a pre-order bonus.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:05

If you're still into pre-ordering or if you still go to GameStop. At least where I live, gamestop and Walmart are the only two options, so I'd rather go to GameStop than Walmart personally, I'm going to get a pre-order mine there because of that, but Did you guys see the other bonus that was just announced today In Japan?

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:21

No, the earbuds no at.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:10:24

Best Buy today in japan no, here earbuds.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:25

Oh no that best buy for zelda no I didn't know, I didn't, didn't hear about that it's an acrylic set like in a like the acrylic figures in the background, yeah, like the sonic one exactly I have about 50 of those.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:38

I gotta do some of these giveaways because all of their stuff that doesn't give. You know, that was a good pre-order bonus I have one too really cool.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:10:48

Um, yeah, so I have mine pre-ordered at best buy. I already had it pre-ordered there, but when that was announced, I canceled my order today and put in a new one. Only because in the past, when I've had games pre-ordered at best buy and then a pre-order bonus is announced, best buys drop the ball, even though they're supposed to still give it to me. Yeah, they're like, oh no, you, you didn't pre-order it in the window.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:14

I'm like, yeah, because I did it before yeah everybody which is still give it to me I've had so many things canceled here recently that the NES um, it's in a world championships. That that was that one upset me pretty bad. Six days later I ended up finding one. Uh, went to all those stores. I probably spent two hours of my day just trying to find this game, um, but that acrylic stand looks really cool, like better than the Sonic one.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:11:41

Right, yeah. So I was like, yeah, I definitely got to get that. I got to do that too.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:45

Yeah, and I don't know if it's every, at least for the games subject. It's all I've got locally here, but there's plenty of times where they'll do pre-order bonuses but they don't. You know, whatever they're allocated for the store only sells X amount of pre-orders and if I go buy that game comes out. At least the guy that runs it's like oh, we've got extra pre-order bonuses and they'll just give them out with games and stuff like that, which I think is also neat.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:12:06

That's nice.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:09

I just want to say the dimensions for this, what they say, a fabric poster. It's 18 inches by 24 inches for the GameStop fabric poster.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:18

It's got some size. I'm not going to lie, I want both of them. Because I'm such a big zelda fan I really legitimately want both of them. It's gonna be a tough one to, I don't know. The acrylic stand's pretty cool, but it's small yeah uh, I mean I.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:32

It's neat getting pre-order bonuses as well, as you know different stores doing different things to, at the very least, more than likely, encourage pre-orders yeah, yeah, definitely the.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:41

The fabric poster is cool too. It looks like um, uh, this is my nintendo store. Uk is doing a zelda key ring and and a wall scroll, so you get a wall scroll and a keychain. It looks like oh yeah, cool. But I saw earbuds or something. Zelda earbuds went up on. Uh, I think it's. I think I missed that. Was it nintendo on hold on? Might have went up for points. Get with points.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:13

I'm not sure I'll have to look it up, but there's some stuff yeah, do you plan on uh playing this game the day it comes out? I assume you do oh yeah, 100 yeah 100.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:13:25

Yeah, I, I pre-ordered it for store pickup so I can like I'm not gonna wait on the mailman to deliver it at five in the afternoon or the next day or the following day, because I've already seen that play out over the years. So, yeah, yeah, I pre-order for store pickup so I'll be there, you know, ready to get to to play man, no doubt I'm very excited about this game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:50

Oh yeah, very so. What I was talking about were zelda wireless earbuds. That went up on nintendo uk and it's also available in ireland, apparently.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:00

So yeah, so it was uh collars. I believe marina's right 30, since he's like 35 euros or 30, I don't think it's pounds. I can't, I don't, I don't remember what the right symbol is for for european currency I, I don't know either.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:13

They look like cheap um like timu wireless earbuds with the zelda logo on it.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:20

It's probably what it is. One of those. They, you know, plastered it on a brand that already exists.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:25

That's what it looks like, but it's kind of neat, but like at the same time, I don't know. I know a couple of Zelda collectors that will get all three, though, because they're different colors. Yeah, all right, so we'll zoom through the last thing here. We got Nintendo Switch. We got this. The last of the small news. What is it? Nintendo Switch reaches major sales milestone, so this is talking about whether it's going to surpass the PS2. Before we check this out, do you guys think it will?

Mark Trobough: 1:14:58

It'll be close, I do. They came out and said it's officially. They sold over 143 million units worldwide on this. Apparently it's officially. They sold over 143 million units worldwide on this. Apparently it's become the top-selling system in Japan, surpassing the DS and the Game Boy. You know Japan globally, but I think it's close. Obviously, we're expecting whatever the Switch sequel's going to be next year it's kind of like the going rate, but I mean it's closing in on almost to be within 10 million units.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:15:25

So I think it's definitely doable yeah, I, I think nintendo still has some tools right to use here. Obviously, we. We got some great games coming out. They've said that they plan to support switch for at least a couple years after switch 2. And if you think about it, guys, like the switch came out in march 2017, yeah, and we're about to enter the holiday season here, shortly of 2024.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:15:54

So if you were born in 2017, you might be getting your first video game console, which a nintendo switch would be a great, obviously, console to get nintendo's great for kids. So it's it's like you're of the age now I mean, you're past the age I see kids gaming at. You know, four, five, six years old. I came when I was three, for god's sake. So, sure enough, you start gaming and this is it's opened up to a whole new demographic, right, right, yeah, it's not just us, it's kids playing for the first time. They have the games for it. Obviously, you guys, I'm sure you're going to touch on those sales numbers, but it's like the amount of software they're selling is absolutely insane. So, yeah, I think, as long as they continue to support it which again they've said they will, I think when long as they continue to support it, which again they've said they will, I think when they announce Switch 2 and talk about backwards compatibility. Yeah.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:16:50

I think parents will be more likely to say OK, we're going to get you a Switch 1, see how you like it, see how you treat it. Ok, if this thing breaks, I'm not buying you a Switch 2. Like, if you don't take care of it properly, right, if you're dropping it everywhere and treating it like crap, I'm not gonna go buy you something more expensive. We all know how that works and I think we'll see that.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:17:11

but one of the biggest tools they have is the price drop yes, yeah right outside of the bundles because we know we're there's going to be holiday bundles this year, but it's the price drop and I think when switch to gets announced I almost feel like it's going to be in tandem that they will announce price drop for switch 1. I think that could really really help. I mean, depending on how aggressive they are, that could really help them beat out the ps2 I mean, it just could be good marketing in general right yeah like hey, have no fear of buying switch one because switch two is coming out.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:17:51

It's backwards compatible, it's a low, low price. Buy it for your kids for the birthdays, for for the holidays and see if they like video games right like, especially if it's a low price buy-in when all the other consoles are a couple hundred dollars more. Yeah. The Xbox PlayStation. It's like you can get your kid a current gen console for however much. I mean Switch Lite, as of late I've seen them on Amazon for $159. Yep, I have too.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:18:28

And there's been nothing official. You guys know. But imagine if Switch Lite's $99. $99. Why not? I mean it's, it's, it's a great number yeah, I think so I think so I mean

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:42

this is always the time where you know people that maybe can't afford a full price system. You know, grab the console. That was me with consoles, until I was, probably whenever the 64 came out. We got that, but it was still like I think a year after it came out. We got that, but it was still like I think a year after it came out. But that was me.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:02

I always had hand-me-down systems as a young kid, so you know it's possible. I thought for sure. I said a couple of times, yeah, this is going to happen. Now I'm like I'm not 100% sure if it'll happen, because it doesn't seem like a lot of units but it kind of is, and I feel like most houses have at least one switch in it, right, some people's have multiple switches in it. So it's possible. The world's big. So I definitely won't say it's not possible, say it's not possible. But I'm a little, you know, I don't know for sure because the thing that the ps2 had a one-up on was people were buying it just because it was a cheaper dvd player you know, like at the time, like that was, that was the way to do it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:49

Blu-ray when the ps3 came out, my god, blu-ray players were crazy expensive. The ps3 was expensive when it came out but a lot of people still, you know, ended up going that route. When it got cheaper, it was easier. They came out with the Slim model and stuff. I don't know, it's definitely possible. But the Switch doesn't play your movies.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:11

Not that anyone's really buying physical movies anymore anyway, I think that just shows how impressive it is. People aren't buying it as a DVD player, they're buying it to actually play games on it. It's impressive for sure. Plus, I guess we've got some more special editions coming, like with the Zelda game that comes out in September. They're doing a special for the Lite, which I think will definitely help boost sales as well.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:20:33

And I have that pre-order. I'm not going to open it. It's literally a collector's item that I'm just I'm going to collect, I'm going to keep, yeah.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:20:41

I think a lot of people are right from from what I've gathered. And obviously these sales numbers. I looked at this earlier when I looked at the sales numbers this morning and I looked to see when the pre-orders went up for the Zelda switch light and they weren't up yet. So I will say I don't know what that number is going to be, but these sales numbers Definitely don't include the Switch Lite Zelda pre-order. So, that is a boost. I expect that to actually.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:12

Sell pretty well Be a significant boost. I'm surprised that they haven't done a few more. I mean they've done. I guess you wouldn't call those animal crossing. Ones are like nothing. Nobody's going out and buying. All it had was like a stamp on it, right.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:21:28

It's right behind me To the right of my shoulder there. Oh, I have that one of the switch lights to switch. Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:36

They got my lady.

Mark Trobough: 1:21:38

No, I have that too over here, and that's the switch I'm going to use for my purposes later on, I think to keep disconnected from the internet, but I mean I think by the end of the year, get to the holiday season, at the very least it'll be under 10 million units as far as like surpassing or catching up to the PS2 yeah, and we gotta remember like I think people kind of forget, this is that the, the ps2 was can was still being sold for many years many years, really long lifespan 2014 sports game came out for it well over a decade that console was supported yeah, it was supported for over a decade.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:22:19

So the thing is is that it may not look like nintendo has a chance to do it, or that the window is pretty small right now, but were they going to be it in like two, three, four years?

Mark Trobough: 1:22:35

if they're still selling it and they've discounted it, it's like if you discount it, because even when they decide you can't yeah, even when they decide to stop, they still have x amount of inventory that they they want to get rid of and sell. Because, I mean, I'm pretty sure, like even when, like you know, ps4 and the xbox one came out like last gen consoles, you they were still around. People are still buying them because at that point they're super dirt cheap hundred dollars or even if you buy that, you know, refurbished under hundred dollars, that's extremely cheap for game console, especially if you're like you know, this new console came out but there's no library for it. There's no immediate need to jump to the next best thing that just happened with the ps5 and ps4.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:23:13

You guys remember the ps5? No one could buy it.

Mark Trobough: 1:23:16

And then sony had a problem stocking ps4s because they were selling out yeah yeah, but like everything, everything, everything that came out for it was backwards compatible, like the only major upscale was its ssd, because everything's backwards compatible, so it's got to be designed for ps4 and ps5 right, which is what could benefit.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:23:36

Switch now, with it being backwards if switch to which you gotta, you gotta believe I mean I would put money on it. That's going to be backwards compatible.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:45

But they'll have that same benefit too with selling more switches yeah, yeah, mr coffee said my friend paid 900 for a dvd player when they first came out. I remember seeing the blu-ray players when they came out. There was one that was $700 at my Walmart, just a straight-up player. It was still cheaper to get a PS3 then when they first came out. There's a lot that could be factored into this, to where it could still happen. I think there's definitely a possibility. Collector's editions are always going to sell if there's something like a Zelda or the Zelda community is pretty hardcore, so if anything sells, for that they need to do something. As cool as the 3DS Zelda Shield, do you remember that? Oh my God, one of the coolest collector's editions ever. Man, that thing is beautiful. Yeah, this new one come out. It's pretty cool. Uh, not quite as cool as that one, though.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:24:46

No, it's not. It's definitely not as cool. It's cool, but no way on that scale, and I would like to see him do more stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:55

They and they could, but you know whatever it's selling, so who cares? Uh, all right, so we're going to jump into the topics. Um so, steve what, what's your thoughts on? Uh, we briefly kind of talked about this a little bit the mig switch, unlock, switch, all that jazz yeah.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:25:13

So we we did briefly talk about this and, uh, I got a little, I guess, story to share about it. So one of my good friends we used to work together in mortgage still a good friend of mine and you know I'm sure, like you guys, I'm the guy that all the friends and family reach out to when they have questions about video games, and it's been like that my whole life, not just since I decided to do this on youtube, right, and so nothing's changed. He reached out to me regarding buying a switch, oled, but he said he wants to to mod it, and so he he didn't own a switch, he's always thought about buying a switch and I think he saw probably something on youtube about the switch being easier to mod now and disclaimer. Like he, he's never modded a console before, but he's very good with tech, confident enough to give it a shot right. So he asked what I knew about the make switch, the unlock switch, and of course I've seen the videos on on youtube about the, the big switch, about people not getting the dumper that they were supposed to get, and so I knew I was going to tell him no, don't, don't do the make switch. And after doing some research, we ended up settling on the pico fly and, long story short, he successfully did the mod. He did the soldering, which, again, it's not something that he's done before, but he sent me some pictures. He's got it up and running, everything's good to go.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:26:57

So yeah, there it is the mix switch. So he asked me about it and that's what I. So I told him to go. So, yeah, there it is, the mix switch. So he asked me about it and that's what I. So I told him to go with Pico fly. And you know, of course, he asked me if I have my switch, mod it. And you know, I will say, guys, whether you mod a switch or your mod your systems or you don't no judgment here, whatsoever. No I. Judgment here, whatsoever. No, I. I let him know that typically I I don't mod my console until it's no longer supported. Right, for instance, when the 3ds was no longer supported, when that went down, the shops down is literally you can't go online with the thing. Yeah, I, I modded mine immediately and I love it. I got, I have virtual boy on my 3ds. I have the virtual boy mod I know, me too, it's rad like it's really cool.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:27:47

It's a great way to experience it right, without going blind or injuring my, my old eyes, giant headache yeah, so, um, I I think there's.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:28:00

I think modding is a lot of. Honestly, it's a lot of fun. I've played so many cool games that you would only be able to play if you've done some modding. You know rom hacks, some homebrew games, I mean. I've done them. Recently on my channel, like I I was, I did a video playing the original metroid on nes, port it to super nintendo with the msu1 chip, so it's got cd quality sound, it's got the remastered soundtrack, got zero mission and it has the famicom disk system soundtrack as well as the nes and it's just cool yeah, there's no slowdown in the game.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:28:47

And it's funny because I'm playing nintendo world championship, right, and I was playing the, the metroid missions, and I'm fighting kraid and there was so much slowdown. And I'm like this is crazy, because I literally just played this game less than two weeks ago. I beat it, the metroid super nintendo port unofficial port zero. Slowdown there zero. Yeah, and, like you know, this is why I really appreciate that scene, the homebrew scene, the modding, the hacking, the ROMs. All of it I appreciate it.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:29:26

So that's kind of my stance on it. And as far as the MiG Switch, you know, for its intention I would say for its main intention, but for its dated intention I think it's great to be able to for game preservation, right? Uh, I, I presume most people are not buying it for that and that's okay. Again, that's okay. You know, like Brandon, you have one and you bought it for game preservation. Yeah, so, to be able to back up my, my saves and stuff. You know, like brandon, you have one and you bought it for game preservation?

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:01

yeah, I just want to be able to back up my, my saves and stuff. You know all the hours I got in pokemon and zelda like I want to be able to keep that. You know, who knows what happens these cards in 10 years? Whether they lose data, we don't.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:30:13

We don't we don't know. Yeah, we don't know. So I think it's a great product and I'm glad it exists and overall I respect that whole scene a lot awesome yeah we talked about it pretty extensively, like we were waiting on the kind of lead up to unlock switch coming out at.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:31

The thing that sucks is, you know, I've stayed before. I didn't get my dumper for the switch, so I now have the one that came with the. I'll show it to you for, uh, people watching the video. It's just like, um, there's a cable in here too. It's pretty neat that's cool.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:51

But yeah, it's, it's a pretty neat. But now I can use this for that and I still haven't done that yet. I just need to get around to it. Um, but the unlock switch does. The software is on out for it. Yeah, so it's essentially a brick, you know. So the only thing I can do right now is use that dumper to test out the mix switch now, which I need to do it. Just, it takes up a lot of time. Those ever drives we talked about are great. Yeah, it takes. It takes a lot of time to find the like right set. Make sure it works, you know. Whatever, Get those put together.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:23

That's beautiful. I love that. Oh, that's cool. You got Stone Age Gamer Sweet.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:31:27

Yeah well, it's got Stone Age Gamer on there, it's got Akari and it's got Krix.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:33

Yeah, so certified. That's cool. I like that Stone Age does their own labels. That's that's cool. I like that stone age does their their own labels. Uh, I they're actually in ohio went out there and visited them last year and checked out their shop and how they do. It's pretty, pretty rad oh, that's cool man, yeah, it's neat stuff, uh.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:49

So next we got, um, I guess, I guess we kind of talked about maybe just a tad, but not necessarily as specs. So, talking about the switch to specs, what, what are you guys sort of expecting for that? We've touched on before, mark. There's been stuff that that's came since and got some new people anyway. So, um, what do you guys think specs wise?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:32:13

I mean I'm excited about the specs from the rumored specs right that we've heard, and specifically I'm talking about the 12 gigabytes of ram, just right off the bat oh yeah that that is very exciting.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:32:32

And you know, like if we were to compare it, of course, to say the Series S, we know the Series S has 10 gigs of RAM. I looked it up earlier to see how much the operating system is using. It's using 2.5 gigs to run the operating system, so it's got 7.5 gigs of usable RAM. If the Switch 2 does indeed have 12 gigs of RAM, it's not going to use two and a half gigs for for the operating system, it's not going to. It's not going to be that much.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:33:07

You guys, you guys know what the switch operating system looks like and you know what the Xbox one looks like. There's a lot of stuff going on on the Xbox one. It's very busy, it's cool. There's a lot of stuff going on it's on the xbox one. It's very busy, it's cool. There's a lot of stuff going on, it's it's great. Yeah, but you could tell that the switch if, even if they improve the os, which we know they're going to, they have to please, especially the e-shop pretty, pretty right now yeah, but say they use I don't know one or two gigs, just say they use that much.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:33:40

Then the Switch 2 would be using 10 gigs of RAM. It would have 10 usable gigs. Well, the Series S has seven and a half, and we haven't even touched yet on the DLSS. Yeah, so I like, just from that point of view, right that angle, it's pretty exciting because we we know the kind of technical wizardry that nintendo and some of its closer partners, like, for instance, retro studio, monolith soft, what they can pull off right.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:34:15

And not only that, but we've we've seen some crazy third-party ports yeah yeah, and the dlss is supposed to really help with the ports to to oh yeah make the porting process much easier as far as getting your frame rate up and the resolutions improved. And from what I've gathered, the the dlss is the 3.5 which is yeah that's what you want.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:34:46

Yeah, it's got the frame generation, it's got super resolution and it's got ray reconstruction. It you know if there's ray tracing or not. If there is great, if there there isn't, that's fine. You know what I'm saying? Like, this is going to be a huge, huge jump in graphical fidelity. Uh, for, for a Nintendo system, like from the switch to the switch to this, would be a massive, really a massive job. I mean, it's not, it's not even like NES, super NES, and I know it's compared to that a lot and it's an easy comparison to make and I just think it's going to be even greater than that based on these, these rumored specs. So I'm very excited.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:35:32

I have some interesting ideas, I guess you could say, about how Nintendo could use the DLSS. I don't know how possible this is. Let me know your guys' thoughts as well. But man, if you really and I'm speaking about this from experience, actually if you can take games on the NSO, like uh, 64 games and 64, yeah and apply dlss to these games, like we've we've seen on pc, like I have, uh, zelda 64 or green at a time and major's mask on my pc with dlss, how dare you apply and, dude, I can run zelda on my with my graphics card at 120 frames per second, no problem.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:36:30

And even just playing it, though honestly, at 60 frames with the dlss on and the resolution boost, it cannot tell you how good it looks and plays. Imagine if we got that ray tracing mario imagine that'd be crazy it's interesting to think because, man, if you could play zelda or all these n64 games you know I have, I have the mario 64 pc port that runs at 60 frames in 4k, and I say if we could get that on the switch too, and you could only get it through, nso dude dude, that was so easy easy money for nintendo.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:37:16

So I'd like to see that and I would love to see dlss applied to some of these switch games, to for switch to. Like you guys probably know that in paper mario the thousand year doors code and its source code is 4k resolution yeah so you got to ask what, why?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:37:41

why is that in there? And all I can think is that, well, it was probably planned as a release for switch to or a dual release at that, and I gotta hope that they have some sort of upgrade path possibly available that they're going to be doing to where they can resell some of these games or, obviously, like we've seen Sony and Xbox do, where they charge $10. I think that would be great what do you guys?

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:12

think.

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:13

No, I'm with you. So I've done some of the PC stuff with the retro games and it's pretty rad. I think here's what I'm like imagining what the heck would say. Take Super Mario Odyssey what would that look like on the Switch if you're running 4K or 1080p, 120 frames per second or with the ray tracing? How insane would that be to see Mario like that in that much detail? And how does that apply to all these Nintendo series?

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:49

One thing I keep thinking about is Metroid Prime 4, the trailer that we've seen that game. It looks, and obviously Metroid Prime Remastered looks great. It's like almost a remake. That's the way I look at it. Almost it looks great. But the trailer looks just like the remaster. So it makes me wonder, you know like, because I think it could be a dual release. I think Metroid Prime 4 has a possibility of being a dual release. We did a video on it. I think it could be a dual release. I think Metroid Prime 4 has a possibility of being a dual release. We did a video on it. I think it's possible. I don't know what to expect Because I was looking at one of the rumors that we reported on a while ago. It said that it had 8GB RAM, ddr5 RAM. There's a few reports here that I pulled up, so they're kind of conflicting. It's a little all over the place. It's hard to say exactly what this console is going to be. Mark, what do you think?

Mark Trobough: 1:39:50

Not sure. Great answer, a lot of it you kind of already touched on as far as whatever, far as like whatever it's going to be when it comes to the to, the switch to or whatever it ends up actually being like. The one thing that I really care about more than anything else as it stands right now is the internal memory. I think is atrocious on the switch. Yeah, it is. I think 256 should be like the standard across the board. Uh, yeah, because even with the cartridge you eat up that memory so fast and a lot of people regardless of what we might think a lot of people do digital only and you know that internal memory is just not good.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:32

Even with, the switch is full. Right now I have a one terabyte sd card and it's full.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:37

Same oh and full yep yeah yeah, I'm with you on that, then I totally on that I think the memory is far cheaper now than it was in 2017 when the when the switch came out. There's no reason it. They couldn't get 256 on something. You know even the size of the switch realistically with. You know how small internal memory and ssd is like, how how much memory you can get on something extremely small. I mean you just look at a lot of the like if you build a pc, look a lot of the uh, the m2 chips for ssd, how big they are and how much memory you could realistically store on them. I think it it needs as far as like internal memory and I'm sure it affects it. It would affect the ram as well. Ssd should be the standard for the switch to and agree as far as just how the games would run.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:22

It would help get rid of a lot of the lag as well, just being able to process the memory faster.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:41:28

I agree. Earlier today I was revisiting an older rumor. I was actually listening to the Nate the the Nate the hate podcast.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:41:40

That was one of them from last year. But in regards to gamescom, right and I was just trying to make sure that I still remembered everything as it was said it you know just hearing it again, right, hearing him in a modern, vintage game we're talking about the breath of the wild, right running at gamescom behind closed doors, running at 4k uh, natively, 60 frames per second, and just how fluid and flawless everything ran and and how it was running the you know the matrix 5 demo and how you couldn't even tell that it was a switch to like it looked like the same thing that we saw on the ps5 and I, I, I have the demo, I I tested it out on the ps5 when it came out, like it's really cool and to think that a handheld could do that is absolutely really. It's really quite wild and it's pretty exciting just to think that that's something we could have portably yeah, I mean it's insane.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:53

The other thing is like we've got these beefy, beefy, freaking pc handhelds coming out. I mean these things are absolutely insane. And the switch has got to compete with that. Yeah, the switch to um, it has to at least compete. It's got to be on par with one of the better ones out there, which we'll just say the, the new asus rogue ally that came out, the x, uh, it's got to at least be on par with. That has to be. It's it's got to be, because those are basically, I mean, we'll say like ps4 pro level. Right, would you say that? Like that's where the asus rog ally x is at. I mean, that's just an improved version of the first asus rog, uh, but we are getting the second one. We've seen some rumors about that. We reported on that and it sounds like that's going to be even beefier. So they're doing crazy things with those. It's got to at least be on par with some of those.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:47

It's not necessarily competing with that market per se. It's competing with the handheld market, but it's not necessarily competing with the PC. Do you know what I'm saying? It's competing with being a handheld, but it's not really competing with that side of things Cause it is PC related. So you're Steam and your Xbox and all that jazz, and I'm still of the mindset that Xbox is doing handheld. I wholeheartedly believe that. I mean, there's been too much has come out and that's what I think.

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:16

So it's gotta be competing, you know.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:44:22

Yeah, out, and that's what I think.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:44:23

So it's got to be competing. You know, yeah, what? What I ultimately think here is that with the switch to specs, again, we don't know what they're going to be right, yeah for sure, because there's, they're rumors, yeah, oh yeah, we're going based off rumors, we're speculating, but I think bottom line is that it's going to be powerful enough that third parties are going to have no problem porting their PS4 or Xbox Series S games to the Switch. 2. Do I expect Grand Theft Auto 6 series s games to the switch to do? I expect grand theft auto 6 to be running on switch to no, no, if. If it does that, that'd be impressive, extremely impressive. Just me, me not even knowing, obviously, none of us about what the specs are. If, if it could, great, but I'm not expecting that.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:45:20

I am expecting to get all the great games from last generation, from the PS4, xbox One generation, and I'm expecting Series S games to be able to come to the Switch, and I think that's enough. I, I really do. I think that would be damn good. Uh, you know, I thought about games like red dead redemption 2. Which excellent game. But what's funny is there's no performance patch or anything. For current gen it still runs at 30 frames per second and I could see red dead 2 coming to switch to because we have red dead 1 now. I could see them bringing that over for switch and that running at 60 frames per second because it's a new game for switch. Like they're not patching red dead on ps4 and xbox series to run on series s, x and ps5 at 60, but because they're bringing it brand new to switch, I could see that running at 60 so we get stuff like that. I think people would be really happy, but I'm expecting a lot, like I'm expecting visions of mana to be there expecting.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:46:43

Elden Ring to be on switch to yeah because why not?

Mark Trobough: 1:46:48

yeah, like I mean the DLSS is going to really help in that too, yeah, 100% no, but I'd expect whatever the switch to to be at the very least. Obviously I doubt we'd actually get these ports, but it'd be able to play like a ghost of tsushima, uh, a horizon zero dawn, a bloodborne. Uh, the final fantasy 7 remake, because these are technically last gen games. As far as the, the playstation goes, yeah, like I, I would expect it to have no problem playing these games for the most part. Uh, memory might be an issue with some of these games, you know for how big some of them can actually get. But as far as, like, what the hardware can actually handle, I I'm making the assumption that it, in theory, could play everything from the ps4 to the xbox one library, no problem at all.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:47:32

Yep yeah, and if it can do that, I think that's more than enough. And yeah, obviously we're gonna see. We're gonna see whatever nintendo and retro, like we said, monolith soft what kind of wizardry they can pull off using this dlss. And it's just going to be interesting to see some of these major third parties build games from the ground up for switch with dlss in mind. Yeah, because typically dlss is used to help port games right and it's to help make that transition. It's not to really like build a game from scratch using that as one of your main tools. So we might see some crazy stuff. We really might. Either way, it's got me excited.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:23

Oh yeah, I mean I'm excited too. I'm excited either way because the game that I originally bought the Switch for expecting it to be on the Switch successor, which is Metroid Prime 4, obviously.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:48:33

Yeah, I know I'm with you on that. So are you guys on the cross-gen train? Are you guys both there? I'm not really set there, but I think it's a possibility, or at least it comes out on Switch and there's maybe an enhanced version on Switch too.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:53

Yeah, I'm kind of likely with a lot of games for those parts. Most games that probably come out first year are going to be cross-gen, unless it's specifically there to sell the system at launch, which I mean obviously we don't know. I'm kind of leaning towards Metroid Prime 4 more than likely being at their launch. Don't know if you would consider that a system seller. Obviously we're not expecting a Zelda game, but probably expecting just because of how long it's been with a mainline. Mario game is probably going to be a system seller. But I mean kind of like with the Switch and most consoles at launch it's not going to be a lot of games there.

Brandon Hurles: 1:49:28

So you know? What I wonder, though, is because we saw that trailer and it looks so much like Metroid Prime remaster is like how can it not be on Switch 1? Is what I kind of think. That's the only thing that kind of throws me for a loop, because it's like this definitely is not Switch 2 that we're seeing right here. This is most certainly on the scale of Metroid Prime Remastered. That's the only thing that's like how can this not be coming Switch 1 as well, because we just saw footage that is most certainly Switch 1. I think it has to. Yeah.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:50:02

I think it has to from a sales aspect, guys, because you both know Metroid, regardless of the praise and the 9.8 out of 10 that it gets.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:17

It doesn't sell.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:50:18

It doesn't sell it doesn't sell, it, doesn't sell it, it doesn't, and it's. It's a beloved franchise for a lot of us, like long-time hardcore gamers, right, yeah, all three of us love it. I'm sure people in chat love it and it's unfortunate, but that's where it's at and I know we're going to touch on this probably a little bit later, but I think they need to sell metroid to the 143 million switch owners as well as switch to, in order to make their money yeah, make the money and try and make something of metroid.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:50:54

Yeah, right, because I I kind of have an idea of how it's all gonna go down, or at least what would be logical. And yeah, it's obviously they. They need to get prime two and three out the door before four. You have to build you, you have to let other people play these games because, yes, you gotta build the franchise up I mean the story is there as well.

Mark Trobough: 1:51:17

It's a continuing story that builds up through those three games, even if they're, for the most part, standalone on their own. It's a story that moves forward, especially with three yeah, it's like any movies, man.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:51:28

Like I'm not gonna ask you to watch rogue one and then show you phantom menace, right, or I'm not gonna ask you to watch movies out of order even though we did with star wars, you know, yeah, I know, I know I thought about that as I'm saying it's like, yeah, well, they were out of order, steve. But but you know what I'm saying? Like people don't like to do that and that's why you see these long-running video game series like the yakuza series, yeah, everyone's always like where do I start? Dude like do?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:52:04

I start it you know, yakuza kiwami, uh like a dragon zero. There's so many uh dragon quest. Where do I start? What's a good entry point? Final fantasy this goes on. You know, like I thought it was just going to be one. It's final fantasy. I thought this was the final one, what everyone always used to say, and it's like no people don't know where to jump in, and so when you have you only got four metroid prime games here, you already have two that are done. It's like when did echoes come out? 2004?

Mark Trobough: 1:52:36

you're right around. It's only like two years later, because they were both game cube games yeah, it's 20 years ago, we remember it.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:52:43

Yeah, the kids they don't. They don't a lot of the switch owners they don't know. They don't know about metroid. Uh, you know the blue ocean strategy. They don't know about metroid. Uh, you got to re-release these games and really build it up appropriately if you want Metroid to reach into a new stratosphere and be part of the big three, because right now it's still a big two. Right, it's Mario and it's Zelda, and then closely nearby is Animal, you know animal crossing, and obviously there's there's Mario cart, which is huge. But yeah, metroid is not on that level of sales. It is on review scores but not on sales.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:31

Yeah, Cause I think the it's dread sold the most and it barely broke 3 million in sales and it's the best selling by far which is kind of I know me and Brandon talked about it.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:46

I think Prime 4, being one of the launch titles on the Switch 2, would be a really big boost as far as sales, because you're going to have a limited library. Obviously it should be across gen, but hey, if you're one of those people that are going to be buying it early on or at the, the first year of its life cycle, you have a handful of games. Uh, I think a metroid series would benefit from both sales and exposing it to more people by being one of those few games on a new console launch. Plus it, it adds a variety because, say, you have like a mario, you have metroid and then two other whatever random I don't want to say shovelware type games, but that's kind of what you'd expect at a launch or something like that.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:54:20

Yeah, you're expected. Launch titles.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:22

Yeah, I just think it would benefit as far as options for players, yeah, and just general sales, ideally for Metroid.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:31

Yeah, I think that plays a part into early adopters, right, they're limited on what they can pick, so they have to play this big. You know nintendo game um, I think that's one thing. But yeah, you definitely got to play a hand in that massive install base already there for the switch because the series doesn't sell. You know, three million for the for a 2d game um, what was it like? Barely broke one million for metro prime remaster, right. So yeah, I mean like it's just kind of insane. And then you look at the sales of the old games, like oh, it's abysmal and it's depressing because like they're so good, yeah, pressing. But Nintendo has never pushed.

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:10

Metroid ever either. I don't remember being pushed Metroid as a kid.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:55:15

Everything else seems like, but I don't remember the push for metroid super metroid had a real push for super nintendo, but you know that came out in 94, right?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:55:27

yeah but I remember the commercials. I remember the marketing blitz. I remember getting my nintendo power in the mail with super metroid on the cover, the, the commercials were everywhere and it was very exciting because we had all grown up, of course, playing the original Metroid and it was so much better. It was truly super, it lived up to the name and it was really exciting. And I do remember Metroid Prime having a really cool commercial, the live action one, and it had a good marketing push. But I feel like after Prime 1, I don't really recall much of a push for 2, 3, trilogy. On the Wii we had Metroid, other M Samus Returns.

Mark Trobough: 1:56:23

I don't remember anything for that. Yeah, I think part of it, at least for prime one and two, is it's on the gamecube and then by the time you get to to echoes, halo on the xbox has really taken off, so it's it's on a not a good selling console as far as a market that's extremely competitive with other games that are just doing it better. But I mean, I still think it's it's crazy because the original metroid is the third best-selling metroid game and the only other two games that that surpassed sales is dread.

Mark Trobough: 1:56:47

And and the first prime game as far as good as like, uh, super metroid is. Uh. The original game on the snes sold a million more little over a million more copies than Super Metroid.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:57:00

That's the thing, guys. That's what's hard about this. I know one of our subjects is do you think Metroid matters as much as any other series to Nintendo? My answer is that I think it matters to Nintendo, but they need to find a way to make it matter to gamers Again. Of course Metroid matters to us and the people listening to the podcast, but we are the minority. The average Switch owner either doesn't know or is not interested in Metroid, and it's the marketing team's job to finally figure out a way to make the mainstream switch audience care about Metroid if it's ever going to grow and expand on the scale of Mario and Zelda.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:57:51

So I think Nintendo wants Metroid to enter its next growth phase, uh, to where it can become a a 10 million seller. I think that's the mark we're looking for. And I do expect nintendo to continue to release 2d metroids like dread. I think they kind of have to now because the sales dictate it and they do have shareholders and I we said it earlier I don't think their shareholders make the decisions at all, but I do think Nintendo does listen and the logical approach is actually to continue to make 2D Metroids, because they do sell well and because maybe those 2D Metroids can help propel your main series, which is the Prime series, similar to what they're doing with Zelda. We had the Link's Awakening awakening remake. Now we have zelda echoes. Those are both 2d top-down zeldas and those games do help support and grow the flagship zelda titles, which of course are the 3d open world zeldas. So I think they have a game plan. They just need to go out and execute it yeah, yeah, I think the other review scores, you know they're good exactly so what?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:59:07

what's the only thing that went wrong here? It's the marketing they.

Mark Trobough: 1:59:10

They gotta give people reasons to get excited about metroid, and only the hardcore, unfortunately that, and I think the other problem is there's massive gaps in a lot of these games. I mean, between it wasn't a big gap, only what? Three years. But you have one bad game and still another M and then the whole franchise just go on ice for the better part of a decade. Yeah, it's been over a decade, because that game came out in 2010. We had some remakes come out between them, but not a brand new game until dread 11, 11 years later, which is crazy. I think that you know hurt sales as well.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 1:59:46

It did, and we also went from super Nintendo to then GameCube. Yeah, completely yeah 64.

Mark Trobough: 1:59:54

Yeah, as another one.

Brandon Hurles: 1:59:58

Seven years, yeah, there is as another, what seven year gap. There was definitely a Metroid 64 in the works. It was yeah that's a bummer.

Mark Trobough: 2:00:07

I forgot about that. I mean, I guess it would have been exciting, cause once it was an eight year gap between Super Metroid and Prime 1 and Fusion that both came out the same year a 2D and a 3D, which I remember was cool, my first. I can't remember which, because Fusion and Prime were the first two games I played. I can't remember which one I actually played first, it's just been too long. But I do remember the first time playing Metroid Prime on the GameCube At the time that game blew my mind when I first saw it. That's really probably when I fell in love with that game or the whole series as a whole.

Brandon Hurles: 2:00:42

Yeah, I mean that was a mind-blowing jump for the series. I mean going 2D, I think it was for every one of those it's been so long.

Brandon Hurles: 2:00:48

For me it was when I played Ocarina of Time, I mean I guess Mario 64, technically, because I had that holy crap, this is insane moment, because I had that holy crap, this is insane moment. But once I played Ocarina of Time, man, it just changed everything for me. But Metroid was a big one too. That was crazy to see it that detailed. You know where you start to get the detail in there and the textures and stuff like that. So yeah, I mean you know, I guess we'll see what happens. But I think we've got to get Metroid 2 and 3 remastered out. I know that. Yeah, I mean you know.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:01:22

I guess we'll see what happens, but I think we've got to get Metroid 2 and 3 remastered out. I know that. Yeah, I think that's what I'm hoping for. Yeah, I would expect they get announced. Like, I would not be surprised if 2 gets positioned somewhere in this calendar year.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:34

I feel like it has to right. We're not getting a double pack with 2 and 3.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:01:37

I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:42

I don't expect a double pack, but maybe no. I hear some people talk about it, mainly just because of the time frame. If you expect prime 4 to come out next year, more than likely it's just lining up with the next switch successor, which we expect to get announced in september's director or roughly that time frame. I don't know if there's going to be a big enough window for them to have their own separate release at this point. I, from what I've seen and obviously it's all speculation that they get packaged together and while there's an upscale, it's not to the degree that you had with prime one. It's more of a. We're getting these games out as a a less, a minor upgrade, but we're going to double them together. Less money, but essentially they're they're out there to play. As far as bridging the gap leading up to prime four, yeah, that's kind of.

Brandon Hurles: 2:02:21

I heard they should have just did another trilogy. I feel like I mean, that's what we thought forever. Why didn't you just do that? There's not like you said there's not enough time for a two and three separate release, but I guess the idea is with the first one.

Mark Trobough: 2:02:34

It's like hey, we're putting a, it's like a test in the new engine, reinvigorate a few years out, bring back in new interest and kind of like trickled out essentially, is what I would think.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:02:45

Yeah, I could see. I do see that and how that could be beneficial, especially for Metroid.

Mark Trobough: 2:02:51

Yeah, because didn't they do that with the Wind Waker HD? They re-released it with an artillery motive, as in. They were testing other things as far as the engine goes for Breath of the Wild, if I'm not mistaken. I might be misremembering, or getting it wrong. I thought the game came out specifically because they wanted to test some new things on a game that they feel was going to be able to sell.

Brandon Hurles: 2:03:14

essentially, I'm not sure on that, but I could see it.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:03:19

Yeah, I think they did test out some gamepad features, because the gamepad was supposed to play a huge role in breath of the wild and they scrapped it right at the end because they didn't want the wii u version to be superior to the switch version.

Mark Trobough: 2:03:35

Yeah, even though I say it is yeah so I I just see it similar that way they were. They want to test other things? All right. Where's the interest? Obviously we know we teased you like seven years ago with this game and we've done nothing with it since. But that's just kind of where I felt with that game. And then, obviously, if we're going to just re-release the rest, less work. But here's the other games that you really want. As far as I'm concerned, echoes is the superior of that trilogy.

Brandon Hurles: 2:04:02

See, I'm all three. Man, I'm all three. I didn't care for the third game all that much, to be fair, I loved it. I loved it. I think the I liked the motion controls for that game. I think they were spot on, but I know I'm in the majority saying that I also think that Hunters is peak Metroid, so alright. So next we got. What consoles does everybody play the most? Or PC, what's everybody on the most?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:04:35

I'm probably switch, yeah, I'd say for me uh ps5 and switch would be tied. Uh, maybe ps5 a little bit more, but switch lately been getting some good time with that I play this guy a lot too yeah, I got my.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:04:50

I got my analog pocket as well. I love that, um, but ps5 and switch, I guess you could say. And then steam and xbox will probably be tied after that. But I, I thought about it. I'm like you know, lately it feels like it's been more ps5, switch and then the super nintendo and nintendo. I've been playing my analog nt and my super nt with all these like retrospectives I've been doing on my channel like playing the msu one, super nintendo games and like that's been a great time. So my mainstays are ps5 and switch and then after that it could be, it could be anything, because I mean I'm like playing, playing everything, man, yeah it just depends, I think for me, that's what it is for me to switch ps5.

Mark Trobough: 2:05:39

Yeah, I think I'm a little bit biased. I I my switch is probably number three of the three main consoles that I play, and it's really only when I'm playing nintendo games, when I definitely when I get the itch for it. The second is ps5, but I really only play it for the playstation console exclusives for the most part, and obviously by a mile mile. It's my PC, especially once I got it upgraded, I guess six, seven months ago or something like that. What do you have? A 4070? Yeah, I think that's what I ended up getting, nice, but I eventually had a 1060 Ti before that. It was getting old.

Mark Trobough: 2:06:15

But I prefer anything that's cross-platform. I just prefer to play on pc. I think it just the hardware. It performs better on pc for for a lot of games and then for the switch and the ps5. I play for cons or for exclusives on the consoles and then, um, if there is an xbox game that I want to play there hasn't been recently obviously I can play it on pc. Either it's been ported to steam or one of the other platforms or you can get the uh, their, their game passes on pc as well yeah, I have the I've game pass ultimate I.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:06:49

I got it stacked for years back when you used to be able to get it for like a yeah, very low price, uh I missed that before microsoft patched it. I guess you could say but uh, uh, I'm with you on that. Like I do, prefer to play actually on pc more than my actual xbox. For that reason because the pc has better hardware yeah, it's really good that and exclusives too, like you guys know.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:07:19

Obviously, when a game comes out on ps5 and switch, especially these days, it's like you got to look first, see how the performance is. You know, if you haven't bought the game yet, you might be it might be a good idea. I always say to check youtube yeah if anyone's done a performance evaluation like Digital Foundry or something, and just make sure the Switch version is capable of at least having a decent frame rate before you get that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:07:47

There's like series for me where it's like I want to grab the Switch version of it, like things like Ys would be one. Like those JRPGs where I just it feels like I have to play it on Nintendo hardware, I don't know what, where I just it feels like I have to play it on the center of hardware I don't know what it is, but it's like I'm stuck to that. Plus, games like that I want to be able to play in handheld mode. I have a PlayStation portal. It's a toss up whether it wants to work correctly or not. I'm, you know, hardwired in right next to it. Everything that you got to do. I've deep-dived Reddit and done all the things they said, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Same here, same results. Man, yeah, it's a bummer.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:27

Yeah, I'm actually. That brings up an interesting point, because obviously I still prefer games like for the Tales, games that I need to get back into playing those Ideally streaming, but that's been an impossibility here recently. Like, if I get a game, I'll prefer to buy it on Steam, obviously, but it's all digital. That's what PC is. But if there's a game that I do want to buy physical, I'll usually buy it used because it's cheaper. But I'll buy it either on like if it's on a Switch or on one of my other consoles, so I it's on a switch or on one of my other consoles, so I can have it physical at the very least, even though I'm paying more than I should like.

Brandon Hurles: 2:09:02

If it's a game I like and I want it physical, I will then go buy physical on another console as well well, I mean, it's like we go back and you know, buy some of us do go back and buy like retro games that sometimes it might be more expensive and more than we want to pay. But a lot of those jrpgs, for example, if you went back and were trying to buy all the trails games good freaking luck man, those psp games no thanks on the prices, because I was gonna buy all those at one point. And it's just I've gotten to the point where I'm like pretty okay with not spending a bunch of money on retro games. Physically, um, I'll always hunt down deals, but like I'm not going to pay out 400 anymore for you know, I'm just not going to do it anymore. It's gotten old, it's stale for me. Some people still get excited about paying those high prices. I sure don't. So that's just me yeah, I do not.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:09:53

All the games I have are the games that I bought when I was like in high school. Honestly, like I, I have, I think, 300 nes games up behind me, at least 100 super games, but they're all really good games yeah and it goes for all the games that I have. I just I didn't sell them, I didn't trade them.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:10:12

In some of these games I got at funko land back in the day you know before gamestop bottom and they used to have a printout that they had, uh, you know, right at the cashier at the checkout, and I kid you not, there were so many games that were on this printout of used game prices yeah just like 49 cents 79 it was crazy I remember when, yeah, our funko lane was shutting down that was about 30 minutes from me they had a massive sale.

Brandon Hurles: 2:10:43

Boy, do I regret not buying a bunch of games at that point in time because, my god, I remember seeing like earthbound was like I don't know. It was so kind of expensive at the time, but not not what it is now, just a bunch of stuff. And then I remember seeing Earthbound discounted in bins. I forget what it was, but like $20 or something. You know Something like that. It might have been even cheaper, I don't remember. But I remember seeing Atari Jaguars discounted at my Radio Shack, turbografx, turbo Express, which is the last thing I ever paid out for because it was something I've wanted since I was a kid the handheld yeah, yeah, I got it back here that's awesome.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:11:28

My, my friend that modded the switch, he a couple years ago, when we're working together. He's like he said, steve, do you know where I can source a turbo express? I'm like I I don't off the top of my head. Man, I said, but do we go? Look around? He was like in love with the turbo express idea. Yeah, and the tv tuner. There's a tv tuner that you can get for it too, right?

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:50

wow, yours looks great let's get the right back there oh nice man, that's so cool.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:11:58

Yeah, that's a. That's a nice piece of portable hardware for sure oh yeah yeah, it's definitely cool.

Brandon Hurles: 2:12:04

There's definitely a lot of regrets of that stuff. You, you can't get held up on that. I've. I kick myself all the time with some of those prices now, but I just I've gotten to the point where I just don't care, like I'll pass over all that. I got really excited about it again during like around the end of 2020. I got kind of crazy with it, but then the prices started to spike up, you know, early 2020. Oh yeah, it just went absurd prices and I got quickly not excited about the prices anymore. So it's fun to chase video games and I love to go game hunting and stuff like that. But you really don't, you're not going to ever find those deals like at a you at a used game store where they know what they have and they're there to stay in business, so they're going to sell it for what it's going for.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:12:52

Um, it's, it's just not the same, it's not, it's not what it used to be so and goodwill goodwill doesn't have games anymore, like, like they do, but it's like online same it's not. It's not what it used to be. So and goodwill goodwill doesn't have games anymore like, like they do, but online.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:13:03

Yeah, it's like connect sports, you know, just total trash yeah and all their games now that, yeah, they, they either sell them online or they send them to the. There's one location in the us that's a video game distribution like uh goodwill, so you don't find them there, and so really your only chance is if you can get lucky at a garage sale yeah, that's it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:27

I mean that's that's the only thing you can. Maybe a flea market. You find an old gentleman that doesn't know what he has type of deal where you kind of feel a little scummy about it. But you're like exactly, yeah, that's.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:13:42

The thing is that it's just not like it used to be and I'm happy that I have the games I had, that I have and I didn't sell them because I know if I did I would want to buy them back. And I see just how this, the retro market, has expanded and the pricing is just insane and it's like man, I feel bad because it's. I know it's hard to for new collectors to even try and get involved and see what some of these past games were all about. It's really expensive to buy into that when you don't, when you don't even know.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:17

Yeah, yeah, and Nintendo and some of these companies don't, when you don't even know. Yeah, yeah, and in nintendo and some of these companies don't give you ways to access these games legally we talked pokemon before like why is pokemon not on the e-shop or nintendo switch online? It's a mystery. You know there could be a lot of things, but it's like what is going on here? People want to go back and play these games more than ever and you don't give them a way to play the game legally.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:41

Yeah, no, I know I've never been one, but I know we talked about it before. It's like I didn't. Until we brought up I didn't even know that the pcfx was even a thing at one point, just because it's not a, the retro, for the most part it's not a thing. But it's like I'm willing to hunt down these because there's a, an ip on it that I really want to pay, uh, play essentially, uh, yeah, so I I used to be into anime a lot more when I was definitely younger, but I'm still into it passively. But it's like, it's like a, like a handful of tension movie games. If you ever watched it was on toonami back in the day, if you ever watched it. But I was like there's games on this on the fx. I'm like I'm gonna buy these games in in the FX for this one game so I can play it, at least say that I played it and then be somewhat content with my life.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:23

The problem is, Mark, you have to remember that these are text heavy games and you can't play them that way. But I did show you the option on the PC FX. There's a mod for it to be able to play on the. English, transpac. The only, the only option is I just need to learn Japanese yeah, there's that too, but some of this is like but even if I can't read it, I just want these games.

Mark Trobough: 2:15:45

I want to have a piece of an IP that I really like and stuff like that, especially how it shaped my I don't want to say childhood, but, like you know, especially like late into my teens, early in my 20s and stuff like that and just a series that I'm really into. But outside of that I'm really into, but outside of that I'm not into. Big on collecting. It would be nice to have a lot of these older games, especially on hard-to-come consoles. Games and consoles are just ridiculously expensive but there's just a way for them to get ported digitally Legally at the very least, outside of just using emulators and pirating illegally, essentially.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:19

We of just you know, using emulators and and pirating and illegally, essentially because, yeah, we're willing to pay for these games or we are at a reasonable price yeah, at a reasonable price, um, and they don't give us the option to pay.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:16:29

So exactly my point. Yeah, if you don't give me a way to play it, an option to pay you, then I'm gonna find a way to play it. I prefer not to go that route, but I will because I want to play it. I'd rather give you money, but you know you guys got to figure that out.

Mark Trobough: 2:16:45

The video game industry as a whole has got to figure out game preservation there's a lot of games that have just been kind of tossed to the wayside and forgotten about yeah, lost of time and they will be lost to time, because when I'm gone, when you guys are gone, no one's gonna know what these games are.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:17:00

No, I mean the.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:01

The media that they're printed on only has x amount of time. You know, when it comes to dvds or cartridges, like eventually the hardware is just gonna stop working yeah, that is true yep, yep, 100.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:13

All right, so we're going to zoom over to the big news real quick and kind of go over all that. Um, well, it's been super long on on these topics but we got. Uh, one of the biggest things this week is the is that bungie laid off 17 percent of their staff and they have, uh, restructures development. They're restructuring their development strategy. Um, so this is 220 employees. Uh, I can't say I'm like a super surprised because Bungie again is like one of those companies that changed once they left making Halo essentially, yeah, but yeah, 220 employees, 17 percent of its workforce. We see that Pete Parsons is showing off his fancy multi-million dollar car that he bought, apparently trying to pull that back up too. But there were reports that he was showing it off days before this announcement came out and I have seen a bunch of stuff pop up on X about this, like people just going off.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:18:19

I mean, I actually screenshot one of these tweets in case um on X about this.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:18:23

Like people just going off I mean, I actually screenshot one of these tweets in case we were going to talk about. Oh, yeah, yeah, if you want, I can read this. Yeah, absolutely so, they said. An ex employee of Bungie who was laid off calls on Bungie CEO, pete Parsons, to step down. Also says he's a liar and a thief and claims this isn't on sony but bungie's leadership. Says pete also supposedly bought a whopping 24 vehicles from a single auction site since the acquisition closed in july 2022, totaling $2,409,550 in cost, presumably part funded, but by what Liana refers to as, quote, the giant Sony payout. And then, of course, two days later, lays off a ton of the staff and I did hear that part too, where I guess I think it was earlier this week he asked some employees if they want to check out his two new cars that he got. So I knew about the two new cars. I learned about the 24 cars in what sounds like the last 24 months. It says since july 2022. That's a car a month.

Brandon Hurles: 2:19:44

That's in god. That's insane. That's crazy, that's absurd. That's unnecessary stuff like that. He should not be making enough money to buy 24 classic cars and then however many you said, in one auction. It's just tone deaf.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:19:59

You know what this is classic Western CEO behavior.

Brandon Hurles: 2:20:04

It 100% is. This is not something you see happening with Japanese studios ever.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:20:09

Because in Japanese studios the figureheads would take a pay cut and say pay me less, we keep the employees. And they literally do that. It's such a different way of life. You know, I'm saying like I have a lot of respect for how they do things over there, and I wish we were more like that here. Well, I'm looking.

Mark Trobough: 2:20:34

No, I'm just saying he's like I want make that 24, so 200 of you just need to lose your job. I need the Perrys.

Brandon Hurles: 2:20:43

I mean, I just don't know where the mindset comes from. So I'm looking at a tweet on here.

Brandon Hurles: 2:20:47

If you go on X and just type in Pete Parsons, the stuff that you see is unbelievable, oh yeah, but I've been seeing tweets constantly going off. People are very upset about the jobs lost and I'm seeing a lot of people who lost their jobs, you know, speak out. So there's this uh one, I think her name's sam bartley. Uh, she tweeted out she's a coward. Uh, you did this, you chose this. I'm already listed as do not work with and I don't care anymore. You lied to my face, straight to it. You also invited me to come see your new cars two days before you laid me off. Uh, and yeah, he blocked this, this woman.

Brandon Hurles: 2:21:23

So I, I just think it's mind-blowing. There's somebody made this meme of uh, pete laying down there with a bunch of bunch of cars and then putting the destiny. I put it there in the um, in the notes, but somebody the destiny wiki, like changed his stuff, turn him into a clown. I just it's absurd, man, I think it's crazy. I, you know, I hope the people that lost their jobs are able to uh pick up and and find other work, but it's like who would want to stay in the games industry? That's where I'm at, like I don't know who would want

Brandon Hurles: 2:22:00

to stay just pushing people out and people are going to college and paying thousands of dollars to do this. You know, and it's just and it's all for passion, not, mark, I think I told you last week, nobody really getting gets in the video games is just like a career, like they're usually pretty passionate about games. Like if they're getting into video games is just like a career. They're usually pretty passionate about games. Like, if they're getting into video games. You have to go out of your way to get into video games realistically, unless it's in the marketing side or something like that. But if you're developing games you have to care to some degree.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:22:32

It's like being a teacher you know you're not going to get rich being a teacher. In some states it's worse than others. Arizona is one of the worst paying states. We're on the bottom five in the US.

Mark Trobough: 2:22:51

You could make more money working at a lot of places, but instead you want to become a teacher and you go to school and you pay all this money to the college only to become a teacher and you're you're paying student debt for probably 30 years yeah you know like you don't get in it to become rich, just like video games yeah, yeah, you do it because it's passion, yeah, and you know making money is a benefit essentially, uh, but I mean as far as it's stuff with bungie and I think they've just fumbled the ball. As far as destiny and destiny 2 are concerned, uh, do you think, uh, now that the first descendants come out it's been out for for a few weeks now you think a lot of people are going to transition from destiny 2, which I think is just a whole mess, to the first descendant?

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:39

I'm seeing that already, based on like my little bit of time here this past week on twitch, a lot of people streaming that game because you can definitely tell me around it.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:48

It's the same inspiration, but I mean it's a new take. It's not a convoluted mess, it's. It's another game made by a korean developer. So if you want, uh, some titillation in your female characters, it's definitely you're able to buy into it, I mean it's a free-to-play game so you can hop in and play it. And if these, these uh cosmetics are there, they're expensive, but I mean it's you know I can't believe it's a free-to-play game, so it's.

Game Junction: 2:24:12

I thought it was a good way to the way that, the way that you said, if you look at some of the costumes.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:17

You go into that game and look at the costumes and tell me, that's not a perfect explanation for, yeah, I thought it was a good descriptor it was pretty good.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:25

I just never heard anybody say that. The titillation on those characters I've heard it.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:24:29

I haven't heard it in a long time, so that was actually funny. It just came to my mind thrown around that much anymore.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:36

No, yeah, bring it back I think we are.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:40

We're all on the same page. This is absurd, though, and um it's unfortunate.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:24:44

I mean truly unfortunate, but it just keeps happening.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:47

Yeah, it's just one thing after another with playoffs yeah, but if you want to support an industry that, at the very least, hasn't yet to get super corrupt, it's like oh, it's a same type of game, but bungie doesn't care about the players nor the developers, why not go to a different game that, at the very least, doesn't have that, that baggage behind it, if you actually have morals and you just don't care about the game itself?

Brandon Hurles: 2:25:08

yeah, yep yeah, I do you think he's gonna step down? Do you think they're gonna make him step down?

Mark Trobough: 2:25:15

I don't think he's gonna step down on his own. I think if he does, it's because he's forced to behind the scenes.

Brandon Hurles: 2:25:19

Well, I mean, yeah, investors board shares people. I mean, do you think that? Because the outcry for it is insane on twitter, x, whatever, and we see people caving in these companies cave into this out. They do all the time.

Mark Trobough: 2:25:36

You see it all the time they'd have to see it and their stock take negative hit for them to actually really realistically do anything.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:25:44

I think they need to see more to like yeah, it has got to be something more serious, I think there. Yeah, does this appear that he's completely tone deaf? Yeah, you know, but there are a lot of the things that all the words people are using to describe him is pretty typical for a lot of CEOs. Yeah, honestly, it is so unless he's doing something that is, you know, really out of line. I guess you could say something that yeah, I will get canceled for hate using that word. I hate the whole cancel stuff. We did too.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:26:25

You know what I'm saying, like, if it's something like that, then yeah, they'll get rid of them. Who? Who was it Over there at Activision? Oh yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:38

What's his name?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:26:40

I don't know why I can't think of it we forgot about him. We just talked about it Kind of glad though. Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying. He was in the news non-stop at that point and you know if I think, if it reached maybe a scale like that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:59

Yeah, yeah, it would have to be something more and I'm sure there's possibly something there based on his buying habits.

Mark Trobough: 2:27:07

Yeah, Were you talking about what's it, bobby Kotick?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:27:11

Yeah, kotick, or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:27:17

Yep. Well, we have some lighter news. We got a new mask. Same task. You guys know what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, this is. This is shocking. This happened the next day after the podcast last week. I was kind of mad because I was like, ah, it's like a whole week away before you talk about it oh just barely missed it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:27:35

Um no, this was. This is unexpected, to say the least. Robert Downey Jr talked about on Joe Rogan podcast how he was never going to be in any MCU stuff again. I don't know if any of you guys have seen that or anybody watching or listening, but and that happens quite frequently somebody says they're not doing something again and it happens. So you know, the money speaks Money talks.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:04

Would this anything happen with Wolverine? Essentially, it's what they led us to believe.

Brandon Hurles: 2:28:09

Yeah, and he said that too. He wasn't going to be playing Wolverine again. It was over done Lo and behold.

Brandon Hurles: 2:28:16

Yeah, it's interesting, though that he's playing dr doom now. There could be a lot of there's a lot of speculation around this. Obviously, um could be anywhere. I don't keep up the comic books anymore. It used to be a weekly reader, but it's been since, I think probably 2018 or so, when I kind of gave up on. It was too many, too many books coming out every week and it got convoluted. You had to read this four issue mini series that connected to this main series that was going on, but there's also 16 other ones that you can read that are all attached to the same, convoluted, like the mcu has got.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:28:53

That's yeah, what it is. They want you to buy everything. Yeah, to get the full story, you got to get all the DLC, and that's basically what it is. But for for for books, for comic books, you want the whole story. You got to get all this. We'll give you the foundation, but you want to know what happens here by this.

Brandon Hurles: 2:29:11

By this, by this, I mean, yeah, classic, classic man, mm hmm, I know, I remember there was one week when I was right at the end and I was about done reading. There were 12 books that came out that week that were all connected to the same event that was currently happening in the comic book. So if you wanted everything and you wanted to see all sides of what was going on with everybody, you had to pick up all those books and it got to be too much. But anyway, that's besides the point. I don't know what this is coming from exactly. There's a bunch of stuff out there. Somebody was commenting at the beginning of the podcast too about it but the one thing I saw was that there was one of the Earths in the multiverse where Tony Stark is Doctor Doom. They take the collars of Iron man and mix it with Dr Doom, and that's what he looked like.

Mark Trobough: 2:30:03

So yeah, that's what I've heard some people. Unless this is going to make sense in story, why Robert Downey Jr is coming back to cast him. Like the criticism of like why cast him? Unless it makes sense in the story that his character is coming back in some way, why not cast a new actor? Cause it would be kind of weird if if uh, I aren't the like an Ironman or the the ultimate for Tony Stark, like it doesn't in-story make sense, Then why recast him to do somebody else in the MCU?

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:31

It's kind of kind of weird, Cause you think of him as Ironman yeah, and then, like traditionally, dr doom is his ultimate foe, you know um. So like that's kind of how it always was. I don't know. Do you remember the iron man animated series you review?

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:47

where he turned into iron man with his um briefcase, dropped the briefcase on the ground and it turned him into iron man, uh, but it was always like dr doom centric, so like I kind of grew up with doc, because my dad was in the comic book stuff growing up. So it was always like Dr Doom centric. So like I kind of grew up with Doc, because my dad was in the comic book stuff growing up so it was always around me and Dr Doom was traditionally his ultimate foe. So I don't know, it's definitely interesting. I was like looking on here and it says that there's apparently Hold on, let me read this If you let Doctor Doom simply be evil Tony Stark that is somehow now going by Victor Von Doom in another universe. That seems like a disservice to the original character, I don't know. So they're just actually pulling up an analysis.

Mark Trobough: 2:31:36

Yeah, but isn't the MCU its own timeline? It's doing its own thing outside of the't. The mcu its own timeline? It's not really it's. It's doing its own thing outside of the comics it's what I was always like to believe, so you could. You could do that, take inspiration from something else, but you're not beholden to what the comics do no, I one arm's saying they could just be doing their own thing.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:53

You know so I I'm sure they took inspiration from some of this, but but yeah, it could just be like a new thing. It's definitely interesting.

Mark Trobough: 2:32:01

Or they're desperate and they need to bring it back as an actor, so like we're going to find a way to bring him back.

Brandon Hurles: 2:32:05

You know that they, they had to, they had to be. You know it sucks is well, I guess it doesn't really suck, but this got announced's two days exactly after Deadpool Wolverine came out, so immediately all the conversation around that movie halted and I haven't heard one person talk about it since. I haven't seen anything. Personally, I haven't seen one single thing since that. But that weekend, the two days before, that's like all I was seeing. So I don't know. I think that's kind of interesting. I was like why are you overshadowing your new movie?

Mark Trobough: 2:32:40

Why didn't you step this out at least a week later? I guess if they wanted to do it at the San Diego Comic Con, it had to be done now, which is probably what they wanted to do. So it's just a bad time. I think the timing's just terrible.

Brandon Hurles: 2:32:53

Yes, it seems like kind of rough timing now.

Mark Trobough: 2:33:04

It's like you want the discussion to be around the new movie, but that movie's already sold gangbusters, I think it was the.

Brandon Hurles: 2:33:07

It's the biggest opening weekend movie ever now, yeah, I missed the opening weekend, which was, unfortunate, the the biggest ever. That's crazy. So I mean, I don't know, that movie's good, um, are you still planning on seeing it?

Mark Trobough: 2:33:18

I'm trying to this week I want to do this week. I worked late most of the week, for the most part. I know I need to watch it. We were going to try to do a movie on it and I had to work all weekend. It's one of those things we talk about sometimes.

Brandon Hurles: 2:33:34

Life just gets in the way of what you want to do sometimes and then also the Fantastic Four first steps, which has mostly also gotten overshadowed. But did you guys see that announcement as well?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:33:47

Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 2:33:49

I saw it a few hours ago.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:33:50

Sounds like a reboot, right First steps and trying to distance themselves from the other Fantastic Fours so they can actually make a new series and release multiple movies. Movie, yeah, exactly can't blame them.

Brandon Hurles: 2:34:09

Do you think they can do this one right? Because the last attempt oh my god, that was worse than the other two movies. Yeah which were like kind of cheesy fun in my opinion, like I remember liking them and I didn't know that other people didn't like them. That's like when those two first came out. But they're not good, but they're kind of like cheesy fun movies. That last one that came out was god awful, absolute dumpster fire.

Mark Trobough: 2:34:36

So Apparently, they just struggle with Fantastic Four. When it comes to the big screen, it sucks because I love the Fantastic Four.

Brandon Hurles: 2:34:44

I think they're great. I always read the Thang comics and all the Fantastic Four stuff. It was one I was super attached to as a kid. I thought it was great, but I don't know what's gone wrong. So we've also got Suda51, and Shinji Mikami are interested in making a Killer7 complete edition and sequel. Mark, you probably haven't played Killer7, right on the GameCube?

Mark Trobough: 2:35:09

No, I haven't. It definitely wouldn't have been a game I would have been allowed to play back then.

Brandon Hurles: 2:35:16

Have you played Killer7, Steve, oh yeah.

Speaker 5: 2:35:22

Oh, yeah, about when it came out, it was part of it was part of the capcom five.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:35:25

Do you guys remember that? Yeah, I remember. Yeah, that was a big deal. Yeah, the five exclusives for gamecube. That didn't end up being exclusive. Nope, they sure didn't. It was what? Uh? Pn03?

Brandon Hurles: 2:35:40

yeah, resident evil 4 beautiful joe, that was a good game, oh yeah very good game killer 7 and then um one of them got, one of them got canceled yeah, that that was the only only ones in the that was supposed to be a part of that five. Um. And then we quickly saw that Resident Evil wasn't exclusive, and then it went on every platform ever.

Mark Trobough: 2:36:05

They probably saw it like we're not going to make any money if this stays on GameCube.

Brandon Hurles: 2:36:08

Well, the GameCube didn't sell either. It's probably part of the problem, but it was so good. It may be my favorite console ever. It may very well be my favorite console ever. May very well be my favorite console ever. It was good. Yeah, I love that. I love that console. I also didn't know for like ever that the gamecube didn't sell, but uh, it was popular around me. So, like I, I just didn't know.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:36:32

But we had it. A ton of us had it. In high school we would play, obviously you know, mario kart and smash brothers. All the time we played a ton of monkey ball ton of rock. Growing up, love it yeah, great, great console yeah, for sure first one I camped out for really yep I can't say I've ever done that.

Mark Trobough: 2:36:54

I, by the time I actually had money. That just wasn't a thing anymore.

Brandon Hurles: 2:36:58

I camped out for my Series X the pre-order day, there was me and one other person. Hold on, let me tell this story real quick. So there was me and one other person. This was to pre-order, that's it, not to get the console. And then, the day of to pick up the consoles, only two consoles came in in and there was a long line going all the way four stores down two consoles, mine and one other guys, the mean looks. I got the fact that one of the employees wanted to walk me out to my car. People were pissed. People were, and because they waited in line for hours and hours and hours. But they didn't wait in line for the pre-order day, they went in line to just come and get it.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:37:39

So yeah, I've seen that happen since gamecube. I camped out for the cube, uh, the wii, the ds, the, even the wii u, and obviously I didn't need to, but we didn't know that when it came out right I was the one person for the wii u at my game sub.

Brandon Hurles: 2:37:59

I was the only one there to to pre-order it. It's crazy so I really stay nobody else there for it a lot of good times.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:38:06

I always meet a lot of great people camping out for systems. You know you're. You're there all night. Like for the wii, we got there friday night and the console, of course, came out sunday morning. So we were there for a couple of days. We had a projector, we had a gamecube on best buys wall. That's cool. Yeah, like we had a really really good setup but made a lot of friends.

Brandon Hurles: 2:38:31

It's always a good time I mean I even did with the series x. Like there are people you know I was out there talking to and stuff, and um, like there was the, the other person that came out, it was a family, so there was four of them and I mean that's cool. Those are really good memories that you'll never forget. You know, that's the fun, that's the best part of it, right I think that's better than getting the console itself they are.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:38:54

I met so many families that legit brought tents and you know, like the sleeping bags, like, like they are really truly going out in the woods camping yeah yeah, not like urban city camping and it was just fun to meet the families too, because you could tell, especially with some of the younger kids, that they were so excited to be doing this and that you know their parents actually took them to camp out of line for a new system. I mean, you could really tell that it was a special moment for a lot of people and the heights through the roof like people are very excited, so it's always good time, a lot of good energy yeah, do you remember the?

Brandon Hurles: 2:39:34

you know people camping out for the star Wars movies, the prequel trilogy. Yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:39:38

Remember that. Yeah, oh my God, the lines on the news so I'm like 45 minutes from the city and the lines that we would see on our local news. I didn't get to do that, I was too young. I got to see the third movie the day it came out and then I saw all of them in the theater but it wasn't like a I would have been allowed to go wait in line type of deal. You know I wasn't old enough yet. Um, I'm trying to think what movie I saw. I know for sure the first movie. I remember seeing. The lines on the news in the city were absurd. And same thing People at the tents, tents all the whole night bringing all their stuff out, lightsaber, battles going on.

Brandon Hurles: 2:40:24

Yeah, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Man, it's just, I, I love, uh, I love that stuff and that is something that is it's gone forever, realistically, I mean people are just buying online, I know.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:40:35

and the midnight launches, I mean I don't know about you guys, but there's none here. There's none.

Brandon Hurles: 2:40:42

In Arizona the midnight launches are. The GameStop will call and ask me hey, would you like to pick this up? At nine o'clock? We're doing a release party and their release party is just people coming in there to get the game at nine o'clock the night before.

Brandon Hurles: 2:40:56

And they do that for, like the bigger stuff. They'll call me. They've done it quite a few times and I've gone and done that. But yeah, the midnight launch stuff is gone. The last thing I remember doing that for was call of duty. Uh, world war two, I think, is the last one I remember doing that for. So that's, but it's been a while. Yeah, I miss this.

Mark Trobough: 2:41:18

One times the end of an era. Yeah, that era is over, because digital has taken over.

Brandon Hurles: 2:41:25

Yeah, it definitely has. So we've also got the. This one kind of in one way sort of makes me mad. But the PSVR 2 sales so I'm sure you guys have seen the tweets and stuff going out all week mark. We talked, we were literally talking about this last week. Yeah, we were, um, talking about the psvr2 and then right after that I started sending you. I was like, hey look, this is 350 right here, 400 for the bundled version, and you know it's like quite a bit off because it's 549 msrp for the standard and then 600 for the bundled version. So that's a that's a lot of money off. And this, this reminds me of when they cut the price on the 3ds. You remember that? Yeah, because I bought it day one ambassador, ambassador, uh, program or whatever you got my ambassador games yeah, those uh, there's three ds's with those games on are worth worth good bit of money.

Brandon Hurles: 2:42:22

I, I did that too, um, but yeah, I I think this is a great thing for this, but I still think it's kind of dead in the water. What irritates me is that look what happened when they cut the price and and sold it for a decent price, because you have to either at least now you have to either buy a PS5, $500 right there to be able to even play this unit that costs another $550, so you're $1,000, not even including tax well over $1,000 or PC. So now you still have to have another thing to play this. It's not a wireless unit, so it's a lot of money to get into this.

Brandon Hurles: 2:43:03

Do I love mine? I love it, it's great, it's powerful. There's no games. That's the problem, right? So it's going to be a Vita all over again, where third-party developers are keeping it alive, indies are keeping it alive. You saw limited run games came out of the vita. You know I I bought their first game when it went up for pre-order, so I it's. I don't know. Do you think this will change anything for the psvr2 as far as playstation first party, any of that?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:43:35

no, unfortunately, because I I own a psvr too. I bought it day one and, no, I don't think it's going to change anything. I think it's too late as well. I really do. I mean, we're ps5 came out in 2020, 20 yeah, we're four years in. We're talking about the ps5 pro. If you started developing a game today, how many years is it going to take? Yeah, right, yeah, what would I do think and I kind of thought about this earlier is that, as you guys know, the psvr2 pc adapter is supposed to come out on the 7th and still nobody's selling it, which is wild. But I've looked everywhere.

Brandon Hurles: 2:44:22

Everyone else has isn't it only being sold on the PlayStation store, or mine?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:44:27

now. So well, it is on there it's supposed to be. It's not yet. Yeah, there's not even a placeholder listing, but the blog says you can buy a PlayStation direct and select retailers okay doesn't say which ones they are. The only one who has a placeholder up is GameStop. It says coming soon. Meanwhile, gamestop Canada is already selling it and it's in people's hands.

Brandon Hurles: 2:44:52

So it's really weird. I saw a video on it already.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:44:54

I did too. Yeah, I saw the same one. Here's what I think, guys. So I'm going to get the vr pc uh vr adapter, because I I do want to obviously play games. Uh, pick up games on steam. There there's a lot of great games you can get for a great deal.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:45:12

But, as we know, psvr 2 is going to be missing a lot of its key features like headband, vibration, eye tracking, adaptive triggers, haptic feedback and they're saying hdr, but some games will have hdr, but you know, the messaging there is a little weird too. So what I could see happening is, if it sells enough, then you take these pc vr games that are already out. Yep, add those features, release it on psvr2. That's how the psvr2 can get more games. If all you got to do, it would be like taking a ps4 game and releasing it on ps5 and taking advantage of the dual sense controller. Yeah, I look at it that way, and that's easy money for the developer. So, depending on how hard it is which I don't think it would be that hard I think that's how they. That's how the psVR 2 gets more games. I don't think Sony is going to support it. I really don't. Yeah, you know, it is what it is right. We got some good games. We got the Resident Evil games, we got Gran Turismo, which is so cool.

Brandon Hurles: 2:46:31

That's a VR game. I said that that's the best experience.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:46:34

It's not even you know, it's so cool. I had my brother come over and play it and he was just like, oh my God this is insane.

Brandon Hurles: 2:46:41

Did you get the bundled version too with Call of the Mountain? Yeah, yeah, I don't feel like it's that great. It's certainly not a VR headset seller. No, it's fine, but it's not. It feels like a tech demo.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:46:56

It does. Yeah, gran Turismo feels like a tech demo, it does. And yeah, gran turismo, to me, is the flagship. Like vr experience, right, it's so cool, but I don't know if, like horizon, I think they had the right idea in mind for a console or, you know, not a console but an extremely expensive accessory to be the pack-in title, versus a racing game which doesn't appeal to everybody, no matter how great of a reputation the gran turismo series has. Yeah, so I I see what they tried to do there. But, you know, it sounds like you guys are in agreement too that, uh, gran turismo 7 is the best experience and resident evil is a damn good one too, but it wasn't there at launch yeah

Brandon Hurles: 2:47:44

yeah, I 100 gran turismo. I told mark that last week that's still the best thing on it. Um, and then, yeah, prison evil is good, lord man, so immersive with that. It's an experience. It's like truly an experience that even like non horror fans should at least check out. But yeah, I love that. I don't think it's going to change any first party stuff either, just like the Vita. I feel like it's kind of dead in the water for them, and when they abandon something they abandon it completely.

Mark Trobough: 2:48:16

Oh yeah, nothing else for it I guess I kind of have more of a pessimistic view on this. This seems like, uh, we're done with it. We're cutting it, probably losing money in the process, and we're just trying to recoup some of our losses as we empty out our inventory I think you're right, this is what it feels like to me, because I mean you can't, they can't cut two hundred dollars off and tell me they're not not losing money on these sales.

Brandon Hurles: 2:48:37

Yeah if I remember seeing correctly, like they're not making much money from these headsets to begin with, if I remember seeing correctly, like it's something like 50 bucks or something. Uh, so they're not making, they're really not making money off the headsets like that. Um, so I don't know, I guess we'll see. We'll definitely be staying tuned to it, see if anything happens. But I I don't think it's going to.

Mark Trobough: 2:48:59

I think there's just them just emptying the inventory because it's obviously at the 550, it's not selling. I think there's just better vr headsets out there if you're going to get into it yeah, and I don't think we're going to get a vr3.

Brandon Hurles: 2:49:13

No, no I don't see it happening.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:49:14

I don't I don't see that happening with the ps6. I really don't. I don, I don't think. I think the trust is gone. It's gone for me as far as this is concerned, because I don't think they would support it. I've already seen it happen twice and we've seen it happen also with Vita. Yeah, but like you guys said, I still appreciate what it does have to offer.

Brandon Hurles: 2:49:36

Yeah, yeah, I think it's an excellent headset, it's a great headset, but that's not the problem. You know the headset the hardware is not the problem.

Mark Trobough: 2:49:44

But I just think that the I just want to say I just think it's the VR market is on the PC and it's just it's too expensive to add on for most people that are going to be into consoles, met going to be into consoles, meta quest has the market by the. You know. Yeah, like the market's dominated in one area it's kind of like handheld, like sony or microsoft could dabble into it. But it's really hard to break into a market kind of like with nintendo, who's just dominated handhelds for the better part of what? 30, 40 years at this point, yeah, yeah, yeah, like it's like they've been the backbone for it. So yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:50:22

And then I wanted to shout out that Johnny is in here and came popped in the chat so just want to say hello to you, didn't? It wasn't ignoring the chat there, just did not see that we had a bunch flood in. So he was mentioning about the new Dragon Ball game I assume he's talking about Sparking Zero and then what else we got? Oh, I wanted to mention before the last topic the ROMhackingnet stuff, since you sent that to me Because I'm still seeing stuff about it. But yeah, they're ceasing operation.

Brandon Hurles: 2:51:03

This says the website has been a nexus for fan translation and ROM hacking for many years. So that was actually the very first thing I ever went to this website for was for Phantasy Star. Oh, what's the one? No, no, it was an early game that never came out over here. Ok, I can't even remember it was. I think, oh, it was a game gear game. It was a game gear, yeah. So I went to that website for fan translation that there's a few of them out there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:51:34

The website definitely was like a great source for getting ROMs or fan translations, like I went there for many Dragon Ball games on the Famicom. I went there for those. There was a bunch, especially RPGs, because there was so much that didn't come out here and it was such a great source for so many years for that, and it's truly a bummer. But it does look like, I guess, on the positive side, that everything from the website is going over to archiveorg, which is good because that's where I get most of my stuff these days. It's just a safe, easy option. Everything's compiled together. But what? What do you think about this, steve?

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:52:14

Well, yeah, I think it's unfortunate because, to my knowledge, they didn't house ROMs on the site as far as, like you can actually download ROMs here, like you had to have the ROM from somewhere else.

Brandon Hurles: 2:52:30

I don't remember I could be misremembering about the actual ROMs part.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:52:38

Was it like linked to somewhere else for the roms, or like? No, like most of the most of the the games on there you're you're either downloading translation patches oh yeah, the patches and stuff, or you're not, or you're downloading hacks, right, and yeah, you have to use like, uh, like lunar ips or something to patch the rom, so you have to supply the rom. They supply the, the hack, which is the patch right and dude, I played.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:53:04

I I've played so many awesome, awesome rom hacks because it's like I own the game. You know, like I, I don't see any problem with it. I own the legend of Zelda on NES and if I want to download the Legend of Zelda, outlands ROM hack.

Brandon Hurles: 2:53:23

What a ROM hack too. That's classic, that's a classic one.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:53:26

It's so good and so I found so many games like for the NES, for Super Nintendo, even for 64. I have the Mother 3 fan translation, of course, earthbound 3 oh yeah, I got that on a cart too.

Brandon Hurles: 2:53:47

I didn't do, I have the cartridge uh so it's stuff like that that.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:53:53

These are games that I they're either fan creations and you know they they put a lot of heart into these projects. They do because, to my knowledge, you're not getting paid for it, right?

Brandon Hurles: 2:54:07

I don't think so. I've never heard of that.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:54:08

Yeah, I'm sure there's a way to monetize that now with like patreon, but the classic stuff, like the old stuff, no yeah, like, if you, if you release your rom hack physically and I've bought some physical ones I'm sure that they get a cut from it. Uh, but as far as this website's concerned, these are like passion projects and it's just something really cool that has been out there for the gaming community to consume if they want to it, especially like when we have kind of dry periods in gaming when there's like just not a lot of stuff going on, a lot of games going on. Yeah, I go over to romhackingnet and I just see like a list of all these new, like different games that have have romhacks now, and I'm clicking, looking at the screenshots, reading the user reviews. You know it's like, oh, like, 20 people recommended this game. Yeah, like, oh, shoot, like I need to see what this is about.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:55:07

You know that sort of discovery? Yeah, that'll be gone now, even though it's on. It'll be on the internet archive. The the community aspect will be gone, which is unfortunate, and my only hope is and they even said this in their tweet or in their their their message that they put out their last message is that, you know, maybe somebody else will grab all the stuff we're putting on to the internet archive and take the reins. Maybe they'll create their own Like we're we're done, we we've done everything we wanted to do. We've grown the rom hacking scene by having this website. It grew way bigger than we ever thought it would and people know about rom hacking now and that's great, and I thought their message was pretty, pretty heartfelt. Actually, I was, wow, that's that's good, I really I would agree with you guys.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:56:01

You really did grow it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:56:03

Yeah, they put out a long message too. So if you want to check it out, you can. You can find on X and some other places. But, yeah, put out a real long message. It was very, very heartfelt. They this was definitely a passion project. I mean, obviously they kept it around for so long. You know, they might even, you know, maybe they're just not in the video games anymore too, and I don't know where. They just need to not have this on their back anymore, because stuff like this can Exactly it can turn into like a monkey on your back when it gets bigger than you think.

Brandon Hurles: 2:56:32

you know, and definitely a lot of people appreciate the time that went into this, so I think you you know it's bound to happen. Eventually, everything good comes soon in so unfortunately. Yeah, so for our last thing, this was something that just happened, basically a few hours ago a game down, a GameStop shut down, a game informer I. What do you guys think about this? For us anything?

Mark Trobough: 2:57:02

I don't know. But that actually, because I guess, yeah, they have their physical and the the website. I'm I was surprised they they published their physical magazine for as long as they did. But I mean this doesn't surprise me. It probably wasn't making money if potentially losing them. And then obviously you know, game stops financially been struggling for for years at this point, so I'm surprised it was around as long as it was.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:57:24

Personally, I mean I would say that, yeah, I'm surprised as well, like that. It's been around this long. Uh, I I think the presence is greater on GameInformercom right. I think, that's been a mainstay and, from what I've gathered, right is that it's all shut down yeah, all of it from what I understand as well. I went to the website. If you go to it, it literally says the final level. Farewell from game informer yeah, it's all.

Brandon Hurles: 2:58:04

Their articles are gone now yeah, they were a running, functioning website like ign, like game spot I found a lot of news there, legitimately, like it would pop up, and if it was the related one I don't really preference one to the other, I just click whatever comes up first or looks, you know, like it might be a full article.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:58:22

So I used it for this podcast all the time game informer was like obviously it was very much you know gamestop on them, but they were really tied to them, I think, through gamestop's website as, and it would say like if it got a game informer editor's choice, like they, they really tried to, I think, implement the two together and I think that's a great idea in theory, but clearly it didn't. It didn't work. They tried to use the magazines, of course, to sell the memberships at gamestop and look man, no kid cares about a magazine no, they don't kids.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:59:08

That's not how they get their news, and even people like us that are this age, if we still read magazines, that's just, it's fine, it's just considered super old school because, yeah, you're reading last, you're reading news from like six or seven weeks ago.

Brandon Hurles: 2:59:24

Most like it's older than it. It gets older than it ever has, and there's something in five minutes.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 2:59:30

It pops up yeah like the nostalgia of magazines isn't even there. Like I haven't, I have a bunch of nintendo powers right from back in the day, like from now I gotta say I have a lot of nostalgia for the nintendo power so do I, and and for me, that's where my nostalgia is at for for magazines. But yeah, you know, I don't have nostalgia for game informer. I you know if it was Game Pro or EGM, electronic Games Monthly.

Brandon Hurles: 3:00:00

I got both subscriptions for both of those too.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 3:00:04

I would, but I just don't. Anytime this happens, it sucks. I'm sure there's a lot of talented people still working there. Yeah. I think it's just a sign of the time, guys.

Mark Trobough: 3:00:22

Yeah, I mean a lot of a lot of these news gaming, not not specific, but a lot, a lot of media has been struggling lately. Yes, some of it I don't want to go to some of. I think it's their own, their own fault with how how they, how some personalities do a little bit wild. I know exactly what you're talking about. It's the whole.

Mark Trobough: 3:00:44

if you know, you know, type thing yeah as far as the magazine, I think it's just going away. I think Nintendo Power did well for so long because it wasn't just news, it was game specific. You'd also find game guides, maybe a short little comic or like a manga type thing in there that they would sell as well. Uh, but I mean, I think it's just a mixture of you know gamestop financially not being the best, and then you know a lot of you know journalists, websites, game media websites just don't have the traffic that they used to especially when you have places like youtube and X slash Twitter, where a lot of people go for news and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 3:01:23

It's, you know, where people go for. Information is changing with the times, you know, with the access to the internet and other platforms, it's just like there's better places I can go to get my news.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 3:01:34

Right, the young generation doesn't want to look at screenshots, they don't want to read, they don't want to read articles, they want to see gameplay footage and they want to play demos. Do not care whatsoever about this Game Informer magazine, and only the only ones who would is us, the old heads, the older people, and we don't really either yeah, I don't have nostalgia for Game Informer.

Brandon Hurles: 3:02:13

I got it in the early days I guess, but I just don't have nostalgia. You said GamePro and E, that those two, and into the power of my three subscriptions that I got in here from. Uh, god, hold on, I don't know why, I just forgot about it. Uh, oh, from the year 2000 until the very last issue, I had a consistent nintendo power subscription and then the other two. It would be kind of off and on with those. I'd get subscriptions here, there, my grandma would get me one that year or something like that. Um, or you know, whatever the situation might be, but I just don't have nostalgia for game informer like that. But hopefully, you know people, that I don't know how many people lost their jobs. So hopefully, uh, you know, uh, they finally won't either.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 3:02:57

I feel like a lot of people did, though, on the website.

Brandon Hurles: 3:02:59

I they had probably yeah, I feel like it was a pride pretty big number, um that all lost their jobs at once. I haven't heard anybody speak out about this yet, but they might not be able to for all I know. You know, maybe there's a, I don't know something?

Mark Trobough: 3:03:14

Yeah, just happened. So it might take time for for people to actually have a proper reaction or digested. Who knows when the actual employees found out? Did they find out a week ago or they've just found out? Oh yeah, by 24 hours ago.

Brandon Hurles: 3:03:25

You don't have a job anymore, type thing. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, so I think that is all the news that we got for this week. Um, yeah, so we appreciate having you on steve. Hopefully you had a good time I did.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 3:03:42

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys.

Brandon Hurles: 3:03:43

It was great, great conversation today yeah, it definitely went a little bit longer than expected with you on here, so I apologize about that.

Thunder Stash Gaming: 3:03:50

Hopefully you didn't get bored or anything what's happened I know and I apologize to the viewers if I spoke too much no, no, no, I mean just here to talk about video games.

Mark Trobough: 3:04:00

You know fun hobby that we all enjoy, so you, hopefully everybody, has a good time us and viewers as well. And then john said we we are old so thanks.

Brandon Hurles: 3:04:14

All right. Well, we appreciate it by watching, listening. If you're listening on the audio, definitely appreciate it. We charted, for some reason, on a couple of different apps last week, so that was pretty cool, definitely very neat. But if you are listening on the audio, be sure to give a follow or rate, depending on the app that you're using. Some of them allow both, some of them allow none. So wherever you're listening, let us know. Comment. Head over to the YouTube. Check out the video. It's fun, you might have a good time and we'll see you all later. Appreciate it, see you all. Have a good night.