Maggie Smith Tribute, Switch 2 Buzz, and Ubisoft Chaos | Game Junction Podcast 104

What happens when the gaming world meets the brilliance of a legendary actress? We begin on a heartfelt note, paying tribute to Dame Maggie Smith, whose illustrious career has touched millions. From her iconic portrayals in Harry Potter and Downton Abbey to her unforgettable role in Sister Act, her loss is deeply felt across the entertainment industry. Join us as we celebrate her legacy, sharing heartfelt memories and the profound impact she leaves behind.

Amidst the somber news, we turn our gaze to the latest gaming buzz that has enthusiasts on the edge of their seats. Speculation about the Nintendo Switch 2 is heating up with whispers of a potential 2025 release. Could a new Mario or Metroid Prime 4 be on the horizon as launch titles? We dissect these rumors and ponder the strategic implications for Nintendo, including the integration of cutting-edge technology like DLSS to elevate gaming experiences. 

But the gaming universe isn't all rosy. Our episode tackles controversies from the PlayStation 5 Pro scalper frenzy to unrest at Ubisoft over remote work mandates. We’ve got insights on

NYXI Gaming
- NYXI Wizard GameCube Wireless Joy-pad for Nintendo Switch. Use code "gamejunction" for 10% off!

Stone Age Gamer
Stone Age Gamer continues to add exclusive retro gaming products at low prices.

PWRUP Grip 2
Use code "GameJunction" for 10% off.

Dubby Energy
Get 10% all your Dubby Energy drink needs using "gamejunction10" and help support Game Junction!

Launch Your Own Podcast Now - Buzzsprout
Start for FREE with our affiliate link.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 0:01 Game Joke Show Ep. 104 Discussion
• 7:49 Upcoming Nintendo Game Launch Discussion
• 13:25 PlayStation 5 Pro Scalper Controversy
• 23:28 Ubisoft Remote Work Controversy
• 31:58 Ubisoft Stock and Assassin's Creed Controversy
• 39:21 Gaming News and New Releases
• 48:16 Game of the Year and Price Increase
• 52:48 Remastered Games and Retro Revivals
• 59:38 Legend of Zelda
• 1:06:38 Nintendo Repairs, Character Design, Retro Consoles
• 1:17:05 Pokemon Games and Steam Record
• 1:22:23 Exciting Tokyo Game Show Announcements
• 1:30:03 Upcoming Game Releases and Announcements
• 1:38:29 Ghost of Tsushima Sequel Speculation

Transcript

Brandon Hurles: 0:01

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Game Joke Show podcast. We are here for episode 102. Are we good, Mark?

Mark Trobough: 0:08

No, yeah, we're good on this side now that we, you know, constant issues with OBS and Twitch and my computer for whatever reason. But hey, we're finally live.

Brandon Hurles: 0:18

Well, yeah, we're here for 102, episode 102. Yeah, there's been quite a bit this week, so I know like we're talking to the tokyo game show, right?

Mark Trobough: 0:29

yeah, definitely a lot of, a lot of news, a lot of news still coming out that's still going on this week and this weekend. So, uh, there's just a lot of a lot of news dropped this week in general from the beginning of the week till you know, ongoing all weekend long. So, yeah, let's talk about yeah a lot to talk about.

Brandon Hurles: 0:45

We got some sad news, some good news, some interesting stuff, some hot topics and debates with some garbage companies and, yeah, we got all kinds of stuff in the, the gaming and pop culture I'm talking about this week. Um, I guess we'll go ahead and start off with um. We got some sad news, so we'll go ahead and get that out of the way, um, unfortunately. So we got dame maggie smith has passed away at age 89. Uh, so she was um professor. Uh, I always forget how to say the name McGonagall.

Mark Trobough: 1:28

McGonagall, that's his name. Professor now you got me messed up my words, mcgonagall, is that right how you say it?

Brandon Hurles: 1:42

I legitimately don't remember. For some reason I didn't remember that being the name, but if you saw her you'd know who it is. She's you know instantly. I'm confused why I don't remember that being the name of the I don't know. Anyway, she's in a bunch of stuff, man. So, uh, downton Abbey, which is a very, very popular series, she played Countess Violet Grantham. But obviously Harry Potter was like one of her biggest roles. Like I said, if you saw her you know she is very iconic character she was. She played the character very well. Um, character she was. She played the character very well. Um, she definitely came off as like straight to the points, no, no, bullcrap, didn't joke.

Mark Trobough: 2:32

You never saw her laugh, smile and yet stuff in the series which was that character, she did it very well like I don't know how good she is in the book, that I read the books, but just like a no nonsense. Straight to the point you're here to learn, not goof off. Type teacher.

Brandon Hurles: 2:46

Yeah exactly, yeah, and she, she has that that kind of look too, if that makes sense no so yeah, um, it's really unfortunate. It says she passed away in a london hospital, as reported by the bbc. Um, yeah, so was a bunch. I saw a bunch of tributes come out today we got she was also in the prime of Miss Jean Brody and she's in that in 1969, which is wild, it's old, that's crazy. But yeah, we saw Daniel Radcliffe put out a tribute and said that she was a legend.

Mark Trobough: 3:29

Yeah, mr Coffey was saying, remember her from Death on the Nile in 78 and Sister Act as well. I don't know if you've seen any of those movies?

Brandon Hurles: 3:35

Yeah, whoopi Goldberg's in Sister Act man. I don't know if you could do that movie in 2024. I don't think you could.

Brandon Hurles: 3:43

I don't know why not, it would offend people. I don't want to do all that, but yeah, we definitely wanted to mention that. That's sad. You know that she did get to live a long life and sounds like she had, you know, had some pretty great experiences and I had no idea. You know that she was in things in the sixties, which that she was in things in the 60s, which is wild she's been acting for a very long time, probably most of her life at this point, up until fairly recently.

Mark Trobough: 4:12

I guess that last 10-15 years.

Brandon Hurles: 4:15

Right, that's unfortunate. It's sad. We also got more Switch 2 rumors. What do you think on this? Um? We also got more switch to rumors. Uh, so what? What? What do you think on this? We've got a launch. We got a quote unquote launch date, which this lines up with everything that we talked about last week and have talked about before Um, but we got something that came out, a rumor, saying that it's going to launch in March or April of 2025.

Mark Trobough: 4:44

Yeah, I think that's what we've all been around there. I think they say it could hit as early as March 3rd, because I think that's around March is when we got it, when the Switch originally launched, the month it was in. I think that's just kind of what we're hearing. Obviously, that's a lot of rumors, but if all this is to actually believe and it's going to eventually be true, I think it really comes down to probably kind of what we expected. Sometime next month is when we expect to hear about the switch, to switch access or the switch, something whatever they're going to ultimately call it. But I mean, yeah, if this is accurate, it's kind of what we've been hearing and thinking about for quite a while now what we've been hearing and thinking about for quite a while now.

Brandon Hurles: 5:27

Yeah, yeah, I think it lines up. When we got the rumor that it was going to be delayed to next year, we instantly pretty much thought quarter one right, because I mean that seemed even late then and originally we thought, you know, it was going to come out this year. But that rumor, I mean it seems like it's accurate. It's obviously not coming out this year.

Mark Trobough: 5:42

Yeah, you just would have heard about it by now yeah I mean I guess early next year, like first second quarter, late first quarter, early second quarter isn't the worst window because not a lot is coming out. Most people drop their big thing fourth quarter for the holiday season, so it's not like it would have a whole lot to compete against. Plus, it's got time to get the diehards out of the way for 2025 holiday season.

Brandon Hurles: 6:04

One of the good things, too, is it doesn't have to compete with the PS5 Pro at all, so it's got a good length of time there, because that launch is October 10th.

Mark Trobough: 6:13

You wonder if the rumor, Then again, I don't know how well the PS5 Pro is going to do and how much it would actually Would the Switch actually be competing with a mid-life?

Brandon Hurles: 6:21

upgrade? I don't think so. Be competing with a midlife upgrade? I don't think it would actually be competing with it.

Mark Trobough: 6:27

It might affect some sales, I'm sure I assume this is going to be under $500, competing with an $800 console.

Brandon Hurles: 6:33

For something that's half the price. I don't think it's a direct competition to it at all, but it might affect a few sales. A little chunk, a very small chunk, but not not much.

Mark Trobough: 6:46

I think it's negligible, but that's just my opinion.

Brandon Hurles: 6:50

But I mean it's still is away from that. I don't think it has anything to do with that. Obviously, we heard about that rumor of it being delayed before we even knew about the PS5 Pro.

Mark Trobough: 7:00

Do you think we'll hear about this sometime in the next two weeks, though then around, I think we'll hear about this sometime in the next two weeks, though, then Around the museum. I think we have to.

Brandon Hurles: 7:06

I think, yeah, yeah, we talked about that on the Nintendite podcast.

Mark Trobough: 7:10

Yeah, because I know is it Mustache Gaming.

Brandon Hurles: 7:16

I'm sorry, thunderstache Gaming.

Mark Trobough: 7:18

Thunderstache I didn't have it pulled up. Yeah, that's my bad.

Brandon Hurles: 7:22

You were tuning in when we were talking about that right.

Mark Trobough: 7:29

Periodically pulled up and I, yeah, that's, that's my bad. You were tuning in when we were talking about that right periodically when I was able to. But I know he because when he was on like I think the at least the last two times he was on, he brought it up and that was like where he was sitting there thinking around the museum and stuff like that. So I think if he's right, you're right within like the next two weeks we're going to hear about it, but I think sometime next month. It just makes sense, because you probably want a good six month window of just building up hype and advertising and stuff like that to get everybody excited ready. And then, alongside hearing this coming out, I guess the big news is what games are going to launch beside it. Are we because I know we are nowhere not going to get a is all the game?

Brandon Hurles: 7:59

we just got a spinoff game and there's just not been enough time since the last, it's not a spinoff game, but it is a mainline game.

Mark Trobough: 8:07

It's a mainline but not in the way you'd think of, like breath of the wild or tears of the kingdom type type style, you know I think we're we're not getting a new 3d zelda until probably like 2028, like a new? Yeah, probably a few years in just because the the timelines is going to be there, but it's been a while since we've had a a mainline mario game. Uh yeah I've been thinking that now, with sometime next year that metroid 4 comes out, would make sense for us to line up with.

Brandon Hurles: 8:34

It has to yeah, type thing, and then maybe one or two, because nintendo's not been known to launch more than, like you know, four or five games, a couple of big games, yeah, because like they rely, like they rely on third-party of that too, right To have third-party launches with it, and usually it's either one or two mainline games.

Mark Trobough: 8:52

Yeah, and then like maybe one or two like spin-off games or smaller third-party games, but it's like one or two system seller launches.

Brandon Hurles: 9:00

Yeah, yep, yeah, and I think that has to be either the next 3d mario or metro prime 4. Metro prime 4 would make sense because it would.

Mark Trobough: 9:10

It would boost sales 2025.

Mark Trobough: 9:12

It would be like I'm just thinking if it was, it would drastically not only get the metroid series out there but just boost the sales by being one of a handful of games at launch, even though it's not like the main system. Seller say that's a mario game. If you only have a handful of games coming out at launch, a lot of people are probably going to pick it up as a uh, that's the only really different game from like a mario platformer to a more first person shooter type game yeah, I think it's.

Brandon Hurles: 9:37

I think it's important for them to have a 3d mario at launch, because I metroid's not going to sell systems by itself.

Mark Trobough: 9:44

We know that, but maybe it's not going to I guess the idea is maybe launching it just gets the game in front of more people and more people into the metroid series as a whole would be beneficial, like you've got to find a way to help. It's lined up this way and it would help generate hype for a series and maybe a lot of people haven't played. They get a taste of this game and and then they start spreading out to other older games maybe.

Brandon Hurles: 10:05

Yeah, and do you think, are you still thinking a possible cross-gen with Metroid Prime 4? Because I feel like.

Mark Trobough: 10:12

I think that's a guarantee at this point. Then again, I don't know.

Brandon Hurles: 10:14

I feel like it has to be, because you can't count on just a Switch. 2. A brand new install base for Metroid Prime 4,. I feel like you can't at this point. I feel like you can't at this point I feel like you can't do that it's not big enough.

Mark Trobough: 10:25

But I think for a lot of people, if they're gonna get, they plan on getting the Switch successor, are you really gonna get it for your old hardware or if you plan on getting the new one, you're just gonna get it with your new, with your new hardware type thing. But I think it's a guarantee it has to launch on both at this point.

Brandon Hurles: 10:38

Yeah, I think so too, and I think so too, and I think that's potentially one of the reasons they got so delayed is because they knew they were going to do that. I mean, you got a separate team for something we're working with, with DLSS, and then you've got the old Switch 2017 hardware that you got to work with. So those are separated teams for sure.

Mark Trobough: 10:59

All I'm thinking is that is not running.

Brandon Hurles: 11:00

You know it's going to be different.

Mark Trobough: 11:02

It would make sense, though, if it ran significantly better. The only thing I can think of is if there's a big enough.

Brandon Hurles: 11:08

Stable 60.

Mark Trobough: 11:09

If there's a significant jump in hardware performance that maybe somewhere in development they upgraded it to this or they had a separate team working, so it'll launch on both, but the ideal way to play it will be on the Switch 2, just because that's like yeah, what they like, ideal way to play it will be on the switch to. Just because that's like yeah, what they like. Halfway through development they swapped to work on it on this one. So it's right, it's the same game but it plays very different on both.

Brandon Hurles: 11:33

I would say more, not only frame rate but the graphical fidelity would be extremely different on both hard hardware yeah, with I mean, and with the dlss, like that does cut down some of what they have to do for that Right. So I feel like I mean to be honest with you. I don't know that it'll be a stable 60 for the frame rate. To me, frame rate matters more than visuals. I don't know about you, but I yeah, it doesn't matter.

Brandon Hurles: 11:59

Yeah. So it's hard to say if it, you know, runs at a stable 60, but I think it's going to affect both performance and visuals.

Mark Trobough: 12:09

Dlss is a big deal, so I think it's, I think it's both, I think it's on both yeah, I think it is too, but I'm hoping that at least just me personally, just being a fan that when this announces that we definitely get. Get that announcement like, hey, for sure, it's gonna be a launch title yeah, for sure, because I don't know because I plan on getting it. But that for sure would push it over the edge where it's like, yeah, I'll get a switch successor because I I mean to be fair.

Mark Trobough: 12:34

The original reason why I bought the switch was for metroid 4 originally yeah, I was gonna ask you are you planning day one for switch?

Brandon Hurles: 12:42

are you going to try at least? I mean, I'm sure they're going to sell out, I'm sure, but it's, it's definitely try it's going to be a wait and see.

Mark Trobough: 12:50

I might. Just because I don't know the price and the availability. I'm I'll just have to wait and see, just because I don't know where I'm going to be at when it comes out. Need to wait and see what's going to come out, uh, but there might be the chance I might push it back a little bit just because I might have a few other things going on that might eat up some financial stuff. I don't know, everything's kind of up in the air right now. It's. It'll just be a wait and see. I will. For sure get it.

Mark Trobough: 13:17

I just don't know if I'll get it like right at launch or if I want to try to fight for it right, right at launch.

Brandon Hurles: 13:24

That's fair. And then these rumors did come out from a peripheral um manufacturer, so we got this is from an executive at said company. I don't have the actual company name, but this is where, apparently, the leak came out of, and which is this is partially what we had talked about a little last week but also talked about on the other podcasts significantly, but it looks like it just kind of came out and they kind of solidified hey, this is what's happening. But it says that the consoles are done according to this rumor and they're ready to go, they're all finished. And it says, yeah, they're dropping sometime at the end of march or beginning of april. So we're not, we're not far away, realistically.

Brandon Hurles: 14:10

Uh, but mercato went on support some other rumors and leaks about nintendo switch and said, yes, the magnetic joy cons are accurate, so they're saying yes to that too. Um, and then, yeah, talking just solidifying the launch window. So, yeah, that's definitely interesting. I think that's pretty accurate to me. I mean, that's what I've been saying anyway, and that's what a lot of other people have been saying, and it makes the most sense and it correct me if I'm wrong, mark, but I think that the switch one launched in april of 2017. Right, it was a quarter one drop as well, or was that the wii u? I can't remember which one I was pulling up.

Mark Trobough: 14:49

Uh the switch. One marched, uh the switch launched march 3rd 2017 okay, so it was still quarter one nice, yeah, so that makes sense.

Brandon Hurles: 14:58

I think the wii u did too.

Mark Trobough: 14:59

I think it launched quarter one wii u uh launched november 18th 2012. Okay, okay, all right, so yeah, because the we, the we launched november 19th 2006, so before the switch, they were holiday launch windows.

Brandon Hurles: 15:14

Yeah makes sense, all right. Well, yeah, that's definitely interesting, so we solidified that. Uh, now we could talk about the ps5 pro 30th anniversary edition pre-order selling out immediately and also, people are getting their orders canceled. Um, I tried to jump in on this to see if I could get through, yeah, and I couldn't get through. I got through for the ps5 pro the normal one, uh, but I wasn't able to order it. Right now. I have to wait, um yeah, I am planning.

Brandon Hurles: 15:43

I am planning to get it, but i'm'm going to wait for the GameStop drop. Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 15:46

I know Some people are talking this reeks of we're just going to let allow more pre-orders than what we actually are able to sell and then we're just going to cancel a handful of people's arbitrarily because, well, we got too many pre-orders so we have to get rid of some people's stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 16:07

Are you able to pull?

Mark Trobough: 16:08

anything up by chance to show.

Brandon Hurles: 16:09

Uh, what do you want me to show exactly? Uh, I would uh ebay to show what they're being sold for right now, like prices, because it's absolutely crazy. Um, I saw some and they're selling too. There's, these aren't just asking prices. Um, I'm gonna pull it up. But oh, yeah, I saw let's talk in a or I was talking to somebody earlier. He's like hey, did you see, like what some of these are actually being sold for? I saw the price listings but I, I want to say I'm shocked, but I'm really not that they're selling for what they are, but somebody asking prices, like there's somebody on here that has the whole bundle that was a thousand dollars on here for 50 000 or best offer. Um, there's other people for 4 000 or best offer, 3600 or best offer, uh. But then there's people that have the ps5 pro, the normal one, up for a thousand dollars and it's a 700 console, so a 300 mark, but those aren't selling, surprisingly, the PS5 Pro, the normal ones, stayed up for a long time Because I checked like four hours later and you could still get one.

Brandon Hurles: 17:15

You had to go through the queue but it was shorter, it didn't take as long. But when I got in the queue and I was on the minute that it hit 10 o'clock. I clicked on there and it said the queue I and I was on the minute that it hit 10 o'clock. I clicked on there and it said the queue was going to be an hour. So it did actually take an hour to get through and when I got through you could get everything else but that bundle, because it was it sold out immediately yeah, I had to do some stuff around, but I can pull it up it.

Mark Trobough: 17:41

Uh, it wasn't doing exactly what I do, it's. I like move some stuff around, but yeah, I mean it's just crazy.

Brandon Hurles: 17:47

I want to say I'm like I said. I want to say I'm shocked, but I'm not uh with some of the prices that I have actually sold. Yeah, um, like, there's some being bid on here for 3500 right now 40 bids, 3037 bids. It's just, it's crazy, man, and there's somebody that's got the controller on here for 175 bucks it's gonna make that larger.

Mark Trobough: 18:07

That way it's not stretched. But no, yeah, like I uh, ps5 pro for 37. Someone's got some on here for for 50 000, another for 3 000, 1 000, 2300, like it's. It's crazy what some people are selling. It's the fact that I saw something on here for for 50 000 the thousand dollars.

Brandon Hurles: 18:27

You gotta keep in mind. That's just the console, right, and it was a bunch. The bundle was originally a thousand dollars, the whole bundle, everything, and that's just for the slim, like the thousand dollars. The 998, that's for the slim console. That's not even for the ps5 pro, like a bunch of these. 1200, that's for the slim digital. That's not even for the ps5 pro, like a bunch of these twelve hundred dollars. That's for the slim digital, that's not even for the pro.

Mark Trobough: 18:48

That's the crazy thing yeah, yeah, someone's got the. Uh, they say deal with lifetime. Ps5 pro 30th anniversary pre-sale november 7th 24, 50 000 or best offer crazy man, uh, from chattanooga, tennessee. But yeah, I see a lot. I see a lot of stuff closer, like the, to the one to three thousand range, but that's, that's crazy. This one's got no bids but there's one for 3,500 that's got 40 bids on it. Yeah, that's insane.

Brandon Hurles: 19:19

That, that is crazy, absolutely yeah, so I mean, the price is nuts, not surprised, but the crazy thing is is that, yeah, people are getting some of their orders canceled. So, uh, I don't know an actual reason why some of them are being canceled. I'm assuming that it potentially went over on what they actually had, stock wise, because it's it's limited to that number. But it says they were sent an email stating that the order for the PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition had been canceled through the purchaser. Though the purchaser denies that they canceled it themselves, it seems there may have been some problems with processing the payment, as the email reportedly stated that the payment method did not work and users' account listed transaction reversal. What's your thoughts on this, the whole ordeal here?

Mark Trobough: 20:14

Not surprised, but this is what happens when you do your stuff all online and not at a physical store. Just ripe for scalpers.

Brandon Hurles: 20:22

Yeah, it's just crazy man. I'll say this.

Mark Trobough: 20:24

if you're paying that much money, if you're willing to pay that much money for a PS5 Pro, you deserve to get ripped off. I'm sorry, nobody should even be. That should be a thought. The PS5 itself plays just fine. You're not getting that much of a boost to where you should be paying anywhere. If you're going to pay $3,500 for ps5 pro, spend $3,500 and get a high-end pc and it'll work like so much better for you the thing is this isn't for the ps5 pro.

Brandon Hurles: 20:52

You gotta keep in mind 90% of people are buying this or keeping it in the box as a collector's item, because if you look at the 20th anniversary ps4 pro a, there was one that sold for like 40 grand well, yeah, I guess some of these are the anniversary edition.

Mark Trobough: 21:05

But that's just a. It's just a skin on hardware, it doesn't, it's not worth that much collectors are wild.

Brandon Hurles: 21:11

Man collectors are wild but these are like whales buying them up like who can afford that? Besides somebody?

Mark Trobough: 21:17

it's got significant money I'm saying it doesn't even matter if this is the pro or this is like the anniversary edition, because some of those were the anniversary edition. Uh, kind of correct myself. You deserve to get ripped off if you're, if you're paying that much like it's so stupid it is stupid, I agree I I don't understand that it's not worth it because it's just a piece of play.

Mark Trobough: 21:35

I could make my own ps4 look like this by just getting an outside, just a new skin. Like it's not that hard it'd be extra work, arguably, but like they make it sound like you know this is like you have to have it or the world's coming to an end, and I just think it's ridiculous and a waste of money what one thing I will say I thought was kind of cool that I actually didn't know.

Brandon Hurles: 21:57

Apparently, 45 for fifth, 54 games at launch are getting ps5 pro upgrades, so that's kind of cool. I didn't know there was that many at launch which getting PS5 Pro upgrades, so that's kind of cool. I didn't know there was that many at launch, which is good, because that's better than I think. The PS4 Pro yeah, but the PS4. I expected just the 12 that they talked about.

Mark Trobough: 22:15

The PS4 Pro is marginal. It's not like it did a whole lot new, it was just a little extra more hardware to make your stuff look better, run a little faster.

Brandon Hurles: 22:30

That one was even more marginal because this has the ai upscaling, so this has got dlss, this that's a whole different ball game. Right, but the ps4 pro, it was so marginal that I don't think it even made sense to upgrade if you didn't already have one.

Mark Trobough: 22:37

But even with the dlss I still think the upgrade is going to be marginal and it's not worth the price of a brand new, definitely not worth 3500. At that point a high end pc will play 20 times better you heard it here first mark does not like playstation. All right and I sit with a ps5 in my background that's a, that's a knockoff, that's a whatever station, right?

Brandon Hurles: 23:00

yeah, you wish all right. So I'm gonna let you take this one, because I think you know a little bit more, and then I'll kind of give my opinion on what I know. But I want to hear what you got to say. So we're gonna talk about. I guess we can just encompass kind of all of yeah, because I guess or, if you want to, or we can leave the other part for later. I mean, it kind of all goes together.

Mark Trobough: 23:23

I mean, yeah, we can kind of do all the same time we're talking.

Mark Trobough: 23:28

Ubisoft. This week, guys, shocker. Everyone's been talking about it. Outside of the Assassin's Creed Shadow Drama, there was apparently some Ubisoft France employees came out planning to strike. From my understanding this is new today, it's Ubisoft related, but this more has to do with the fact that ubisoft uh came out and was like you have to come back to the office. They're like hard nixing any kind of remote work and people got comfortable to it. Um, so they announced that thousand workers in their paris office alone, or ubisoft has a thousand workers. I don't know if we got a hard number, but the a friend, the french union for their games industry.

Mark Trobough: 24:12

It's pretty much coming out there supporting, criticizing ubisoft and, you know, obviously supporting the workers not wanting to strike. Uh was trying to double check, so they were planning to strike on the 15th, 16th and 17th to stop remote work. I don't really think it's going to probably change anything because we didn't get any hard word of like how many people actually plan to strike. But it's an argument I get both sides of it. People want to do remote work, people want to do in-person work, but not everything is necessarily remote and if you had to ask me personally, I'd rather go to work in an actual office. I hate doing work from home because I get far less work actually done Plus me. Personally, I like the social element of actually being in an office place talking to other people. When I'm at home it's just me, you know, talking to myself. I just don't think it's as productive. But I don't know if you had anything to say about this or not.

Brandon Hurles: 25:13

I mean about this specific part.

Mark Trobough: 25:16

Yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 25:17

If it's about the remote work you know, I don't think that's a reason to go on strike, if you ask me so they, they did come out, and it was so.

Mark Trobough: 25:28

Apparently, their demands were on top of the what they call formal remote work, whatever that actually means uh, a salary increase and uh better social dialogue, which means absolutely nothing to be honest.

Brandon Hurles: 25:40

What is that supposed to mean? Because I don't understand. Who knows who cares maybe that's just me, but it's like we want to work from home and we want you to.

Mark Trobough: 25:44

To be honest, what is that supposed to mean? Because I don't understand. Who knows who cares. Maybe that's just me, but it's like we want to work from home and we want you to pay us more to work from home. The one thing that I could see, potentially because obviously a lot of jobs are in major cities very expensive, especially with inflation and everything else driving the cost of just living in general. So I get like like if you want to be able to work for a major company but live in a more rural area where it's just cheaper to live, but that kind of makes commuting impossible or a several-hour round trip, which is just not practical on a day-to-day basis for the most part. So I get that, though I get not.

Mark Trobough: 26:22

Every job can be remote. There needs to be a mount, so I don't know. Maybe the option is allow certain type of remote work If a lot of people want to live in a more remote area, maybe open smaller offices, not near the head office, where you can still do in-person work, but you don't need to be in the middle of a metro city. It is France, so I don't know a lot of that stuff, but I'm sure for some people that matters, commuting in france so I don't know a lot of, a lot of that stuff. But I mean, I'm sure for some people that that matters because that's it. Can you know, commuting to and from work for a whole year, you know, gets expensive the more you have to commute and stuff like that if you're not within walking distance.

Mark Trobough: 26:53

Most people probably aren't, because it's it's ungodly expensive, probably to live in downtown paris, probably where their studio is I'm sure.

Brandon Hurles: 27:03

I'm sure I mean the salary increase.

Mark Trobough: 27:07

I think that's kind of up in the air, because if you're able to live somewhere cheaper but maintain your salary, I mean, we don't know what they're being paid.

Brandon Hurles: 27:12

So that's one thing.

Mark Trobough: 27:14

It's probably all over the place, because you probably have people high up and people at the very bottom of the rung that we're doing some kind of remote work.

Mark Trobough: 27:20

So it's it's all over the place and I just I can't speak for france because I don't know where france is financially, but you know you should at least be getting pay raises every year to at least match the rate of inflation. That should be like a minimum standard, just because cost of living goes up. But I don't know, to be fair, it'll be. We want more money. Ubisoft's very obviously not in a good, strong financial position because they've had two major games launched this year and they've both bombed drastically. So it's like, hey, we can pay more, but we've got to cut x amount of jobs, type thing.

Mark Trobough: 27:51

Uh yeah there's criticism all around, but you know, I don't know where they, where their finances stand, so I can't make make a decision on that. I'm just saying, realistically, assume you don't have a huge 20 increase in inflation, you know you're, you should be getting raises to kind of match that. That way your, your costs, your wages, master the increase in cost of living type stuff. Right, I'm I'm kind of back and forth when it comes to the remote work, because I get it for most people and for most jobs. You probably do need some kind of in-person work. But I don't have the numbers. I don't know if they're seeing, you know, a drop off in productivity or something else, or they just want people to come back to work.

Brandon Hurles: 28:28

Obviously, covid changed a lot of stuff like that, but uh yeah, like you said earlier, people got comfortable with doing that and I think that's the problem, right Cause before COVID it wasn't that way. Work from home jobs, that was very rare, you know what? I mean they didn't really know people that did that and they work.

Mark Trobough: 28:47

But I do know people and I'm arguably one of them that when you're working from home, your productivity very obviously drops off yeah, I think that's different for everybody, because I know people that say that they, you know it increases.

Brandon Hurles: 29:00

But I do know for like me, um, it depends, right, like, like, sometimes I'm that way Sometimes where, you know, productivity drops down a little bit. For me, some days are better than others because I do like a hybrid thing. I mostly work in person, but there's sometimes a day that I'll work from home. It just depends I get it, I mean.

Mark Trobough: 29:23

I mean, I guess you got to work, figure out what works for you. Every work environment can be very different. This is not an Ubisoft. Trust me. I'll take any opportunity to crap on Ubisoft because I absolutely hate them and for the immediate future, I refuse to buy anything from them.

Mark Trobough: 29:37

I don't care how good the game actually is essentially when Ubisoft came out and said you won't own it and you're just not going to own your game, type thing. That completely soured me. Yeah, we can go into that, but I mean there's just a lot of to me unknowns to make an outset. Looking in To be like.

Mark Trobough: 29:54

I don't know Like I get. There's a some level of drop off. Your game's kind of buggy, but your games have kind of always been buggy, but I just don't know a lot of the the details. But I mean, both sides could be greedy for all I know and just wanting what's best. So kind of yeah, this on that, on that side of it yeah, for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 30:15

Do you want to get and jump with the the other ubisoft stuff?

Mark Trobough: 30:18

then no, yeah, we can the the uh assassin's creed shadows yeah if you haven't heard, obviously, not only did ubisoft at the last minute pull out of the tokyo game show, which was immediate red flag on top of everything else, but then they shortly after came out said, yeah, this game's getting delayed and I'm getting pushed to february, 14th valentine's Day for some reason, but it's essentially getting like a three month, three, four month delay more or less, which, if you're hoping for more polish, like a 90 day window, is kind of negligible at the end of the day, like there's only so much you're going to be able to fix. So the game is arguably in some level of broken state at launch, because obviously they've had skull and bones and star wars outlaws which have been financial flops and, if you've not heard or watching some other videos that definitely track this, like ubisoft stock is like plummeting, it's like down 60 some percent on the year, something like that yeah, I actually got sent that by uh thunderstache.

Brandon Hurles: 31:23

He sent me because he brought up. He like how much you want to bet that the next day after that announcement their stock drops and it went.

Mark Trobough: 31:30

Yeah, so year to date, Ubisoft. So this is a slight difference. So their year to date is down 54%, but in the past year their stock is down 60, just about 63%. If you go back five years, their stock is down 84 percent. Their stock peaked in 2021 at about around 20 a share and it's right now sitting at about 2.31 usd a share wow uh, well, that's ubisoft entertainment adr rep one-fifth. Uh, let me double check, just make sure that's the right stock, are you sure? I googled ubisoft stock and that's what came up.

Brandon Hurles: 32:04

So oh, okay it just might.

Mark Trobough: 32:07

It just might be how it's listed, but I do know it's like a huge drop. Uh, even in the announcement of the delay, their, their stock dropped a lot. Um, it's not what I want. Um, I just wanted to pull up just to make sure I'm getting the right thing. I guess I'll just pull up Bloomberg and it should be on here, because there's a bunch of different technically because there's a jump around. So Ubisoft Entertainment SA is one of them. Are you gonna show me the whole thing? Apparently not, so some of these, some of these sites are just being stupid, but I mean regardless, there's been a huge drop in their stock consistently. I'm pretty sure I had the right one the first time, but I mean, obviously their stock's been dropping so low that the shareholders are. I'm pretty sure I had the right one the first time, but I mean, obviously their stock's been dropping so low that the shareholders are the ones to take action and be like I don't know what you're doing, but you're costing us a lot of money.

Brandon Hurles: 33:13

Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 33:21

Yeah, ms Coffey's saying that Forbes reported that there was some talk about, uh, removing or reducing yasuke's right. The problem is if, if you wanted to make a major change like that, three months isn't a big enough time to like make any kind of significant change in a game.

Mark Trobough: 33:38

You'd need like a year yeah because that really that affects so much of the game in the story and I don't know how you can lower the One of your two main characters' role. Your game's essentially where it's going to be. That would just require so much change. It probably would just outright tank the game and it just would never launch. At that point You'd require Ubisoft to go back to the drawing board Because I don't know how much, how much there is there, but like I know it's not been good for Ubisoft. The fact that and more or less like if this game doesn't do well, like Ubisoft is like as a company in massive trouble, as much as I would might be the wrong word, but I would be gleeful if ubisoft just went under, because it just shows you know you put out crap, you kind of get what you deserve I mean it's, it's wild because they're just making really stupid decisions.

Brandon Hurles: 34:40

I mean, like none of it, bad leadership from the none of it. It doesn't make any sense. I don't understand what these companies are doing. I mean I don't get it. I just do not understand what is going on. They've got all the political stuff backing behind these companies and like they're throwing away dollars, they might as well be throwing money in the trash because they're losing people. Like it affects your sales.

Mark Trobough: 35:02

You know what I mean, yeah yeah, I mean it's just like.

Brandon Hurles: 35:10

It doesn't make any sense to me.

Mark Trobough: 35:11

You can't tell me that outlaws and uh skull and bones. Hat like haven't lost money for them as a studio this year oh for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 35:19

I mean a quadruple a game.

Mark Trobough: 35:21

They spent a lot of money on that yeah, I mean, at the very least, the fact that, uh, you have shareholders threatening to try to get them, you know, trying to get uh other shareholders in. I don't know what. You call it an agreement to try to force them to essentially fire the head ceo and then force the company private to essentially try to fix it or just to sell the company to somebody else. Because, regardless, you know, because I think they mentioned like something like black rock, which I think arguably would be worse um, yeah, it doesn't matter for ubisoft as a whole, for the shareholders. You have bad leadership at the top and it's it's going to destroy the company if they keep going the way they're going, like assassin's creed has to make money to at least stop the bleeding it's like I don't know if at this point, like like at one point, assassin's Creed was like Call of Duty, right, like those were the two.

Brandon Hurles: 36:15

Oh yeah, it was a big one. It was a huge deal when it launched.

Mark Trobough: 36:18

All the new games, the late 2000s into the 2010s. It was a really big series yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 36:23

Yeah, it was massive. I mean like the big time sellers every year were Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty. Those were like the big, you knew it was going to sell no matter what, nothing matters. But now I feel like that's dropped off, like I don't feel the same. I don't think Assassin's Creed is moving the units now that Call of Duty is. I just don't Like, I don't think it's as prolific of a series now and as important as it once was. So, yeah, it's just I, I don't know, it's just crazy, man, it's just crazy. Uh, I think the whole decisions behind assassin's creed are stupid, like all of it from the the jump, everything we knew from the beginning. Stupid, man, I mean, I don't, I don't know about you, but but I just think it doesn't make any sense that they're doing the things that they are and they are losing people, like literally losing people. People are, I mean, and for good reason. People are getting upset for good reason. So I don't know, it's crazy. I officially have no interest in playing Assassin's Creed.

Mark Trobough: 37:31

I have no interest in an Ubisoft game period Like they lost me.

Brandon Hurles: 37:36

I'm, I love Samurais, I love Japan. I love these type of games. I think it like this, realistically, would have been the place I would have wanted them to visit with Assassin's Creed. Why are you laughing?

Mark Trobough: 37:53

There's some comment there. Gamer Freak wanted to talk about trying to bring up some Godzilla stuff and then Miscafi retcons what if they reskin Yasuke and make him look like Godzilla? I couldn't help but laugh.

Brandon Hurles: 38:10

That's funny, yeah, craz. Funny, yeah, craziness man. Is there anything else you want to?

Mark Trobough: 38:18

say about Assassin's Creed, though I think we've said for the most part what's kind of already been said. There's obviously a lot of discourse around this in different ways, because obviously there's a whole discussion around DEI and Ubisoft, but that's an ongoing discussion. But I don't want to get bogged down in that discussion right now. Yeah, all right, cool, just just keep keep it moving. I want to, you know, get bogged down in some some culture war discussion stuff. There's too much game to talk about.

Brandon Hurles: 38:43

So okay, so we got a classic ps2 horror game is making a comeback, and that horror game happens to be um, was it?

Mark Trobough: 38:52

siren, I believe, was the name of the game. Oh, yeah, yeah, siren, yep yep, have you played this one? I have not, but I saw this and I know you're both a retro and a horror fan, so I thought I'd bring this up yeah, no, this is really cool.

Brandon Hurles: 39:05

I have siren. Um, it's, it's a cool game. It's not one I would have expected to ever make. A comeback. Um, it's definitely really cool and it's not expensive. If I remember correctly, I've had the game for a long time now.

Mark Trobough: 39:20

So I didn't. It was a korean game, if I'm mistaken right uh, it's um.

Brandon Hurles: 39:27

It was a japan studio game, japanese game oh okay, so no, it was a.

Mark Trobough: 39:33

So the news came from the Game Rating and Administration Committee of Korea. Rated Siren.

Brandon Hurles: 39:39

Yeah, that was just kind of a Korean rating board.

Mark Trobough: 39:41

Yeah, that's kind of where this leak slash news kind of came from. Sorry, I misread that.

Brandon Hurles: 39:46

No, you're good, You're good. No, this is really cool. Like I said, it's one I would have never expected to make a comeback. Um, I, I would love to see it like. I think, if I remember correctly, it was kind of like people thought it was sort of mediocre. Uh, let me see what it's probably. Yeah, so I'm looking at reviews like overall metacritic, 72 out of 100. So that's still, you got to remember, that's still three-fourths of the way there. So it's not bad. I enjoyed it, and horror games used to always get bad ratings, so, like, don't judge it on the rating system, if it wasn't like a Silent Hill or a or a Resident Evil.

Mark Trobough: 40:23

Yeah, the top top-end type. It's kind of like horror movies. It's either really good good ratings or ratings or it's really bad yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 40:31

Yeah, yeah, no, just like horror movies, horror games, like almost never universally get bad reviews, like we just don't get good reviews.

Mark Trobough: 40:39

I mean with all the, with all the games, the older games, getting like remasters, remakes, uh, obviously leaving out the fact that we're getting too many uh uh last, too many uh uh last of us remake, slash remasters that don't need it, and we just got news about the uh uh what?

Brandon Hurles: 41:00

is it? I don't know I played down the name.

Mark Trobough: 41:01

All of a sudden pulled uh the horizon zero dawn getting a remake slash remaster when it's just too new, like the game's, like maybe five years old. It's less than a decade old, it doesn't need a remake yeah but I like the fact that we're getting a lot. A lot of retro stuff is starting to come back. It's gonna be remastered the the 2d 3 or the 2 the 2.5 d, you know 3d type remake. Yeah, it's a really bad run on sins yeah, no, I get what you're saying.

Brandon Hurles: 41:30

Uh, no, I think it's great and like there's no reason a game that's less than five years old is getting a remake. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, it's that last of us saying gets a remaster one generation, the next it gets a remake.

Mark Trobough: 41:43

Next year it got a remaster for the first, the original game from the ps3 to the ps4.

Brandon Hurles: 41:49

It was like how is that a remaster? That's just. It didn't play like a remaster either, because I played it it was the same game, just it looked.

Mark Trobough: 41:57

It looked better, obviously, but it's like this game came out like less than two years ago. Why?

Brandon Hurles: 42:02

it was a buzzword to put it on the console and make you think, oh, this is the way new, improved and desperate way to play the game and so you should buy it again.

Mark Trobough: 42:11

Then they did a game with PS5, but they called it part one, since we got part two, because people are stupid apparently.

Brandon Hurles: 42:16

That makes no sense. I said I would grab that if I find it for $20, but you ain't gonna catch me paying $60 for that again. Then you ain't gonna catch me buying that game for $60 again.

Mark Trobough: 42:30

I saw that, mr Coffee. It's in our notes.

Brandon Hurles: 42:33

we'll get to that about the some surprises oh, yeah, yeah, okay, uh, before we move on for other news, I wanted to stop for a second show off a couple things that came this week. Uh, mark, you got some stuff too, so yeah, I can pull obviously picked up new zelda. Echoes of wisdom. Um, still see, I did get to start it. Yeah, mark, hadn't got started yet. Um, you want to go and show off your other thing?

Mark Trobough: 43:01

yeah, because my store only had two of them and I just kind of said, screw it, I'll go ahead and pick it up, having it's still in the box. But I went and got the, the light, the Hyrule edition that they released along with it, still sealed. I don't know how much it cost me, like $300. Whatever the price is, I don't have the receipt in front of me. I kind of said, screw it, they had it, so I bought it. Yeah, so cool. I still have my original Switch. I don't have a light. I'm pretty sure it's just the light.

Brandon Hurles: 43:27

Obviously got no OLED screen, which would be nice, but well, there is a mod out right now I was just looking at again today for the Switch Lite and OLED screen mod. That's really cool. I mean like so cool that somebody has done that already while the Switch is still currently active.

Mark Trobough: 43:45

I meant to ask did you get the tote bag with the game at all?

Brandon Hurles: 43:48

nope, I didn't get anything because my GameStop both did not get my console in and also did not get the fabric poster. Pre-order bonus.

Mark Trobough: 43:58

So I didn't pre-order mine. I just walked in and was like do you have a copy? I didn't really care for it in the pre-orders. I don't know if GameStop had anything specific, but I didn't pre-order it.

Brandon Hurles: 44:05

Yeah, it was supposed to be a big fabric poster and mine didn't get him. Again, he it didn't. They didn't get to stuff the last two times I've made pre-orders.

Mark Trobough: 44:13

Yeah, I think my store. I think he said he had like 20 to either 20 or 40 copies that weren't pre-orders and he's like that should get me through the, through the week or the weekend it's not. It's not a big store, but it's. It's decent enough right. And then I guess if you're, if you're doing it before you go to one. I technically, because I wasn't so like earlier, I did get two other things okay to.

Mark Trobough: 44:33

To add on, I got because they finally had it the second and the third initial d omnibus that I picked up as well, not just the first one.

Brandon Hurles: 44:41

So I'm a huge, I'm a huge initial d fan so the moment I saw this, I was like yeah it just how much were.

Mark Trobough: 44:47

how much were those 23 piece for these omnibus it's? I mean, it's more expensive than I prefer it. But I saw that I was like, yeah, I'm going to get that.

Brandon Hurles: 44:56

That's rad. Those are cool. The other thing I got that came in the mail is Flippy Drive. This is a GameCube mod, so the peekaboo that I have in my GameCcube. Now I've got it loaded up with the full library. This is similar to that. It's got new software, but the it's a solderless mod, so you don't have to solder anything. You bend um this pcb flex here, it gets bent and put inside the gamecube, but basically you just you literally screw this mod down. So it's super simple. You can look up the directions. It's not out right now. Hopefully I'm saying this correctly. I think it is still a Kickstarter project. I believe they're looking at sometime early next year. They should be out, but people are going crazy for this thing. I know that they've already met their goals. They've done everything that they need to do. People are very excited about this and being solderless is a big deal for a lot of people, because a lot of people don't want to touch a soldering gun, right.

Brandon Hurles: 46:01

They don't feel comfortable with it.

Mark Trobough: 46:03

It's too easy to mess something up.

Brandon Hurles: 46:05

Yeah, for good reason. You literally just have to screw this one down and insert the PCB flex where it tells you to put it in. It's super simple. You can load up. It's both got new software for the GameCube, so it's basically got a 2.0 home screen where it will load up and when you go to your memory card selection it'll have all of your games that you've loaded up on there. Do you remember the memory card selection screen? How they were in blocks? Yeah, so all the games that you have saved there.

Brandon Hurles: 46:35

One of the other cool things is you can actually back up. You don't even have to plug in your computer. You can back up your physical games straight to this and save them on the device and it'll actually rip the game in your GameCube. It'll read and rip your game so you can save up. You can back up your own games game in your GameCube. It'll read and rip your game so you can save up. You can back up your own games right on the GameCube. It's crazy to me, but it also has Swiss and if you know anything about GameCube mods, swiss has been around for a long time, but it's basically what has been used for the GameCube for years.

Brandon Hurles: 47:09

At this point as far as the software, and so it's really cool. I'm going to dive into it soon, hopefully. I gotta find another gamecube, though, um, because I've already got this one set up. It's done, it's good. I need a different gamecube. I don't want to, um, take out and desolder what's already in there when it's run perfectly fine. I just need to find another GameCube. But yeah, that's really really cool. Pretty excited about that.

Mark Trobough: 47:36

Absolutely. I guess this next thing wasn't something big, but obviously a lot of stuff is getting announced during the Tokyo Game Show, but the they came out during Black Moth Wukong. Sorry, I couldn't blank the name on the studio. What's that? What? What? During Black Mouth Wukong?

Brandon Hurles: 47:51

Sorry, I couldn't blank the name on the studio.

Mark Trobough: 47:52

What's that what?

Brandon Hurles: 47:54

What's Black Mouth Wukong?

Mark Trobough: 47:55

It's the game that just came out like.

Brandon Hurles: 47:57

I'm just kidding.

Mark Trobough: 47:58

Like at the beginning of the month or something like that. But it came out, announced during the Tokyo Game Show, that Black Mouth Wukong has sold over 20 million copies in its first month which is very impressive, more than any natural game probably combined yeah, realistically they're claiming it's one of the top selling games. I tried to get hard numbers on some of the other games like uh, I don't think it's still a blade, it's not the right thing to think of, but, um, how, what was it?

Brandon Hurles: 48:27

stellar blades you get in dlc. Did you see that?

Mark Trobough: 48:30

I did, um, so I had this pulled up and I I lost it all of a sudden. Uh, so I don't know where it stands with the like, with the, with seven rebirth, infinite wealth, hell, divers, 2, um, as far as like, the actual numbers for what they've sold, uh, just because the years and out, I don't know how many people have hard release numbers until probably the end of the year, when they do whatever they're to, they come out during this, their investors, and say, hey, this is what we I mean copies, we move this fy and everything else and stuff like that, how much money we made stuff. But it's arguably it's gonna be one of the top selling games and I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes a top selling game of even with its short window.

Mark Trobough: 49:14

I think this is game of the year Easy, frontrunner, easy what should be a winner of game of the year to me personally, I just don't think any other game holds up to it. I just think far and away it's just going to be the best game and probably the best-selling game. But obviously it's hard to tell because I found pretty early on that games media, for whatever reason, didn't like it because they came out and the whole stuff a few months ago with the with sweet biggie, sweet baby ink, where they told him to just, you know, eat sand, yeah, but I think, regardless the actual game, it's a very good game. I still need.

Brandon Hurles: 49:47

Have you seen it yet?

Mark Trobough: 49:48

I haven't beat it, unfortunately I. I should have by now, but I didn't. But to me it's just, I just see this as being the easy, easy game of the year.

Brandon Hurles: 49:59

It shouldn't even be a competition. Yeah, I think it's definitely going to be in the discussion. I I can't think of what else like besides assassin's creed would have been one of them.

Mark Trobough: 50:09

Yeah, it's just not. Maybe if it was a 3D mainline game. I still think it's a mainline game, but it's kind of doing its own thing and it's not going to be seen as like a AAA mainline game.

Mark Trobough: 50:21

I'm trying to think of what else would even be Before the controversy you would have said Assassin's Creed, but controversy, now the delay, it's not even coming out this year anymore. And then, but controversy, now the delay, it's not even coming out this year anymore. And then, yeah, I don't know, I mean to me it instilled a blade on my two favorite games.

Brandon Hurles: 50:35

Oh, so well, you came out this year.

Mark Trobough: 50:36

Yeah, I don't I think that might make the list.

Brandon Hurles: 50:38

I don't think it's not gonna win. I don't.

Mark Trobough: 50:39

I don't think it's gonna win either I don't think it's gonna make the top five, but I could see like a dragon helldivers 2 uh, definitely in the discussion yeah, yeah, um, I yeah, I think it's probably gonna win.

Brandon Hurles: 50:54

I mean I can't.

Mark Trobough: 50:56

Yeah, probably is there's just no other. No other game, not only in sales and popularity, but just the game itself I mean I I won't support it because I don't.

Brandon Hurles: 51:06

I think it's sketchy, I think you're getting your data stolen and all that stuff with it.

Mark Trobough: 51:10

But to be fair, your data is getting stolen from Facebook. It's getting stolen from everybody else. It's just who to who's taking it and selling it. Your data is already out there. There's no stop and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 51:23

I disagree with that. I don't think everybody's data is out there, so most people, anybody internet your data is Whatever you put on the internet.

Mark Trobough: 51:34

It's out there and it's getting sold to advertisers for money. It just is what it is. I get it, if you don't like it, for its roots, with a Chinese company based in China and stuff like that, but as a game by itself it's just a really good game.

Brandon Hurles: 51:49

Well, we got Horizon Zero Dawn price after remaster announcement. So they doubled the price after they made the announcement for the remaster, because you have the $10 upgrade option and they don't want you to do that. They want you to spend more money.

Mark Trobough: 52:08

That's so stupid, because they went from $20 to $40 after they announced, hey, we're going to remaster and release it. What's the point of increasing the price, other than you're just.

Brandon Hurles: 52:19

It's just so greedy, it's corporate greed.

Mark Trobough: 52:22

Like it's Give me more reasons to stop supporting Sony, like it's just. This is pointless. It's a what a a five, six year game at this point, came out in like 2017, 2018, I think 2017 they came. They came out the same year the breath of wild did, but it's just like, that's just not necessary wild, I mean on top, of you're gonna release another game.

Mark Trobough: 52:43

So what? You're trying to get people that want to play it now to pay more, like you've long since made your money on this game. It's a really popular game. You know it's a really good, really good and fun game. But like, yeah, just, I agree, it was great. You see stuff like that. You're like first of all, I didn't need a remaster, it's a new coat of paint. But like what? I just there's no, there's no support, I don't even know.

Brandon Hurles: 53:06

I don't even know this. We were just talking about the last of us stuff. This. Very well might be one of those situations where it's like, okay, the game runs a little bit better, but there is no. To me, remaster that means that you're working with the original source code and you're working from sort of the ground up with it, so you're kind of rebuilding and the visuals should look significantly different when it's being remastered. A remaster to me is not just a new coat of paint or just okay, now it's a stable 60. That's not a remaster to me.

Mark Trobough: 53:48

You're remastering a game that you already have access to, and it's not that old it's still playable on the PS5. Well, less than a decade old.

Brandon Hurles: 53:58

At this point it's a last run, physically and digitally. So why are we doing this?

Mark Trobough: 54:01

like. I get it with old games that are like 10, 20, 30 years old that if you don't have the old hardware they're essentially impossible to play. That's one thing. But a game that's this new and sony's been feels like they've been doing this for a while now. They're just doing it more and more, like it started with last of us when they went from the ps3 to ps4.

Mark Trobough: 54:18

But it's just like this. It just seems unnecessary and it nobody, nobody should buy this. The only reason you should buy this remastered version is if you never played the game to begin with. Like if you already have it, there's no point, especially now that it's on pc. Like I can make this game look and run better by just modding it on pc, like I don't need a remastering and it's, yeah, it's crazy man yeah I don't know that's the only thing you could say it's just corporate greed. I'm like I don't.

Brandon Hurles: 54:44

Yeah, no, sony, you just I saw the name where it's like uh, sony's doing, doing like yeah, sony's back, oh no, we're gone.

Mark Trobough: 54:53

Oh no, we're back. Oh no, sony's done for, type thing. I was like this just feels like Sony like the past like two months they do something really good, then something really bad, and then she goes back and forth it's wild man.

Brandon Hurles: 55:05

I don't get it. I mean I don't get it like is this something you would buy?

Mark Trobough: 55:11

I already have the game. I have it on ps4 and on pc, so who are they trying to sell this to then? I don't know at this point, like who cares about this, if you? Wanted to have played this. You probably already have the game yeah, it's wild man but speaking of stuff that actually deserves a remaster, I know you talked about it and I think you posted it on the Facebook and some socials. Lunar is coming back after God knows how many decades it's been gone.

Brandon Hurles: 55:41

Yeah, funny enough, today is 19 years ago today. Lunar Dragon Song came out on the DS, so I posted that today too. Kind of funny timing, but yeah, no, this was my. I was more excited about this than anything in the PlayStation Showcase because I want these games to hit a new audience. So, just like we talked about with Trails and Tales and some of those games that you know Ys that hadn't hit with like an American audience before, this is another one of those. Or that you know ease, yeah, that hadn't hit with like an american audience before. This is another one of those ordeals these games are. These games in this collection to me are 10 out of 10 games. I love these lunar games like I deeply, deeply love these games.

Mark Trobough: 56:25

They are so good so, from what I saw, it's lunar silver uh star story, then Lunar Eternal Blue are the two games in this HD. Because it looks like it's still the same pixel the two best games. A little bit maybe of some 3D, with just the graphics and stuff like that, but it looks like the old pixel game, just with a fresh coat of high def pixelated art, essentially.

Brandon Hurles: 56:46

Yeah, that's a good way to describe it.

Brandon Hurles: 56:53

Yeah, and there's like honestly like these games, just bringing them to modern, modern platforms a big deal. Because here's another one of the things just like so many other jrpgs, these games are expensive, so there's no legal way to play these without spending several hundred dollars to buy them, because these came in box sets. These games did. They were in like, so, the ps1, it came in a sleeved box set that was about this thick and it came with a book and map and stuff like that. But no, they're doing all new English voice acting, which will modernize the classic experience, they said, and I think that's really cool that they're doing that, because that means they're actually putting work into it.

Mark Trobough: 57:31

Yeah, they said they're bringing the cut scenes to high def, uh, because I've seen some cut scenes where it looked like the old, like 90s anime. I assume they're just uh upscaling those the new fresh paint stuff like that. I don't know if they're like completely redoing the cut scenes, I'm not sure yeah, I'm not.

Brandon Hurles: 57:45

I'm not sure about that part either, but like, just looking at the cut scenes, they it is so cleaned up and looks really good. I think it looks excellent, like from the screenshots that we have, it looks very cleaned up from the original game. You got to remember, like PS one we're talking, you know where the air of we talked about it many times, where things maybe didn't look so great, don't hold up as well today. Now this is a little bit different because it is a 2d game. But even then I've gone back and played Silver Star Story and you know it can be a little rough in some areas just because ps1, but the game itself is an absolute sin. I'd send amazing stories like these. These two games are fantastic. Yeah, I'm so happy that they're coming to modern platforms and I hope that it reached a new audience so we get new games. I mean this. This is a series I would love to see continue.

Mark Trobough: 58:33

There's just a lot of good RPGs from the nineties that are stuck in that that top down 2d pixel art style that some people might be turned off on, but they're just really good written stories. It just requires you to have like 40, 50, 60 hours of time to get the whole story.

Brandon Hurles: 58:49

That's. You know that is the thing about JRPGs is they are a little bit of a time sink, you know so. But it's also one of the great things about it is that you get your money's worth out of the game you know what I mean.

Brandon Hurles: 59:00

Like that's, the cool thing about JRPGs is that you really legitimately get your money's worth. Like a 60-hour game, yeah, it's an investment, just take your time with it. Then who are you rushing for? Just take your time and enjoy it and you're getting your money's worth. That's how I see it. That's pretty cool. We didn't actually get to talk about it, but I am going to bring it up to Zelda. I started playing it.

Brandon Hurles: 59:23

Apparently this is around a 15-hour game, which is pretty good for a 2D Zelda game. It's actually, I mean, I would say, really good for a 2d zelda game. But, um, yeah. So I got a couple hours in and it's really cool, man. Um, it's, it's definitely different, it's really neat. Uh, it's no spoiler, because you saw it in the trailer, but you start the game out as link quickly and I won't say anything beyond that for that. But it's very interesting Right from the get-go.

Brandon Hurles: 59:53

You're thrown into the action of the game Like right away. There's like kind of no waiting, which is really neat. The Echo ability is freaking cool, man. Like really, really cool. It's such a cool concept. It's taking kind of like a semi semi thing from Tears of the Kingdom, sort of. It's similar in ways. But the echoes, which is like a copying ability and building ability, is really really neat, and there's like 150 different echoes in the game, different things that you can use to get around the environment and solve puzzles, and it's really really cool. So I did want to just mention that with it, but I'm enjoying it, I'm excited about it. One thing I will say, though the overworld when you're going through it, it's got the Link's Awakening problem. The frame rate is not stable. When you're going through the overworld.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:45

Yeah, that's what I heard. Hopefully that's something that will hopefully get patched because Nintendo's not known for well, they never patched Link's Awakening. It's still that way I hope not for such a big game, because it always feels like it's a big thing when games are Nintendo. Games are not polished when they come out, so hopefully it's not an issue.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:02

Link's Awakening was one of those very few exceptions for Nintendo where, like oh, this has got some actual performance problems.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:09

Outside of the Pokemon company, which just doesn't care about Switch fans.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:13

I feel like those were the only two that I can think of Scarlet and Violet and Link's Awakening, which is very unfortunate because it doesn't make sense with it being a 2D game. Why there's performance problems? I don't know what is wrong with the engine they're using, but something's up there.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:29

It's very weird and it's very weird and it's crazy to me that they would let that happen again after links. Awakening the frame rate in that game is rough, especially on a game that they're advertising as a brand new. It's not. It's not remaking, it's like a brand new from the ground up.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:41

Yeah, like I don't even know if this is where this goes in the timeline either when it starts out, because I guess it's not a spoiler. Like zelda doesn't know who link is, I'll just say that. So, like, where does it go in the timeline? It?

Mark Trobough: 1:01:57

might be. It's on a random thing, I assume, based off of what they're going to split off to a fourth timeline. Now, I mean, that's what they kind of did with the, with the two new games. Uh, they just kind of like uh put a line and said, hey, these two games are connected and they're just kind of not connected In my experience, I think Link's Awakening is worse, but I've seen a few people comment that this is significantly worse than Link's Awakening.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:20

And I'm about three hours in, so I've spent a good chunk of time in the overworld. I don't think it's as bad as Link's Awakening, but it's there. You can tell right from the get-go and when you get into the overworld it doesn't happen dungeons, anywhere. If you go inside a house it doesn't happen inside anything, it's just the overworld. Yeah, it's weird, um, and this is how many times bigger than links awakening, like I think they said eight times bigger than links awakening, like the map because it's an open world game.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:48

Yeah, and it was significantly larger and you would expect them taking a not being restraint to a old game on the game boy being able to do a whole lot more with right, right.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:58

Yeah, it was so disappointing to see at links awakening because it was like it was. It was so rough that, like at points, I didn't even want to continue like it was pretty bad and I love links awakening on the game boy. So, um, of course I did beat it. I beat that game twice, the remake.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:13

I was trying to figure out where.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:16

I think they said eight times bigger, but there's a whole map you've got to unlock, like here's the kingdom.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:22

Yeah, I just wanted to go back. So, if you're not sure, link's Awakening takes place after A Link to the Past and the Heroes defeated Timeline. It's the second game in that timeline.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:31

Mm-mm, and it's just confirmed by Nintendo.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:34

Yeah, it's the official timeline placement, because we all know that all the games that have no proper timeline placement were in the Heroes Defeated timeline.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:42

So this is after A Link to the Past.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:45

Yes, it's the next game after. That's weird, and then Link's.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:49

Awakening is after that, right, I mean Link's Awakening, that's weird. And then links awakening is after that, right?

Mark Trobough: 1:03:56

uh, I mean, links awakening is just a dream so it's like how do you yeah, it's like the past links awakening, uh, the one I pulled up is not the best. And then there's another game, and it's the, the oracle games, and it's uh the oracle games, I think, have to be next for remakes that you would think so ages.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:09

oracle of Ages is in my top three Zelda games ever, so I think it's phenomenal.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:17

Yeah, so it goes in the Heroes of Feud. It's Link to the Past, link's Awakening the Oracles, then the Link Between Worlds, and then Zelda 1, zelda 2.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:25

Yeah, so, mr Coffee, it looks like Link's Awakening is set after this game, right? Yeah, I have no idea. I thought you just said it.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:36

You mean this brand new game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:38

Yeah, this is set before Link's Awakening and after Link's Awakening no Link's.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:42

Awakening, because I was asking this specific question. Link's Awakening is placed after Link's Awakening.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:47

We have no idea where the Seiko's game is Well, that's what I was saying, that's what you were trying to say, the whole time.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:53

No, because they said in their new announcement that we talked about a few episodes ago.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:57

I think this is its own game.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:58

It was like a hard line. Then it was Breath of the Wild, tears of the Kingdom, completely detached, and then I assumed this one was going to be somewhat attached to those. But I don't know if it's going to be a spinoff or there's going to be a huge time jump.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:10

So maybe after uh it could be before tears of the kingdom, potentially I don't know, or maybe this takes place doesn't know.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:18

Link is this takes place after, because I can't remember how the ending went for for tears of the kingdom, but maybe there's some amnesia that happened after. These are their, they're the offspring of the future, because we know that's the still the whole. You know they're they're doomed to repeat, the cycle type thing. But but yeah, I guess we'll just have to wait until they officially put it into a timeline or we get another mainline Zelda game that you know mentions this game maybe probably won't.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:46

Well I'm wondering if this is its own thing. I legitimately I don't think they would want to split off and make a fifth timeline. Who knows, at this point it's Nintendo, but I did say, like what I was most excited for with this game was the story, because I wanted to know is this part of you know the Tears of the Kingdom timeline?

Mark Trobough: 1:06:05

and Breath of the Wild. I have to finish the game and see, I guess, maybe, maybe it'll tell you you should play more.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:11

Yeah, maybe We'll see.

Mark Trobough: 1:06:12

I maybe we'll see. I'm sure someone's already. I'm glad there's more.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:14

There's already more story there than tears of the kingdom had for the whole game.

Mark Trobough: 1:06:19

I'm only a couple hours in, so I mean, there's decent now, but it's like the that's a, that's open worlds. In general, there's a give and take. Well, this, is open world too yeah, so there's a there's a limit on how in depth the story can be, compared to a super linear game where it's just pure raw story that moves the game forward.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:38

Well, apparently Nintendo's ending repairs on three consoles right.

Mark Trobough: 1:06:45

Yeah, so there's for sure. Two of these were Japan specific, if you didn't know, apparently for the Famicom Classic and the Super Famicom Classic, which in the US it was known as the NES Classic and the SNES Classic, their ending support, essentially once parts ran out, as well as, apparently, the new 2DS XL. The fact that Nintendo does this and they advertise it, it's still amazing to me.

Brandon Hurles: 1:07:10

Maybe the other consoles do.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:12

Nobody consoles. But they're like, hey for the Famicom classic, super famicom and 2d new, 2ds xl. They're saying, hey, once parts are out, we're not fixing these anymore, so you need it fixed. Get it fixed now, send in now. Yeah, like we've heard this before recently with some of their old stuff, but just like stuff that's like 10 years old.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:31

so it's like it's it's end of life type thing with the hardware and and they're like you know we're just not going to support it anymore. Something kind of small, but you know, some need a decent amount of Nintendo stuff. I don't know where Brandon ran off to, oh he's still there.

Brandon Hurles: 1:07:47

Yeah, okay, so we got Kingdom Hearts creator. Comments on ugly characters in video games.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:55

Yes, I thought that was just kind of funny. I did see some people talking about this. But essentially he came apparently when he was a classmate. One of his friends was playing a game in which he came out and said the protagonist wasn't good looking. So his friend actually asked well, I don't have to be ugly in the game too, not only in her world but in a video game and apparently that highly influenced him on his character. Have to be ugly in the game too, not only in her world but in a video game, and apparently that highly influenced him on his character designs to be like.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:21

You know you want a because obviously people's like. It's not realistic but it's a kind of a game. It's more of like a fantasy or something you would wish to see. Why, you know? Because not everybody's like this top one percent the best looking people in the world. If, if you want to look, you know, play as a nice person or look good in a video game and not everybody wants to look like themselves in an actual video game they want maybe a more idealized version of themselves or somebody like a blank slate character that they could kind of like imprint themselves on as they're playing the game with the whole blank slate character type thing. I can't imagine this getting a whole lot of uh drama around it. I'm sure some people would would do that. It's just I thought it was kind of funny and a little neat that people were talking about. They came out and was kind of yeah, this is kind of like why I make my characters the way I do that's a very interesting.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:13

I think a lot of people funny, probably, would, probably, would agree with the statement. The whole out of this whole drama around you know, eastern western character design and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:22

Yeah, I would agree. I mean, let's just be, it's not real to video games, so why not have you know, play into the fantasy of of you know and pretty yourself on somebody that you probably aren't like, not everybody's like the hero in the real world Going to be a go on this huge quest, say, the world. I was going to know your name, but you can be that person in a video game, that idealized version that you see yourself as.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:47

Seems sketchy I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:49

I think it's just you.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:51

It might be, it might just be me, but it's definitely interesting.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:56

I thought it was kind of relevant, just because you see a stark divide between East and West. As far as character design goes, it's very different.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:03

Yeah, it's definitely interesting, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:08

I guess you could stay around Nintendo a little more. So apparently Platinum Games has gotten its full rights from the wonderful 101 from Nintendo. Nintendo was the publisher of this game, but now apparently Platinum Games got full rights for the game that they made back in 2013. I don't know Did you ever play this game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:31

No, I have not have you.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:34

I didn't really have much of a Wii U presence Hold on. I have a Wii have you? I didn't really have much of a Wii U presence Hold. On. I have a Wii U, but I didn't. So it's what's it like? It's like a Wonderful Joe game or something like that. Oh, Wonderful 101,. Yeah, sorry, that's what I thought.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:49

I played this, yeah, so no, this is I don't know how to explain it. It's like a game where you've got 101 characters on the screen that you're controlling. They're all superheroes. It's very wacky, very interesting, and Platinum Games is always great. I liked it a lot.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:06

They're a really good game studio.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:08

Yeah, they are. They put out, obviously, Bayonetta and stuff like that. So they do some really good stuff and you can't go wrong with any of those games like that. So they do some really good stuff and you can't go wrong with any of those games. But a sequel for Wonderful 101 would be really, really cool.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:22

I mean for sure hopefully that means good things in the future. They got the rights back they want to continue on or release the game or do a remaster. Maybe Nintendo had it and they didn't want to do anything with it, but you know the studio did so yeah, yeah, no for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:37

I mean I would love to it, but you know the studio did. So, yeah, yeah, no for sure. Uh, I mean I would love to see them, you know, do something with it. Uh, yeah, mr coffee said it's like pikmin meets beat them up. So yeah, that's a great way to describe it, for sure yeah, I think I bought the.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:52

I have a wii u, but I bought it to play a handful of Wii games. I got Mario Maker on it, but I got the Wii U at the end of its life A year or two before the Switch came out. Oh yeah, do you still play it? I haven't pulled it out. In a few years, like five years, I haven't pulled it out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:12

Do you have? What retro consoles do you have?

Mark Trobough: 1:12:16

I've got the SNES, the 64, the GameCube. I got the Vita. It's like edge of retro. I guess I got the Wii U and stuff like that, but I've only got a handful of old consoles. Do you have the?

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:29

64?.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:30

Yeah, these are the consoles that I grew up playing with. So, to be fair, they all technically need refurbished. Oh, ok, but I I have them. I just don't really really use them, play them a whole lot at this point, so more or less they just they sit in a closet.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:45

Uh see, that's, that's sad. I don't have a proper sit there.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:48

The problem is for for the, for the snes 64 and, I guess, more or less for the GameCube. I don't have a proper CRT to play games on. I've got a 55-inch flat screen which they don't play well on. Even with an adapter. They still look stretched, distorted, highly pixelated on a modern, you need the retro tank. Yeah, probably I do.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:14

No, 100%. If you use those cheap adapters, you might as well not even play it. They look so bad they do. I've got it here. It's under a bunch of cables so I can't show you, but yeah, no, that's what I use for modern tv and it fixes that problem completely. Uh, and you can even put scan lines on there to make it replicate like a crt, because there are some games where those pixels were designed around the scan lines being there.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:40

Yeah, so if you don't have them there, it just looks off actually I thought it was funny because I saw somebody talk about that like like duck hunt, like apparently it's designed around, it's looking for where it is. It was like what they say, like a flash on the screen that it's looking for through the, through the gun, and if and if it sees that flash, it counts it like it's a hit. So apparently you could just put it under a lamp shoot and you would hit every time.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:01

It's super high Cause, it's just it's based off of the screen would flash super fast and that just determines based off where they did it flash, where the, where the barrel or whatever the thing is looking for, aiming essentially, essentially which I guess you know that, the wii.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:15

No, no, you're good. Did you know the wii? Um, you can use a candle instead of the sensor bar and it'll work. I didn't know that yeah, you got serious. There's videos of it. I've tried it and it works. Isn't that crazy?

Mark Trobough: 1:14:29

that is yeah, it's wild man, the jankiness of old technology trying to do something neat. No, because I was just trying to say apparently it technically works on modern uh lcd and led screens just not as well, just because it wasn't designed. It was designed around what the crt actually does. But in theory can still work, it's just not as not as effective yeah, the retro think solves all those problems.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:52

Um, I don't, I can't say I 100 understand the technology behind it, but the guy that does it like there's the retro think 4k now that's out, which I don't have. It's just it costs too much. I just can't afford it right now. But I've got the 5x, which is good enough for 95 of people. Um, and it it works perfect. It's Like it fixes all those problems and you can work around. Obviously everything up to, like you know, sega, saturn, ps3, even Like it does a lot of stuff. It's crazy.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:27

I guess the last thing I'll say on this is I could go with the CRT. The problem is a lot of these old games that I had and I actually played a lot, if not most them are now like on the nintendo switch online.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:40

So it's like I don't have ways to play a lot of these games and like I want to play it, but like I'll play it for like a day or two, a few hours, and then it's like I want to move on, like I'm not just going to play these game religiously. It's just like you get the itch periodically, periodically go back and play a game that you played to me. For a lot of these games you can beat within a day. Do?

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:54

you still have any of your handhelds.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:57

I got my Game Boy Color, my Game Boy Advance. They're both missing the battery back but they've been missing those when I was a kid. Classic, I think. I've got the Vita, and then the Clamshell. I think the Clamshell one its battery's kind of shot. I think it has to stay plugged in at this point, and then I've got my old DS but it just doesn't work.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:15

I'm pretty sure because I think I showed it before. It's pretty sure the batteries have since corroded and probably just damaged it permanently because it just sat in the closet for like a decade.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:24

What you should do is at least unscrew that back and pull that battery out, just in case it hasn't ruined it.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:31

But I've got to implode in there. I ended up also getting like I've got two new 3DS XLs so I have ways to play my old DS games. I bought two.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:41

Why am I here to buy one off of you? I bought them when they were cheap.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:47

Before it was announced, because I think I got both of them for no more than $100, $120 a piece or something like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:52

Yeah, I remember, I wish I had grabbed one.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:01

You said new 3ds. Right, yeah, the new 3ds. So that's what I mean. I've been trying to find one. I have to buy one off you. That was the time when I was playing. I was playing, uh, pokemon games both on the, on the, the online store, as well as like the, the newer games they had on the ds and pokemon need to trade.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:12

That was really what I was into working on the pokemon living decks which I got through all those games, uh, so that was like. The main reason was I needed ways to trade for myself for for yeah, that makes sense stuff like that. Um, but yeah, that was. That was back when it was like 100 bucks. It was like whatever it's.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:29

You know really cheap, plus I've got deeply not grabbing a couple of them plus, yeah, I, the old ds is neat to have, but like just having the bigger screen I'd rather play old games they work and it's. It's just a better hardware so it looks better on the 3ds too, and if it's not, if it's not stretched it'll still give that box, but like you can play them just fine on modern, on the modern they're backwards compatible, so there's no real need to pull out. You know 20 year old handheld hardware and play it.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:58

Yeah yeah, it doesn't it doesn't necessarily have like picto chat or something like that on it, but more or less I could still play the games I want to play but it is good to play picto chat too, you know.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:09

So, yeah, all right. So what we got?

Mark Trobough: 1:18:11

next mark I guess two more quick things before we get on to a bunch of our big stuff. So, uh, it was like a quick little note steam broke, uh, its own record for concurrent players. So they this past sunday, uh, trying to pull up the actual date on the on the 22nd september 2024, uh, they hit 38.3 million concurrent users on steam, which broke their previous records back in january 23 and july of 24, uh, which just kind of goes to show how popular steam really is it wasn't something, it was just like hey we, they, they broke a one of their records of just concurrent people on steam, which is crazy.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:55

That is crazy. Uh, the other one was some something I saw like right, like within like a half hour before we actually went live, uh, just because I have one of these versions of the of the game on the 360. But we got just got an announcement that the venus vacation prism dead or alive extreme was announced for5, ps4 and PC, due out in early 2025 from the publisher Koei Tecmo and the developer Team Ninja. And if you don't know anything about the Dead or Alive Extreme, it's essentially it's a immersive romance adventure game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:33

That's a way to put it. I didn't know the dead or alive.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:38

Extreme games had anything other than volleyball, so this is like even the old, dead or live extreme had volleyball, but there are other aspects of it where you're like buying outfits for the girls. Try to get them to like you, or something like that there was always like a remember that I don't remember.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:51

Trying to get you to like you, part I some't remember, because there's a few games I thought, but there was always like a romance, dating sim light version to those games on top of the girls are just the dead or alive girls just in skimpy outfits at a beach, so which is very obviously the main selling point of the game and it might not be extreme it might be one of the other games, but hey, if you're a fan of these quasi-dating sims, especially the Dead or Alive Extreme series, hey, you get another game. They haven't forgotten about you.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:29

I will say this, and this is nothing I would ever play. I'm not interested in dating sim, but it looks really good. Like visually, it looks better than it should, in my opinion.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:43

Like the screenshots, it looks really good it's kind of like some quasi dating sims. As the boss on Venus Island, where summer is everlasting, you will interact with the girls you encounter there. Your story with the girls will unfold based on the choices you make, resulting in a variety of outcomes the heart-fluttering sensation caused by casual gestures. The thrill felt as you draw close to your love interest. The worry about which girl to choose. Are you ready to experience true romance on the island of everlasting summer?

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:16

And there's, uh, six, six girls, I I'm assuming the same with the previous looks like a visual novel. Yeah, that's kind of what these games are. Just watch the trailer.

Mark Trobough: 1:21:25

I mean this is, this is probably a probably gonna sell far more better in japan than probably everywhere else, just because it's like the primary marker for these types of games. But there are people here that that like visual novels and and there are some decently good visual novels, even though the choices you make are select what dialogue option and then the story just kind of moves forward. There's really no interaction more than that. But yeah, I just thought it was funny, I saw it and thought I'd mention it because why not? Yeah, no, it's definitely interesting.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:55

I legitimately didn't know that that consists of spinoff series of fighting games, which is wild that this is like a spinoff of a spinoff Pretty much Wild. Yeah, it's definitely interesting. And there's no volleyball in it, though. That sucks.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:11

I mean, who knows, maybe there is, you just don't know.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:14

Yeah, there might be a small little mini game. Maybe yeah, Alright, so are we moving on to the bigger news?

Mark Trobough: 1:22:23

Oh yeah, we can do that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:26

Okay. So we got some Tokyo Game Show announcements on the Xbox side, so we saw more about Metal Gear Solid, delta Snake Eater, which is really cool. A lot of people have been asking about this, wondering what's going on. Are we going to get release dates? Are we going to get any more info? And we didn't. It doesn't look like we really got a release date for it.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:52

Is that right? I'm not sure. Or at least, what GameSpot wrote up didn't have anything announced on it. There might be a better one, but just the fact that we're getting new news about a new Metal Gear Solid game. It's exciting. Now just hopefully they don't mess it up. Fix your audio your headphones. Oh you good, oh my brain is doing something.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:25

My audio guy sorry. I'm trying to fix it.

Mark Trobough: 1:23:28

Yeah, he's trying to fix it real quick. On top of that, I guess we'll do something a little bit smaller. If any of you are still an Overwatch 2 fan. Apparently the game's getting a bunch of my Hero Academia skins for certain characters. So you know different stuff, like All Might Uravity, deku and Himiko Toga are getting certain skins and I get a few other ones. I'm just not sure for who the character is. I think from what I saw, tracer is the one getting the Deku skin, but I don't remember about the rest of the characters. It looks good. I'm not an Overwatch 2 fan, but for those that are both the my Hero Academia and Overwatch fan, it's good. You're probably gonna get ripped off on what they're charging for it, but Are you an hey?

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:13

are you a age of mythology fan?

Mark Trobough: 1:24:17

uh, I played it once. I didn't really care for it, but I'm glad we're getting more of the remasters because I am a big fan of the age of empires 2. Uh, remaster it's, yeah, it's just a really good classic game and style of game yep, looks like we got more on indiana jones before we, because I did skip one while you were gone, though. Did we get news about StarCraft Remastered and StarCraft 2? Apparently, they're both expected to be coming to Game Pass, which is good. Talk about just classic games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:51

That's exciting. I'm excited about that. I definitely would love to revisit StarCraft 2 for sure I love would love to revisit Starcraft 2 for sure I love that game.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:58

You got a fan for the Age of Empires DS. Mr Coffee commented big fan of the DS version, which I have, but I've since long since lost. I think Brandon still has his. It's probably what he's going to grab. I played a lot of it and it definitely played more as turn-based. I just prefer the Age of Empires 2 on PC. It's one of those games that I wish I still had. Just, you lost it god knows how long ago as Brandon. Yeah, I think I put a decent amount in. Yeah, it's a classic old game, the Age of Kings back when that was like the only expansion. Now there's like it feels like five different expansions I love it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25:40

I I replayed some of it again not too long ago but it runs like garbage. But I love it just because I have that nostalgia for it. It runs really bad though it's got a lot of issues, but I still loved it.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:52

I put another like eight hours into it, yeah, but I mean I got that itch when I got age of empires uh, age of empires 2, the remastered version of it, so I've been going back playing the old campaigns plus there's new, like. The one thing that was really great is the game. That's like 25 years old. Once they remastered it, it's still getting more content, more updates, which I think is absolutely great, because it's just like the peak of what you know of RTS really is peaked in like the late nineties, early two thousands.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:20

There's really no, need to to innovate on it.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:22

I think it works just fine at that point.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:23

But for sure. Then we also got Tanuki pond summer, which is an interesting, interesting kind of game. I was watching a trailer of it. It looks it looks fun, it looks game. I was watching a trailer of it. Looks it looks fun. Looks it looks really fun. Um, looks like it'd be a pretty short game, but fun, fun stuff. I'm kind of excited about that one now I don't know the time, yeah, I don't.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:45

I don't know if you call that more like one of those, uh, those cutesy type games that tend to like pop up like the like a comfy game or whatever you want to call it. It's what it feels like cozy, yeah, yeah, cozy game. It's what it felt like to me.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:57

Yeah, for sure, but Threads of Time. Oh my God, does this game look amazing? Holy freaking crap. So it's a new JRPG, so it's supposed to be in lines of Chrono Trigger, and you look at both the gameplay, the art, aesthetic, and then it's got full anime cut scene sequences in between. So it's got that really really good.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:23

It's got that really popular pixel but that at point 2.5d art style for for old retro games it's really starting to uh become like a big thing come back. Yeah, I think I think that 2.5d really works in the modern age for for these pixel games, whether it's new or like a remaster, because it has a 3d environment, but it still has the the pixel artwork that you really like about the characters in the environment yeah, it says it's uh threads of time.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:46

The team describes it as an era-spanning turn beast rpg inspired by the timeless classic. So it's very much supposed to be in the line of chrono trigger and it looks. The aesthetic is beautiful absolutely beautiful it looks, the animated cut scenes too, thrown in there like holy crap, dude. Like it looks awesome.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:05

I think they did a lot. It's just how many games do we need before we get a chrono trigger actual remaster that we so desperately need? Well?

Brandon Hurles: 1:28:13

I would. I would love that, but I'm also like new games, new ips. Oh yeah, like I'm all for it, man, this is what we should be getting more of is new ips like getting past this stigma that flat 2d games are bad, like not everything needs to be this triple a 3d game like you have really good storytelling and the graphics look good, but you don't.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:34

You're not putting in 200 million dollars into a game and hoping to god it doesn't flop. You can put like 10 million dollars into a game like this.

Brandon Hurles: 1:28:42

It could be wildly successful yeah, yeah, no doubt I'm excited about it. Looks really, really awesome, so I can't wait to check that out. No, yeah, absolutely that's a really cool one from it and definitely to see in the xbox showcase. Here's another one I'm excited about. Uh, we love katamari, katamari reroll plus royal reverie, so I bought the.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:05

It is yeah, they say it's available.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:08

I can't remember which katamari that I bought. That was a remaster for the switch, but this one is my favorite Katamari game, so I'm really excited about this.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:16

Yeah, so I think this is both on Game Pass for both the PC and the Xbox itself that's out right now, and I mean they're just, they're great fun games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:25

Yeah for sure. And then we got to see more of what may be my other than Zelda. My most hyped game that I'm looking forward to that comes out next month, which is metaphor right Re Fantasio. I it's gotta be. You. Look at this game. It just looks beautiful, man. Just looks so good. I'm. I'm just I'm so excited to see more of these types of games coming here, cause it's yeah, it's just not something that happened before, and if it did, it just didn't do well, it didn't hit with other people. But this is up there for what I'm most excited about. This game just looks so freaking awesome, man. What do you think about this game?

Mark Trobough: 1:30:05

I think it's pretty good. I don't know if I'm going to get it at launch. I might have a rule of thumb. I at least want to give it a few days just to see the reaction and stuff like that. But it assuming this game is actually good, I'll probably get it like within the first week it comes out. I'm hoping that it does good. I think the game looks amazing, at least from what we've seen.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:25

Yeah, the visuals man look really good.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:29

It's really interesting looking like monsters that really look like they pull from, like Japanese mythology or just general Japanese, like weird horror art. It's like a monster with four eyes, a weird tongue, that's got a flower with an eye on it and stuff like that, but it's coming out of a flower. It's just crazy.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:44

You want to let us know about this next game if you want to play it.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:49

You mean Frag Punk?

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:51

Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:54

It's a new hero shooter. Of course it is. It's a new 5v5 hero shooter. It's a new hero shooter. Of course it is a hero shooter.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:59

It's a new 5v5 hero shooter. It's getting your closed beta and signups are now available for it.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:04

It can't do any worse than it doesn't look nearly as bad as Concord.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:08

But yeah, I don't know, I just don't know how well it's going to do. It's the same concept, though.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:12

I guarantee you it has not the amount of time. It I mean, it probably looks a little bit more unique than that game, but I don't. I know now. I know why you may talk about.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:21

It's a hero shooter so by default, I just don't care for, for hero shooters, I don't care, like I tried, overwatch 2 and I played that for about a few like two hours and I was like, yeah, I'm good yeah, I. I just I never even touched two, it just didn't. One didn't click with me at all. Uh, so we also got a. Tell your yuma, the alchemist of memories and envision land. Oh, he's gotta have these crazy long titles yeah, thanks japan.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:46

They've had, they've held like titles, like anime and manga. That's like a full-on sentence. It's crazy.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:53

Uh, this next one I have no idea how to say it Asura Jing Rumble. It's a Battle Royale game, anime-esque Battle Royale, so probably something I won't play.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:04

Yeah, it's a Battle Royale fighter type game With an Asian skin to it. The best way to describe it essentially.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:13

And then you want to talk about this next one.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:20

I assume not the fallout 76 one. What's there to?

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:22

talk about fallout 76.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:22

I have no idea. We're just getting more content with the game. What?

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:27

why are you you?

Mark Trobough: 1:32:28

can you can get a cat in fallout 76. This is what they're, what they're bringing to the wasteland. Seems like it didn't really need a big announcement for it, if you ask me.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:39

Yeah, I don't quite understand, but.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:41

I mean the Sin Duality. If I didn't butcher that Echoes of Ada, which is the PvPvE type game, kind of looked interesting. I mean it's more of the it goes into that live service type game, but it had an interesting premise from what it looked like.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:59

Yeah, yeah, but uh yeah, it had an extreme premise from what it looked like. Yeah, yeah, for sure, I'm pretty excited about a new bleach game. I gotta say I love the. Ip what?

Mark Trobough: 1:33:06

sorry, I've been a little.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:08

I've seen a smartass oh, you know, I like well, yeah. I know as well.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:14

Sorry you never got into it right the anime, not really.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:20

Yeah, I think it's great. I thought it was under the most. I mean it was because of the big three the One Piece, naruto and Bleach. It was the least popular, I would say, and I just thought it was great. Man, I mean it's my favorite of the three. Like, I like Naruto a lot, I like One Piece too, but Bleach I think it's a great. So, yeah, I'm excited to see if this is any good. This is one I'll, you know, wait to see what people say about it or whatever, and like kind of get the general consensus, but it's coming out early 2025 and, uh, it looks pretty cool yeah, and then we're getting another, uh, another remaster, suikoden one and two.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:00

It's getting an hd remaster yeah, so we knew about this, but we finally got a release date, march 6th of next year, because it keeps it keeps getting pushed for some reason.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:09

So for some reason we weren't getting like a solid release date. But again, just like the other ones I talked about when I was talking about lunar 10 out of 10 games absolutely fantastic. I'm so happy they're being brought to modern platforms, because they're expensive and they're not accessible. So I'm all for it. Yeah, and then all you need is help what's the next game?

Mark Trobough: 1:34:34

it. It's a multiplayer puzzle game, essentially yeah Best way to describe it Like something I probably wouldn't play. Yeah, of course not. I've never been the biggest. There's only one puzzle game that I actually played.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:49

Thousand Year War is a bomb. I agree it is. Have you seen the trailer to Date? Trigger no Vita. It's basically Fortnite, but it's all waifus. Have you seen the trailer to date? Trigger no vita. It's basically fortnite, but it's all waifus. Have you seen that mark? I don't think so. That's up mark sally. He's the waifu guy. Uh, I'm gonna skip that one because another multiplayer online game uh, so we got slitterhead, which looks like an interesting horror game. I definitely saw some discourse about this game so I'm interested to see if this ain't good. It looks kind of cool, but I always remain skeptical. Yep, I'm saying wrong, you know, I just kind of usually the horror stuff.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:29

It depends, but I usually wait to see if people say people, I know yeah, so yeah and then this next year we kind of already knew about the dragon quest 3 hd 2d remake, and then the trials of mana and the legends of mana. Uh, games, yeah, trials of me.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:47

Trials of man has been out for a long time. It's just coming the game past same with legends, uh, but we kind of already got cool.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:53

Yeah, we kind of already know it's coming. The dragon quest 3, hd 2d is coming later this year, november 14th, and then obviously we're getting the 1 and 2 sometime next year. Just, you know, getting more information, more, look at it. You know, just can't wait for that game to come out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:36:06

Were you smiling while watching the trailer for the Waifu game? I don't know why you say it's a waifu game. He said it, not me. Yeah, I don't even know what that means, but we also got Final Fantasy 1 through 6 pixel remasters coming to Xbox. So that's really cool, man for Xbox. People are getting a lot of JRPGs.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:28

Yeah, and obviously this was the Xbox one. There's still stuff going on today. You used to have the rest of the weekend, so there's stuff, stuff going that was going on today. There's you just have the rest of the weekend, so there's definitely a lot of more stuff to come, hopefully, because obviously there were different, different studios doing, you know, different announcements throughout the whole weekend. But I mean, this is like a really good start for stuff that's coming out, both new and stuff that we kind of already heard about. That's great. I just like the fact that we're getting a lot of, uh, these old jrpGs getting a new life on new, a new console, new hardware where they knew more or less go to paint on top of them, cause these, these are older games that definitely deserve people that either didn't play them back then or I've never heard of these games, to get to try some of these old JRPGs and if you want to actually play a really story rich game that's actually well-written, that's the kind of way to go.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:17

Yeah 20, 30 years in the past.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:20

Yeah, for sure. Uh, so it looks like the last thing we got is ghost Sushima. Dev reveals plans for spinoff projects for the series. Um, so ghost of Yotei signals a major shift for sucker punch as it signals the start of a new Sony franchise. Sucker Punch's plans for the franchise include more spin-off projects and a movie adaptation. I don't know how I feel about that, because I don't think everything needs a movie.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:48

Yeah, pump the brakes on the movie crap, that's either going to do really well or it's going to bomb.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:52

I just don't think it's necessary. There's too many adaptations, I'm sorry. The medium of video games just works best, uh, but yeah, it looks like the whole ghost of is gonna be a new, a new series running forward, and whether that stays in japan or whether they they branch out even to this day in japan like there's a lot of good storytelling you can do like there's definitely a lot of history. And for this one, uh, for ghost of yotei, we're going up to hokkaido, because I believe yotei is, if I'm not mistaken, the name of the mountain that's being shown. That's like the big mountain up in hokkaido. Yeah, yep, uh. So yeah, it's a lot of stuff to see.

Mark Trobough: 1:38:29

This game takes place. I believe they say what is it? Uh, 1603 is the year Uh. So for like a quick little reference, essentially the uh in the year 1600, which is like the last major battle of the Sengoku period, essentially the final death nail of it. That's like the battle of Sekigahara, I believe happened in 1600. And then, officially in 1603, the year this game comes, uh takes place, the Tokugawa shogunate officially comes to power and it enters the whole uh shogunate period where japan's kind of closed off to the world and stuff like that, except for, yeah, they only trade with the dutch. So at least I have like a quick little uh reference to when the game kind of takes place, but with it taking place in hokkaido, uh, I highly doubt it's going to interact with a whole lot of what's going on down there. I do, and I don't remember because I haven't pulled up. I do know there were some people talking about. There was some famous, well-renowned, was it samurai or sword sword person, sword guy, I can't remember his name.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:32

I'm not sure that existed in this time and some people were kind of hoping for it to kind of like take place and stuff like that. Uh, some people disappointed that we were going away from from jinsukai, from ghost of tsushima. But this game game takes place in 1603. Uh, the mongol invasion was in the 1200s, 1240s, something like that. Uh, so it's like a you know 350 or so years in the future type thing.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:57

Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:58

Not expecting any kind of reference to that, but I mean more or less, we know this game is coming out next year and we got like a sneak peek of where the game is going to be at your main character, but outside of that kind of left don't really know a whole about the actual story. From the trailer it's just yeah, yeah. The actual story from the trailer it's just yeah, yeah. And then I can't remember what the main protagonist. I can remember what her, what, what her name is.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:23

I thought they came out and said her name.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:24

Yeah, uh, I know it was put out there, but I may be missing it. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if it was, if I had a pull on Nate Nate Fox. No, it's not Nate Fox, it's Otsu.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:38

That's their name.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:39

It's Otsu Sorry.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:41

ATSU.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:42

No, no, okay, All right, but it just looks just as good as the original game and I assume it's going to play very similar to the original game. To be fair, I don't think they needed to change up the whole gameplay, a whole lot. A new story, new location, new stuff to experience. They've got the formula down perfect. No, essentially crossing your fingers. They don't screw the game up. Hopefully they've got a new franchise, but hopefully Ubisoft didn't run it to the ground as well as their studio.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:21

Yeah, I'm hoping for the best.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:22

I ghost of tsushima. I played it twice, playing on ps4 and ps5, but I I did see some fun stuff. It's like, oh yeah, this is essentially the style of game that assassin's creed should have been. Uh, but this has just wants to. You know, crap, the bed like there's a better samurai.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:34

That way, I would have wanted to play it. Yeah, because I like that, that time period, and I just like all the japanese culture stuff and yeah, a lot of people.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:45

I'm not playing it now I'm not.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:47

I'm not giving them 70 bucks for that game.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:49

Yeah but, they can go take a hike yeah, but all all they knew is, uh, it's coming out sometime next year. They did announce uh, what's a? Uh, well, it still appears to be a way off. Amazon prime animated anthology, secret level is set to release a ghost of tsushima themed episode in one of its plan. It's 15 planned episodes when it arrives in december. Uh, so for those that have a prime are interested in the what secret level does, hey, you can get a little, you know, insight sometime this december. I don't know, I assume they're just probably gonna drop all 15 episodes at once. Um, but yeah, no, yeah, definitely, definitely a lot, a lot of good stuff to look forward to and hopefully a promising new franchise. But I mean, you know, fingers crossed, just because a lot of games, you can make one really good game and then one that you know craps the bed. You know the next game.

Mark Trobough: 1:42:37

So no, you said nate fox that was the creative director was nate fox and jason, jason connell gotcha. Okay, that makes sense, clarify that from, like you know, however many minutes ago it was yeah, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:53

So all right, do we got anything else I?

Mark Trobough: 1:42:58

don't know if there's anything that you want to pull up or talk about. I know there's a lot of. I mean, obviously a lot of stuff has dropped and is dropping, so it feels like it's impossible to to catch anything. So I didn't know if there was anything you were missing, or yeah, no, I mean any breaking news over on the Twitter X sphere.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:16

I honestly have not even been on and checked anything. I did want to say. Are you able to pull up what Metacritic has for Zelda right now?

Mark Trobough: 1:43:27

Yeah, give me just a second Double check.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:34

It's out of curiosity to let the viewers and listeners know oh, that's right Metacritic did want to mention that the mod retro chromatic is up for pre-order on GameStop right now so you can buy that if you want to play your Game Boy or Game Boy Color games. It looks really awesome. I may be getting a review unit I don't know they had. I had spoke with them a while ago through email so I'm not sure but it looks really, really cool. It's it's going to be an interesting new device to check out and it's got new games, brand new games coming out too that are uh Boy games that you can play on it.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:18

For the Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom. As of September 26th, it's got 91 critics with an average of 86. Based off 66 user scores, it's sitting at a 9.0.

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:32

9.0, okay.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:34

It's 66. I don't know how many people are on that side of it, uh, but it looks like it's doing decently well with the with the ratings that's.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:41

That's really good for, weirdly enough uh, ign has it a 9.10 at best buy's got a 1.6 out of 5. I don't know who's rating stuff on best buy. Are you serious? Yeah, that that's wild. How many ratings. Someone's 1.6 on 63 ratings over on Best Buy. I wonder if it'll let me see why people are upset about it. It's got 81 star reviews. Huh, I'm trying that, but I don't think people actually wrote anything about it. Who knows what people are upset about over on Best Buy? I can't tell why you don't like it if you don't think people actually wrote anything about it. Who knows what people are upset about around Best Buy? I can't tell why you don't like it if you don't write anything.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:21

Yeah, it doesn't.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:23

It doesn't help me know why you're upset with the game, right.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:28

It's interesting.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:29

Yeah, but yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of people that are in the process of agreeing or playing it. It's a Zelda game. It's not going to be. It's not like the CDI games, which just got awful bad. That's a really low bar to hit.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:45

Yeah, it really is. And I guess the last thing you mentioned, the Incredibles are coming to Fortnite, so play Fortnite. That's interesting.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:55

Yeah, I think that's all um been good episode yeah, I think, just I don't know uh might have some more to talk about. Might be old news by by next week, because there's a lot of stuff going on, uh. But I mean, maybe we'll see some new stuff because obviously, for those who don't know, uh for sure, over on uh on Twitter, we're gaming tomorrow at 6 pm Eastern Time. That's right, or is it 8 pm Eastern Time? Oh, 8 pm Eastern Time. Sorry, it's 6 pm Mountain Time. That's where.

Mark Trobough: 1:46:26

I'm at 8 pm Eastern, we'll be live on the Twitch doing a little bit more of War of the Processed, playing through Gears of War, the Ultimate Edition for Gears 1, so we definitely have that going on. I don't know if there's any other streams you've got planned coming up.

Brandon Hurles: 1:46:42

I'll probably stream Zelda this coming week. I just don't know when for sure yet. Maybe like Monday night.

Mark Trobough: 1:46:48

I'll have to see when time comes, when we get a little bit closer okay, and then this Sunday uh should be noon eastern on the junction network got another uh anime junction cast episode coming out, so definitely look forward to that as well. And then yeah, don't know if there's any last things you want to. You want to pitch before we head off no, I think that's all.

Brandon Hurles: 1:47:14

Be sure to check out the socials over there Facebook X, instagram, tiktok, all that jazz. You can find it in the link tree in the description. Yeah, we'll be live playing some Gears of War. I think we're going to play through all the games. We got a good chunk of the first game done, so if you want to check out the full playthrough of that, we'll be doing that. And then, yeah, I'll be streaming Zelda at some point this coming week.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:41

So yeah, definitely look forward to that and we will see you all. For those going to be on the stream over on Twitch, we'll see you all tomorrow. And for those that are just here for the podcast, we will see you next Friday have have a good one everyone peace out everybody.