Xbox Insights, Dragon Quest 3 Reactions, and Gaming Nostalgia | Game Junction Podcast

Prepare to embark on a thrilling journey through the world of gaming as we unravel a treasure trove of updates and insights. Want to know what Phil Spencer has up his sleeve for Xbox? Or why the Dragon Quest 3 HD 2D remake has sparked mixed reactions? We've got the scoop on everything from Game Junction's new expansion to the buzz around Super Nintendo World's Donkey Kong attraction. Get ready to feast your eyes and ears on a rich discussion that'll make your inner gamer rejoice.

Curious about the hype surrounding Croc: Legend of the Gobbos remaster or the tantalizing collector's edition that's causing a stir? Brace yourself for a playful debate as we pit Jake Paul against Mike Tyson in a hypothetical boxing showdown. Alongside, we unravel Ubisoft's controversial Assassin's Creed Shadow battle pass and share personal tales of gaming nostalgia. This episode is your golden ticket to a world brimming with gaming news, debates, and sweet nostalgia.

As we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of gaming, our discussions touch upon the fascinating realm of handheld gaming systems like the Steam Deck 2 and Rogue Ally. From the intriguing canonicity of Horizon games to the controversial Game Awards voting process, we've got all the hot topics covered. We promise a blend of humor, insight, and gaming love that will have every enthusiast tuning in. Join us and become part of a community that cherishes every pixel, byte, and nostalgic memory.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Gaming News and Updates Discussion
• 9:50 Croc Remaster Collector's Edition
• 20:23 Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul Debate
• 34:19 Ubisoft and Gaming Trends Discussion
• 43:08 Game Trading and PS5 Controversy
• 53:41 Square Enix Departure and Collectibles
• 59:20 Gaming Updates and Collectibles Discussion
• 1:10:39 Backing Up Saves and Gaming News
• 1:23:31 Gaming Industry Updates and Speculation
• 1:31:49 Handheld Gaming Systems Discussion
• 1:40:32 Steam Deck 2 and PC Trends
• 1:53:52 Xbox Handheld Confirmed With Nintendo Comparisons
• 2:01:46 Future of Xbox and Game Pass
• 2:11:20 Game Awards Controversy and Game Nominations
• 2:19:47 Game Awards Speculation and Game Nominations
• 2:27:05 Steam and Gaming Politics Debate
• 2:38:25 Gaming Industry Trends and Discussion

Transcript

Brandon Hurles: 0:00

Hey, what's up?

Mark Trobough: 0:01

everybody. Hey, how's it going everybody? Episode 109. How you doing, Brandon?

Brandon Hurles: 0:06

I'm doing good, man. How are?

Mark Trobough: 0:07

you doing? It's another day, another dollar.

Brandon Hurles: 0:11

Another day, another dollar. That's how I'm feeling.

Mark Trobough: 0:14

The dumbest thing kind of popped into my mind there, but hey, everyone that's joining us live now we definitely appreciate it. Got a few things to talk about. Everyone that follows the Game Junction socials. They're now over on Blue Sky. That brand's taken care of. Also, the Culture Junkies podcast is making a monthly comeback. For those that are excited for that.

Brandon Hurles: 0:34

Yeah, I think we're going to talk some just to break up there. That gives us the space to talk about more stuff like Ed and Eddie or cartoons or other nostalgia things. We've been talking about this for a while, so I know we're going to get that rolling at some point here soon.

Mark Trobough: 0:49

No, definitely we have some Xbox news, some stuff that was talked about, with Phil Spencer making some I don't want to say cryptic tweets because he's not actually talking, but some of the things that he said is opening up a lot of people's eyes about the future of Microsoft and Xbox, as well as potential handhelds and stuff like that Dragon Quest HD 2D remake for the Dragon Quest 3 just dropped yesterday, so we have some thoughts on that. Light Gun Horizon Adventure, also released to kind of a it feels like it's already petered out and it just launched, as well as earlier this week, if you didn't catch the live streamer or watch the bod uh. Super nintendo world direct uh, dropped, with the donkey kong world that's launching next month, I think, believe december 11th, over in japan. Uh, you know some more ps5 pro and then just a lot of general stuff that we want to talk about.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40

yeah, a lot of stuff yeah, hopefully everyone is excited yeah, definitely so.

Brandon Hurles: 1:46

We uh, we covered the super nintendo world direct. We streamed that, uh. So we should probably just get and talk about that first because, um, if you haven't seen that video, go check out the video, get our full thoughts and our full, like you know, live reaction. But, um, overall, I think the place is cool, man. I think it's really cool. It's not something I ever thought would happen in my lifetime, like I just never imagined it, but it makes so much sense. It's such a massive world. I mean, overall, mario, if you take any Nintendo franchise, it's Pokemon, mario. They've got the biggest like lore and stuff going on to it. You got all the Mario Sports stuff and all the spin-offs. There's so much that you can do in so many characters. I think it's great. I personally I don't know how you feel, but I love Donkey Kong. I love seeing him getting some love and the fact that they're focused on Donkey Kong Country specifically, which you know with the barrel ride and stuff.

Mark Trobough: 2:45

Yeah, they got a ride about to come out, so it's good. Definitely marketing a one-two punch for that. I think they did a really good job. I think the park just looks absolutely amazing. Plus, they talked about I don't know if they I assume they do it for the rest of the park but some like the, the wristband type things you can unlock and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:57

Yeah, yeah, well, no. So I think the deal is I think you have to buy that wristband to ride the rides and do the stuff in the theme park. Like to get into certain things.

Brandon Hurles: 3:08

You buy that I think it's like 50 bucks. Then you get, you're able to get in line for like certain rides, and then there's like certain different things that you can do, from what I understand, because I remember a guy before, uh, they had the louis, I think luigi, mario, princess and Toad I want to say were the four that were available and he had gotten them all. He went four times and I think that's what it is.

Mark Trobough: 3:32

It's like a ride wristband but it's like a cool collectible it's like a really cool collectible, though that's better than whatever.

Brandon Hurles: 3:41

I don't know what Disney World gives you. I haven't been to Disney.

Mark Trobough: 3:44

World, since I was still in high school.

Brandon Hurles: 3:46

So never been.

Mark Trobough: 3:47

I still want to go, but don't want to pay the prices, that's for sure yeah, but I mean outside of the, uh, the bemoaning of we're not getting, probably not getting to direct the rest of this year for the switch to at this point. Uh, yeah, for the quick 10 minute. I think it was pretty cool, just not what we kind of uh not what we wanted out of a direct.

Brandon Hurles: 4:12

I'll just say that much. It's not, though. I mean, I I didn't expect, um, I didn't expect them to show anything else, so I went in totally. That's why I was kind of surprised, like I wanted. I immediately thought like, oh, that'd be great to live react to. I was kind of surprised that you had immediately said that to me, which was cool, um, because I knew it was going to be focused on that and they weren't going to show anything else. But it was still cool to do. It was fun because we talked about other stuff like the um, yeah, the near automata stowa blade stuff and yeah, some other things like afterwards that we talked about. So that's why you got to go check out the video, because we talked about a bunch of other stuff that uh yeah, it was like a 10-minute direct, but we streamed for about an hour.

Brandon Hurles: 4:46

Just shy of an hour. We got to talk about a lot of other stuff, so it was fun.

Mark Trobough: 4:53

I brought this up specifically just because I finally got the email for it. My Light Pop Chainsaw is finally shipping. I finally got the email for it.

Brandon Hurles: 5:01

Nice, and you got the Collector's Edition right.

Mark Trobough: 5:04

No, I just got the email for it, oh nice, and you got the collector's edition, right? No, I just got the regular PS5. I didn't get the collector's edition. I just don't have the money, or didn't have the money right then, to splurge on it for essentially the PVC, unfortunately.

Brandon Hurles: 5:15

Yeah, well, it's still cool that you're getting the physical, though I was really mad that I didn't get the physical. However, I don't know if they fixed it, but it had problems. People hated it. It had a lot of performance issues where it was performing really, really bad on PC and console. Did it get patched?

Mark Trobough: 5:37

I haven't played it. I'm waiting on my physical to come, so hopefully three months down the road when everyone gets their physical, I would assume they're working on patching some of that stuff up.

Brandon Hurles: 5:45

I hope it's patched into the disc and the cart because it had a lot of problems. I knew a guy that returned it. It was so bad he loved the original. He's like I'm just going to play the original, I'm not bothering.

Mark Trobough: 5:59

To be fair, if this game has problems at launch, I can't imagine it's going to stay that way.

Brandon Hurles: 6:09

Eventually it's going to get. It should get patched, you would think. But the problem with it getting physical from like a place, like a limited run, like the whole kind of point of those companies, is that you're getting the game on the cart.

Mark Trobough: 6:14

You don't have downloads well, considering the game just shipped. Maybe they had time to fit. I have no idea. I'm curious I'm curious.

Brandon Hurles: 6:21

Yeah, you'll have to get back to us. It'll come by next podcast.

Mark Trobough: 6:28

We'll get to find out. That's cool. I don't know how quickly they're going to ship it. I'm sure it'll be.

Brandon Hurles: 6:33

It's usually pretty quick. Where are they shipping out of? I think Washington.

Brandon Hurles: 6:39

I think, it's out of Washington. I always enjoy playing the originals when I can. Yeah for sure. Hey, intellivisiongamer, what's up man? How's it going? We also got SpeedrunHype in here. We got EtherealSapphire who's hanging out with us again. Definitely appreciate it. So for our audio listeners, we broke another record number. We got 25,000 downloads now I'm sorry, 30,000 downloads now. We we had broke 25 000 just a few weeks ago. Um, so that was really cool to to see and, uh, we definitely appreciate all the support on the audio side. The audio side just kind of blew up and has been doing well and, um, you know, definitely not complaining. We, we definitely like that.

Mark Trobough: 7:22

So appreciate our audio listeners the last update I got was that it was in route to dhl uh on the 14th out of concord uh, north carolina, so I was out of the country.

Brandon Hurles: 7:32

It's gonna. It's gonna be there. It's gonna be in seven days. Yeah, you'll have it by now we'll see.

Mark Trobough: 7:37

It's still in like pre-transit, but I got the email. It's shipping. But on top of that we finally got announced uh, digital versions of the Lollipop Chainsaw Repop for the PS4 and Xbox One will be releasing December 2nd. They do note that for both of these versions the game will be full HD at 1080p and will run at a constant 30 FPS or higher, so it has a baseline of 30 FPS.

Mark Trobough: 8:03

Curious if it'll have a ps5 pro enhancement because, since it had the problems well, I don't know, because I got it on the ps5 version, so I don't know if there's a difference or this is like a downgraded version.

Brandon Hurles: 8:14

I'm not sure yeah, you mean upscaled version from the ps4 but as like an actual pro version, I would remain skeptical.

Mark Trobough: 8:22

You're probably not, it's probably not, gonna're probably not going to put the time or the effort into it.

Brandon Hurles: 8:25

Probably not, but it is obviously, if it's having issues, could take advantage of that TLSS. I mean obviously, yeah, I don't know, Probably not, but it'd be cool to see.

Mark Trobough: 8:39

Yeah, they did note that the PS4 version is not compatible with upgrades or downgrades. The Xbox One version is compatible with, they say, smart delivery.

Brandon Hurles: 8:48

That means Series X version, so it'll get straight to the Series X version.

Mark Trobough: 8:52

They did also say that they will not be accepting promoters for the PS4 or Xbox One versions, but are planning to offer early bid bonuses. We'll let you know as soon as the details are finalized, so please stay tuned.

Mark Trobough: 9:01

And that was over at the dragami games official. So this wasn't uh, uh, limited runs. This is the actual studio dealing with the, with the remaster that put this out. Uh, if you do want to, you can go check out their their tweet. They put out on the 13th, that's at dragami, underscore games d-r-a-g-a-m-i underscore g-a-m-e-s, over on or X, whatever you want to call it.

Brandon Hurles: 9:24

Yeah, that's cool.

Mark Trobough: 9:26

It's, like you know, three paragraphs long. I don't want to just read the whole thing, kind of like a robot, but the fact that it's coming to more digital systems so more people have access to play. The game is is always good, just ideally. Hopefully, you know when the physical comes out you get just any kind of performance. Issues have started been.

Brandon Hurles: 9:42

Have been fixed, hopefully what did want to bring this up? Cause I've shared it a few times on X I don't know if you've seen, but it's coming out in December. So next month Croc legend of the God Gabos is getting a remaster. So I played this game on PC back in the day. It was all. It was also on PS one, but I played on PC and I I am super nostalgic for this game so I'm really excited I'm going to grab.

Brandon Hurles: 10:09

There's a collector's edition out there that you can get, but it's going to be on pc. Ps5 series x, nintendo, switch, uh, gog, and I think so. It doesn't say steam, but it says gog, um. But yeah, it says the remaster aims to reignite the imaginations of players with its enhanced HD graphics, updated Mario controls, which is the biggest problem with it, because it used tank-esque controls on PC. I don't know about the PS1 version, but I remember PC. It was the. You know you got to turn and then jump, turn, jump, like that sort of deal. But it says authentic gameplay experience that will transport players back to the golden age of gaming. Here's the cool part 30 bucks. So if you want to get, if you just want to buy the base game, 30 bucks. But there's also a collector's edition out there that you can get and it looks like yeah, so croc will be Exclusive on PC to gog, which doesn't bother me any, I love gog, it's my favorite um, but I'm gonna get, I'm gonna grab on console because I want to have a physical of this for sure. And this is this takes me back, uh, to a really good time. So this is cool to see it come out in december because, as we know, games go in december to die. But for a game like this, where it's hitting the sort of audience it is it's not a triple-a game, it's a remaster it's fine, like I'm glad to be getting a game that I'm looking forward to in December, because normally we don't get crap right. Like December becomes our time to play the games that we bought the last few months before. So you know, like I've got another game to show that I showed on Anime Junction Cast, but didn't get to show on the Game Junction Podcast that I still have not even opened up yet and started. But yeah, no, this is really cool and you can get the collector's edition.

Brandon Hurles: 11:55

I'm trying to figure out where the there's a specific website that I had never heard of before. That is doing the collector's edition. It's not. It's a limited company but they've only got three releases ever. That is doing the collector's edition. It's a limited company but they've only got three releases ever. So I'm trying to find it real quick for you guys. If you guys want to look it up, let's see. Very interesting. It's a company I've never heard of before, so it looks like it's going to be $130 for the collector's edition.

Brandon Hurles: 12:22

It comes with a big statue. It comes with a double-sided poster. One of the posters is of Croc swimming, like the Nirvana album cover, so he's spread out like the baby. It comes with a bunch of stickers, soundtrack keychain, but the statue looks really, really dope. So the website is called Rocket Games, so rockitgamescom. You go on there. The collector's edition is $30, or you can get the physical for $40. So, like Mark, I would highly recommend that you grab that $40. I mean, it's a cheap game. You didn't get to experience it. You can check out like. This was another. This was a competitor for super mario 64 at the time, and then games like crash, bandicoot, spyro, um, all the 3d platformers that were coming out bubsy obviously, which failed um, but this is bubsy's a 10 out of 10. I, I like, I. I actually like some Bubsy games.

Mark Trobough: 13:24

I didn't care for it.

Brandon Hurles: 13:26

There's a bunch of people always like judge it based on Bubsy 3D, which is a horrid game, which was the attempt of being like Super Mario 64. However, if I remember correctly, that came out right before Super Mario 64. I could be wrong, but at least you can say that they attempted to do that before. I'm pretty sure that came out right before super mario 64, so at least they could say like, oh, the tech wasn't there yet for it. But uh, yeah, rocket games. They've only got a few releases. Man, this is so cool to see to get a physical.

Brandon Hurles: 13:59

I would have never in a million years thought this game would ever come back and get a remaster, like I just didn't. The company rose back up like a Phoenix, like the actual company that originally put out Croc is now an active company again, where, whether they just disappeared and then you know, I, I, I don't know what, I don't know what happened, but it's pretty cool. So then we'll spend 15 minutes talking about that, but I definitely, definitely wanted to share. It wasn't something we had in our notes, but once something I wanted to bring up no, that's always good.

Mark Trobough: 14:33

Uh, we did have a game just launch yesterday, the dragon quest 3 hd 2d remake, and I was actually bringing this up less because of that. This was shared over on the anime junction, cast over on x, and I think I tagged you in in the comment as well. Uh, but the for the actual box art on the inside in the? U, at least in the us, it's just a disclaimer on one side, a white background, plain, plain, bland as can be. But then there's a picture with an actual japanese got and it's like the original, like two separate OG artworks of the original Dragon Quest 3 on the inside that you could obviously flip it out for and you're just like man. How are we getting robbed over here?

Brandon Hurles: 15:12

Yeah, it kind of sucks man.

Mark Trobough: 15:14

I like the reversible art even better. Put a little bit of effort into it.

Brandon Hurles: 15:18

Yeah, no doubt.

Mark Trobough: 15:21

Plus. Also, if you're able to pull this up, you'll go over on on x on the socials and stuff like that. The sticker is very different on the us and the japanese version of the actual cartridge. It's not even the same sticker. The cover art on the actual cartridge better as the japanese version better, just the low. It's just a white background with the original logo oh, gotcha okay, so we've got a little more character on ours.

Mark Trobough: 15:42

but I mean maybe the simplicity with the more box art, because how many people are actually looking at this tiny, tiny cartridge outside of the actual box art? I would take the swap of the art on the cartridge for the actual box art which most people are actually going to see.

Brandon Hurles: 16:00

Yeah, no doubt it's so weird that we didn't get that, but that stuff happens all the time, so you've got to play it right.

Mark Trobough: 16:08

Like 20 minutes. Okay, so tell us what you? I have not gotten into any actual combat, but I kind of got the introduction on the Switch. I would say there's a minor little hiccup on the Switch version. I'd say there could be a patch for the performance, because I was playing there was no download, it was just straight cartridge what they released it as. So it's like 1.00 for the Switch versions and a few. There's a little bit of hiccup. You're like, yeah, they could run a little bit smoother. I don't know if it's just the Switch having limitations or the game itself isn't fully optimized. They're waiting for the year first patch to come out.

Mark Trobough: 16:39

But the game looks absolutely amazing and gorgeous with the pixel art, but with the 3ds world on top of it, because it feels like it plays like an old school game, but the background feels fully 3d, immersive and it just looks absolutely beautiful. Like it starts off, it's like a massive mountains and like a waterfall in the foreground. It's asking you your name, date of birth. That's cool. I think this is probably like some of the older games. I'm gonna ask you like 10 random questions and it's like a yes or no type thing.

Mark Trobough: 17:06

For whatever this deity or the game is trying to like get an idea like who you are, and then it just sets you off on your journey. And then I because I've never played the original, I don't know as far as like the comparison, but you kind of it starts like a teasing, like the background and stuff like that, the history of like hey, what happened to your dad? Now you're off on your adventure and stuff like that, with talking with you. This is the third game, but it's chronologically the first of this trilogy.

Brandon Hurles: 17:30

Yeah, it's a prequel.

Mark Trobough: 17:32

I guess it fits in that aspect. I hope the other two games have just as much love into them. But they're competently well-written and stuff like that, or at least for the localization, and they don't butcher some stuff, I can't imagine it being a bad game. I've gotten to the point where I was able to get my party members and that's about it. I had to run over here, hop on, do the podcast type stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 17:54

Well, I mean, at least you got a little time with it.

Mark Trobough: 17:56

It looks absolutely amazing. It looks gorgeous.

Brandon Hurles: 17:58

Yeah, I've heard that the Switch version is good, but optimization could be a little better. As far as performance, there's a little performance dip here and there.

Mark Trobough: 18:08

It's a little bit more hardware compared to PC or the other consoles, because I chose to get it on the Switch, not the PS5.

Brandon Hurles: 18:12

Because this is a Switch type of game. To me, this is.

Mark Trobough: 18:15

I would grab it. It feels at home.

Brandon Hurles: 18:17

Yeah, it feels at home. So I guess I'll go ahead and bring up my video game of the week. Since you brought that up, a lot of people don't know about this release. It was kind of obscure and went under the radar, but that is the Dragon Quest 1 through 3 collection. So this has the original 1 through 3.

Brandon Hurles: 18:33

The caveat to this is that these are the mobile versions of the games. So I think this is part of the reason why it just kind of flew under the radar. But a lot of people do not know about this and as soon as a lot more people learn about it or some YouTubers start doing some videos on it, the price is going to jack up for sure. I have a feeling and that's why I grabbed it. The mobile versions are competent. They're not amazing. There's definitely some problems. You can definitely tell they are mobile games. You can tell they were optimized for mobile. But they're still competent. They're still playable.

Brandon Hurles: 19:06

I beat all three. They were fine. I like this collection Not the best thing in the world and each one's different, like I thought. Second, the second game was the best optimized version of the three. I thought Dragon Quest three was the worst as far as being more of you could tell it was made for mobile and just the way that the interactions happen and stuff like that and the battle mechanics and all that jazz. But it's still a cool collection. So that's my video game that I want to show the week. We actually haven't done that in like 6 or 7 episodes so I figured, hey, why don't we bring that back and make sense with Dragon Quest talk?

Mark Trobough: 19:46

so, and before we move on, I just had a quick question. Uh, jake paul or mike tyson?

Brandon Hurles: 19:52

yeah, I was actually going to bring that up right now, so I'm hoping it's like about the I think it's. No, it started at eight.

Mark Trobough: 19:57

It started at eight the pre-festivities probably, but I'm gonna see if I can point something out, but uh, uh, yeah, so we might be able to announce the winner on the podcast.

Brandon Hurles: 20:06

I mean, who knows?

Mark Trobough: 20:07

I'll keep an eye just because we have to be by the time we're done that, we've got to know a winner.

Brandon Hurles: 20:12

By the time that we're done, what? What's it airing on, by the way? Because I I want to talk. It's on this pop culture, I don't care, um, it's. Yeah, that's right. It's on netflix, isn't it?

Mark Trobough: 20:21

yeah, down in, down in Dallas and stuff. I just saw a funny little picture as I was moving around over on X. No, it's someone that posted like five hours ago. Just remember the year Jake Paul was born. Mike Tyson was also 31, biting ears off of people fighting Las Vegas police, Like peak Mike Tyson when Jake Paul was born.

Brandon Hurles: 20:41

Yeah, no doubt that's funny.

Mark Trobough: 20:43

I'll say this 100% if Mike Tyson was at his peak, it'd be like a one-hit knock, wouldn't even be a fight.

Brandon Hurles: 20:49

This wouldn't even be a fight if he was at his peak, the only thing that's working against.

Mark Trobough: 20:57

This is the age I mean. That's it, that's the big thing. It's the age, I think. And they're going to be like, oh you beat up an old retired man, because that's what 100% people are going to say, or he loses. And they're like, oh you let a 60-year-old fighter beat you up. I think it's a lose-lose for him, at least to some degree on the internet. Yeah, for sure I don't care.

Brandon Hurles: 21:21

Mike Tyson where he's at now. If you watch any of his training and stuff like that, it's absolutely insane how powerful this man still is. That I think he's fit could be wrong.

Mark Trobough: 21:29

I was like 61 or something like that I was.

Brandon Hurles: 21:30

I thought he's 57.

Mark Trobough: 21:32

Uh, he might be, I don't know, maybe one of them he's got to be in his 60s at the very least he might be 61 um, but yeah, I just want to give a quick little shout out, for if anybody watches, uh, flash gets over on. They did a video on this fight. I think it's super funny. Who did Flash Gits?

Brandon Hurles: 21:50

I've never heard of them.

Mark Trobough: 21:53

They're always funny. They reference. I remember watching it earlier this morning and they referenced it like oh, there's Jake Paul fighting. He's a brother of Logan Paul who has a Pokemon card addiction problem yeah, yeah, we get.

Brandon Hurles: 22:09

That's what he's known for.

Mark Trobough: 22:10

Yeah, I don't know, I just it's it's funny if you actually watch it. I it cracked me up.

Brandon Hurles: 22:14

But I'm gonna do while, while uh you're you're talking, I'm gonna do a poll to see what people think about this oh, they're probably.

Mark Trobough: 22:21

I assume our audience is gonna go more jake paul, jake Paul, but I'm sticking with the old man dude, there's no.

Brandon Hurles: 22:26

Every person I've talked to has said I've never heard one person say Jake Paul.

Mark Trobough: 22:31

I'm just saying, old man, strength is a thing.

Brandon Hurles: 22:34

Don't ever underestimate an old man in a young man's game well, here's the thing, and the other thing he has working against him is that he has done this for so long. He knows the game he's been retired longer, but longer than jake paul has even started boxing, which has only been a few years, so I mean, like he knows, the mental.

Mark Trobough: 22:54

It's a mental game too yeah, I'll say this it would be different if jake paul was actually like peak in, like boxing, like fighting like other peak boxers. That'd be one thing he has been winning. He's all the fights yeah, but he tends to fight other, like uh, internet celebrities. He's not fighting like actual, like he's fighting two legitimate, real boxers are they like top 10 boxers?

Brandon Hurles: 23:18

yeah, yeah, look you can pull it up right now, pull up his record.

Mark Trobough: 23:21

But he, he fought like boxer, like quasi internet celebrities. He did that, but he fought a legitimate, really good boxer, like quasi-internet celebrities.

Brandon Hurles: 23:26

He did that, but he did fight actual boxers and one of them was a big boxer, like one of the big come-ups that they thought that he was going to be one and he still could be. Just because he lost one fight doesn't mean anything.

Mark Trobough: 23:38

I'm still pulling for Mike Tyson 100%.

Brandon Hurles: 23:42

We got SpeedrunHype, said Tyson 100% in the chat.

Mark Trobough: 23:46

No, we're disagreeing all day on that. What oh?

Brandon Hurles: 23:50

my god, even more reason to disagree.

Mark Trobough: 23:53

I pulled up at a ESPN. Jake Paul of Cleveland, ohio, yeah, ohio. Ohio I wasn't born in Ohio, thank God. But I lived my whole, most of my life, my life, child life and in, and I can be like nah man.

Brandon Hurles: 24:08

At least you got to meet me right. Sounds like a good character At the very least.

Mark Trobough: 24:14

Hey, man Not raised, but Florida-born yeah. Got a little bit of that Florida man in my blood yeah man.

Mark Trobough: 24:24

But moving on to some more actual stuff we had planned to talk about, we got some Stonelab news also, because we talked about it on Monday on the live stream because the update is coming on the 20th. We also got news that there is officially no date, but Stonelab is getting a PC release sometime in 2025. That is official. They've come out and confirmed that. At the same time, they came out and pretty much said what Eurogamer reported was wrong. They are not making a new studio in Los Angeles and they are not making an anime on Netflix, which was reported a few days before by Eurogamer. And they're like absolutely not. We're not doing that at all. You're muted, brandon. Hey, brandon, brandon, I'm not getting any of you.

Brandon Hurles: 25:18

I was purposely muted. You'll understand.

Mark Trobough: 25:22

You'll understand, sorry about that guys, are you doing some promo stuff?

Brandon Hurles: 25:26

yeah, I was doing a quick, I probably should have said something, but hey, our audio listeners don't want to hear about all that yeah, no, but I plan on playing this update.

Mark Trobough: 25:38

I don't know if I'm going to when's the 20th. The 20th is on a Wednesday 100%. I'm not going to be home Wednesday night, so I'm not gonna be able to play this update when it drops, but I'll probably end up playing it like Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving week, when I've gotten, you know, some extra time off of work.

Brandon Hurles: 25:52

I'm, a hundred percent, going to, uh, at least live stream this you know at seriously, had my fingers legitimately crossed that you would have time to be able to live stream Dragon Quest because I really wanted to watch it. I did not end up getting to pick it up yesterday. I am going to pick it up when I get paid. I just unfortunately was not able to pick it up day one, like I said I was going to, but I'm definitely going to be grabbing it, so it's the next thing I'm getting game-wise.

Mark Trobough: 26:19

I'm going to have time to play it next week. I'm just not going to be able to stream. I'm not going to be home like half of next week. I'm going to be getting home like super late, so I'll be able to play it. Talk a little bit more next week. It's just Monday through Friday. My schedule is extremely hectic.

Brandon Hurles: 26:35

You got busy lives.

Mark Trobough: 26:36

Yeah, Also talked about Horizon, the Lego adventure that dropped this week. I don't know if you were excited for it. I know when I was at my local GameStop they were like, oh, we got some copies in, I hadn't sold a single one the day it dropped. Are you serious? They didn't sell a single one. They didn't have any pre-orders and they didn't sell. He said he may have sold one he didn't have the whole numbers up, but he doesn't really. It wasn't a game they're talking about. And if you want to clarify, this game dropped was it yesterday? Yeah, on Thursday, on the 14th. This game is currently sitting at 311 players right now on Steam. It peaked yesterday with 602 on Steam.

Mark Trobough: 27:15

So I'll say this it's a theme, but that's kind of what I expected this game was not going to do well.

Brandon Hurles: 27:21

So it got average reviews, which is is fine.

Mark Trobough: 27:25

It didn't get bad reviews, both critic and uh users so like a 74 on steam, which is like mediocre, but that's like 50 positive, 17 negative.

Brandon Hurles: 27:34

That's like 71, 71 critic score on metacritic and 7.2 user score. So, um it again a lot of 80s, a lot. There's some nineties, I even see. I like Lego games, but I don't like Lego games at full price, so this is one where I am sure this is either going to be a PlayStation plus game or I eventually can pay 20 bucks for this game and then I'll play it, cause I do want to play it. I do like horizon. I think it's, uh, an overlook series that just every single time it gets overshadowed by another bigger game, every single time. Although I will say I don't think Allie is necessarily an interesting character, I like the world, I like the world.

Mark Trobough: 28:16

I'm more interested in that. She is his character.

Brandon Hurles: 28:18

Yeah, she's not an interesting character, but the world is good and the mechanics of the game it's fun. Yeah, I'll say this Horizon.

Mark Trobough: 28:26

Zero.

Brandon Hurles: 28:26

Dawn is a better game. You'd play this, right? No, no, no, I said you would play this if it was a PlayStation Plus game where it was like a $15, $20 buy.

Mark Trobough: 28:36

If it was a free game, I'd play it. I'm not paying money for this.

Brandon Hurles: 28:39

Okay alright.

Mark Trobough: 28:41

I think it's got two things going against it. One, the release window. There's just so many other better things to play, I'd say more competent games to actually play. And two, I just don't think this game works as a Lego game, because it's a Lego game that takes the gear towards more a younger audience for a game that is a mature rated game and more mature audience.

Mark Trobough: 29:03

I'd say Lego works for, like a Lord of the Rings or like a Star Wars, because those are IPs that are, you know, an all-encompassing for all ages. So it's got a wider audience to bring in from the original IP and from the LEGO side, which this game just doesn't have because its original IP is not for younger audiences. So it loses that market.

Brandon Hurles: 29:26

I find that to be the cool factor. It's kind of like how we got a Robocop cartoon back in the day and we got a Rambo cartoon back in the day from movies that were definitely definitely not made for kids, that's also a different time in media as well, and how they were marketed.

Brandon Hurles: 29:44

I find it's interesting that they're doing this and the reason I find this interesting. The biggest thing for me is that I would like to find this for $20. Here's why I want to own a PlayStation IP on my Nintendo Switch. Just the literal factor of that happening, I want to do that. I think it's cool. I legitimately think it's very cool and I can see a game like this being. You know, we talked about the Switch 2, dlss games working running better on the Switch 2. That were Switch 1 games. I can see this being a game like that.

Brandon Hurles: 30:17

Lego games framerate is everything for LEGO games Resolution, you know, whatever, I don't care about 4K like, but frame rate in a lego game is, is literally everything. Um, there's so much fast combat, the lego, the legos are spreading all over and um, it's very quick combat. So, like all the almost all the lego games except there are spinoffs like there's even ones back in the day on pc from like 1995. That did you know different stuff. But uh, most of the lego games now are the same and they're the same type of combat, same thing every single time. You know what I mean.

Brandon Hurles: 30:51

Like cause you had like yeah, even had stuff like Lego Chima. You had stuff like like some properties that people didn't care about too much. There were some other ones, like I have Lego Chima on the 3ds. I've got the hobby, even though I hate the movies. Um, of course, like a Lord of the Rings, I have the newest um star Wars game, which is a freaking nine out of 10. Great, uh, the Skywalker saga saga. I care nothing about the new Disney films, but that went through the entire series. You played.

Mark Trobough: 31:24

There's like tired. It had been made like a decade ago.

Brandon Hurles: 31:27

That right, but it basically redid all of those games and put everything in the one big, gigantic game. So you went through.

Mark Trobough: 31:33

You went through everything from episode one is a collection all in one, and it was.

Brandon Hurles: 31:38

It was like it was actually a good game too. I mean like it, it really was a good game it's more it's.

Mark Trobough: 31:44

It feels like more like a lego game at times than an actual, like a star wars game, like that's the appeal.

Brandon Hurles: 31:48

It's the lego aspect yeah, and it's got that. It's got that lego star wars humor that's always in there and stuff like that but I think it was fun for what it is.

Mark Trobough: 31:56

So you know yeah, I just I'm not surprised for what I'm seeing with numbers for this game. I I I must're going to lose money, but I don't think they put a lot of money into this game, so I don't think it's going to take a lot to make money back.

Brandon Hurles: 32:08

Nah, I don't think they're going to lose any money on it.

Mark Trobough: 32:10

I don't think it has the audience they thought it was going to have because of the IP. But I mean, that's just me being skeptical, Do you?

Brandon Hurles: 32:16

think if they had chose something? Listen in the hell did they not pick Ratchet and Clank or Jak and Daxter or like anything else but Horizon?

Mark Trobough: 32:27

Because they're stupid. Why? I mean, there's no other way than Sony's leadership. You have so many good.

Brandon Hurles: 32:33

IPs Jak and Daxter could fit for a kids game.

Mark Trobough: 32:38

This is like after the fact, when I was like oh, we don't have that many IPs, ratchet and Clank could work perfect as a LEGO game that could work.

Brandon Hurles: 32:47

That new Ratchet and Clank. When the PS5 launched. I still think it is the best-looking PlayStation 5 game. We're talking about base PlayStation 5. I don't know yet for PS5 Pro, but I still think it's the best-looking game. Visually it looks stunning. What a game man. Nope, and I just feel like not not that many people talked about and it was a big launch game. Did you play the new ratchet and clink?

Mark Trobough: 33:16

no, ratchet clink hasn't been relevant in like a decade or two decades what does that even mean relevant?

Brandon Hurles: 33:21

but then why has it got to be relevant to be good, not to be relevant to be good?

Mark Trobough: 33:26

not to be relevant, what they took like a two decade hiatus on even touching the ip? No, we got, we got several ps4 games.

Brandon Hurles: 33:33

We got three. Yes, we got, yeah, we got a bunch of ps4 games.

Mark Trobough: 33:38

Uh, I think there were four of them, and then three psp or how bad they are at marketing it yeah, no, they're just not good with marketing these other ips.

Brandon Hurles: 33:49

They're not. I mean ratchet and clink, like to be fair, when the ps5 was going to launch, they were all over showing that off, that and spider-man miles, morales, like that's what they were showing off. Those were the big games to show off the ps5. And boy did they show it off, though I mean to be fair, like when, when we saw the ps5 launch, at that, at that point, when I saw ratchet clink, it was like it was, it was crazy, like I hadn't seen anything like it at that point. So, um, now I'm checking things out. Finally, on the ps5 pro and, um, we'll talk a little bit more about that here in a bit, I think, but we'll go and move on to the next topic, mark yeah, uh, if you thought the negative news and leaks about the assassin's creed shadow games had stopped, uh, think again.

Mark Trobough: 34:33

Uh, so apparently recently there were leaks, uh, including some images that had, uh, that had come out about a potential battle pass in the assassin's creed game uh, which I think would be the first for this series in a single-player game. There were leaked images, but Ubisoft has been going around, essentially copyright striking anything related to this leak, which kind of, I think, leads to proving that it's probably true. That's the assumption I'm going with.

Mark Trobough: 35:02

Yeah, yeah, I'm going gonna say that as well, yeah but I mean, are you really gonna put a battle pass like microtransaction, the crap I mean, they already have microtransaction, wasn't it assassin? Wasn't it an?

Brandon Hurles: 35:16

assassin's creed hub that just got announced. For, like all of the games, it's like a I swear to God. Just yesterday I saw it everywhere. It was called like Assassin's Creed Legacy. Maybe it was like a hub for the games, yeah the Amnet 70s hub or something like that.

Mark Trobough: 35:35

Every say it I.

Brandon Hurles: 35:36

I don't, I don't know, but it was like a thing. They're one, scott.

Mark Trobough: 35:39

Yeah, they got announced back in like October.

Brandon Hurles: 35:41

No, it just yesterday, okay, five hours ago. Assassin's creed infinity has a new name and no microtransactions.

Mark Trobough: 35:48

Um so this was five hours ago an article about it, talking about the ms hub and stuff like that back in october. So it's not new.

Brandon Hurles: 35:55

Well, this was five hours ago, so I'll just read what this says real quick from msn. It says ubisoft quietly confirmed new details on assassin's creed infinity, a hub that set the launch alongside Assassin's Creed Shadow. On the franchise's official Reddit on Friday, it not only revealed that Animus Hub would be the official name, but the rewards would be free. It says the post was in response to a datamine leaked, since taken down via DMCA request. They revealed a lot of information about the Animus Hub and how to integrate with Assassin's Creed Shadows, along with revealing the new name we learned at the Animus Hub, it would include a battle pass, cosmetics that can be purchased with issu coins, the in-game currency. This led to people assuming that there would be microtransactions involved. So my thing is there's been microtransactions in like every assassin's creed game. Why would we people be arguing about this? Well, of course it's gonna have microtransactions I'm not defending a system.

Brandon Hurles: 36:53

I'm not defending it, but it's ubisoft, ubisoft sucks I think the more.

Mark Trobough: 37:00

I think they just think too highly of their IP at this point, like who really is going to? It used to be it used to be.

Brandon Hurles: 37:07

What mattered was call of duty. Assassin's Creed, pokemon. Those are the three big games. That was it. Those were the big games every single year, but we're not. It's not anymore. Assassin's Creed does not hold the weight that it held in 2012, 2015.

Brandon Hurles: 37:22

Those those three game series brought up call of duty zone that still maintains its its weight Well, and then, like pokemon, the sales are like absolutely absurd, especially if you're looking at, like around the time of like assassin's creed, black flag, modern warfare 2, modern warfare 3, black ops 2, you know stuff like that. Or you know, call of duty was really like I mean, it's still big and, believe it or not, I'm actually really excited. It is on it or not. I'm actually really excited it is on Game Pass, so I'm going to play it. But apparently this new Call of Duty is actually really good. People are saying it's the best one in a long time. So I've heard this from a couple of good sources personally who I trust and are not Call of Duty fans. Both of them both said checking the game out because it was only on. The only reason they did was it's on Game Pass. They said it was freaking amazing. They said it took them back to like Black Ops 2, modern Warfare 2. So I'm excited now to check that out on Game Pass.

Mark Trobough: 38:17

But yeah, Tell me how it goes.

Brandon Hurles: 38:18

Yeah, I'll let you know.

Mark Trobough: 38:20

I'll remember.

Brandon Hurles: 38:26

Call of Duty. Most people only ever play those games from the multiplayer. The multiplayer just keeps getting forgotten. I play zombies in the story mode, that's it.

Mark Trobough: 38:28

I don't touch multiplayer oh, you're like the hyper minority of people that play Call of Duty now.

Brandon Hurles: 38:34

I so rarely I'm collecting the full set and I still haven't even touched Modern Warfare 2. I didn't touch that. Modern Warfare 1, I haven't touched it. I did play Modern Warfare 3 Zomb. I didn't touch that Modern Warfare 1, I haven't touched it. I did play Modern Warfare 3 Zombies on stream a couple times. So this new one I'm going to play. I'll stream it. I think that's what I'm going to stream next week. It's one of the days, is that? So yeah.

Mark Trobough: 39:01

Yeah, but I mean, ubisoft is going to be Ubisoft and they're going to continue to shoot themselves in the foot. Yep, Ubisoft sucks. But shortly after we got the leak about Ubisoft struggling in sales, all of a sudden they're like, oh no, we hit it. We reached a million sales, like the day after that whistleblower came out, like a few days after the fact, and apparently they're trying to hunt down about who leaked that information internally within the company good luck, they're not nintendo.

Brandon Hurles: 39:29

I can tell you that yeah, I just uh.

Mark Trobough: 39:34

I feel like this game had naturally hit a million ubisoft, who had been all over the internet about it, but the fact that it's been like two weeks now, I feel like they're just gonna get clowned on. Like how is this game taking this long to hit a million Assuming that they're, at this point, being honest with us, probably?

Mark Trobough: 39:49

not and they quietly said yeah, moving on to Mass Effect. Nothing more to talk about. Nothing more to talk about this game. We're just going to move on, which signals it's not doing as well as they want it to do.

Brandon Hurles: 40:02

You know what's weird? I just don't care. I just don't care about it. Most people don't care.

Mark Trobough: 40:07

It's got decent user reviews, but nobody bought the game, so, of course, the only people that buy it are the ones that are going to have an inclination to want to like this game.

Brandon Hurles: 40:16

I'm not an uber fan of the series. I've told you what I played and it's been fine. I just don't care. I mean, there's so many other games that I need to play right now that I just to throw something like this in. I mean, to be fair, most of the AAA games are the things I'm not even really playing. I'm mostly picking up stuff like when I want to show off here some of the JRPGs we just talked about Dragon Quest, things like that. I just don't care. Aaa game, man, is just not what it was, it's dropped.

Mark Trobough: 40:51

I mean, that's why everyone's going to Eastern developers. Now.

Mark Trobough: 40:53

Those are the studios that are starting to blow up, because they're tired of the same minimal chlop that you're getting out of these Western studios. On top of this something, there were some more rumors back on the 14th that were that that grums posted uh, allegedly they're sitting on 30 000 cop uh return copies via gamestop on this game. Uh, it's the budget for this game is rumored. These are obviously rumors so these numbers aren't could be wrong, but it's rumored to be about 250 to 300 million dollars was the budget for this game, which would put estimates that they would need to sell 6-7 million copies to break even On the high end. I think the low end is saying 4-5 million copies just to break even as far as the profit on this game.

Brandon Hurles: 41:38

I did want to shout out that. Mr Coffee came in the chat and Ethereal Sapphire earlier said Lego Star Wars Saga had way too short of levels. Mr Coffee said I played for the story mode, got tired of playing multiplayer, so many cheaters. What was the last game? You did care about Giving it a try.

Brandon Hurles: 41:57

As far as Call of Duty, I think the Cold War Zombies was the best zombies since Black Ops 2. I thought the zombies in that was fantastic. That came out. I got it with my PS5, so I want to say it came out in 2020. And then after that, I never played Modern Warfare 2. I tried the Modern Warfare 3 zombies. I thought it was garbage, hot garbage. But I really, really, really liked the Cold War. It was fantastic. So but what I hear? I am hearing that the zombie mode isn't particularly good in this game. It's the multiplayer in the story mode. That's good, and I care about zombies the most. I'm a zombies guy. I like the concept of brains. I'm going to eat your brains. I just like the concept of zombies. I mean I have since World at War.

Mark Trobough: 42:46

I remember playing zombies when we were still in high school, and that was forever ago.

Brandon Hurles: 42:50

It was so fun and it still can be, but some of the games are not doing it right. Hopefully this one, whatever. I've heard that it's fine but it's not good. It's not like Cold War zombies, which was really really good. Hopefully they kind of turn that around. But I'm excited to check out the story. The story looks really good and the thing that kind of sucks is it's on Game Pass, but it's also a PS5 Pro enhanced game, so it's like I know I need to get it for the collection too anyway. So I'm a little stuck there on what to do because I know I need to. I'm being an idiot and getting all variants, so at some point I'll have to have both physically, but I will not buy both new at all for sure. I mean it's on game pass. So I'm considering potentially picking up the ps5 version.

Mark Trobough: 43:39

Check out the pro enhancements, um, but we'll see what happens oh yeah, and then I just wanted to hit because I don't know exactly how accurate this is. Check out the pro enhancements, but we'll see what happens. Oh yeah, and then I just wanted to hit because I don't know exactly how accurate this is. But some people bring it up, as you know, a bad sign. But the GameStop trade-in value for Dragon Age Vilgard. You can only get up to $22 for trade-in value on this game. All I can say this is a comparable game. Uh, echoes of wisdom, which came out like two months ago, was sitting at up to 33, so it's got like a higher end value. But that's like what they're gonna cap you your price at for trade in value. But I don't know how accurate this is. I never pay attention to the secondhand market. I don't know how good this is. It's just, uh, something people are bringing up as another like attack revenue on this game. So, yeah, take it.

Mark Trobough: 44:27

Take it for what you will yeah, no doubt for sure you'll get as much trading value as for uh, undisputed on the ps5, which I don't know anything about that game either that's funny, you get as much trading value as uh tears of the kingdom again trading value has never been good.

Brandon Hurles: 44:43

I mean, let's be real I don't. I don't know how accurate this is. I will say the only reason I got a ps5 pro is because of the offer that they did have for the trade-in, which was actually really really good they usually do like if you're gonna do.

Mark Trobough: 44:55

It was really good they have like a specialty on certain it's 350 of it.

Brandon Hurles: 45:00

So and then I had 50 uh, whatever with the points, plus my five dollars a monthly thing. So I actually got. Really I said I wasn't going to get rid of that, but then at the end of the day I'm like hold on, I don't think I need to keep the ps5 and have the ps5 pro because I'm just not going to use it. The only reason, the only reason I wanted to hang on to it was because the disk drive did not have to connect to the internet. So I knew that long term it's going to be the version that people want long term. When it comes to the point where the console is not supported and you get a disk drive and you can't connect it to the internet, it's going to be a problem. But I guess, for right now, who cares? Once the PS6 comes out, I don't know that I'll even care or you know whatever, but we'll see.

Mark Trobough: 45:47

That was the only reason I considered keeping it, was the disk drive stuff the only thing I can see, because I there's some sealed copies for for dragon age that are right around msrp like especially if you had like one of these special editions but for like used, actual used copies over on eb I'm seeing they were from like $40 to $50. So it doesn't seem like the secondhand market's completely had the carpet pulled off of it. But come back in another two weeks the secondhand market could have completely dropped.

Brandon Hurles: 46:15

Mr Coffee said, live service has really killed a lot of gaming fun and picked up PS3 Dragon Age Inquisitions for $5 at Big Lots. I used to hit GameStop when they had four for $10 or four for $20. They still do that occasionally, because I just got games a few months ago from that. Those were sweet deals. I like when they do that too. I'm all in on that. I always go in and check what they got when they have those deals. Yeah, what do we got next, mark? Oh, and we also got a negative nancy comments earlier. I'm like, uh, we were we're like, oh, we don't want, you know, too much negative stuff or whatever. We don't want it to always be negative, but there has been some positive stuff we talked about for sure.

Mark Trobough: 46:55

Yeah, I mean, there's some more.

Brandon Hurles: 46:56

We have some more negative stuff. We also have some more positive stuff to talk about or you can just get over it, because, hey, this is how we do our podcast, I mean the news is what it is.

Mark Trobough: 47:05

It's kind of hard to kind of pick and choose for the most part, when you're trying to talk about stuff that's relevant. We did get. Something else that I feel is we've talked about this before writers, directors, actors on a project just saying the wrong thing or saying stupid things. You're sitting here like why are you even saying this? This is not going to help you get people to come watch your show. But a writer for season two of One Piece over on Netflix claimed that one of their season two characters is supposed to be based off Donald Trump, and that is in a negative light. So they're talking about the character Wapple, a character that was created some 20 years before trump even decided to run for president. Like realistically, uh, essentially has nothing to do with one another, uh, but they're like no, we're, we're inspired to write him off of this other person that we don't. Like he was introduced in the 131st chapter.

Mark Trobough: 48:00

Uh, back, they came out back in 2000 oh wow really yeah, wow, this was reported by that park place and it's just one of those things which is kind of like uh, why, why are you doing this? Uh, the writer is uh randy, uh troy, that he posted over on x on the back on november 8th and then, shockingly, he immediately got a. Uh, he got noted, so he got noted six votes.

Brandon Hurles: 48:26

We got Mike Tyson winning out on the boxing match. I want to leave it up there for a little bit longer for people that come in because they are.

Mark Trobough: 48:33

I've got the right choice.

Brandon Hurles: 48:35

I got to pull it up over here so I'll know when it goes live. But we'll keep a track and see what people say by the end of it. I was just one of those things you're sitting here like I don't know. I don't know what y'all are doing and see what people say by the end of it.

Mark Trobough: 48:45

It's just one of those things you're sitting here like I don't know what y'all are doing, like this is just. You could just not have said anything and nobody would have known or cared.

Brandon Hurles: 48:52

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, what sucks is that we like One Piece.

Mark Trobough: 48:57

I mean, I don't like it.

Brandon Hurles: 49:00

This show. I think it was totally unnecessary. It was fine. It was fine. It was fine. It wasn't great. The anime is way better. I'm sorry, the anime is ten times better. It was fine. Just okay, like a five out of ten for me. It was watchable. It wasn't bad like Dragon Ball Evolution, but it wasn't good either. I think they casted the a six and a half the wrong, I just he didn't.

Mark Trobough: 49:27

He didn't say luffy to me, it just didn't but anyway, it's very clearly geared towards an audience of people that aren't isn't your core fans because, like, I find it fine but it just made me want to go back and watch the anime, but it's it. I think, like a lot of shows, this is not geared towards your core audience. It's trying to reach out to an audience that may have never actually watched the actual show before. That's what it felt like to me.

Brandon Hurles: 49:47

Well, I mean, it's got to be for the fans too. You always got to be for the fans as well.

Mark Trobough: 49:50

I don't think it was terrible. I think it was watchable, but it for me it just like. I'd rather go. It just makes me want to go back and actually reread the manga or re-watch the actual anime, not continue to watch which, by the way, is fantastic because it's a great series, just a million times better than what they did with the cowboy bebop, which was unwatchable like oh yeah, that was terrible.

Brandon Hurles: 50:10

To me, that was really really bad completely butchered it.

Mark Trobough: 50:12

It's like you never, never, actually watched the show, like, oh yeah, I watched a trailer. That's what it felt like watching that show you know what that show?

Brandon Hurles: 50:18

the first five minutes. I knew it was bad. The first five. Do you remember the first five minutes?

Mark Trobough: 50:24

of it, the trailer. It was like I'm not watching this slob. I think I tore it so I wouldn't give Netflix any money.

Brandon Hurles: 50:30

So so did you watch the first episode, because the first five minutes legitimately.

Mark Trobough: 50:35

I timed it. I didn't get like five minutes in, but I I was Gonna give them money they started it off so bad.

Brandon Hurles: 50:41

I'm like this is junk. I'm not watching this. This is junk, like this is just absolute junk. Um, no thanks, I'm good, I'll stick with the anime or manga.

Mark Trobough: 50:51

So that's, that's the. I would say it's the preferred way. Even if you have like a you know 1200 episodes to watch or like several hundred or almost a thousand chapters and stuff like that to read, it's, it's a better way to watch it, because there's no way they're going to fully adapt this to the whole series yeah, there's too many episodes.

Brandon Hurles: 51:08

There's too much too many arcs. What is there like in total arc wise? There's like over 60 arcs, something like that, like actual legitimate arcs.

Brandon Hurles: 51:17

No idea, some crazy number there's a lot yeah, more than drag way more than wait, more than dragon ball even, and it's just one series. There was never like a continuation series, it's just one piece. It's funny we've never gotten like a spinoff or anything like that or like a, uh, something connected to the world with another character or something. I bet it could have. Uh, it worked. I, I think it could have worked. I think it could have worked. We got Mr Coffee said was Jake waiting for Tyson to blink before his uppercuts?

Mark Trobough: 51:56

Oh, I don't know. There's a pre-fight going on right now.

Brandon Hurles: 51:58

Yeah, I was just looking to see if it was.

Mark Trobough: 52:00

They haven't actually started their actual fight yet. Yeah, they're talking at the moment. From what I see, I just had some like track right from ESPN. I was peeking over periodically. Yeah, I was gonna give a shout out. We had a section dis and we just had gamer freak pop over over on the twitch.

Mark Trobough: 52:17

Give a, give you all a shout out, heck yeah let's go, you know for those if it's not your first time, the our podcast is done a little bit differently than a regular streams and stuff like that, so it's just generally a little, a little less interactive just by the nature of what we're doing but definitely we try to acknowledge here and there, but we do have to regard our audio listeners and that this is, you know, a formal podcast, so it works different than our live streams.

Brandon Hurles: 52:41

Yeah, does this?

Mark Trobough: 52:41

It works different than our live streams. Yeah, just wanted to give that quick little shout out for those that this may be your first time or something like that.

Mark Trobough: 52:47

For sure what do we got next, we got some news from Square Enix. Apparently, earlier this week their stock took a 10-point dip, which essentially cost the company $350 million, which is a lot of money to make news. I don't exactly know why they took a hit. Do you know if it's a lot of money to make news? I don't know exactly know why they took a hit.

Brandon Hurles: 53:06

Do you know if there's an announcement?

Mark Trobough: 53:07

or something like that. I'm not saying I'm like they had a game come out earlier this year, but I just can't. Just kind of weird that you know this game company. I mean they have taken a lot of criticism recently with their work with like sweet baby ink and stuff like that. But I think they came a little while ago and said, yeah, we're not working with them anymore, which only means so much it could just be not working with them and stuff like that. But obviously that's been like an ongoing drama and stuff like that. Yeah, it's newsworthy. I don't think it's really going to affect the company all that much, like stocks go up and down all the time, unless this was like a hard downward turn and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 53:41

Square Enix has departed from Sweet Baby Inc. Correct, that's what they've claimed. They're a good company, they have a lot of IPs I love.

Mark Trobough: 53:54

I don't want the Final Fantasy remake.

Brandon Hurles: 53:57

If you played Final Fantasy 16, that was Sweet Baby Inc's enemy right there. That game was like a Game of Thrones. That was not a very mis enemy. Right there, that game was like a game of thrones.

Mark Trobough: 54:05

That was not a very misogynistic type game I think it was like square enix had uh four spoken. They came out last year, which is an absolute bomb okay, hold on, hold on a second.

Mark Trobough: 54:15

Good, keep talking no, I was gonna bring that up of like they have some good games but they have made absolute dog crap games in the past. But like it's not the uh absorb's not the. But looking back, it's probably that game was made because they were working with Sweet Baby at the time. So as Brandon grabs one of his games, not for show time, I just remember he's just getting ahead of the tap. I don't know.

Brandon Hurles: 54:41

I'm making up words right now we'll get and break up from news again and then we'll go and do our little show and tell what we got for the week. So, mark, show us what you got first.

Mark Trobough: 54:52

I mean kind of already mentioned it. Can we play it? I do have the Switch version of Dragon Quest 3, the HQ 2D and of course it doesn't. It has the super boring white inside. I don't have a disc in here because it's in my actual switch right now, but I think the case looks decent on the outside. It's you know what you get out of switch. It's the box art they had when they announced it. I think it looks really nice. Actually, a few things. This I actually picked up today because I went to GameStop looking for that game we talked about and they didn't and I couldn't find the physical of it. So I'm going to have to buy it digital. What game? The Naruto game.

Brandon Hurles: 55:28

Oh no, you couldn't find it.

Mark Trobough: 55:30

They had the physical at one point. They didn't have it. I probably have to buy it digital, but I did pick up for like $30 a golfing Miku figure, just because they had it. Why is she golfing? I don't know, it's Miku Hatsune.

Brandon Hurles: 55:45

Miku Are you a fan? Are you a Hololive fan?

Mark Trobough: 55:51

I'm a Hololive, not a Hatsune Miku.

Brandon Hurles: 55:53

I know you're a VTuber guys, that's right.

Mark Trobough: 55:57

I don't listen to her hardly anymore. Some of the other ones that I know I didn't tell you about. Two of these are actual puzzles On top of the other one Just because I saw it, a Super Mario U Deluxe puzzle. I think this one is a yeah, it's a thousand piece puzzle. I haven't done anything with the Godzilla one, but I've got some more puzzles I was picking up.

Brandon Hurles: 56:19

Oh crap, I picked that up too and it's in the other room. So I found it at mine and guess what? I went in there to go buy and it was sold. So I saw it and I just said no. I said I'm not, I'm going to stick to collecting video games. But I mean I just I don't know what happened. We did the whole Godzilla thing right.

Brandon Hurles: 56:40

I've been going through all these retrospectives every day, listening to them when I'm going to bed. I've got different Godzilla stuff that I may have forgotten, facts that I didn't know. I'm obsessed again and I went to go get the Godzilla Mothra gigantic Funko Pop that they had there. It was 50 bucks, it was huge, but it was really cool. Sold out, they said it was sold and got sent to another store. They had one of them there. I went the didn't the next day. I said I hate funko pops, but this looked really cool. It was in a really cool set with like a tower, so like it just looked really good. And I was like like went back and forth, should I get it? Should, should I not get it? I was like, yep, I'll get it. I I was like, yep, I'll get it. I went in there, gone One day later. So my luck, of course. Yeah, that happens sometimes. My luck.

Mark Trobough: 57:29

But I, just because we talked about it, I did get another thousand-piece puzzle a little larger, the one-piece one they had. That's got like all the characters. Oh, that's cool, I like that. I've been slowly Now, do you?

Brandon Hurles: 57:41

put them together and frame them.

Mark Trobough: 57:42

I don't have a way to do that, but it's probably what I will end up doing. Why get a puzzle just to?

Brandon Hurles: 57:48

You can laminate, you can put the rubber adhesive on the back to keep it together. That's how I used to do it back in the day.

Mark Trobough: 57:59

You put the rubber adhesive on there and it would stay together. There's ways you can properly have it framed and stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 58:04

It's like actual ways you can properly frame and stuff. It's like actual puzzle. It's made for puzzles, like rubber pieces that you wipe across the bottom to keep it together.

Mark Trobough: 58:10

Yes, and then you can put it in a frame or do something with it. I don't want to do the same puzzle over and over. I don't find enjoyment in that. The last thing I kind of picked this up on a whim today the Greninja EX they call it the ultra premium connection for for Pokemon. Oh sick, when I was talking over the store, most people were getting this, not for the cards, but the actual, the actual play mat and stuff that you get with it, cause it's like one of the benefits of these big things are the actual play mats and you know the dice, the cars and stuff like that. Uh, but obviously it Greninja EX card, stuff like that. And it's got like another how many, another 16 booster packs, booster cards of different packs and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 58:51

I'm sorry audio listeners, but video listeners, look what I pulled today Absolutely freaking, insane on his phone oh, I got two of those. I pulled two of those the same day that me too, so did you say how it did that whole story beat for it? It was dope. It was really cool. But I also pulled this right after multi-ac oh yeah, it's, it's a really good card yeah, yeah, right after. So I'm, I'm really into it. I think you're I don't know how you're leveled so much higher than me, what, what?

Mark Trobough: 59:24

are you doing Playing more battles? I was just going through some battles.

Brandon Hurles: 59:28

I haven't been playing a lot of battles. I've played some. I've played at least 15 of them, but I haven't gone through and done all of them yet.

Mark Trobough: 59:36

I'm almost done with the Lapras. I'm almost got that completely done. I think I've got another four or five battles to win on that one.

Brandon Hurles: 59:48

I did get that. I knocked out all the sides. I weirdly got three of those Lapras cards. I think you get one or two. No, because you can pull them.

Mark Trobough: 59:54

You can still pull it. Oh no, yeah, I think I've got at least one, for sure that I got through that one. I don't remember how many I actually have, but I was actually using the Mewtwo cards in some of the battles. Obviously, if you get the draw right and stuff like that, they're really powerful cards.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:06

Yeah, that's a really good card. The whole story beat. I wonder what Mew's like. Mew's one of my favorite Pokemon, so I keep trying to pull Mew.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:13

That little story beat there's.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:15

Mew in the background or something like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:17

In the glass or something.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:18

They should do that for more cards. I didn't even know cards did that. There was cards did that, but yeah, there was a whole minute-long story beat for it and I was like, oh, that's really cool, it showed the movie. Basically, I'm just trying to pull Mew because Mew's one of my favorites on the top five Pokemon. I just keep trying to pull Mew. Man, I love Mew.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:37

I mean the odds are stacked against you, but they're stacked against you for that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:40

I know I keep trying, man, I'd keep doing the Mewtwo packs just trying to pull you you just keep opening the cards and stuff like that eventually. The game tells you that the tournament ended. By the way, the two weeks was up, so it ended.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:53

Oh yeah, I'm going to get charged for it anyways.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:55

I'm not going to pay for it. I just $10 a month. That's like Netflix for an extra pack a day. No, I'm not doing it.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:05

I canceled a subscription I wasn't using. I'm like alright, I'm still net positive without the other subscriptions. I'm curious I haven't done a whole lot of online battles. I've kind of been doing those we gotta do some.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:18

Do you know that we can hook our phones up to the flashcards?

Mark Trobough: 1:01:24

Sorry.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:25

Elgato's. Yeah, oh, elgato's.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:28

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, cause there's a I've got, I've got one.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:31

I've got one to do it, so maybe sometime as like a bonus thing we could do that. That would be really fun, just like an extra off the wall. That would be fun. Did the core? I have one of the cords already to do it there. That would be fun. I have one of the cords already to do it. You can get one for like $5 on Amazon, so we should do it. I thought about streaming Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, because they announced now that you can buy the game and get everything in it for $10. So I'm going to buy it because I was playing it for years. So I'm just going to do it to have it and keep my stuff. But hey, we got Matt R in here said what's up guys? Um, mr coffee said I downloaded the correct game. What's your friend code? I'll add you. Oh, if you're talking about um pokemon, I will.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:18

I think you have it somewhere, unless you're going to repost it yeah, it's on the socials.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:23

it's long so I don't want to try to type it out. I'll see if I can pull it up real quick while Mark's going on to the next thing, but I'll.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:31

Did you have more to show?

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:32

off. No, that's all I had, Okay so yeah, mr Coffee, I'll try to get you added, but if you go back a few days ago, I on Facebook, I posted it a few days ago, so go back and look on there if you don't mind, but definitely add me. Mark, you gotta share yours out on Anime Junction and get people adding you, because I think I've already got 50-some friends on there.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:54

I've only got two you and some other people that I just added.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:58

Well, I put it out there. So I got a lot of requests, so go ahead and show where I got. You brought that up. I got this for five bucks at walmart. Uh, I remember the stuff about it. I remember a few people saying that it was, it was an okay game, but there was whatever around it that you were talking about, but it was, yeah, five dollars. I paid five bucks for this.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:18

So I picked it up because I looked at the game terrible game I looked it up and I was like for five dollars it looks like it might be like I might get some enjoyment out of it, but it was one of the cheapest that I've seen for a long time.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:34

Yeah it's in like a $63 on Steam and like that. It's in like a mixed review.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:38

That's what I said. It's like a $5 game. I mean $5.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:41

Yeah, $5. You're probably getting enough play time out of it. Like an hour would probably be worth the $5.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:46

I wouldn't have paid more than $10 for a game like that, but anyway, I showed this on Anime Junction. I don't think I showed it on Game Junction, on the Game Junction podcast, but I got Ys X Nordics, which I haven't opened up yet, but I do plan to dive into this. The reason I haven't opened this up yet is because I'm already currently playing the Zelda game. I'm currently playing Mario, luigi, brother Ship, currently playing Metaphor and currently playing Dragon Ball Sparking Zero all at once. So unfortunately this has to take a backseat for a minute. But as soon as I beat one of those, I am going to start this and did want to shout out MiloTV, that's my spot, edgar Allen and Angel over on the uh tiktok side. So thanks for popping in um. So also I got this is really cool. So you remember we talked about this a lot and that I had already gotten sent out the prototype version um, which was an exclusive purple cart, but the unlock switch didn't even know, this was coming, so they sent out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:45

this is what I believe is like the final version of it. Hold on, give me just a second, I'll show you the other version as well.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:54

As he goes and grabs that real quick. Love the purple shirt, by the way.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:01

Thanks, I like it too. Game Junction I'm not wearing Game.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:03

Junction, you go on YouTube. Mark, I thought you had some Game. Junction, keith Brink, you go on the YouTube.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:06

Mark, I thought you had some Game Junction shirts. I ain't seen them in ages. Do you even have them anymore?

Mark Trobough: 1:05:13

I still have my shirt. I've always had the one, but I have the gray version of that shirt so this is the prototype they sent out, which was the.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:22

It is a little hard to see with the. Let's see if I can try to light it a little bit. To see with the. Let's see if I can try to light it a little bit. They're purple, purple, see-through.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:31

Yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:32

So that's that one, and that was like the prototype beta tester ones that they were sending out. That's it. They only made those for the beta testers, and then this just showed up in the mail yesterday. I didn't even know it was coming. This is what I believe is the final design, so it is just a straight see-through black and that's the actual cart. This is what goes inside your Switch. This is what is the actual cart and we'll play the games on it and everything like that. This is the dumper. So this is how this cable right here and this how you dump your games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:13

So if you got your game cart which that's how I'm doing it I'm not playing, you know, legally. I'm doing it legal. I want to back up my games, have my games and then if there are games that I want to be able to have and just have one cart, my switch and I have to switch out. That's what I'm going to do. But, uh, I've got that. So I've actually got three of these are. I've got two of these and I got a mig switch none set up yet. Um, and the reason is because they do not have the unlock switch, has not put the programming software out yet. So they're actually not even usable yet. Um, they said it was 95 done. Uh, so should be. Should be soon that I can get that set up.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:52

The mix switch stuff is kind of a mess. I have to figure it all out. I've got to have like a good five hour stretch or something to spend on it researching um, and to be able to start dumping things and it. It's going to be a long, long process, but it'll be worth it in the end. When Switch 2 comes out, I'll have this cart for Switch 1. I'll use it in a Switch that is not going to be connected online and then I'll just have all my games dumped and then put on one cart. So if it's games like this, for instance, and I have to grab it off the shelf, I can just have one single cart.

Brandon Hurles: 1:07:27

It has all my games on it and they're backed up. I got my saves backed up on my PC. Good to go, breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. I have so much time in those games I want to make sure I have my saves backed up. You know what I mean. I don't trust the cloud save moving forward I don't trust it. I moving forward I don't trust it. I want to back up my own games, so that's really cool. And then also I got kind of a surprise controller. I didn't know this was coming either Retro Fighter's new Mantis controller. They sent this to check out, so I'll be doing a video and a post. We'll be going out on this either tonight or tomorrow. But this is a PS4 and pc controller. It's completely see-through. It lights up rgb.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:11

Let me it looks pretty cool it's a really really cool controller really dope. It's like what a mini version of the ps. Uh, ps5 controller yeah, it's like.

Brandon Hurles: 1:08:21

It's like a mini controller that fits really really good in your hands, like it feels really good. I feel like this would be perfect for fighting games especially, but like it would work for any game and it just fits real snug. So ps4 and pc is what it says. I don't know if it's compatible with ps5, so I gotta find out what the deal is that if it isn't, that's fine. You know it is compatible ps4, pc and I like to have pc game pads. Uh, so something that I ordered this is the 8-bit doe pro 2 controller. It went up for 15 bucks on amazon. It's normally a 40 controller, so what's interesting is this is I'm even taking the plastic off, part of it.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:01

It looks like the old, like wii pro controller almost it kind of is.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:04

So it's like a snes controller with grips and back triggers so like and and the uh, and the joysticks as well yeah, you've got joy, it's but, but it is like in the style of a snes with but, but you like, you said the wii um classic pro, what was it called? Was it called?

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:21

the classic pros yeah, it looks like that. It's a really, really nice controller. It's I think it's normally 40 bucks. You've got your d-pad on there. It feels like a snes controller with the um with the grips, and I wanted something for retro games that was like that. So this is perfect to me. Um, so I was like 15 bucks.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:40

I love controllers. If you can't tell, I pick up controllers all the time. Um, I'm a big controller. I don't know what the deal is. I love controllers. If you can't tell, I pick up controllers all the time. I'm a big controller. I don't know what the deal is, but I love controllers for some reason. So I've got so many compatible PC it's not even funny. Yeah, so that's it for show and tell.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:00

So, audio listeners, if you want to see the video on any of that stuff, definitely go over to the um youtube or twitch and check that out. We got matt rat, said. I said I just uploaded my final part of playing resident evil 4 and switch took me 17 parts to upload. Wow, that's crazy, isn't mark's pokemon name waifu master. Uh, will, will tyson bite off jake's ear? That's a great. That's the best question we have gotten today.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:28

Uh, I'm saying no, brandon, you aren't doing anything with it. This is all just for testing. You have no need to back anything up. You love nintendo. All hail nintendo. Yeah, no, I mean legitimately, though we've talked about that. I like to back up my games. I've backed up my pokemon saves on on the game boy um with the um, the epilogue gba. That plugs into your pc so you can play, stream gba games, game boy games. But you can also back up your games. So I'm all about backing up your games. I'm trying to get all of those for every console that I can. If there are saves that I care about, I want them backed up on my PC.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:06

So you're always laughing at me for some reason when I say that I don't get it. Doesn't that make sense to want to back up your saves? No, it does absolutely Okay, you're always looking at me like that's what you, alright. What do we got next, mark?

Mark Trobough: 1:11:25

Oh, we got some news, so I know you. We only played it once on stream and once with you, but the first Descendant is getting a new update that is adding new jiggle physics for the boobs on the characters PS5 Pro right. I'm pretty sure it's on everything well it does have.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:44

It is PS5 Pro enhanced. I do know that for sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:47

Yeah, but there were players that were asking for it and stuff like that we're coming to. But there was one site it's n4gunlocked or n4gcom that it's coming and they say it caused a divide among fans. Yeah, I've only ever seen within the Discord, I've only seen one person that actually complained about it in the Discord, and that's what they call a divide among fans. If you're playing the First Descendant, you're all for this. Like, let's just be real. If you've ever played this game. The outfits are very exposing.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:18

I don't even remember it being like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:20

The male gaze. I don't remember it being like that legitimately, but maybe not the default to a lot of degree, but something like the outfits you pay money for, like some of the bunny outfits and some of those stuff, are extremely revealing. That's like half of the draw of the game yeah, for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:41

Yeah, I don't know. I don't care too much about the game, but I did think about living it up. Check out the PS5 pro enhancements. Apparently it runs at a steady 60 is what I saw it was running at 30.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:52

I'm hearing yeah, steady 60 was running 30 on the regular ps5 and it wasn't even a stable 30, so that's cool. Do I care about checking that out? I don't know, but I just want to experience some of the ps5 pro enhanced stuff because they're. What's cool is that for this there's already 55 plus games at launch available, but for the ps4 pro there were 42 games at launch that were available, so there's already more available than there was for the ps4 pro with the enhancements and all that stuff.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:22

So yeah, because I got one for that plays that absolutely loves the game. I do want to go back and play a little bit more we could stream it again.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:30

We could stream it again sometime.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:33

You should probably pay attention to the actual story next time. Just run through it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:36

You were the one that kept saying what I was trying to read and you're like I don't care about anything you're saying I'm going to screw that I'll play, that I don't play whatever you want to play, no, but we have some.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:52

I know you brought this up. We have some mortal one combat news about what's a ghost face coming to the game yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:57

They always add those extra characters from other IPs we've gotten in the past. Let me think here some of the weird ones that we've gotten. We got yoda I know that was still caliber yoda and darth vader um moral combats obviously got from the boys whatever. Uh, whatever the guy's character's name, the main character he's in it um, you know you talked about.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:19

I can't remember the name.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:20

Yeah, he's in it um. So ghost face is really cool, but apparently ghost face is actually three different characters. Did you see that? Do you know any more?

Mark Trobough: 1:14:28

about that? I didn't. I don't play mortal kombats. I don't know anything about it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:31

I don't know. I all I saw was a quick thing that said that ghost face is actually three different characters. So I'm like you could see the lineup of like when I was grabbing images just for the thumbnail, it was even showing, um, multiple ghost faces. So I don't know what that means, because there was multiple people who were ghost face in the screen movies, obviously. Um, so, let's see. It looks like we're okay, so let's see if we can get a little more info on it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:01

Uh, watching the trailer here looks really cool. I mean, I think it's a cool character to have in Mortal Kombat. Um, I still have not picked up Mortal Kombat 1, just because, for one people didn't love it. So I was like I'm gonna wait for, I'm gonna wait for 20, 30 bucks for this. The one that doesn't make sense that I hadn't picked up, which I was I'm way more excited about playing, was street fighter 6. But again, I'm waiting for it to be like 30 bucks. Um, I'm just being super selective with games. I'm buying at full price. I kind of wish I would have had, would have bought street fighter 6 by now, but, um, yeah, it looks cool. Ghost face looks really cool in it. Um, like, actually looks really good too. The character looks really good, um. So yeah, I mean, I've heard that the nintendo switch version is really bad, though like really bad that's that's not what you want to hear yeah, but I see that uh, some apparently some key takeaways.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:02

ai is telling me as fans speculate about the identity of the masked killer, with some pointing out moves that resemble other characters from the series. In a hilarious meta fatality, ghostface stabs his opponent while the action plays on a living room TV. So it looks like what the deal is is that there's multiple Ghostfaces. There's actually the identity Okay, apparently it's two fighters. The identity of two of the fighters under Ghost Face's mask seemingly have been figured out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:32

Two of the Ghost Faces appear to use moves from classic Mortal Kombat characters, making it clear who they're meant to be. So these are potentially not even Ghost Face. These are potentially just being hit as Ghost Face and their other characters. If that's the case, that's really cool. That's some deep, cool lore. If that's the case, they're actually just other characters underneath the aesthetic of Ghostface, which would be really, really cool. There's also the second combat pack, which is adding Conan the Barbarian, terminator 2's T-100, and then Ghostface. So those are the ones that are coming. So that's pretty cool. I mean, like I said, I haven't picked the game up yet. It is one I'll grab, for sure, because it's a fighter, but that's cool.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:22

Well, yeah, it really is. If you haven't heard it already, though, there was some other drama around Sony and stuff like that. The record hunter for trophies over on PlayStation, hakum, is stepping away from doing any kind of content with Sony in the future after some drama, with his account being suspended, banned and stuff like that. And then Sony kind of coming out and not really caring and he holds multiple Guinness World Records and stuff like that he pretty much said he ended his partnership with Tony retiring from Trophy Hunter.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:00

So do we know what the problem is exactly, what happened, what?

Mark Trobough: 1:18:04

Sony said is they that? Who? That his ban was due to him getting platinum trophies too quickly? They say completing games practically no playtime, logging into more than 200 accounts and using 29 playstations. Uh, hukum said that he attained a platinum trophy rapidly due to the autopop system. I don't know anything about that and playing shovelware titles just to get trophies Because that's where a lot of those trophies come from is shovelware.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:29

Isn't that what people do, though? To trophy hunt, Isn't? That kind of like the point. That's the kind of fun of it for people.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:35

He said. She said out of this Because you get the point Sony doesn't really care all that much.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:47

And Hakum is just kind of like this is just bs the truth. Okay, hold on, this is too much. Why do they even care? Why does playstation even care at all? I?

Mark Trobough: 1:18:52

don't know, because when it first broke you're like, oh, some random person banned him and then, when he reached out to get support, they kind of uh, uh, blew him under the rug, like they didn't really care to deal with it I'm just wondering, like, why does it matter?

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:04

because it's the same thing with gamer scores on xbox. So I used to do that in xbox with like cheap little games like xbox live arcade games, and I upped my gamer score a lot with that. Um, I never got into trophies because I didn't have a ps4. I got my ps3 really late, so I just get the trophies that I get now on PS5 legitimately. I'm not like I don't trophy hunt. I no longer try to up the gamer score on Xbox.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:33

It's hard to not want to go after it, though, because it feels like it's an achievement, you have to go after.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:37

That's why I prefer to play games.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:39

That's another reason I bought the Dragon Quest game on Switch. Not only does it feel more at home there, but oh for sure you don't have to do it with trophies, which sometimes I feel like are a distraction, because sometimes you play the game in order to get certain achievements and trophies and stuff like that I feel zero obligation when I play a game with trophies. It's hard not to though so much though.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:00

Listen to this. I've been gaming as long as I have right Got. Listen to this, I've been gaming as long as I have right. Got a PS5, got a PS5 Pro, I got a PS4 late, had a PS3, ps2, ps1. I do not have a single platinum trophy. I got hundreds of what bronze trophies, I think, and some silver trophies and maybe some gold trophies, but I have zero platinum trophies.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:25

But the thing is for me, the 360, I was a 360 guy, hardcore, right. And then I got my Xbox One and that's how we linked back up, we started playing Elder Scrolls Online. So I got that and linked back up and we were playing that. So I played a lot of Xbox One. And then I got my Series X, started playing more, built up the gamer score a little bit more, playing games on there when it launched and I just I don't know like they're cool, they're an extra thing, but I don't like hunt them down. I just there's too many. There's too many games for me to care, and that's to be honest with you.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:59

Like some people ask. They're like, why doesn't Nintendo have a like a system set up like that? Well, they kind of do to get real-life prizes Every single week they change the things that you can do and it'll just say, hey, play Donkey Kong Country, 2. Load it up for two seconds. You get 60 points in there and those can go straight towards getting physical items. So I mean, if you ask me, it's there, it isn't a trophy or it isn't a score, but like you're earning coins for real life stuff, or you can do it for the icons that change out every week and are exclusive, um, so I don't know, that's kind of I actually kind of like that about nintendo. They don't do that because it's another thing to just not care about.

Mark Trobough: 1:21:46

No, yeah, I'd agree with that. His account was eventually restored, but he pretty much says he's done with Sony, he's done doing any content, but he did amass 2,000. 2,007, 379 trophies yeah, 207,379 trophies I thought7, yeah, 207,379 trophies I thought I said that weird.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:08

Wow, that's crazy. Mr Coffee said Ghostface does have some of Rambo's movesets. Personally, if I'm close to Platinum 100% of the game just from normal play, I don't mind just finishing it up. I put in over 200 hours into Destiny, so I was just why not? Yeah, I do. I. Just there's too many games for me to put hundreds and hundreds of hours into games anymore. Like, there's just there's too much. You know what I mean and that's a. It's a good problem to have and I like to switch around from game to game, like I, like you I don't know if you still play, but like, for instance, we actually have some viewer questions and one of our questions is going to be about this, but I'm not sure if you still play Rocket League, but that was a game you were always going to.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:52

I didn't play that game in two months. I just got pissed off with the game and people I played with.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:57

Yeah, fair enough, fair enough.

Mark Trobough: 1:23:00

All right, what do we got next? We do have some rumors. So, based off an intern QA marketing for the first half of 2025, there's rumors around a gorilla that there is a another horizon game coming out sometime next year, potentially, oh wow, which I mean the Lego game. Would make sense. Trying to keep, you know, keep the talk around the game relevant and try to hype up the next game potential.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:31

Yeah, but this is obviously just kind of a speculation point, is okay, so we know the VR game is canon, is the Lego game canon?

Mark Trobough: 1:23:36

I can't imagine it would be really okay, because I don't think it played. I would think it would be. It also feels a little quickly because Horizon For west came out in february 2022. So we're coming on three, almost three years since that game came out, which just doesn't fit and then the vr game came out in 2023.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:54

That was just a year later, which is canon to to the story um, which I can't imagine there's anything not playing the game probably doesn't doesn't affect anything if I I could imagine you can watch what happens basically, but most people don't have the vr, so I don't know how much they want to talk about it.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:10

Be it. Yeah, it says it's a retelling of the first game, but it's just like a lego game oh, so it just retells the first game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:16

Okay, all right.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:17

Yeah, interesting I mean you'd be better off just actually playing the game at that point. But I mean that's just me, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:22

Yeah, I mean another Horizon game. I still haven't played Forbidden West, so I need to get around to playing that and there's an expansion for it, correct?

Mark Trobough: 1:24:35

Yeah, both games have story DLC to them.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:37

So I've played the VR game, but I just have not played Forbidden West. It's on PlayStation Plus so I can play it, but if that's the case, I'm going to have to play it before that comes around, and that's a PS5 Pro Enhanced game anyway, so that gives me an excuse to check it out.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:51

I'll say this Store Res. I prefer the first game. The game plays much better. The first game was still good.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:56

I heard the second one is not good. Actually, what I heard was it's basically more of the same but kind of dumbed down, like it's basically more of the same but kind of dumbed down, like it's not.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:06

In some areas. Yeah, I mean, if you really want to go the route, you can. There are some areas where you can feel the DEI-ish in the game, but it's not like it is there, but it's ignorable to some degree compared to where it didn't feel like it existed at all in the first game. But I mean, I just think this more of the same isn't always bad, right, uh, because you take a risk, there's a chance you lose it. But I mean, there's a there's times where I felt like the story just just dragged on, like the world's bigger, there's different environments, which is always great. But, uh, some of the side quest content is not the best. I didn't care for it. I've had a harder time going back and replaying the second game than I did the first game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25:48

I will say the what was it called? The expansion for the first game was amazing.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:56

That was Frozen Wild right. It was amazing, Was it called Frozen?

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:00

Wild.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:01

Yeah, I believe so.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:02

So good. I was like this is what an expansion should be. I think, they were actually working on this partly after the game too. It felt like that it's a good story.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:14

In a whole new area it takes up place in the north, which is supposed to be right around Jackson Hole, yellowstone area, which fits with the environment being cold and wintry for a fact, yeah. It also ramps up the difficult, you know for a fact, yeah, but uh, it also ramps up the difficult. You get access to new stuff, but the new monsters in that area are just brutally. It's a brutal difficult climb, especially on the harder difficulties. Like it's just not a new area.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:37

It it adds a layer of difficulty to the game, which I thought was nice yeah, that's kind of interesting uh, but uh, moving on, just because I know we have to get to some of the bigger stuff AMD got is apparently taking a 4% hit to its work off to its workforce, or they're laying off 4% and it's really expected to. They're they're saying it's in reference to to AI around the company so we know that 4%, but it's 4% of around 26,000 employees, so you're talking a few dozen people getting laid off A few dozen. That's like Maybe 100. It's not a lot of people.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:16

Well, I mean, 100 people is still Relative to the size of the company. Relative to the size of the company, yeah, but it's still a lot of people, if you ask me, losing their job, and there's going to be more to come. This is just the beginning. Just the beginning when it comes to the AI portion of layoffs.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:32

I did want to clarify 4% of 26,000 is 1,040.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:36

Okay, so way more. Yes, that is a significant chunk of people.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:39

It's a significant chunk, but we don't know exactly who they're getting rid of and why they're exactly getting rid of them. It's just they're laying off 4% of the workforce.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:50

Okay, well, I mean that sucks. I hope those people land on their feet and that everything works out, because that's a huge bummer Families involved with that stuff.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:05

I mean, AMD is one of those companies that's that's been pushing ai oh yeah, for sure, or something like the forefront on top of like google and microsoft for ai. So you can't imagine that with them going more to ai, that's gonna start taking over. You know the direction of the company, the type of jobs and stuff like that, yeah, and they're thinking like, oh, do we still need these positions at that point, stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:24

So yeah, like you said, there's gonna be more to come, I'm sure, at least in the back half of this year there's there's less layoff news out of the out of the gaming and tech industry compared to last year and, like the first, like six months of this year, just felt like there's constantly like layoffs every week yeah, yeah, I don't kid, we were talking about it literally every single week, if not every week, like every other week, at least once a month at the most for the winter and the spring and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:28:51

Yeah, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:53

This was a little bit smaller but apparently talking with some devs on Metroid Prime 2, they were talking about some of the cut features. I don't know if you've ever played the multiplayer mode, but one of the ones they talked about was the ability to play as like a space pirate in the multiplayer mode of that game they talked about some cut stuff.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:11

It wasn't really big but you know, with Metroid Prime 4 being relevant, of course any kind of talking with some devs or engineers on the old Metroid games is going to grab some level of attention so I don't know if this is true, but I saw a reddit post.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:24

Apparently we were supposed to get a second ds title a, a uh, semi-sequel to hunters, where it was going to be set in between what? Two and three at that time, I believe um, I have no idea.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:39

I believe I haven't heard this before.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:41

Yeah I mean because they were talking about. First of all, we knew about metroid dread way back right like we know about that a long time ago. But yeah, I read I don't know that it's true or not, but I I'm in the metroid reddit so every now and again I'll get like emails or notifications and I saw that apparently they were working on another ds title. That was a sequel, because metroid prime hunters relative to to Metroid and for that handheld did well for what it was, so they made their money. It wasn't you know, but it was a bigger title as far as Nintendo goes, I guess. But yeah, I found that really interesting. I really wonder about that. I hope that someday that we get, because I don't know if you ever played it, but I got the launch DS and it came with the demo. The demo was entirely different than the real game, do you?

Mark Trobough: 1:30:29

remember. Yeah, I do remember that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:32

The demo looked really bad. It played completely different, the controls were different, the Metroids looked different, samus's cannon arm looked different, so it was a whole different thing. So I'm curious what else they would have been doing, because I feel like they could have actually, graphically, went probably a little bit further than hunters did, had they? Because you could see other titles on the ds really push the hardware and and really you know, I mean I think it could have pushed it a little bit more. That would have been interesting to see and I love hunters, as everybody knows.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:08

Yeah, but before we get on to the main news, we just had a little small news. Apparently, sonic and Topgolf are teaming up Starting today. There are certain US and Glasgow locations that are teaming up to do whatever they're going to do with Sonic and Topgolf. They say more locations to come in quarter one 2025. Topgolf is kind of like a driving range. It's not a driving range, but it's like a. That's really all you're doing. It's not actual, proper golf.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:34

I've never been, but I know people enjoy it.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:36

Yeah, so I don't know how long or exactly what locations they have, but if you're into golfing and into Sonic, it might be worth looking into what locations might offer it if you're near one and something like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:47

Yeah, for sure, that's really cool, I mean it's a neat little thing.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:49

I thought I'd give a shout out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:52

Yeah, I bet it's a little promotion for the new game plus the movie coming up and stuff like that. I still gotta pick up that game, but I'm excited about it.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:01

I'm glad it always is. I'm not a Sonic fan, but I know you are, so I saw that and grabbed it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:06

Yeah, for sure, love Sonic.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:08

I've got no Top Golf near me, so it's kind of a roll, I don't know if I do or not, I'm legitimately okay.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:12

I would go for that.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:13

There has to be one up in Columbus, I would guess there's probably some there in Salt.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:17

Lake, but if not Salt Lake, for sure, denver hour drive I'd be curious if there was one around the Columbus area of Central Ohio. Yeah, I might have to look into that, See, because I do like Sonic and I think it'd be kind of cool.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:32

So yeah, I guess you want to have some of those uh questions before we get into our main topic stuff yeah, so we had some viewer questions.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:40

We got three. I I tried to pull from everywhere that I could, but I only got the three and they were all from facebook. So, uh, we got. Nexon was asking what is your go-to handheld system, or is there one you want but don't have, such as a Steam Deck or Analog Pocket? I'll let Mark answer that first.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:00

For handheld. It used to be the DS for the longest time because it's the only one I had. Probably, right now it's probably to be fair, the Switch. I like the Switch, but if I had to have another one that I would prefer probably the probably not the Steam Deck, but the other one we've talked about.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:18

The Rogue Ally, probably the probably not the steam deck, but the other one. We've talked about the rock ally, same same. So for me, go to right now. Actually, I'm such an idiot did not get to show us off. This is kind of a big deal, so I'm going to show it off here.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:30

Give me just a sec he's got to go grab whatever he is grabbing. Yeah, right there.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:37

I totally apologize for forgetting about this. There's just been so much that got sent out this week and things like that. But a particular prototype got sent out to me. These launch in December.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:54

But this is the Chromatic, which is a oh, you did a post on that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:56

I saw, yeah, oh man, the thing is beautiful, so I'll open it up and I'll show you guys real quick, because I got the EverDrive in there, so I've just got the full library and you did something on your keyboard.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:09

Oh no, can we undo it? Yeah, I did. Okay, sorry about that. So here it is. So right now this is my go-to. I have turned it on every day and check stuff out, absolutely so, as a it has a pixel perfect mode on it as well as a color correction mode on it. So I'll show like sort of the home menu so it can get firmware updates so they can improve stuff when it comes, comes down the line. But showing here the it's really hard because the screen is bright and it is like a pixel-perfect screen. But you got the mode here for frame, frame blend and color correction. But yeah, so the chromatic man. So they put on here first edition on this. So this is not the final design. I will actually read off parts of the note. I don't think I'm allowed to tell you guys everything, but they said we are excited to be sharing this prototype chromatic with you. We hope this feels like Christmas morning. When you were a kid it really did Like I, legitimately. When I was opening it I felt like a kid again. This is one of the first units that has come off of our prototype production line. We're excited to put the chromatic in your hands ahead of our holiday mass production ship date.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:26

It will be bundled with Tetris, which it did come with a Tetris cart and it's a brand new Tetris. It's fully compatible with the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges, as well as EverDrives and Multicarts original Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges, as well as EverDrives and Multicarts. We're also working with developers to release new cartridges in games, so that's the really cool thing about this. You can buy these through GameStop. They partnered with GameStop. They're $200.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:50

This is hefty. It's magnesium. This is not plastic. It's got some weight to it. It's good, it's hefty. It got hdmi out, which is crazy. Uh, so you can play this on your tv. If you want to play it on tv, um, so you can hook up a bluetooth controller, play it on your tv, um. But yeah, it's really cool. Right now it's running at firmware 0.11.2 um.

Brandon Hurles: 1:36:17

It's uh, I can't say enough good things about it. I've had a lot of fun with it and one of the cool things is when you've got an EverDrive to run through. Um, these different games that you've never gotten to play like. I just found myself playing um the other day. Uh, what was it? Toy Soldiers, just like random game. Uh, I was playing on here but, like you know, I've got my ever drive pulled up in here, so I've got, I've got the full library for game boy and game boy collar, including like beta games and different things like that Japanese games. So I'll see if I can show one of the actual games. Here's some Mario golf loading up on the ever drive Um. Mario golf loading up on the everdrive um, and it takes. It takes a little second to load up.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:59

But it's gotta do that see it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:02

So it's the pixel, perfect brightness. It makes it really hard to see on screen. I'll see if I can. It looks, I'll put it this way it looks absolutely beautiful in person, like the, the frame blending, um. I have two analog pockets, so I compared it to the analog pocket and this is how I feel and this is legitimately the way that I feel. I love the analog pocket. I love the open fpga. I think it's really cool and I think having all those other cartridge adapters for links, turbo graphics, game gear is all really cool. But the way that I feel this is how I'm going to always play my game boy and game boy collar games from now on.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:48

This everdrive is going to stay in here and I'm going to pick up some of the new games. They're all 40 bucks. They're brand new, developed games specifically for the chromatic, which is really really cool. So you're getting the actual retro style games on what is basically a retro handheld that went and perfected the game with collar, essentially, um, I mean, just just so cool. It makes it really hard to see on. Let's see. It's a little better there, but it's yeah, it's a. It's a little better there, but it's yes, yeah, it's uh, it's a little hard to see but it is, uh, absolutely beautiful. So, to answer the one part of the question um, my, my most go-to is the switch. Um, I play the switch the most. What I want, I want an asus rog ally z. I think it's asus rog ally z, but what I think I'm actually going to do is wait on the new one to come out, because I think there's four models out for the mark. You might have to look that up and see if how many models are for that real quick.

Mark Trobough: 1:38:46

But what is it again?

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:48

asus rogue ally. I think there's four different models, um, but I'm going to wait for the new one to come out that we know is coming and I plan on getting that. But we did get the announcement it's crazy that this gets brought up that there's going to be a limited edition white Steam Deck OLED. Did you see that? No, I didn't. It's a limited edition. It's going to be a limited edition drop, which is really cool. I'll have to see if there's a number count on it or something. It looks dope, I'm not gonna lie yeah, there's.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:21

There's four models, but there's two. There's the two variants of two different types of the rog ally uh, so what are the variants? Uh, it's the. There's two models of the ally x and then of the ally gaming console. So the ally gaming console came out in 2023.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:36

The ally x came out in 2024 okay, yeah, so that newest one, I don't. I think I'm still going to wait on the next one, because we do know beefy, our hardware is coming and I, just at that point, I'm just going to wait, do they?

Mark Trobough: 1:39:49

rumor anything about upgrading it because the the specs it's it's capped at 1080p 120 hertz on the 800 ally x that came out this year.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:00

It's rumored that we are getting a 1440p handheld.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:05

You think that's going to break $1,000?.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:07

I think it's going to be $1,000, yeah, I do think it will be $1,000. And the thing you have to think is there is a dock. So at that point it's basically a mini PC. You got your dock, you can play it as a PC, full browser everything, windows, linux, whatever, however you want to run it. So I do believe, yes, it's going to hit $1,000. That next one, but that's just the rumor, that the 1440p part. But we do know that another one is coming and we do for sure know that a steam deck 2 is coming.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:41

Uh, but the I might even wait till see what the steam deck 2 is going to be well, valve just unveiled the white steam deck oled, but you'll need to order it quickly.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:49

Uh, it's a one terabyte model, it's.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:52

Uh, let's see I'll just be gonna upgrade the screen and nothing else well, it's the same thing, it's just a different color.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:00

The white is, it's normally a black. The white is limited edition. I'm trying to see if there's a limited edition. I'd rather just wait to the next one if it's going to come out in like next year or so, the Steam Deck OLED white is $679, which is $30 more than the standard black model with the same specs. The white model also comes with some accessories included in the bundle, such as a white carry case and white cleaning cloth.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:24

And what the $30 is.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:26

Yeah, I mean I would imagine. I'm trying to see if there's like a number that we've got, for how limited it is. I'm guessing it's just the limited time and they're not going to produce a bunch of them. But I will say I I mean you're looking at, you got a ryzen zen 2 and the steam deck oled, so I mean like it's beefy hardware. You know, I it's beefy hardware, but I think that I just want to wait for either seeing the steam deck 2, but I think I'm more on the the asus rogue side, because you can still access everything else with it with the Steam Deck OLED without going around some stuff making it more complicated. With the device. You're stuck with just your Steam library and for me that would be incredibly boring because I have games on Amazon Games, gog. I do have stuff on Steam. I've got stuff on name, some other ones Fanatical, I think it's called. I've got stuff on Steam. I've got stuff on name, some other ones, fanatical, I think it's called.

Mark Trobough: 1:42:19

I've got games on that Steam, gog and Epic but like 90% of my game library on PC is on Steam. That's not going to change anytime soon.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:29

See, for you it might make sense. For me it's less of a problem. But I my thing with GOG is obviously that it doesn't have the it's DRM free. So that's my thing with GOG. That's why I love GOG. I don't think there's any problem. I mean, is there any problems to you with GOG, is there?

Mark Trobough: 1:42:47

I just I like the Steam platform better, like it really comes down to, I just prefer the Steam platform over everything else. It's what it, because it's so user centric the other.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:00

So the two highest powered ones out right now are the asus frog, ally x and the lenovo legion. Go um, they do beat out the steam deck quite a bit, and the deck's been out for a few years now.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:11

Yeah, wow, it's pretty old hardware.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:13

Yeah, it's relatively to the other hand especially when you're talking pcs like pcs get out of date in, like you know, two years. You know what I mean. Realistically, like people were upgrading the, the.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:25

The general thing is every two years half of your technology is out of date. I mean realistically, if you build a pc you can make it last for about six years where you actually have to upgrade stuff. That new.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:34

That new um amd ryzen cpu came out and I know it's sold out everywhere. This, I think it's called the 7800x3d, maybe something like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:45

Are you aware of it?

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:46

I don't use ryzen either, but I I like to keep up with the pc stuff down that I actually have a pc I know more intel and video types type stuff.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:53

I don't know, I don't know the amd stuff, amd stuff, I just don't keep up to date.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:57

It is sold out, so that's interesting. Apparently, the AMD Ryzen is better for gaming and Intel is better for more of multitasking film.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:11

Yeah, but to be fair, when they say that it's such a negligible difference, You're not going to know the difference.

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:17

I do more work than I do gaming on pc. Uh, so for me, um, I do game on pc and I'm getting more and more into it. Talk to you about all the time. You know, from the start of the podcast, I was working with just the laptop behind me. It was a gaming laptop, but it was, you know. I mean it was 144 hertz, you know it was it was. It was good for what it was, it was up to date at the time. Now it's been almost three years and it's pretty out of date at this point. But I am getting more into the PC stuff, especially with the way the consoles are going currently. So I do foresee there being a lot more pc gameplay.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:00

For me, um, and I've got like a lot of controllers for pc like I've got two right here that are charged and charging docks all the time, the ones with the, the screens on them, um for pc, if I want to pick up and play and stuff like that and um, I enjoy, I enjoy, I do. I definitely don't hate on it. I think it's great, I want to upgrade it.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:22

I want a 4090.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:23

I want one. Really bad. Will I get one? I don't know, but I want one bad. However, the 5000 series is just around the corner. They're going to announce it in December, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:34

To be fair, you're getting new series. There's a new uh, cpu, gpu every year every single year thing, yeah, yeah but you just you get new, you're in the market I'm getting.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:45

The monitor that I had the whole deal with is a 480 hertz monitor um. So I was watching a video today with someone who he's got a 4090 and then he has the same intel card that I have, which is the i9 14 uh, 14 000k, whatever 14th gen um. So it's it's the best, it's essentially the best one out as far as that goes. But I have a 40, I have a 4060 um. So when it comes to actually now, I got it mostly for uh, to have for the other stuff going on there, but I'm going to put it right here and it's right by my PS5 Pro 2. So it launched the same day as the PS5 Pro. So it's meant more for eSports, it's meant more for FPS with the 480 hertz, but it is an OLED monitor, which is what mattered to me.

Brandon Hurles: 1:46:35

Oled is what I wanted. 1440p is mattered to me. Oled is what I wanted. 1440p is fine for me. I will get another 4K monitor to have as a monitor, which will probably end up being my main monitor, if that makes sense. But I would ideally at some point and it won't be right now but ideally I would like to have four monitors here set up for the streams for the podcasts, stuff like that. That's my plan.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:01

You just need a wall of monitors.

Brandon Hurles: 1:47:04

No, I know exactly how I'm going to do it.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:06

One's going to be vertical.

Brandon Hurles: 1:47:07

I've seen it and I know a lot of people that work with four monitors and it works really well when it comes to that your main monitor should be your nice one.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:14

The rest can be cheap $100,. You know 1080p monitors because you're not going to game on them, they're just for other peripheral stuff. You'll need a lot of money to do them.

Brandon Hurles: 1:47:22

What I will say about this one, which is it's very expensive. It's $1,200 MSRP. What I will say about this one is it's 27 inches, so it's significantly smaller than, like, the main one that I have in front of me. So what I think I'm going to do, I want to finally get the PS3 3D monitor from 2015 out of here and put back in the box and get it out when I want to play 3D games, because I don't want it to get damaged. It's collectible at this point. I don't want to use it every single day as a workhorse, so I want to replace that and then get another monitor that I can have vertically over here for chat.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:58

Yeah, you just need to make sure you've got this set up For vertical. You probably need to get an extendable arm and stuff like that that way you can make sure it works with your desk setup and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:07

See, I don't know anything about that, because the standards are going to be sitting on the desk and a lot of monitors might not be able to do the vertical with the standard. Some do it just with the standard, some do. Just depends on the model that you get. Yeah, you get like a individual arm that just screws on to like the uh, just clamps onto the desk. You have far more freedom with it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:48:26

You know how high do you want, it, where do you want, and stuff like that. Okay, so I didn't even know you can buy really less desk clutter.

Brandon Hurles: 1:48:28

It's worth looking into if you want, like I even considered putting a monitor up on the wall above, like if I had the monitor here, the one I'm talking about in front of me, the 27 inch. I even considered putting one above that on the wall. I don't know if I want to do that or the vertical, but I just want to make it easier because I've got the curved um screen in front of me. It's like what I say is my main monitor I mean it's fine it's fine, I don't love it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:48:58

I've said a hundred times, I think that, color wise, this has HDR. It's 1440p, 144 hertz. I think that this monitor from 2015 that's 1080p looks better, crisper, everything looks.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:13

You look more realistic, you look more like a person on here than you do on this monitor, wide monitor that's 1440p, I think it looks. It looks absolutely stunning well, mine, what?

Brandon Hurles: 1:49:24

maybe you? I'm sure you have a better monitor than I do I got like four or five hundred dollars okay, well, this, yeah, see, this is.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:30

This is a 2018 monitor um that I got for free, so okay, yeah, it could just be older, because mine I bought mine last year, so it's really new. It's like a 2023 model. I'm pretty sure is what it is.

Brandon Hurles: 1:49:43

Yeah, it's not great. Like I said, the fact that a 2015 monitor looks better is kind of weird to me.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:49

It could have more pixels. It just could be a better overall quality monitor.

Brandon Hurles: 1:49:52

It's very, very good quality. This could work as a small TV.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:59

It could be very, very good quality like this could work as a small TV. I have a really good quality side monitor, but the problem was it died so I got another 1080p monitor, but it's far lower quality do you have a way to set it up so you have another monitor?

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:09

like to use it as another monitor.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:10

I have to go buy a second one because my other one died.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:12

The one I have is, like you know, $120, because I did do you have a way to put the third one in that you're talking about? Aren't you saying you have a third one? I only have two monitors. Oh, okay, sorry, so the one died, but alright, and I had to replace it.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:28

Yeah, so I just bought a cheap 1080p monitor because it just has stuff off to the side. I don't ever use.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:32

I play YouTube videos or something. It's not my like youtube videos or something right gaming monitor where I want like 1440.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:40

Yeah, you don't. You don't need high 144 hertz. That's why I said I want to have the one good monitor here that would be for gaming too, but also, just, yeah, still be another monitor to use. But look it up. It is interesting the sony end zone, 10 ms. I saw today that um digital foundry did a video on it and I had already uh, long story short I bought it on ebay. I got sent the wrong monitor. I got sent a 2021 m9 end zone monitor, not not at all the monitor that I purchased. So I'm held up 850 until it arrives. And then they say that it's arrived and okay, uh, so I'm.

Brandon Hurles: 1:51:16

I'm'm not happy about it at all. I thought I had the monitor, but I am still going to get it. I'm going to get it from Best Buy open box. It's like $850 open box. That's $400 off. Essentially, it's a $1,200 monitor. So this is going to be my future proof monitor. This is going to be my monitor. I'm going to have it for a long time is what I plan on doing.

Brandon Hurles: 1:51:41

Plus, it's OLED and I've wanted to have an OLED panel for a very long time, and it has VRR, hdmi 2.1, direct port 1.4 and all that stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 1:51:54

So, yeah, I mean like my TV, that I've got, that I do have like the PS5 hooked up to.

Brandon Hurles: 1:52:01

Right now I don't have VRR on it and I noticed with the PS5 Pro playing the Dragon Ball game, because I went through, I beat Goku's story, like I played it, and you can notice that, since it doesn't have VRR, you can notice the frame shifting and where it kind of like it's almost like frame blending kind of that happens when it gets fast paced and it kind of sucks. It kind of sucks playing a game that's super fast paced on something that doesn't have VRR, which is actually like you know, it is a relatively big deal. It has auto latency mode but it doesn't have HDMI 2.1. So it can't do VRR, which kind of sucks. But you can tell and like that's one of the modes that you can go in and turn on and mess with in the PS5 Pro. So it's like kind of sucks because I can't really take full advantage of it yet until I've got a better monitor. But it does still look crisper, looks better, it's good stuff. But uh, what do we got next?

Mark Trobough: 1:53:03

uh, question wise uh, we've got a lot of stuff coming from phil spencer, uh, with some microsoft, uh two different articles kind of covering two things. So the first one uh, he was speaking with rolling stones, I'm gonna this is like a quote directly from him uh, we think about hardware that can create unique value for our players or creators on our platform. We don't need to do incremental hardware for our own benefit. Does a new device really give you a unique experience on screen? In some way? It's less like the old days going from the original Xbox to 360. That was a standard definition to high definition. Now it's harder to show the benefits.

Brandon Hurles: 1:53:41

Okay, we totally skipped over the other viewer questions.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:47

We spent so long I thought we were done with it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:53:50

No, they're quick. Melissa Cancer said Do you have a stress relief game you can recommend?

Mark Trobough: 1:53:55

I have no idea do you have a stress relief game. You can recommend the um I. I have no idea.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:02

I know that for a lot of people it's that farming game, um, what's it called, mark?

Mark Trobough: 1:54:07

farm simulator.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:08

No, no, not that it's like uh dang it Stardew Valley. Well, I know a lot of people go to that, but for me, uh Dang it Stardew Valley. I know a lot of people go to that, but for me, during the pandemic, it was Animal Crossing. It was a big stress relief game for me.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:21

I don't really have a stress relief game. I just play a game I want to play.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:27

I think it's a good question.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:29

Sometimes you don't want to play a game like Dragon Ball. I don't have a go-to game that I play to stress relief. My stress relief is just not being at work.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:42

All right, neely favorite jrpg from 16-bit era. Um, probably, for me it's hard because I don't know if it's final fantasy.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:57

Uh, I'm oh sorry. This one's easy for me. It's Chrono Trigger. That's why I was going back and forth too.

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:01

I think it's going to be Chrono Trigger for me too. That or Earthbound Both of those are. I love both of those.

Mark Trobough: 1:55:09

I mean there's other good games. You have Secret of Mana, you got the Final Fantasy games and stuff like that and a whole host of other JRPGs and stuff like that and a whole host of other other jrpgs and stuff like that. Yeah, I just think the best jrpg of all time is chrono trigger have you played the ds remake?

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:24

what's that? Have you played the ds remake of it? No, I haven't.

Mark Trobough: 1:55:28

You really should still holding out hope we can get a proper final fantasy 7s remake of that game, or at least the.

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:34

I would love to see that game because you haven't played Final Fantasy Remake but it's a whole new take. I have like two of the games that I haven't played them. It's a whole new take on it, completely different. So it's a remake but it's really a reimagining. The first game goes exactly through the game, like how it was on Final Fantasy 7. But the second game breaks that off and it completely becomes its own game. So I would like to see that, because I would love to see new, something different from the Chrono Trigger. I would love a different take from the Chrono Trigger story. I will say another hot mention is the Advanced Wars games, although I guess those are 32-bit on the GBA yeah those are 32-bit, but I do love those as well, they are good games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:56:25

So let's go back to this. So Phil Spencer saying that, what the heck are your thoughts on that man?

Mark Trobough: 1:56:29

Because that's kind of a wild statement. You're not getting a midlife upgrade for the Xbox. I think that's him saying it. Without him directly saying it. You're going to get the next Xbox without him. They're not doing the mid and I kind of agree. I think the midlife upgrade is negligible at best because your framework is still stuck. Like for the PS5 and PS5 Pro, you still have to, you're still restricted to this framework of the PS5. You can only increase it so much, which is marginal at best.

Brandon Hurles: 1:56:57

The thing with the PS4 Pro, though, is that it was a 4K console, versus the PS4 was not, and so you even got a 4K menu. So when you loaded it up, you're like oh, this is a big 4K.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:11

There was 47 games at launch right at launch. And then you got I think there's well over something like 200 games faster on it. I didn't see any other difference because I had the ps4 pro.

Brandon Hurles: 1:57:24

I'm just telling you what I know by facts of I saw it as a waste of money. That's really what I ultimately I felt like all right, well, um, anyway, I mean yeah, so what them saying? That, I think, leads more into which makes us confusing. They confirmed a handheld which, by the way, ding, ding, ding, I've been saying it, have I not? Mark Xbox, and I've said it so many times.

Brandon Hurles: 1:57:48

It's not going to, it's not going to win, but no, but I mean, this is what I said they're doing, they are making, they're making a handheld.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:55

I knew they were making a handheld If you really want to go after it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:57:59

Well, that's why I said they're making a handheld.

Mark Trobough: 1:58:01

Nintendo started by the way.

Brandon Hurles: 1:58:03

They did, but all the way back to the Game Boy actually.

Mark Trobough: 1:58:08

This new handheld era, though it was still pioneered by Nintendo.

Brandon Hurles: 1:58:11

Yeah, it was and it's still the best, if you ask me, sometimes spec and all that stuff doesn't matter. Sometimes the game library matters, the game library on the switch is optimized for for it as well and nintendo just has really good games. Yeah, I mean it is. It is, dare I say, will be the best video game library for a system ever.

Mark Trobough: 1:58:35

I mean ever I think it's on pace for that, yeah it, it's gotta be.

Brandon Hurles: 1:58:39

I mean because you've even got your retro stuff brought over and tons of collections.

Mark Trobough: 1:58:44

Well, considering that Nintendo Switch 2 is compatible, this whole Switch library will eventually probably be the best.

Brandon Hurles: 1:58:50

And there's already, like Mark, you might have to look it up, but I think there's something like 1,500 Switch games.

Mark Trobough: 1:58:59

There's a lot like new games. It's the accessibility of old games, like the old final fantasy games. Yeah, drag quest one, two and three right to be accessible. All these retro games are available on here now I'm just ports to remake, remake, masters to just new games you know it's so many games are available on the on the switch now so many.

Brandon Hurles: 1:59:14

I mean, you have so many eras of gaming available on there.

Mark Trobough: 1:59:17

It's insane, it's slow but we're slowly getting it. It's probably going to be one of the best console generations because it's going to be two consoles for, just say, zelda games, because in the past, we had maybe two games for Zelda.

Brandon Hurles: 1:59:32

It was Wii U because you could at the time, access every single Zelda game that ever came out.

Mark Trobough: 1:59:36

On the GameCube.

Brandon Hurles: 1:59:37

No.

Mark Trobough: 1:59:38

Oh yeah, cause you had the old library stuff like that, but not not always digital. Um, I guess technically the DS had a lot of remakes and ports to it, so it had a decent library of games on an amazing library. Yeah, but I would, I think we're just hoping that they eventually can kind of.

Brandon Hurles: 1:59:52

uh, I would, I would say runner-up DS is my other favorite library of all time because you have every genre ever on there. I mean it's just insane and the RPGs that are on the DS are just freaking crazy man.

Mark Trobough: 2:00:09

I think it's frustrating, though, that we've still yet to see another game that's stuck on the GameCube and, technically, the Wii U the Zelda game Wind Waker.

Brandon Hurles: 2:00:17

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. And Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Mark Trobough: 2:00:20

The Spirit Tracks and the other DS game that came after that Phantom Hourglass and then Spirit Tracks, yeah, that whole trilogy of games absolutely needs a port over, because those are decently good games.

Brandon Hurles: 2:00:34

I think it's crazy that we haven't got. We gotta get those. The big thing. I think it's crazy, yeah, that we haven't got. We, we got to get those, we got, we got to. The big thing I want is the Oracle of ages, is the Oracle of seasons remake, and I want it done in the style of um links awakening and the the new Zelda game. I think it would be amazing.

Mark Trobough: 2:00:51

I want to put a little damper on this because it's technically not on the library, it's via a service. But the accessibility of games on the switch online definitely yeah and it's other games, but it's not like a permanent thing that could be taken away from you plus you don't actually have the, the physical one thing people don't bring up is like the controllers they brought. They brought a sega genesis controller nintendo 64 controller to be able to play other. Yeah, nes for nintendo.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:19

Like that's cool man, that's really cool. Um, so yeah, it's, it's one of the best libraries ever, but I think that, um, the whole, this is xbox campaign mark what. What is your take on this campaign? You can see the image of it if you just type in this this is Xbox and it is hilarious.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:39

Xbox is terrible at marketing their products.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:41

This is hilarious.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:42

This is the funniest thing I've ever seen.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:44

It's on the thumbnail.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:46

Well, going back to the Xbox One, we know what they wanted to go after an all-in-one console box, because they marketed it then and it was rejected soundly. But, they've never changed where they wanted to go with the Xbox.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:57

In their official image. They throw a Steam Deck in there that says this is an Xbox that tags along. And then they've got a MetaQuest. Well, it plays Game Pass. That's what they're saying.

Mark Trobough: 2:02:08

It doesn't make it an Xbox.

Brandon Hurles: 2:02:10

They don't even own a Steam.

Mark Trobough: 2:02:11

Deck, they've got no stake unless they own a stake.

Brandon Hurles: 2:02:14

Hold on, let me read these. They've also got MetaQuest 3. It says this is an Xbox that you wear. It shows a phone, a Samsung Galaxy. This is an Xbox that makes calls. Then they show a food, a bento box, for some reason. Then there's one that says this is an Xbox for your lap, which is a laptop. And then they do show a Series X and a Series S, but then they show the TV, because some of the TVs now have built-in Game Pass. So what this says to me is that they are going the way of Sega.

Mark Trobough: 2:02:52

They are going to be a software developer. I mean to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 2:02:56

in the interview he says I still think they're going to have a developer, they're still going to have a console and I still think they're going to have a. I've said it before this, I still stand on this. I still think they're going to have a stream. I don't know that it'll be a streaming box, but it will be a cheap game pass box, not, uh, not a series x. It'll be a 200 box that maybe it is a streaming box, but maybe it is a native game box that just you know you can play game pass and that's it. That's all it is.

Mark Trobough: 2:03:26

We'll say this. In the same interview he said we'll definitely do more consoles in the future and other devices. So he's saying they're not going to go away from it. But that's like, not like. It's not like they can't have it like re reneged on, like promises in the past. Well, I don't want them to, because I like xbox I.

Brandon Hurles: 2:03:46

I like it as of right now they're still planning on doing a console, but I hope they do forever. I I just I feel like the handheld. I think it's going to. It's smart because it's a big business right now. It's very smart. They have more resources and funds than anybody being I mean windows. They have more recent resources than any of these companies, as well as more money, so theoretically, this should be the best on the market. But the problem is is like what is the type of price point they want to shoot for? Cause I feel like they want to shoot for a $500 price point and if you're doing a $500, you're not going to have, you know, the new Asus ROG Alloy X2 power, which will be, you know, probably around $1,000.

Mark Trobough: 2:04:27

I honestly believe that it's a better benefit than going up to $1,000 and stuff like that, but could you see Microsoft doing that?

Mark Trobough: 2:04:33

He also made a comment in this article. He says to reach new, new players we need to be creative and adaptive of new business models, new devices, new ways of access. We're not going to grow the market with thousand dollar consoles. Obviously this can change. But I mean, microsoft's got all this money, but why would they put all this money behind something they could potentially lose money on? Like you have to think they still need to make money off of this.

Mark Trobough: 2:04:54

Yeah to be a viable. They're not just going to throw a lot of money and then take a loss in their hardware I just think that they I.

Brandon Hurles: 2:05:01

At the end of the day, to them what matters is game pass. I think that's what they care about.

Mark Trobough: 2:05:06

They don't care about anything else well, no, I'm.

Brandon Hurles: 2:05:09

I'm saying as far as what their attempt is is that they're all in on game pass. They don't care about what is on there. I'm'm like because Game Pass, it still is the best value in gaming If you're paying for something the games that you get on Game Pass and the consistent updates of games. It's still the best value in gaming if you're not going out and buying, you know $60, $70 games all the time and you might be one of those people where Game Pass is all you can play and you know know the economy's tough and game pass is, you know, affordable. So they switch out the games all the time. They offer a lot on it. It's available everywhere. So I think that they just want to go all in on game pass being everywhere. And maybe they do make another console, maybe maybe they do.

Brandon Hurles: 2:05:58

I, I don't know the handheld we know is coming. I just I'm wondering they're not doing a midlife upgrade for the series x? They? So they say um, which I don't know if that's good or bad. I I think it's not going to go anywhere for them. If they did a xbox series x pro, I don't think it would go anywhere because the, the sales, I mean just finally. The series x is now outsold, the series s finally.

Brandon Hurles: 2:06:25

And it took how many years? Forever, like four years to yeah, to beat the uh, you know it's a superior console at the time before the ps5 pro came out. It Pro came out. It was the beefiest hardware that we have. So I love the Series X, I love Xbox, I love the brand. I just don't like the things that they do, I don't know. I'm fine with Game Pass being available everywhere. That means that I have more opportunity to play things. So the Lenovo Go or the Asus for all ally, that's an option on there now. And and I love handheld. Like I prefer handheld, um, it's just easier for me, I prefer it. So I am very eager to to see what xbox does with the handheld um, you know very very eager on it.

Mark Trobough: 2:07:15

uh, he also came out because I think it was back in August. He says you know, we run a business. It's definitely a true insight of Microsoft. The bar is high for us in terms of the delivery. We have to get back to the company because we have a level of support from the company. That's just amazing.

Mark Trobough: 2:07:29

He kind of goes on a little rambling. So I look at it this way how can we make our games as strong as possible? Our platform continues to grow on consoles, pc, on cloud. It's just going to be a strategy that works for us. And he kind of went on to say I do not see sort of a red line in our portfolio that says thou must not, because you're starting to see the idea of console exclusives not really mattering as much to them. You already see it to Sony or it's like hey, it's a exclusive to our console for so long that we're gonna start porting it to pc. And you're kind of starting to see some of their uh, some of their exclusives already kind of starting to trickle to say, say, a playstation platform, and then they just straight be like who's to say, in another five to ten years you see halo on a place indiana jones, their big net, their next big game is coming to PlayStation.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:20

That's their big title, flagship title, right now I think you're starting to see the crack and I think the console exclusives is starting to go the way. At the very least it'll be timed exclusive and then it's going to be on everything.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:31

I hope it does. I just I hope we get another Xbox console, because I love Xbox. I've been an Xbox gamer from the beginning, I'm a big fan, so I hope I kind of wish that they would do some sort of refresh, whether it be like they sort of did. They did they have the two terabyte model. Now that's the Galaxy. It's got an extra port. It does have a few different internals, so it's not like a PS5 Pro, but it's largely the same console it's largely the same console and they also have the new white 1TB Xbox without a disk drive, which is

Mark Trobough: 2:09:09

$100 cheaper, but it's not what you would consider like a midlife upgrade it's not a midlife, but it is a refresh.

Brandon Hurles: 2:09:14

It's a different console. It's a refresh, but not an but it is a refresh.

Mark Trobough: 2:09:17

It's a different console. It's a refresh but not an upgrade. That's a stretch to say it's a different console.

Brandon Hurles: 2:09:21

They put one out without a disk drive and then they did one that's 2TB, built in. It's got some changes to them.

Mark Trobough: 2:09:28

But it's largely just no disk drive and more memory internally.

Brandon Hurles: 2:09:31

Because PS5 Pro is not a refresh, no, it's a mid-life upgrade. A that's.

Mark Trobough: 2:09:35

that's no, it's a midlife upgrade, midlife refresh really doesn't change a whole lot of them. That's what I'm saying.

Brandon Hurles: 2:09:39

It doesn't it has more memory, and then you've got one that's cheaper, without the disk drive, so they're refreshed consoles. They weren't available until a few weeks ago, um, but yeah, I mean, I think that that's kind of my thoughts on it, that you know I I saw them going the way of handheld and I can see them going the way of Sega being just a software company. It's just crazy to me, with the amounts of companies that they have, bots, and the amount of good companies that they have I mean Bethesda, for God's sake like they have so much potential.

Mark Trobough: 2:10:15

They have so much they're not going to lock it behind the Xbox.

Brandon Hurles: 2:10:20

I just can't believe it. They bought so many companies during COVID and right before it they were buying them up.

Mark Trobough: 2:10:26

How many did they shut down? That's the real question.

Brandon Hurles: 2:10:29

I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 2:10:30

They have shut down a few.

Brandon Hurles: 2:10:33

Yep, they laid off directly from Xbox Studios. Even so, I don't know man, I don't know man, I don't know. Do you have any more comments on that?

Mark Trobough: 2:10:43

no, not really, because it's more a lot. It's still a lot of speculation at this point, but it's just uh, it's in the news recently, so it's worth talking about yeah, for sure it feels like we talked about a million times at this point. Uh, we already talked about dragon quest, so I'm gonna kind of move on on our in our notes. Uh, game awards. We get the announcements for the nominees on monday I think it's like monday morning or something like that and then, it's about a month until the awards, and like early to mid which, early to mid december we'll be streaming.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:12

We I think our third year in a row, right yeah, it should be like.

Mark Trobough: 2:11:16

I think it's the third year in a row. I think that's the plan.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:18

Yeah, third year in a row.

Mark Trobough: 2:11:20

But it's not to say there's not without some controversy. So this was from their website. They're like all right, how are winners selected? This is from the actual Grumms screenshot of this from the Game Awards website and posted it because he made a big comment about it. Posted it because he made a big comment about it.

Mark Trobough: 2:11:36

But they say winners are determined by a blended vote between the voting jury blended's a big word here 90% voting jury, 10% public fan voting. So essentially, games media determines who wins and doesn't win. The fans have essentially a 10% input, which is negligible unless it's close, like let's just be real. But they say the closing December 11th at 6pm pacific time. That's when, like, the fan closing ends. Unless it's close, let's just be real. But they say the closing December 11th at 6pm Pacific time. That's when the fan closing ends. But if you're asking who's actually voting on this, they have a list that was put out. These are the actual industries that are voting on this. So you have IGN and what's the meme? We give everything a 7. Ign's terrible Inverse don't know anything about them. The Jeff Gerstand man Show don't know anything about that. Kind of funny.

Mark Trobough: 2:12:29

Never heard that before LA Times. Not a gaming outlet Midmax don't know about them.

Mark Trobough: 2:12:35

Pc Gamer we'll talk about it. They have an article. They're a terrible polygon. I uh. Mid max, don't know about them. Pc gamer uh well, we'll talk about it. They have an art, they're, they're a terrible polygon, I don't. I don't know how they're still in business. Uh, venture beat, which I'm pretty sure isn't game the verge, not a gaming outlook. Uh, touch arcade, I don't know about them. What's good games? Yeah, game rant yeah, we're familiar with them. Npr, not games.

Mark Trobough: 2:12:58

Media pride, pride dot com is a LGBT website, so it's not a gaming website. And then you have variety, another non non gaming website. It's like half of these are just general media outlets that you question what is it? What is their outlet going to be? Be? But looking through this, uh, it's the industry. You know what games they are going to like and what they're not going to like. There's a hard bias on what these, what these uh outlooks, the these, uh, these gaming outlets are going to actually push towards, yeah, 90 of what wins? They're going to determine what's game of the year, which means 100 black with wukong, if it gets nominated at all. They're going to determine what's game of the year, which means 100% Black Mouth Wukong, if it gets nominated at all, isn't going to win. It's like a guarantee, because they don't like the game, they don't know it wasn't the game they don't like.

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:46

They don't like game science, they don't like the studio and yeah, because it's a Chinese studio and yeah, I don't know about all that. It's getting a physical, by the way, so I'm considering picking it up. Did you know that?

Mark Trobough: 2:14:02

yeah, I did hear about that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:03

I'm surprised it took this long yeah, I'm kind of surprised as well 100%.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:08

I think Stella Boyd's gonna get snubbed on a lot of stuff. Same with Blacksmith's Wukong. I think the Dragon Age is gonna get too many nominees for a terrible game and a game that just didn't sell well. Even though the sales shouldn't determine it, it should have an impact on what was actually well received and I mean I've seen people talk about like what they'd want to see. I think the fact that there's a lot of people saying what's the game the Astro Bot game should be a nominee for game of the year Just goes to show how bad it was a year for games. I'm sorry, I just don't think that game in any world should ever be on a nominee for a Game of the Year.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:46

It reminds me of a Mario game.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:48

I don't think a Mario game deserves to be a nominee for the Game of the Year.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:51

It's just crazy.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:53

It's a platformer. We're not in the 1990s anymore. Games have grown.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:00

There should be better games out there than, say, a Mario. You're telling me that Super Mario Odyssey wouldn't have been up against any other games.

Mark Trobough: 2:15:06

A game like that on a year, where there's actually a lot of good games. It shouldn't even be in your top 5. It will be in people's top 5 but at large it shouldn't be there. Like to be fair. The only IP that Nintendo large, it shouldn't. It shouldn't be there. Like to be fair. The only ip that nintendo owns that should legit have a shot based off gameplay and story and and design. Everything else would be the zelda games.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:28

That's a personal opinion and it can be a hot take outright.

Mark Trobough: 2:15:32

That's just what I feel, and granted, there's going to be a lot of people that disagree with me, but I don't think platformers carry enough weight as far as what you're getting out of a game and how much game is there, and there's a more or less non-existent story that it should ever be even considered for game of the year. It should win in its own category, but not game of the year well, there's a bunch of categories.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:56

There's a lot of weird ones.

Mark Trobough: 2:15:58

I'm talking just game of the year, the main game of the year so I have got to highly disagree with astrobot not being there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:09

To me that is a I mean, it is a triple, a sony playstation game. It's their biggest game of the year.

Mark Trobough: 2:16:15

I don't see this triple, it's double a people best.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:17

I'm sorry. People loved the game. I just don't think it's a AAA game. People loved it. I played the game.

Mark Trobough: 2:16:21

It's a good game, but it would never make my top five game of the year.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:25

So what? Okay, so what? What are your top five then, right now, so far?

Mark Trobough: 2:16:33

We got one month left as far as like games. That should be nominated.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:36

Off the top of your head, you have.

Mark Trobough: 2:16:38

Metaphor you have, like a Dragon Helldivers is on the outskirts. I wouldn't put it there. You have Black Myth, wukong. Personally I would say Stellar Blade, but realistically it shouldn't make the top 6 and it's not going to yeah, it's not going to.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:57

I think it might win a category. You've got the Unicorn Overlord, but see, yeah, it's not going to.

Mark Trobough: 2:16:59

I think it might have won a category, though You've got the Unicorn Overlord, but see okay, you're telling me Unicorn Overlord could win Game of the Year.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:07

It should be nominated.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:08

It shouldn't win, but it's one of the top six games, I'd say, of the year.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:13

So that's. Dragon Age should be on this list. I want to talk about your, but it cracked the talk about your.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:17

It shouldn't be nominated for anything.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:21

I said off the top of your head what are your top five.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:23

Not what in general, because you haven't played or beat all these games. What are the games that you've played? A lot of these games I haven't played, but I've watched enough to know about them. They should deserve.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:34

What you played this year. What are you saying?

Mark Trobough: 2:17:40

Black Mouth wukong would be the only one that should be nominated in the top six for game of the year. It's the only one I played that deserves to be in the top six, based off of everything that's actually out there. That's not even talking about you had the uh. Uh, the other game that just came out like last month, uh what metaphor the space marines two game. Oh, oh yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:57

More hammering.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:58

Consideration as well, like there's just so many good games out there, like I'm sorry, this is a really good year in games, so I mean. The Baltero card game. Yeah, I mean, I don't see how that should ever be considered.

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:10

It could win one of the weird categories because it is a very, very popular game.

Mark Trobough: 2:18:20

Maybe you very popular game, maybe you're personal, you love the game, but considering all the list of actual games out there, because to me my top two would be, uh, uh, black mcgookong stellar blade metaphor, in that order, and then I'd probably have you played metaphor, yet I played a few hours. I've seen far more of like gameplay of it than I have, and I know enough to know it's a really good game yeah, it's very, very good game, very very good.

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:40

So for me I mean.

Mark Trobough: 2:18:42

I haven't even played it. I haven't played it, but I've watched enough gameplay to know it's a really good game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:47

Do you think this could ever be in competition for Game of the Year?

Mark Trobough: 2:18:53

I don't know anything about the game. I mean, in theory, JRPGs should be fairly easy to go up. I mean metaphors of JRPGs, yeah, but it's like a whole, it's basically like a Persona game. It's that you know, Atlus does perfect JRPGs, essentially, I think they're great games, I think there's just too niche to ever make it out unless you had a breakout game. Well, Persona 3, Reload, though, they're just not mainstream enough Do you remember in one day how many units it sold.

Brandon Hurles: 2:19:21

It sold more than the entire series ever sold in the first 24 hours for Persona 3 Reload.

Mark Trobough: 2:19:27

How many games is that though?

Brandon Hurles: 2:19:28

There's a ton of Persona games, tons.

Mark Trobough: 2:19:31

Oh, I thought you were talking about the Ys games. I don't know. Oh yeah, no, not Ys.

Brandon Hurles: 2:19:35

So I don't think this would ever be in the game of the year, I think.

Mark Trobough: 2:19:38

Persona 5 has started to break out but Persona 4 is far better than 5.

Brandon Hurles: 2:19:47

Listen, I haven't played Reload. No, that's a lie. I played a few hours of it because I talked about it. So I started it on Xbox because it was on Game Pass and it was really, really freaking good. But it's one of those games games hundreds of hours into it. It's got a huge expansion now, it's gotten DLC and stuff like that. So there's a lot to that game. I know people that put over 150 hours into it and they're still not done. That's a big game, but I think, to be fair, I think that is in Game of the Year category, if you ask me Persona 3 Reload.

Mark Trobough: 2:20:21

I have a different take on it. I think Final Fantasy is probably one of the better. What's it? Rebirth?

Brandon Hurles: 2:20:27

Yeah, of course it's probably going to win.

Mark Trobough: 2:20:30

But personally I wouldn't put either of those two games in Game of the Year because they're technically remakes, slash remasters. These games have already came out before. So in my perfect world remakes, remasters, re-releases and type stuff like that, or even like the Dragon Quest HD 2D by default they should have their own category and I wouldn't put them in Game of the Year because technically those games have never released before. I know not everyone would agree with that, but by default I wouldn't put them there because there are other games out there like re-releases.

Brandon Hurles: 2:20:58

The only reason that I would say that Rebirth is because it's not a remake. It's a completely different game. It's not a remake, it's a reimagining Halfway through that game.

Mark Trobough: 2:21:13

You're like it flips the script. Like, oh, this is a whole new story. I think what it's connected to and all that other stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 2:21:19

That's fair enough, all right. So I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 2:21:22

It's a hard and consistent thing. I don't know. I think Final Fantasy VII probably will make it on there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:21:27

I do think it's going to fall in the top games. I think Rebirth is going to win.

Mark Trobough: 2:21:32

But in my world how? I would rate what gets nominated? Anything that's in any way a remake, remaster, reimagining would have its own separate category and there is a game of the year. You feel like it should be more for games that are new to that year. These are our new ips, brand new games we've never seen before. Fair enough yeah it's not saying it's a bad game sure, sure, yeah. And then I mean for the other categories how I, how I look at things that's fair enough.

Brandon Hurles: 2:21:57

I mean, could mario party um the new mario party be?

Mark Trobough: 2:22:02

up there probably win a family game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:22:03

Dude, it's gotta win something it's so good, though, isn't it's better, like way better than it deserves to be? It's really good me and my daughter played the other night and it was it was so much fun I mean multiplayer only games like it could be the best it's not multiplayer only, though I played it by myself several times.

Mark Trobough: 2:22:20

I'm like what are the best-selling games of the year? If you look at top 10, best-selling games of this year are going to be sports. No, mario Kart's technically not on there because I think it's globally, but 80% of the top 10 best-selling games are going to put those for game of the year. When you bring stuff like that that sales shouldn't matter.

Brandon Hurles: 2:22:41

Because NCAA is back. Can that have an opportunity?

Mark Trobough: 2:22:44

to. It tends to show you that the audience at large didn't like it. I will say this 50 million doesn't mean it should win automatically.

Brandon Hurles: 2:22:54

I haven't played it so I can't speak, but, like I said, I think I'll get the physical Black Myth Wukong. I don't think it should get snubbed. I think it will in a lot of ways, because a lot of people love it and I want to play it, but I want the physical.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:10

I just don't like to buy digital only. It's got to be one of the better selling games out there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:15

if you take out sports games, I'm very happy that it's getting a physical, because it sounds like it deserves to have a physical copy.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:25

I felt like the Zelda game that came out in September is a good game. I just don't know if it's going to get nominated for Game of the Year.

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:30

It's going to be on there somewhere. It won't be Game of the Year, but it'll be on something. It's a very good game. It is a very, very good game.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:36

If it was a mainline Zelda game probably would deserve to be up there. But just considering it's a spinoff game, I just don't think it's strong enough to break in.

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:44

That's a whole other conversation.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:45

I just think there's six other games that are probably stronger in the whole.

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:48

You wouldn't call that a spinoff. I wouldn't call that a spinoff.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:51

It is kind of a spinoff. It's not a mainline Zelda game. We've already talked about this before.

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:59

Maybe we have, but I feel like it is 3D.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:03

Zeldas are mainline Zelda games.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:04

Tears of the Kingdom, that's like saying Link to the Past, and Zelda 1 aren't mainline games. Are you telling me?

Mark Trobough: 2:24:12

That's what I'm trying to say.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:14

Okay, alright, that's alright, but what else do we got?

Mark Trobough: 2:24:19

next, are you tired out? Tired of arguing about this?

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:21

now, no, I'm not.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:23

I'm not, I'm legitimately not trying to argue, but I am like more speculative about the game game of the year.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:30

Here's the thing. I'll be honest with you. I don't like what they're doing. Neither of us do. I don't like this stuff that they're doing, so I'm pretty unhappy with that. So I hope that it's good and I hope, I hope. Do you think there's a possibility Switch 2 is revealed there, because we got the Switch? The Switch was revealed.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:49

Nintendo's gonna do a direct for it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:52

Nintendo's never been known to release anything in the Game Awards the Switch was announced there. There's no way it wasn't announced. Breath of the Wild was Awards the Switch was announced there.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:59

There's no way it wasn't announced. Breath of the Wild was.

Brandon Hurles: 2:25:02

Breath of the Wild was announced there.

Mark Trobough: 2:25:04

Yeah, but even then Nintendo's not big on releasing games outside of their directs. Maybe they have a game that they've already announced. You might get a second, a more in-depth one, but usually Nintendo likes to do that stuff in-house.

Brandon Hurles: 2:25:16

I will say I'm not for the DEI stuff. I think it's all stupid.

Mark Trobough: 2:25:22

I'll say the nomination will tell you everything about each category of what is and isn't actually getting snubbed. Because Black Mith Wukong got snubbed by the Golden Joystick, it wasn't even nominated for Game of the Year, which I think is an absolute sin.

Brandon Hurles: 2:25:34

The Golden Joysticks, which means it's irrelevant to me.

Mark Trobough: 2:25:37

Granted, this is the default main. This is like the gaming Oscars. I think that's where the Game Awards are going. But if Black Mouth Wukong is not even nominated for the Game of the Year, it got snubbed and the Game Awards is irrelevant, even if it doesn't win as much as I think it does deserve to win.

Brandon Hurles: 2:25:52

But I'm just saying that's my hot take. No I think that take no, I think I will say I think black man of wukong definitely deserves to be in the conversation in the nomination.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:01

At the very least, if it doesn't get nominated, you know it's, it's not there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:04

I do think industry insiders didn't want it to be and I'm not saying that this would be my game of the year, because it isn't. I do love it, but I do think rebirth is going to win, like that's just what I think.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:14

I think it's got a good chance um, if Dragon Quest didn't completely crap the bed, it probably would have won. I just don't think it's doing well enough to where they could justify it actually winning the game. They have way too much blowback.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:29

Wait, which one.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:30

Dragon Age of Delgard. If the game sold like it should have 100% it would have won.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:35

Watch it because of this other stuff. Get pushed in there, though.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:39

I can see it. I can see them doing it. Industry wanted that to win Game of the Year and I think it's very obvious why.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:44

Well, we all, we all know that the Game Awards sucks. No, I'm just kidding. I like to see the announcements at the Game Awards, that's why we watch it.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:53

I mean, if it's not Game of the Year, you only watch it for that. You year, you only watch it for that. You don't care. I don't care about the game of the year.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:57

Yeah, nobody cares about that I like the announcement, so I I do hope to see some cool announcements from us, and, and, and I hope for the best. Uh, so what do we got?

Mark Trobough: 2:27:06

next mark we got, I think, one more thing left there yeah, uh, all you know is because I was gonna say this before. It just means we're gonna have some spicy take. So, all right, you're gonna watch this more live streaming. I'll be. I'll be hot about some stuff.

Mark Trobough: 2:27:17

100 I will be all right, we'll go ahead and be hot, let's go uh, but I feels like we're going off on a on a slightly negative note. But uh, uh, from pc gamer uh steam is accused of uh what you call normalizing hate and extremist uh content in the game community. From a uh antidefamation league report, which feels extremely targeted. Yeah, oh, you got quiet.

Brandon Hurles: 2:27:45

No, I'm just saying I'm thinking like I don't even know what to say.

Mark Trobough: 2:27:50

Well kind of what they said is from public data, including more than 458 million users profiles and 152 million profiles in user group avatar images, they found a what they call millions of examples of extremist and hateful content, which, if you know anything about the ADL, is anything that doesn't have a left wing bias, because that's exactly what the ADL, you know, leans towards kind of a personal opinion, but that's that's kind of the way we've seen it before in the past with them, so I get the games they went after was uh gary's mod for uh oh my god, that has been around ever.

Brandon Hurles: 2:28:28

It has been around for 15 years.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:31

They're targeting, uh like mods for games, which is not even tied to the, to the games themselves, but like it's just who cares?

Brandon Hurles: 2:28:40

why does it feel like more cancel culture stuff in 2024? Why does it feel like that? I thought we were done with this stuff. Why does it just keep happening? I just I don't, I, I don't agree with, I just don't agree with it the traditional media and the journalists are upset.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:59

They don't have the power they used to 20 years ago, or what they said was was gospel truth, essentially man, I just I don't even know with a, with a camera and a mic, kind of what we're doing. We can come on and share what we feel about stuff and it can go contrary to to what they want hey, what's up?

Brandon Hurles: 2:29:15

retro lou over there in the tikt Gorda Oscar18. Appreciate y'all coming in. Yeah, man, I just I think this is stupid.

Mark Trobough: 2:29:24

This just feels targeted, even coming from PC Gamer, because I saw this originally on X and it was more people going after PC Gamer For even publishing this.

Brandon Hurles: 2:29:33

One example of that Would be the removal of Pepe the Frog Emoticons from the Steam Marketplace. Pepe is such anicons from the Steam Marketplace. Pepe is such an innocuous meme. Are you kidding me?

Mark Trobough: 2:29:43

Pepe can stand for whatever you want. It's a meme, it's a meme.

Brandon Hurles: 2:29:46

You're targeting a meme that's been around forever. How does it have anything to do with hate? Oh my gosh, it feels like they don't like what Steam does.

Mark Trobough: 2:29:58

They don't like gab and how he runs this company, which doesn't favor the, the one thing that publishers and the game developers it publishes the, the fans, the, the consumer hey, what's up? He doesn't, doesn't censor people that criticize. You know games that they don't want them to not criticize. You see it all the time.

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:19

Yeah, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous. Oh my God, we got Mr Coffee. He said Jeff Keighley is also trying to copyright the word Game Awards.

Mark Trobough: 2:30:29

I didn't know that, yeah he came out with something wanting to essentially make that the de facto Game Awards, the only one that really matters.

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:39

He was kind of pushing for that.

Mark Trobough: 2:30:39

Yeah, yeah, he also said on on x for it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:40

He also said I agreed at the same time, fs7 remake uh, should not have been called ff7 because it's so different. I agree, that's why I was trying to tell mark it's, it's completely different, um, but I I get it, uh, mechanically wise, he said, to final fantasy 7 um, and then he said that uh, he also said this comes out after Dragon Age Veilguard.

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:59

Sadly, the second gaming went mainstream and attracted people who aren't gamers. They just want to promote messages. I mean, you're bringing in politics, you're bringing in religion, you're bringing in everything that doesn't have to do with games, that we don't need in video games and should not be a part of video games guess I'll have like a slight caveat to that.

Mark Trobough: 2:31:23

It's not to say you can't have a religious or a political message in games, because there are really good games that do a lot of jrpgs deal with that right right way to do it and it's to not be preachy and not to force.

Mark Trobough: 2:31:34

It's just to it's natural storytelling. And if you want to even push a message I think gundam's a good view of this where the message is anti-war, yeah, it's not preachy and if you don't care for it, you can ignore it regardless of the message. It doesn't take away from your enjoyment, sure you? You can understand it's there and not really care. At the end of the day you can still enjoy it and disagree with it. That's that's how you write good stories with. Yeah, that deals with.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:58

There's a lot a lot of anime and a lot of games that deal with government and politics, and it's the politics with the thing. That's different, though, with that and if we're looking back at the 80s, the 90s, 2000s it's. It's working with the government and the politics in the game, not real life.

Mark Trobough: 2:32:16

Preachy, push on you trying to be very heavy-handed game push an obvious message it was built for the game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:32:24

It wasn't pushing anything on you. You know what I mean. Like you look back at, like chrono trigger, or you look back at, you know, final fantasy 4, any of those things where they did deal with some political stuff and it had no, it had nothing to do with real life politics. It was not left wing, it was not right wing. I don't care. I don't want either one of these in my video games. I just want video games. This is why nintendo I this is why I appreciate what nintendo does, because we are not getting that aspect of crap loaded on the switch from nintendo. We're not getting that and we could be, because nintendo is essentially nintendo is bigger than disney. Now mario is the most recognizable character in the world over mickey mouse, and so they could go the way of disney or something of that caliber, but they haven't and they haven't showed any signs of it, and that's one reason why I do respect them and I and I have lost some respect for PlayStation and Xbox.

Brandon Hurles: 2:33:21

Because, they've been directly tied to Sweet Baby Inc. But you don't hear about that on Nintendo, because Nintendo does their own thing. This is what I appreciate about them.

Mark Trobough: 2:33:29

They want to avoid controversy. It's not necessary. It's negative in a lot of ways and they've had a lot of politics and religion in their games over the years.

Brandon Hurles: 2:33:36

I mean they'll link to the past and religion in their games over the years. I mean they'll link to the past you know you got crosses, you go into churches and things like that so like it can be built within the game without having you know what I mean, like it's not pushing anything it's just natural to the games world.

Mark Trobough: 2:33:48

Yeah it makes sense, and that's not to say even real world events can't influence, uh uh, a game in movies because one of our favorite movies like godzilla, it's influenced from very political the, not from the, the bombings and like hiroshima, hiroshima and nagasaki, but from the uh castle. Bravo, test down the pacific. Yeah, that the radiation went on one of the I can't, it was like some very political very very lucky.

Mark Trobough: 2:34:13

I think lucky dragon number seven is the actual ship that they sailed back and from. I'm saying directly had a huge impact on that movie. But it and there's an obvious message there, but it's not heavy-handed, it's just kind of in the background. But but the influence and the uh, a certain way of thinking just influences how you write a story. It's there but it can be ignored if you don't care for it yeah, that kind of absolutely.

Brandon Hurles: 2:34:37

I mean because you look at the first gojira film.

Mark Trobough: 2:34:40

It's very, very political based I mean it's very evolved kind of away from that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:34:44

To be fair, it did it did and as it should, and it did it naturally and it, you know, it did it in its own way.

Mark Trobough: 2:34:50

But different people have different. You know ways of wanting to, to write and influence things. So sure it's not saying it's bad, it's just how it's sometimes important.

Brandon Hurles: 2:34:57

I mean, I think one of the minus one brought that back, kind of brought that whole thing back, because it got back down to godzilla. The focus on him as the, the horror I mean to be fair.

Mark Trobough: 2:35:08

The timeline's wrong in the minus one. But the castle bravo, is in that movie like it's. It's obviously a direct reference for it. Yeah, it's like a quick line or two, but I mean it's, it's very obvious. But it's not like dragon age of elgar, the infamous scene that everyone I feel like everyone's seen by now is like oh, I miss jindy, let me do push-ups.

Mark Trobough: 2:35:26

I'm like that's such a unnatural, heavy-handed obvious what you're doing, type thing, yeah, even if you wanted to deal with the, with the whole gender ideology there's. There's a far better way to approach it and I think it's brought up a lot of times. But the Baldur's Gate 3, which has, I'm pretty sure I haven't far from it. It's just too big of a game for me to beat and I'm not the biggest fan of the combat. I'll be critical, it's just not my thing. But it has elements of that in that game. But it's not heavy-handed and you can kind of just still do whatever you want. Because one of the other criticisms with Dragon Age is between Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate is in Baldur's Gate you can be nice or you can be an absolute asshole and get all your teammates killed, and it feels like in Dragon Age you can't do whatever you want. Your choices are kind of forced down to you and it doesn't say Bioware is the best.

Brandon Hurles: 2:36:18

You look at the Mass Effect games and essentially you had to be either good or bad with the American Paragon, which was still limiting, but it still gave you the option Witcher same deal. Yeah, you know, fallout, same deal, I mean, but Mr Coffey said all games have.

Mark Trobough: 2:36:33

There are better ways to do it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:36:35

Yeah, 100%. He said all games have religious or sexual overtones. But it's done in a way where it makes sense in that world. The second a game uses terms of real life events, it loses its fantasy. Yeah, I say for the most part. There's a few exceptions, but for the most part, yeah, I agree with that. There's no reason to bring any of this stuff in the video.

Mark Trobough: 2:36:58

This is supposed to be an escape from this, but it needs to be somewhat disconnected from reality.

Brandon Hurles: 2:37:04

Yeah, I mean, like I told you and I talked about it I don't know if I ever brought it up on the podcast, but I just said I wanted the elections to be over because I was tired of seeing stuff about it. It was everywhere you went Everywhere. Vote for Sher. Everywhere. You went everywhere you know vote for sherrod brown, vote for sherrod brown. I mean, I got commercials for sherrod brown every other, I mean there would be four commercials for sherrod brown.

Brandon Hurles: 2:37:25

Yeah, there would be four commercials for sherrod brown during a joe rogan podcast. I swear to god and like it just would not stop. And then it was the opposite. Whoever the other one was at one I can't remember what his name is, but yeah, I mean I, just, you know, I, I, I. This is supposed to be my escape, right, and most people feel that way. This is your escape. You had a long day at work, you've had a stressful day. You want to be able to relax, get into something, to get sucked in and not being preached to you Like you're getting preached everywhere else all day. And all the media I mean all I, you know. I'll say this right now screw all, all a media, screw all the big media, all of it. I mean every single one of those. All the big news stations, screw all of them. I don't trust any of them. I don't, I don't like, I just don't like any of it. They're all politically driven. I don't need it. I don't need it in my life.

Mark Trobough: 2:38:25

So for me when you hear people like especially like sweet baby or other people, that that's like no, you should. You have to be pushing this all the time. You're like people don't want to be, you don't want. A lot of people don't want this. This is a escapism from where they get. Get enough on the news in their daily life. They don't. That's not why people play games and that's why your games are starting to fail, because people pick up on this and it might work in the first two games. Because people don't realize it, they pick up on it and now your games start to sell like crap because people don't want this stuff in your games or in the case maybe, the star warslaws, it's just a bad game. It's buggy, it's broken and you try to push certain things and people just don't care for it.

Mark Trobough: 2:39:05

There's a lot of stuff that's negative around that, but the games that don't have that do well Outside of the media themselves. There was no real controversy around Black Moth Wukong. It's a game that dealt with Chinese mythology and people loved it. Yeah, well, some people did.

Brandon Hurles: 2:39:20

I mean? I mean because it deals with the. It deals with the. What is it? What's the story?

Mark Trobough: 2:39:26

Journey to the West. Yeah, which is cool. That's a great story.

Brandon Hurles: 2:39:30

Right, great story.

Mark Trobough: 2:39:31

I mean it's Chinese mythology, that's all. This game is a part of.

Brandon Hurles: 2:39:34

Yeah, it's just, it's ridiculous, Like, and that it is meant to be the way that it is. I mean that that it's a journey to the west, like that is a religious look. You know, it's got, it's got kind of everything in mythology, but it has like religious aspects of ancient chinese mythology.

Mark Trobough: 2:39:52

Yeah, and it's kind of like it's meant to be there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:39:54

So, like you know, if there's any, I don't know, I haven't played. If there's any of that in the game, like well, that's pretty standard for following the story, then if it's in there, yeah, you know, I don't. I don't other than that, being a chinese developer, I don't understand why else it would get this. No, real.

Mark Trobough: 2:40:08

There's no obvious ccp influence. If you really cared to go down that, that political rabbit hole that really influenced the direction of the game, other than it's, you know, just telling the chinese story. That's really all there is to it, yeah, and you have the memes return to monkey like that's.

Brandon Hurles: 2:40:22

That's what a lot of the community kind of revolves around yeah, yeah, I mean it's just uh, I don't know, I'm tired of it. I'm tired of, uh, mainstream media, I'm tired of triple a games. Looks like you know, most of the games that we're picking up when they're triple a, they're usually like nintendo, like other stuff that we're picking up. They were picking their jrpgs or other, their other companies doing other things like what, what's the last triple a game? I mean I guess I would consider all the big nintendo releases triple a right, because those would be, I mean, those are technically like, they're like triple a ish games, so those would be the only ones AAA type thing.

Brandon Hurles: 2:41:01

However, you would consider. It's a little tough to say there. Other than that, what's the last AAA game that you picked up? Would it have been Black Mith Wukong, proper AAA? It probably was. I think Rebirth for me was the last. That's a lie. I just got Final Fantasy XVI.

Mark Trobough: 2:41:18

I think Rebirth for me was the last. That's a lie.

Brandon Hurles: 2:41:19

I just got Final Fantasy XVI. I haven't opened it yet.

Mark Trobough: 2:41:23

Would you consider a metaphor? A AAA, then, or a AA?

Brandon Hurles: 2:41:27

I would say it's a AAA game. So yeah, I guess that crosses the line a little bit there, but I think that, yeah, I mean it's a big game, it's sold a lot and it is a heft's a big game, it's sold a lot and it is a. I mean it's a hefty big game. It's atlas. Atlas puts out bangers, um all. I would consider all the persona games, triple a games.

Mark Trobough: 2:41:48

Um, yeah, I yeah, I don't know. A quick question. I guess before we kind of headed out was asked by gamer freak real quick, what would you say?

Brandon Hurles: 2:41:56

your worst game of the year is worst game of the year is Worst game of the year. Hmm, I mean, with what I played, the only thing I can say and again, we just talked about it earlier, so I'll play it again what I've played is probably the First Descendants, but I haven't played because I haven't played Dragon Age Veilguard. I haven't played like because I haven't, I haven't played dragon, dragon age, veil guard. I haven't. You know, I don't. I don't pick up stuff that's going to be, you know, stuff I don't agree with or it's crap.

Brandon Hurles: 2:42:26

So I mean, and I'm that's not saying that's a bad game, but for me, um, with what I played, because I'm only pick up legitimately, I I'm, I only pick up games that that look interesting to me, that I want to play, and the only one I took a chance on was the Forspoken $5. I'm like, okay, I picked that up, I guess I can't speak on it, I haven't played it. $5 game, whatever, but I guess the First Descendant and it's not saying it's a bad game, it's just not the best game that I played this year. So I guess it would be that and, like you kind of said the same thing, you were like, yeah, I don't know that I'll ever play this again. We said that at the end of the stream and now we might play it again.

Mark Trobough: 2:43:10

And that's not saying that's a bad game, yeah not saying it's bad. It's just the worst thing you had to pick, like out of all the games I think it comes down to, of the actual worst games. At least Concord games belong in that. Concord, skull and Bones, dustborne have to be at the absolute bottom of AAA games.

Brandon Hurles: 2:43:29

Yeah, yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't know anything about Dustborne, but yeah, I know it failed spectacularly the other two.

Mark Trobough: 2:43:36

Concord was publicly spectacularly a failure.

Brandon Hurles: 2:43:38

I mean, that was a mess.

Mark Trobough: 2:43:40

Dustborne wasn't really a AAA game. It was more indie, but it still failed.

Brandon Hurles: 2:43:46

Mr Coffee said, I'll agree with First Descendant. It's just generic microtransactions loot or shooter. That's how it felt to us, right? I?

Mark Trobough: 2:43:52

will say this it is a microtransaction but it's also a free to play game, so you kind of know what you're walking into that game yeah, yeah I will put that on there, it's. It's there's a lot of micro transactions and they're expensive, but it's uh, there's no pay to entry, so sure, yeah, I mean, I'll at least give it yeah, you give it to benefit of the doubt.

Brandon Hurles: 2:44:09

If it's a free game, I do I am definitely looser with that.

Mark Trobough: 2:44:12

Play it and you don't have to right.

Brandon Hurles: 2:44:15

Yeah, I mean what is it for you? Is it it the same thing of new games?

Mark Trobough: 2:44:21

there's not a whole lot of brand new games that I played that I didn't actually like. That might be at the bottom, but I'd still give it probably a 7 out of 10 somewhere around a 6 for me bad games I didn't play, it's just the worst thing.

Brandon Hurles: 2:44:33

I've played this year because I haven't played really bad games. I've only played good games outside of some Nintendo games.

Mark Trobough: 2:44:38

I don't played really bad games. I mean I've only played good games Outside of some Nintendo games. I don't buy new games that release. I will wait like a week or two before I even decide if I want to buy it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:44:46

Yeah, it depends. Things like Dragon Quest are different, like the JRPGs are.

Mark Trobough: 2:44:50

It's a really good game. It was Nintendo Plus. You had the. The Zelda games were always good. Nintendo has a track record that you can still somewhat trust. I didn't pre-order them, I just bought them at launch. I can at least put that out there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:45:03

I got to get better at that because I want to make sure I secure some of the stuff. I didn't get the Mario Party bonus, but you said you got one.

Mark Trobough: 2:45:11

I just got the keychain. I didn't pre-order the game, they just gave it to me.

Brandon Hurles: 2:45:15

I know the game, they just gave it to me. I know I forgot to pre-order. I meant to pre-order and forgot, but yeah, so I didn't get one of those, but yeah, I mean I guess that kind of wraps up the show. We we got into a lot of good conversation. We. This is definitely a longer episode. This week it's one of the longest ones we've done in a while.

Mark Trobough: 2:45:30

We spent a lot of time.

Brandon Hurles: 2:45:31

We talked like a long time, yeah, but we had some good conversation, so there's gonna be a lot of clips and stuff from this and, uh, yeah, it's been. It's been a good convo, though we've gotten kind of deep into things, um, so we appreciate everybody watching live. Of course, we are live every friday at 8 pm eastern standard time on facebook. Uh, twitch and youtube. Uh, and I'm sorry twitch, youtube and tiktok, and we're trying to set up to go live on Instagram here soon, so we're hoping to do that. Mark, you want to plug stuff for the Anime Junction cast?

Mark Trobough: 2:46:05

Yeah, so we have that coming out on Sundays as well, as we have more content coming out. Just had a video that came out about an hour before we went live over on the Junction Network More quasi a little short, little anime news type segment and stuff like that. But wanted to do more. Some stuff like that, get more content as well, as we have other content in the little bit more long form content definitely in the works, so definitely keep a you had a video drop, correct? What's that?

Brandon Hurles: 2:46:33

didn't you have a video drop as well?

Mark Trobough: 2:46:35

I should be having one drop tomorrow.

Brandon Hurles: 2:46:38

I have to still finish editing it, so so I have a video that should be dropping, um, I'm hoping tomorrow we'll see it, just depends on time if that's gonna end up being sunday. I've got a few products I need to cover, um, and then I want to try to do a couple of videos with you. Or we're talking about a couple discussion topics some of those videos because we haven. We're talking about a couple of discussion topics some of those videos because we haven't done those in a little while. So I want to do a couple of those. It'll be kind of filler videos. We're going to get back on track on making sure that we're having regular videos and things around time and doing our best and stuff on that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:47:13

But please give us a follow either a follow, subscribe, whatever on any of the audio platforms that you're on. If you come on YouTube, please subscribe. That definitely helps us out a lot and be sure to like the video. And also a save helps. If you save the video, that also counts for getting the video pushed out there. We do have our Discord link and the bio, as well as our Facebook, tiktok, tock, instagram threads. Now blue sky uh, definitely give us a follow there. I've been posting it, uh, there every day. Now we're trying it out. Um, and then, is there anything else that we need to plug?

Mark Trobough: 2:47:51

no, I think, that's everything okay all right.

Brandon Hurles: 2:47:54

Well, yep, we got some videos coming and make sure, go to Mark. You want to drop in the chat real quick the link for the Junction Network website or no website YouTube channel. Definitely go and subscribe over there. We're working really hard to build that up. We are bringing back the Culture Junkies podcast. However, it's going to be like probably either once a month or biweekly pre-recorded podcast. However, it's going to be like probably either once a month or biweekly pre-recorded podcast. It's going to be on other pop culture stuff that we want to talk about.

Brandon Hurles: 2:48:24

We got to talk a little more about it, but it's going to be another easy, more more of the anime junction cast style thing where we dive into just different nostalgia topics. So the first one I think I want to do is an edit, an Eddie episode. I think that would be really cool to dive into that. I think that'd be fun. Find five of our favorite episodes maybe the worst episode and talk about that. So definitely give a subscribe over there on that channel as well. And that is youtubecom slash at the junction network. We appreciate everybody watching live and listening and we'll be back again next week. We'll see y'all later.

Mark Trobough: 2:49:01

Peace out.