Steam Deck OLED, Switch 2 Rumors, and Nintendo DS | Game Junction Podcast

Ready to explore the gaming universe from the comfort of your headphones? Join us on our 110th episode of the Game Junction Podcast, where we promise you'll leave with fresh insights about some of the most talked-about topics in gaming today. From our heated debate on the Golden Joystick Awards' Game of the Year nominations to the Steam Deck's unexpected triumph, we're here to unpack every twist and turn. And if you think the McRib's return is only about fast food, think again—we uncover its surprising connection to gaming culture and beyond.

Wondering about the future of graphics and gaming technology? We've got you covered. This episode navigates the remarkable journey from early 3D graphics to today's stunning visuals, as we reminisce about classic consoles and dream about the immersive VR experiences of tomorrow. We also address the whispers of DS games making their way to the Nintendo Switch Online and ponder the impact of advanced technologies like Neuralink on the gaming world. Plus, a trip down memory lane leads us to the inevitable speculation about the Switch 2's launch strategy and its potential for ending scalper woes.

Our conversation doesn't stop there—we tackle the challenges of cryptocurrency mining, the PS5 Pro's new updates, and the excitement surrounding retro titles' return through GameStop's latest partnership. From DRM-free games to the latest gaming releases, including Dragon Age Veilguard, we leave no stone unturned. Not to mention, we venture into the

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Chapters

• 0:00 Game Junction Podcast Episode 110
• 8:48 Crypto Mining, Patch Updates, Virtua Fighter
• 18:59 Evolution of Video Game Graphics
• 24:06 Nintendo Switch Online DS Games Integration
• 31:19 Steam Guidelines, Game Sales, Dragon Quest
• 39:34 Switch Rumors and Game Updates
• 48:55 DDR and Euro Dance Music Nostalgia
• 59:48 Bandai Namco Merger and Gaming News
• 1:12:34 Metroid Prime 4 and Game Releases
• 1:25:35 GameStop Retro Game Partnership Discussion

Transcript

Brandon Hurles: 0:00

What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Game Junction Podcast. We're here for episode 110.

Mark Trobough: 0:05

That's many, yeah, you know funny enough, we're a whole hundred episodes ahead of the Anime Junction cast.

Brandon Hurles: 0:14

We are, aren't we?

Mark Trobough: 0:15

I was messing with it last week, so it was past week, so that's how I know.

Brandon Hurles: 0:18

Yeah, we got ten episodes of the Anime Junction cast Cool, and they're all up on audio. We were just talking about that before. And Rejunctioncast Cool, and they're all up on audio. We were just talking about that before.

Mark Trobough: 0:25

Both here on the Junction Network, youtube, as well as all the major podcast audio platforms.

Brandon Hurles: 0:31

Yes, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast. What else did we talk about? I?

Game Junction: 0:36

mean Amazon. It's not on as many, but it's on quite a few.

Brandon Hurles: 0:41

I know that Right, it's like 12.

Mark Trobough: 0:43

Spotify. By far is Spotify and Apple the two biggest, the most popular ones it's on right now. Yeah, which is cool, good stuff, yeah, definitely check that out. Check out the Junction Network. Get a bunch of other anime related content that's in the process of coming out, so definitely check it out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00

Yeah, for sure, there's a plug right there. Yeah, so we got quite a bit going on this week, so we'll go ahead and get started. We've got. What do we got? First, trying to multitask here.

Mark Trobough: 1:12

Oh yeah, I guess a quick little shout out. You just had your Chromatic video come out over on the Game Junction YouTube page. Definitely check that out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19

Yeah, that's a good start there. So I got it here. We talked about it. The embargo went live, I think monday, monday or tuesday and um, yeah, so you can see the the video there, now able to openly talk about it. But I'm going to get a little more in depth and show off stuff there. A lot of people are going to be using the everdrive for it so you don't have to buy a bunch of cards. So I did catalog there that there is an issue with some games where you can't hit the reset button, so you've got a hard turn off, turn back on. But overall, I think it's a great device, so definitely check that video out. Good video. Proud of that video. It really is Cool stuff there. I guess we're going to start off this week. Besides the chromatic stuff, we've got Steam Deck wins Best Gaming Hardware at the Golden Joystick Awards, which you know.

Mark Trobough: 2:18

Those awards don't mean jack.

Brandon Hurles: 2:19

We still owe it on our game of the year nomination. Yeah, yeah Don't care too much about the joystick awards, but I guess that's cool. We're both interested in the Steam Deck. We talked about it quite a bit and I think it's something that I'm going to wait for the next iteration, because we know it's around the corner, and then I'll probably grab it.

Mark Trobough: 2:41

Yeah, because I know on top of that, just because you brought up the game stick, I for sure was getting a healthy amount of crap for saying was it? Bellatro didn't deserve to be on the game of the year. I literally just saw People are 100% for it or they're 100% against it. There is no in-between with that game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:58

I just saw a. So obviously no Spawn Wave, right, like he just tweeted out earlier. He's like people are only saying that if they haven't played Bellator and as soon as they play that their opinion changes. That's what he said.

Mark Trobough: 3:12

Because I went and got it and I played it and I'm like I think it's a good game, but game of the year no, I still don't agree with that it doesn't scream game of the year to me, but I get like I don't think it is.

Brandon Hurles: 3:24

When an award there's like what a hundred awards that get you know for games, some crazy amount of awards that you so like, it could definitely win like an indie game award or like for another category or something.

Mark Trobough: 3:40

But for game of the year of the year. I was like there's other games that deserve to be there. There's other games that should be there over a DLC that I know we've kind of harped on.

Brandon Hurles: 3:49

Yeah, I mean like. Stella Blade got you know kind of jib-shafted that's what I'll say.

Mark Trobough: 3:55

It's not the best game ever, but considering the down year that we had, I still think it deserves a shot compared to everything else that came out. But at this point, all I care about now is the content creator, because you're not to VTubers, but Usada Pecora from Hololive 100%. That's where my that's the full weight of all I care about at this point for the game awards all I care about is the announcements.

Mark Trobough: 4:23

I don't care about the awards if you don't know, she has a nickname of a war criminal. That's the type of persona that she plays in Hololive.

Brandon Hurles: 4:36

War criminal Okay.

Mark Trobough: 4:39

It makes sense if you actually watch it. He did just shoot missiles at Russia.

Brandon Hurles: 4:44

It's kind of relevant.

Mark Trobough: 4:46

Not really, but no, not really.

Brandon Hurles: 4:50

You're right, let's see, we've got McDonald's. Is bringing, hey, mark.

Mark Trobough: 4:57

I had to put it on there. I'm sorry.

Brandon Hurles: 4:59

McDonald's is bringing back the McRib. I just started reading them.

Mark Trobough: 5:02

Yeah, maybe the McRib is back, let's go.

Brandon Hurles: 5:05

Let me ask you, so I don't mind it, but do you actually like it?

Mark Trobough: 5:10

I get it once.

Brandon Hurles: 5:11

I'm like I get it once it kind of tastes like crap.

Mark Trobough: 5:13

It's not real meat, it's not. You know it's like it's more of like a meme at this point about the McRib that comes back damn well that this is not allowed in Europe.

Brandon Hurles: 5:24

They do not have a big ribbon.

Mark Trobough: 5:26

Don't worry, rfk Jr is going to fix that. He's your new food star. I die 40. I've seen some funny memes with one of them where it's like RFK walks in from Inglourious Bastards and he's like you're hiding fat people into the floorboards, aren't you? I'm like I'm sorry. It's just funny. I will say I am genuinely. I do agree with a lot that he has to say about that stuff. There's a lot of stuff that the FDA, the USDA, that approved here, because it's the truth, it's banned in Europe.

Brandon Hurles: 5:55

It's banned in a lot of countries not just. European territories. We're talking like.

Mark Trobough: 6:02

Like a lot of dyes and stuff, like like red 40 and stuff like that. Like you look like japan and asian countries, some of those as well yeah, like if you, if you buy phantom in the us and europe, it looks completely different because, well, they're not allowed to use certain like guys and stuff in the food, what's crazy is that those dyes are used in like vitamins and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 6:19

So if you ever have, you ever had like a coated vitamin that is like a color.

Mark Trobough: 6:23

I've never really taken vitamins.

Brandon Hurles: 6:27

Multi-vitamins. For instance, one I used to take had red dye in it. I was looking at the back of it. It's like in vitamins stuff that's supposed to be healthy for you.

Mark Trobough: 6:36

That's the big one. But a lot of those dyes be banned because they're linked to health, disease and cancer and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 6:41

Yeah, it's definitely not good, but the McRib is back, then we also. I didn't really know what to bring up for the Black Friday stuff. There's a lot of deals out there. I just wanted to kind of bring that up.

Mark Trobough: 6:56

Yeah, you're starting to get like a trickle of some stuff coming in.

Brandon Hurles: 6:59

Yeah, they're already out. I grabbed a few things today on Amazon and one thing on Best Buy. I grabbed a few things today on Amazon. One thing I'm best by.

Mark Trobough: 7:05

Yeah, I know it's out there. I guess we talked about it before we went live and they just had the DLC Stunner Blade, one of the big games. It's like 20 bucks off instead of 70. It's 50 bucks, which seems to be both digital that I saw and you rebought the physicals.

Brandon Hurles: 7:18

QVC had it for 40 and I missed it with the code. I missed that one. I clicked on it and sold out, all gone, sold all their copies, dang it. That would have been a really good deal. Uh, and I'm rebuying it. I already had it.

Brandon Hurles: 7:33

I can't I've just had a game go missing, so I have no idea. I still haven't found it, but that's the thing about physical man. Yeah, one downside, okay. So this one is interesting. I don't know if you have anything to say about this, because I don't know a lot about Web 3, but I thought it was interesting. It's from a different website too. It was something completely different than something I normally pull up, but it says games are poised to surpass console gaming by 2030. And I don't know exactly what that means. I mean, I'm looking through here and it says crypto. Web3 gaming taps into the cryptocurrency, decentralized blockchain hype. That is what separates it from traditional games. I mean, to me that sounds kind of crazy. This seems like a crazy statement.

Mark Trobough: 8:26

It seems like it's not even really all that relevant, maybe on the indie scene, but as a whole, I find that hard to believe. To be fair, then again, I'm not a big fan of the whole blockchain to begin with, but yeah, I don't know much about it.

Brandon Hurles: 8:42

I don't really get it. I mean, I get the concept but I don't get it like people do. I mean, I know a dude that bought a rig for crypto mining and he obviously never got anywhere with it because he's still in the same place doing the same thing.

Mark Trobough: 8:58

Unless he hopped on it a decade plus ago. You're a little late to the game at this point. At this point, you need massive warehouses full of miners to get anywhere.

Brandon Hurles: 9:09

I don't see, I don't get it. I don't understand what the mining is. He tried to explain it to me. I don't get it, it's essentially using primarily GPUs to do complex mathematical equations. He got a 4090 for his mining rig. He got a 4090 in like 2022?.

Mark Trobough: 9:26

Yeah, he's way too late to the mine To have one rig. It's going to take him forever just to get a single Bitcoin.

Brandon Hurles: 9:32

essentially, yeah, I don't know how much is one Bitcoin worth. It's around I could pull it up right now. It's some crazy amount of money now.

Mark Trobough: 9:42

I don't think it's. Oh yeah, it went up crazy, uh, right after the election it's sitting at 98 000 right now. It's wild, it's it. Yeah, it's back on the 21st hit 98 and it's kind of uh, it's kind of just been sitting there interesting.

Brandon Hurles: 9:59

Yeah, I don't know how I feel about that. It's not. You know, I I don't know what web 3. Real I don't really get the concept of of that.

Mark Trobough: 10:07

So but to be fair, like we talk about crypto, like bitcoin's, like the only one that really actually matters and carries any weight, yeah, but even then it's not really a I don't think it's ever going to be a viable like alternative, like you know, like the us dollar or the japanese surpass chinese q yuan or something like that it's never going to replace it.

Brandon Hurles: 10:28

This is $23.9 billion. Is what they're talking about? Billion? I don't know about all that.

Mark Trobough: 10:36

Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure there's going to be games there, but it feels like it's more on the indie side or the NFT route and stuff like that, which is a little bit more scammy.

Brandon Hurles: 10:47

Yeah, so we found out about the Silent Hill 2 stuff. The PS5 Pro had some issues. I went in depth with Digital Foundry's research and what they found on it. It's getting an update patch, so all the issues with that are getting fixed. But it looks like there's a ton of stuff in the patch fixed issues with counting achievements, fixed graphic glitches on PlayStation 5 Pro, then like a list of other stuff on PS5 and Steam just the technical stuff.

Mark Trobough: 11:20

For Steam was like it fixed the interface between saving a game and probably performing vibrations on the controller, improve range and a step for mouse sensitivity, mouse input issues with games. So it seemed like the technical stuff that had to do with the input, like the mouse and controller stuff, but they fixed good.

Brandon Hurles: 11:37

Well, they patch that yeah.

Mark Trobough: 11:40

And then it looks like most of the actual gameplay. It's pretty much the same thing. Like you know, they added some tool pick for something. They fixed some mannequin stuff, just general gameplay glitches.

Brandon Hurles: 11:50

Yeah, there's like 20 things listed there, so there's quite a bit in that patch. Looks like it's a pretty big patch, so that's good stuff, and my assumption is there's going to be a load of patches coming out for the PS5 Pro stuff kind of trickling out.

Mark Trobough: 12:02

Load of patches coming out for the PS5 Pro stuff kind of trickling out as it launches and they're like oh yeah, these are all the problems we need to go back and fix.

Brandon Hurles: 12:09

Yeah, and now that they've got a little bit beefier hardware, I think that some of these games are going to get some patches.

Mark Trobough: 12:16

To be fair, some of these they probably are already aware of before the game comes out. It's just it has to come out on this date. We don't have enough time to fix it in the process. About a few days or a week later, the patches come out and they're already in the process of fixing them. Some of these they have to be already aware of, but it's like is it in a playable state at launch? We'll just fix it in PlayStation to make it fully playable.

Mark Trobough: 12:39

It is what it is as far as gaming in the modern age.

Brandon Hurles: 12:42

Yeah for sure. So I found this one interesting. Virtua Fighter gets first PC release in 27 years. That's crazy. Started back in 1993. So this is for Virtua Fighter 5 Revo, which has come to Steam First Virtua Fighter game to be released on PC in that 27 year mark. This initially came out in 2006. So I have a vast number of improvements compared to the previous releases on consoles. So I was looking through here. The last Virtua Fighter game to come out on PC was Virtua Fighter 2.1 back in 1997. It's crazy, that's a long time. How a long-running series like this has no PC ports at all, it's kind of interesting.

Mark Trobough: 13:38

You're looking at some of the graphics for Virtua Fighter PC, the 93 version. The fact that you can see, like the polygons on the characters themselves, it's just crazy yeah, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 13:51

Yeah, it was a very polygonal back in the day.

Mark Trobough: 13:54

Uh, it was on like say if you're like I count, like all 64 polygons on this one character model yeah, you could.

Brandon Hurles: 14:02

I mean you really could. Yeah, very interesting, but this is an updated version of Final Showdown for Virtua Fighter 5, which got like you know, several different sort of releases, but looks like Ultimate Showdown. Changes and features will be retained for Evo, such as character customization and costumes. Crazy that this game came out in 2006 and it looks good.

Mark Trobough: 14:31

Yeah, they go back and actually fixed it up.

Brandon Hurles: 14:33

Genuinely looks good so.

Mark Trobough: 14:37

Yeah, and it's got your almighty 60 FPS at 40k support 40k.

Brandon Hurles: 14:44

Look what he just said 4k. Sorry, we're not at 40K support 40K.

Mark Trobough: 14:46

That's what he just said. 4k.

Brandon Hurles: 14:47

Sorry, we're not at 40K, yet Not quite.

Mark Trobough: 14:51

You need a whole side of a building probably to have all the pixels on a display like that.

Brandon Hurles: 14:56

I did see. I'll bring this up too. There's a rumor that the 5090 is going to cost $2,000. It came out today Wouldn't surprise me. Two grand, I mean it makes sense, because 4090 right now is like $1,500.

Mark Trobough: 15:11

Yeah, that's an extra $500 for newer tech.

Brandon Hurles: 15:15

Crazy Two grand for a graphics card.

Mark Trobough: 15:18

That graphics card costs more than my whole computer and monitor setup and keyboard and mouse. It's about the equivalent of all my entire PC setup combined.

Brandon Hurles: 15:26

Yeah, it's a lot of money, a lot of money. Okay, so we got one Nintendo Switch Online game found very interesting just one they just randomly dropped Donkey Kong Land for the Game Boy, which is a really good game, but just kind of random. Does it still have that green background that the Game Boy, which is a really good game, but just kind of random?

Mark Trobough: 15:47

Does it still have that green background that the Game Boy?

Brandon Hurles: 15:49

does.

Mark Trobough: 15:49

Yeah, did they get rid of that in the ring?

Brandon Hurles: 15:52

No, you can play with a green background. I think that's how it is standard, from what I saw.

Mark Trobough: 16:00

You need to have the authentic experience.

Brandon Hurles: 16:03

Yeah, I mean, look, that's how I'd play it. I like that green background, puke green. Yeah, I was thinking like the option to like.

Mark Trobough: 16:15

Oh what if I play this on the Game Boy Color?

Brandon Hurles: 16:17

I think you had that, don't you? Can't you switch filters? I don't know, I haven't played it forever.

Mark Trobough: 16:23

But I mean to be fair. All the Game Boy games could be played on a Game Boy Color, I'm pretty sure, or most of them could be.

Brandon Hurles: 16:28

They all could, yeah.

Mark Trobough: 16:30

And that didn't have the puke green background.

Brandon Hurles: 16:32

Yeah, it took away that and then it gave it some color, Because I never had the original.

Mark Trobough: 16:35

Game Boy, but I have red blue yellow on the Game Boy Color. No, my first Game Boy was a Game Boy color.

Brandon Hurles: 16:42

Oh, wow, that's interesting and those games.

Mark Trobough: 16:47

They didn't have the puke green, but they had a solid shade of yellow or a shade of blue right over across the whole game Two original Game Boys.

Brandon Hurles: 16:52

Because I broke one, my grandma bought me another, I got really lucky my grandma, the only reason. I had any portable consoles at all is because of my grandma Only reason.

Mark Trobough: 17:07

The Game.

Brandon Hurles: 17:08

Boy Color at all is because my grandma only reason you know what color came out like what 98.

Mark Trobough: 17:11

No game we color came out like 93, came out 98. Oh, did it the original game boy no, the original game boy thought came out like 89, like that.

Brandon Hurles: 17:18

Yeah, I thought it came out late 80s 89 yeah, I think that's when it came out. Yeah, game Boy Color 98, because it lasted like almost 10 years yeah, it came out in April of 89.

Mark Trobough: 17:28

The original Game Boy cool, we knew it had almost like a decade long lifespan, essentially without forever yeah back then, that was just like technology advanced a whole lot slower. It really did for handhelds nowadays. Back then, that was just like you know, technology advanced a whole lot slower.

Brandon Hurles: 17:46

It really did.

Mark Trobough: 17:48

Oh man, this kills me, because I was talking with a kid that was born in like 2006, I think it's a city right now about some stuff, because he's played the older games. I'm sitting there like y'all man. It's crazy that you'll never have the experience like what we did growing up Going from like like the SNES was out, like when I was a baby I was born in 93 but like growing up with like the SNES, the 64. But when 2003 came around because I was I think I just turned 10 2003 when the game came out and I first watched the original like Metroid Prime graphics because the first game we played blew your mind away.

Mark Trobough: 18:24

Going from the SNES to the 64 to the GameCube. I think that 64 to the GameCube era jump going to the PS2, the original Xbox was like the biggest and different, most monumental jump in technological graphical fidelity ever and you're never going to see that again.

Brandon Hurles: 18:40

The argument is seeing that, and then Super Mario 64 and Nintendo 64. From the SNES to the 64, I don't know if you can beat that leap to 3D, that's such do you see him jumping out of the pipe? Oh my god, that was like that was mind blowing. Both were mind blowing to see.

Mark Trobough: 18:59

Yeah but I guess I'll say this because you didn't have it like on the GameCube era, the Xbox PS2 era, because when you didn't want to get the the GameCube era, the Xbox PS2 era, because when you didn't want the 64 graphics, there's a lot of like. You can tell it's a flat image that's trying to convey depth, but it looks like it's like a wall poster on some games. You know it's a 3D environment, but there's very obvious limitations to where, when you get to like the GameCube era, you can actually have proper depth. You don't have like depth. You don't have walls of very obvious fake trees.

Brandon Hurles: 19:26

You actually have something that looks actually like a tree or something like that, or it's like a 2D tree. Yeah, a 2D tree.

Mark Trobough: 19:30

Like a 2D wall that marks the edge of the map on a 2D environment.

Brandon Hurles: 19:34

Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 19:35

And it's just the same thing repeating over and over. I'm thinking of Jet Force Gemini, just because it's the most recent game that I played and that did that same thing. Like the whole walls of the map were just the same thing over and over. If it was like a rock wall, that's fine, it's not too bad. Like if you're in a forest or something like that. It's just a bunch of trees and it's iconic for the age, not to say they didn't have like a handful of trees in the map, but there were like limitations as perceived depth and stuff like that. They just didn't have the ability to render it and stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 20:05

Yeah, I get what you're saying. Both are such big jumps and such big leaps that you just can't see. Now the PS4 to the PS5 jump is obviously there, but it's never, going to be as big of a jump as what we saw ever again. The only thing that could be bigger is a truly immersive Sword Art Online game where you're really, really in it. We've got the VR and it's there, but that's the only other thing I can think of that could ever be as big of a jump again.

Mark Trobough: 20:40

I don't think. If you can, the only way you have that big of a jump is you can actually have a true VR game where you don't have a screen on but your mind and body is actually in the game. You're laying down with a headset on, kind of like SEO.

Brandon Hurles: 20:55

I'll be real. I'd never want that to happen?

Mark Trobough: 20:59

I don't know, man. With the. Neuralink stuff. It's right around the corner. It's right around the corner.

Brandon Hurles: 21:06

You see the first guy control games the way that he controls. He says he's faster than people playing mouse, keyboard or controller.

Mark Trobough: 21:14

Because your brain can just do stuff faster than it can. It's doing it ahead.

Brandon Hurles: 21:16

It's like one thing ahead of what he is seeing your extremities.

Mark Trobough: 21:22

there's latency from your brain to your arms. Your hands can only move so fast. Yeah, that's crazy, your extremities. You know there's latency from your brain to your, to your arms, and so your hands can only move so fast yeah, yeah, that's crazy crazy, but I mean yeah, just we're thought, talking about that, I'm like that's, that's crazy, that probably realistically you're never going to have that kind of jump where it's just like you actually have legitimate hype for a new console because it's going to look so different from the one before.

Brandon Hurles: 21:42

Yeah, just, I mean you look at the PS5 to the PS5 Pro, like obviously it's there. But now you're looking at like these minimal spec jumps. You know, even with PC gaming like the 49s or the 59s, it's going to be. You know, probably a leap, but how big, realistically it's just like more pixels on screen you can render more stuff.

Mark Trobough: 22:02

It can process stuff faster so it can be more immersive. But from like 93 to like 2000 through 2005, that was like a peak decade of graphical jumps in gaming, from purely 2D sliders to full-on 3D environments.

Brandon Hurles: 22:19

Yeah, it was such a crazy thing to see. I mean it really was Thinking back to it. What a good thing to see. I mean it really was Thinking back to it. What a good time that was.

Mark Trobough: 22:28

I didn't get my GameCube until Imagination running wild. It was crazy.

Brandon Hurles: 22:32

I got my GameCube two years before the Wii came out, so I got the silver bundle. I never got a launch. I never got it at launch. I played it at Matthew's house and I think I played some stuff with you. Yeah, you both had it before me, but I got it two years before the Wii came out. But I did get the Wii at launch and then I was still getting GameCube games when the Wii came out because it was backwards-compatible.

Mark Trobough: 22:54

Oh, because it was still backwards-compatible at launch, which is a really nice thing about the original Wii.

Brandon Hurles: 22:57

Yeah, like the Twilight Princess, for instance, the better version is the GameCube version, you know, because you don't have the most forced motion controls.

Mark Trobough: 23:06

Here's a concept that I think would sell personal and it doesn't affect it, but with, like the Switch 2, how easy would it be to have essentially a disk drive add-on so you could go back and play your GameCube, your Wii and Wii U games?

Brandon Hurles: 23:19

That would never happen.

Mark Trobough: 23:21

Like you're saying, like outside of the actual emulation process, like the actual drive itself should never be made.

Brandon Hurles: 23:26

How would that happen? The dock. The dock would have to be the drive.

Mark Trobough: 23:29

Well, you're thinking like what they do now with like the digital version of like the PS5 and stuff like that. It's just a USB plug-in essentially. Oh yeah, it's like an optical drive off to the side, not part of the actual thing, but an add-on. You could get that. Hey, if you still have your discs, it's got an attachment for the drive. Because they're already in the process of doing emulation with the older games. We're not at the GameCube yet, but no yeah, they're emulating Wii.

Brandon Hurles: 23:55

They're emulating Wii games at the Nintendo Museum.

Mark Trobough: 23:59

Yeah, so we are at GameCube games. You just need an optical drive and have the emulation software in your console. You plug it in and then you can just play your games.

Brandon Hurles: 24:13

The technology's there. It's there for sure. It'd be a neat concept to have.

Mark Trobough: 24:19

I just don't know how it would work with a portable dock system. They make a damn clock. That's like $100. You tell me you can't just put the effort into something knowing it's not going to make a million dollars but, like you know, there's a niche market out there for it. You talk about wanting to combat piracy. Yeah, you got the clock. You talk about combating piracy. That's an excellent way to get rid of it. People don't have to emulate and get your game illegally. They still have the physical games. They can just play it there. But having the option to still play the game via Nintendo Switch Online should be an option as well.

Brandon Hurles: 24:54

There was a rumor that came out today. I don't know if you could pull it up on X by chance, but I saw a rumor today that Nintendo DS is supposed to be coming to Switch Online, which would be cool. It's been done already. The Castlevania Collection, it's got the DS games, it's all the DS games and they did it right. They did it right and it's very playable.

Mark Trobough: 25:16

You say that the first thing that came up when I googled Nintendo DS on X was Nintendo of America. Yesterday was 20 years when the original DS launched in North.

Brandon Hurles: 25:24

America. Yeah, we should have brought that up, and then we should have brought up Donkey Kong, because that happened this week and so did what else? There's another anniversary that happened. Oh, the Xbox 360 today isn't 19 years old.

Mark Trobough: 25:42

Yeah, I mean it's just crazy because a lot of the stuff that was in the old DS, like the whole PictoChat you go to Walmart and download demos, the Nintendo DS online thing that stuff was so.

Brandon Hurles: 25:53

I can't believe you forgot about the downloading demos.

Mark Trobough: 25:57

We've talked about it before and stuff like that, because obviously you're playing your hunters on it, like the Mario Kart online and stuff like that. But just the hey, you're within, like you know, 20 feet. The DSs can, like talk to each other wirelessly. Just to you know, do the PictoChat, or hey, you've got, I've got a version of the game.

Brandon Hurles: 26:13

I wanted so badly for PictoChat to be online because I knew that the DS was going to be an online handheld.

Mark Trobough: 26:19

I wanted it so bad. There's a very obvious moderation issue that would come into play with that there's a very obvious reason why they didn't do it.

Brandon Hurles: 26:27

You look at the Wii U with the Miiverse, it was filled with pictures of long things.

Mark Trobough: 26:36

Because it was still the era where it's like, hey, if you had like a, one of us just needs to have a farming game and you can play online with somebody else. Ds doesn't have it. Obviously there's limitations if we don't have the same game, but you can still play a multiplayer locally, just one person having a version of a game, like a limited multiplayer and stuff like that, which I just thought was a really neat thing for the DS at the time. I don't remember anybody else doing it. I only ever had the DS. I don't think the PSP or the Vita did stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 27:05

What.

Mark Trobough: 27:08

You just need one person to have a barman game. Oh, no but the other person that you can link up and still play the game or at least a limited version of the game together, Just by having that wireless connection.

Brandon Hurles: 27:17

Multi-cart playing and the single-cart play, which is really cool. You're always limited on the single-cart play, but it was still cool that you could do that, but the option was there to play.

Mark Trobough: 27:25

It was there and it was cool. You and your friend could play together and be like, oh, I like this game. I want to go get it to actually play the full game or the full multiplayer, and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 27:32

Yeah, Bomberman Land is the one I think of what else there was?

Mark Trobough: 27:39

the Mario Party for DS iconic. I can still just remember the whole, like when the game starts up and it says Nintendo DS, the da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, that would be there. It's just so iconic. Nintendo's good with iconic, you know music on their consoles.

Brandon Hurles: 27:53

They are very much, and then the Switch didn't sound very good, obviously.

Mark Trobough: 28:00

Good to get the point.

Brandon Hurles: 28:02

Yeah, so we've also got a little word on the final fantasy 7 remake part three. Uh, so the director commented on many games. Uh, so I'm actually playing it actively right now rebirth. I started rebirth when it came out, dropped it because so much stuff came out. Now I'm getting back into it. That's kind of what I'm playing right now Because I just want to finish it. I just want to get through it Because I know part three is around the corner. But Naoki Hamaguchi Believes part three of the remake Should take a different approach to minigames.

Brandon Hurles: 28:37

Fans of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth had a lot of mixed feelings about the titles, abundance of content, especially the minigames. I will say this as I'm playing it. I'm at this part where you join, you don't join. You put on the military costumes in the game. You have to kind of fit in.

Brandon Hurles: 29:00

When they go to do the march, you have to do a timed event thing. You got to hit X when the circle lands do the march. You have to do a timed event thing. You gotta hit X when the circle lands into the spot. It does this rhythm game thing. It is pretty funny. There's a lot of mini-games in it. Kind of interesting. It kind of it makes the experience a little diverse, if you will. I guess there's a lot there, so I'd definitely be interested to see what happens. A bit of a long article, but it says. While many fans enjoyed the variety of many games in Rebirth, others felt the varied activities were a little more than filler. Director's intent was to provide new experiences every time players entered a new region, but some gamers felt the experience was uneven. Queen's Blood was a runaway success, however, with many fans even comparing it to the Witcher 3's wildly successful Gwent. So Queen's Blood is kind of similar to Gwent.

Mark Trobough: 30:01

It's a really fun game.

Brandon Hurles: 30:03

It's similar of similar to Gwent. It's a really fun game. It's basic, it's similar to that. I still haven't completely grasped it. There's this part of Matt where I just got to this area and you have to battle these twins. You got to win back to back. I beat the first twin, then I get to the second one. He's overpowered. I'm like I can't beat him. I tried something like 17 times in a row.

Mark Trobough: 30:26

I played 17 games of this in a row and I got so tired. Like a card game, you have to like build your, your card deck. You build a deck. Yeah, it could be that thing.

Brandon Hurles: 30:33

You just need to build a stronger deck well, I just now, I think, for the first time bought new cards, so we'll see what happens, but uh, yeah and you say that cause I saw somebody comment underneath that article uh, like the ones that that this guy really liked.

Mark Trobough: 30:47

Uh from like a GR member or something like that. Uh, queen blood Choba racing the G bike and rot uh run wild. There's a lot of different mini games but the more you have, the more that they going to be kind of trash.

Brandon Hurles: 31:03

Some are okay, you brought up.

Mark Trobough: 31:09

The Witcher with Gwent. That's the only minigame in the game. You get more cards as you go on, but they only focus on one, so they could make it a really good fun game.

Brandon Hurles: 31:19

I guess the military thing. I tell you it's not necessarily a minigame, it's part of the story, it's not? Like a quick-time thing. Yeah, it's a quick-time event, but you gotta like it's like a rhythm Because you know they're doing the military march and he's like spinning around throwing the gun.

Mark Trobough: 31:35

I'm not the biggest fan of quick-time events to be fair, unless the game's designed around that like I'm not either, Just do the cutscene?

Brandon Hurles: 31:42

Yeah, I'm not either. I'm not looking forward to this final part. I have to do where I got to gather all these military members and then lead the march. You have to do it all correctly.

Mark Trobough: 31:53

I'm not a big fan of that, and at the end, you conquer and you take over the Senate and you become the Senate Exactly yeah, so we got, yeah, this one we talked about briefly before the podcast.

Brandon Hurles: 32:09

So Steam is Looks like they're going to be getting a little bit stricter on some of their policies regarding season passes.

Mark Trobough: 32:16

Yeah, so their official this is coming actually from Steam their official season pass guideline. It must include the following information A complete list of all DLC included in the past, ie listing each of the four DLCs included in the past. A basic description of the content that's included in each DLC For example, the first content release might be the some named expansion New area to explore two new weapons, new enemies, something like that as well as expected release date for each DLC quarter and year, ie January to March 2025 or season slash year is acceptable, of course. A date that's more precise is also fine. So like June 2025 or June 1st 2025, which not a big update, but I think this is good.

Mark Trobough: 33:00

I've always promoted that Steam is good for the user and less beneficial to the publisher, and this is just another thing. It's just like no, if you're going to do this, it's fine. You need to be precise and clear. How many expansions are there going to be, what are people getting out of it and when are these going to come out? You can't just be like, hey, it's here, coming whenever, type thing. I think it's just more clarification, more openness with the developer to the player that Steam is requiring.

Brandon Hurles: 33:26

One thing I wonder about this is what about the games where you get those free random updates?

Mark Trobough: 33:31

They're like free with additional stuff and you don't even know it's coming out. This is exclusive to season passes. Okay so there's no season pass. It's not the same thing.

Brandon Hurles: 33:41

Okay, all right, cool Okay.

Mark Trobough: 33:44

So yeah, I mean.

Brandon Hurles: 33:44

I think it's good. It's user-friendly, you know obviously.

Mark Trobough: 33:46

Yeah, because, like when, just because it's one of the examples that this game ran had for Star Wars Outlaws, the season pass roadmap was an exclusive mission. The character pack two, cosmic bundles, story pack one, story pack two it requires, like you, it requires the exclusive mission of the character that's on launch day. Story Pack 1 was Cosmo Nexus' Fall 2024. Story Pack 2, Spring 2025. They're requiring a quarter and a year at the very least. For when this expansion? Essentially, it's just forcing that. I keep thinking see-through. That's not the right word that I'm trying to think of. See-through, that's not the right word that I'm trying to think of.

Mark Trobough: 34:25

See-through, Like the clarity as far as to the players, like hey, you're buying this, this is when everything's dropping, which I can't speak. It was always an option, but it wasn't like mandatory, and now it seems like Steam is going to be making this forward.

Brandon Hurles: 34:41

I wonder what game causes, Because you know what game causes a particular game Like alright, we gotta bite down on this. We're doing this this way. I like Steam for that reason. Very user-friendly. All about the buyer.

Mark Trobough: 34:59

Yeah, so it's all about the buyer, the user experience To benefit the publisher. We're here for the user. It's why Steam is such a popular platform.

Brandon Hurles: 35:07

One thing I wish they would make is make the games DRM-free. I mean, that's my one problem with Steam. That's my one problem.

Mark Trobough: 35:17

Steam could make that move and they're just kind of like well, you don't have a choice and the publishers aren't going to go from Steam. It's too popular, they would buy it.

Brandon Hurles: 35:27

I mean they would win out GOG users for days if they did that. I mean, like I love that GOG has that and so I have a large collection of games on there digitally For that reason.

Mark Trobough: 35:40

That's one of the reasons, also because a lot of Amazon games are free and for gog yeah, but steam is just it has more feature than anything else as well, like the huge steam sales. It's just no user is going to completely go away from steam. They've tried it before, like with ea and ubisoft, but their platforms kind of failed and they eventually came back to steam. Because a lot of people that are on steam and don't prefer to go to other platforms, even though you can still download them, they don't like them. With Epic you don't have user reviews and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 36:12

It's not refined for the users and stuff like that that people just don't like and there's no incentive to go over there, especially if it's going to be a timed exclusive or the games are already on Steam, they're going to go to Steam. There going to be a timed exclusive or the games are already on Steam, they're going to go to Steam. There's a huge percentage of PC gamers that they're going to be on Steam. They're not going away from it. Even if you went away from the DRM.

Mark Trobough: 36:32

Nobody else is going to follow. They're not going to go their own way.

Brandon Hurles: 36:34

I feel like they should go in that direction. I think it would be good.

Mark Trobough: 36:38

Yeah, and we kind of already know DRMM. It's just a speed bump to piracy. It doesn't actually stop it. It's stupid games get cracked within like 24 hours or like it within a week of it coming out anyways absolutely nothing but tarnishing your game. I mean, it literally affects the game yeah, it makes the games run, run slower, technically run a little bit worse yeah, it's so stupid, really dumb.

Brandon Hurles: 37:00

Never understood it. Think it's stupid, don't support it.

Mark Trobough: 37:04

Maybe you have to appeal to Gabe directly. Gabe, he's like the owner of Steam, gavin, I don't know, I'm butchering his name.

Brandon Hurles: 37:14

Shout out Gavin, gabe, hey, we need that DRM free. It happens soon, alright, so we got this one. You can speak a little more on, but more than what I had you haven't. I was going to yesterday, but I forgot the game when I was in my hotel so I couldn't play it so it looks like it's sold 820,000 essentially 822,000 physical copies in its first week in Japan, which is crazy, making it the best-selling game in the country in 2024. That's wild. There's so many games this year the best-selling.

Mark Trobough: 37:56

It's just crazy. It's a popular game series, especially in Japan.

Brandon Hurles: 38:02

Huge. People don't understand this series is huge. I mean we obviously had the Dragon Warrior games for NES and stuff like that, and that's what it came out here as. But I've been following the series since real early. I was writing the games Dragon Warrior 4. I mean it's just crazy to me how big the series really is in Japan. People really don't understand Like this competes with Pokemon, for instance, which is also massive in Japan.

Mark Trobough: 38:32

And this came out, because this came out yesterday. This is a remaster. But the bulk of these 641,000 of these sales were on the Switch, which you know makes sense.

Brandon Hurles: 38:42

I mean, yeah, it's sense the.

Mark Trobough: 38:43

PS5 had a fraction of it.

Brandon Hurles: 38:46

It's the home for and they love their handhelds. Japan loves handhelds.

Mark Trobough: 38:52

Yeah, it's popular by default. It's going to make sense. You have to commute two hours to a drive-thru school. You get to play it on your Switch. Yeah for sure. It became the number best-selling game in Japan, obviously for 2024. This is the biggest launch in Japan since Tears of the Kingdom and the biggest launch for Square Enix in Japan since Dragon Quest XI in 2017.

Brandon Hurles: 39:12

Wow, Wild and it's a remake, remake, it's crazy.

Mark Trobough: 39:18

Of like a 30-year-old game.

Brandon Hurles: 39:20

Yeah, but I mean, I know you briefly talked about it last week, but kind of, what do you think overall with what you played? Where do you kind of stand with it? Is this something you're like, oh, I want, I really want to finish this game, like I want to play through this really bad.

Mark Trobough: 39:34

It plays the same way, just it's like the. It looks like the old game. It's just. You know your character is still the pixel sprites, but it's a 3d environment. Obviously you can't move the camera around, but it feels like a more vibrant, like what you would expect anything to look like when you played it. You know back in, like the in the 90s for all these 2d games where it was just so pixelated you couldn't really tell what a lot of stuff really was right. It's just kind of vague, based off the old crt and the pixels like. It just looks like a really more more vibrant world now. But essentially it plays largely the same way. Obviously there's a few quality of life upgrades here and there, but largely it's like the ideal way. If you're going to go for these old games, this HD 2D style remake, I think all old JRPGs should do it it fits far better.

Brandon Hurles: 40:17

What was the big game that popularized it again? Octopath Traveler right.

Mark Trobough: 40:23

Yeah, I think that's really what stylized it.

Brandon Hurles: 40:26

I should have played a sequel to that. I haven't played the second one.

Mark Trobough: 40:29

It's the same style, it's the 2D, it's like a 3D, 2d.

Brandon Hurles: 40:34

Yeah, it's so interesting, it's beautiful, it looks beautiful.

Mark Trobough: 40:38

You're taking the old 90s style JRPG, but you're making the world more 3D and vibrant. The camera's still there. Your character has still that pixel art to them.

Brandon Hurles: 40:47

Yeah, but you've got that 3D environment. It's really cool and it looks good and it meshes well together. I'm excited to pick it up. I need to grab it. I was hoping there would be a Black Friday sale on it but I haven't seen anything yet.

Mark Trobough: 41:03

Yeah, with the game just coming out, you're probably going to have to buy it.

Brandon Hurles: 41:05

Yeah, and I actually looked at Walmart today and didn't even see it there for either system. I was like I want to grab it for Switch for sure. But I did want to shout out that the Marvel Fighting Arcade Classic collection came out today, which I got to go pick up up a GameStop. I didn't pick it up Today's the launch day. I should have picked it up but I knew I wasn't going to get to play it today, so just didn't grab it. But I did want to shout out that that did come out today as of this recording.

Mark Trobough: 41:36

Shout out, baby.

Brandon Hurles: 41:38

Hey little shout out hey momma, alright, so what do we got next? We've got.

Mark Trobough: 41:46

This is weird. Apparently Elon Musk is the top Diablo 4 player in the world, right now Diablo 4 sucks too. Apparently he had a record clear time of 152 in the game's toughest challenge, from what I understand he tweets 50 times a day yeah, but apparently he's just waiting for his run to be officially accepted on the leaderboard. But if it's officially accepted, or assuming it is, he would be the top player player, which I think is insane.

Brandon Hurles: 42:16

He's such a smart man I mean dude's incredibly smart, so it makes sense, it's just wow he has time dude he's running doge now at least 50 times a day.

Brandon Hurles: 42:27

No joke, dude is on top of it. There was a um a thing I saw yesterday where somebody was like calculating all of his tweets and something about like it's progressed up 175 since you bought it, or something like that. He's like I get paid. He tweeted out yesterday I get paid to tweet out. He retweeted that person's tweet about the percentage being like 175% and he's like I get paid for this. Now he's like a billionaire. Why are you worried about it? Hey, whatever he enjoys it, that's cool. I mean, diablo 4 sucks, but you know.

Mark Trobough: 43:10

Yeah, I mean there's an audience for it. I think there are some stuff that have been fixed, but it's also just not the style of the game. Like, I played Diablo 3, but I never really got into it. I played it more for the story and I just did my one run through the game.

Brandon Hurles: 43:26

I think it got better with the other expansions. Yeah, but it's not a game I'm going to.

Mark Trobough: 43:34

It's not the lighter style game. I'm going to keep going back to Fair enough.

Brandon Hurles: 43:39

According to a new rumor, nintendo is and this is from Stealth40k on Twitter Nintendo is potentially preparing up to 7 million Switch 2 units to avoid any shortages at launch. This is 2.5x the amount of Switches that were available at launch, so this is good news. This is what everybody should do.

Mark Trobough: 43:57

Yeah, so Stealth, just to beat Stealth, Stealth40k posted this, but this is also coming from a Nintendo Life article.

Brandon Hurles: 44:03

Yeah, nintendo life. Yeah, it's in the world.

Mark Trobough: 44:04

Yes, Shout out, You're assuming there's some some legitimacy to this rumor If it's coming from a Nintendo related website.

Brandon Hurles: 44:11

Yeah, and it's in the life's a pretty accurate and pretty on point, and uh you usually trust what they say.

Mark Trobough: 44:17

This game is going to sell Buku at launch. Like the creators are going to go crazy yeah so 2.5X, that should help Battle Scalpers.

Brandon Hurles: 44:27

But my thought is it's still going to be there.

Mark Trobough: 44:32

There's still not going to be enough for demand? Yeah, because they did notice. Nintendo reported sales of 2.74 million switches by the end of March 2017. So it sold nearly 3 million in its opening month alone. Wild, which I'm assuming is the worldwide number. So, yeah, maybe that's why they want to wait. I don't know 100%.

Brandon Hurles: 44:51

That's what I thought like they wanted to wait to build up the stock of it.

Mark Trobough: 44:56

I mean that's what every every developer should do all these companies should do it that way but it's another thing, because I mean you're thinking like they want to be able to boast large numbers but you need to have the numbers at launch to be like you know to to boast it, and you're you're kind of seeing with some of the other games, like that they don't have the physicals for, like the the dragon, dragon quest remake, like they want to make sure that stock is not a problem with this game Because you know, long term it's not going to be a problem. But out the gate, if you don't have enough copies there it's going to sell out it, 100% is.

Brandon Hurles: 45:31

I imagine. I mean, look, how long do we deal with the PS5 stock issues? Like two years? Yeah, two years or something like that. My guess is the first six months for the Switch. It's probably going to be pretty, or Switch 2 is probably going to be pretty nuts.

Mark Trobough: 45:47

Yeah, obviously this is rumored. But, like, if they have 7 million at launch, there shouldn't be a problem with pre-orders, but that's assuming. Like, hey, maybe you shouldn't limit it to online only. So you need to avoid the scalper market. Get back to pre-ordering in a store. Like, yeah, you can have X number to pre-order online and because I see some people talking about it, they practice it. I think we talked about it last week with like the clock. Like, hey, you can pre-order online, but you have to have a Nintendo account. Right, it's only going to let you do the one to avoid the botting. Yeah, hey, go to your local store, pre-order it there. Will also alleviate some of the scalper problems Because, it really comes down to, it's just too easy to bot a lot of this stuff online.

Brandon Hurles: 46:28

Yeah, apparently Apparently yeah.

Mark Trobough: 46:30

So if you go back to saying, hey, physically we're going to have X amount in a store to pre-order would alleviate some of these problems, which I think they absolutely should do. I agree.

Brandon Hurles: 46:45

X amount of these, you have to go to a physical store to pre-order and pick up. Yeah, no, I agree, they should definitely do that Nintendo account stuff. I think that would help fight bots. Obviously, bots aren't going to be able to make that many accounts like that. So, yeah, I mean that's, the biggest issue right for launch is obviously the bots and all that stuff. So I think that's a good move. So, yeah, I mean, anything else you want to say about that?

Mark Trobough: 47:10

No, it's good. I know we had Crash Zero saying hey, get slave to the mine there. He's asking about corndogs. I responded to that one, but Mr Crawford was saying about the $7 million, the US or global. They didn't say, but I'm assuming it's going to be global at launch If the rumor's right.

Brandon Hurles: 47:28

Where's the corndogs comment at? I don't know. I just had to see. Sorry about that. Hey, mr Coffey, what's up? Corndogs there, lucas. And then hey, crash, shout out to everybody, okay, fresh Shout out to everybody, okay. So what do we got next? We've got Stellar Blade, nier Automata launching trailer. Did you watch this trailer?

Mark Trobough: 47:51

I pulled this up but mainly just because this game was back on Wednesday with the DLC with Nier Automata. Yeah, I haven't gotten it yet, but 100% I will be.

Brandon Hurles: 48:03

Is it Automata or Automata? I say Automata. Pretty sure it's Automata. I haven't gotten it yet, but 100% I will be. I say Automata.

Mark Trobough: 48:06

I'm pretty sure it's Automata.

Brandon Hurles: 48:10

The first comment under this trailer is I'm buying a PS5 just for this game. Anything with Nier is S-tier. What a golden comment.

Mark Trobough: 48:23

I know I didn't get the chance to because I was busy, but 100% I'm playing this game next week. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna. Obviously the schedule is gonna get released Monday, but probably gonna have to stream this on Wednesday once I get out of work and then because I got the next two days off. So I'm just gonna stream as much of this game I can that night heck, yeah, I already played this game but to have the DLC and some of the costumes and stuff like that. I'm excited for it.

Brandon Hurles: 48:50

Yeah, for sure. I'm definitely excited for it too. Can't wait. Just rewatched the trailer while we were talking about it.

Mark Trobough: 48:58

I did see people talking about it with some of the photo mode stuff. It was confirmed. Photo mode works even with cut scenes. You can pause cut scenes to do photo, photo mode though a lot of people who you're not, you're not looking up, still blade stuff on on twitter like I haven't set up for me.

Brandon Hurles: 49:14

I see a lot of uh a lot of people you know using photo mode yeah, and you got the jiggle physics, so that's in there, right I don't, I don't pay attention to stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 49:27

It's quasi-costum dependent, but 100% of the game has jiggle physics. I'm here for it.

Brandon Hurles: 49:32

Who thought in 2024 you'd be talking about jiggle physics? I mean, look, I think the game's great. I think it's really good. I think it shouldn't have got snubbed for at least being in the game of the year discussion. It should have at least been in the discussion, would it have won? Probably not. I mean, rebirth is such a good game. The problem is that Stellar Blade, compared to a game like that, that's so freaking massive, it's hard. I love Stellar Blade. I a game like that. That's so freaking massive, it's just, it's hard. Like I love Stellar Blade. I think it's great. I just re-bought it again for a second time. Didn't get to beat it, so I want to play through it. I'm really excited about this DLC. It's hard, though, with when you got a game as massive and like triple. I mean this is technically a triple A game, right? Wouldn't you call this, or would? Massive and like a triple. I mean this is technically a AAA game, right? Wouldn't you call this? Or would you call this a AA game?

Mark Trobough: 50:28

No, I'd say it's AAA. But because this developer was working on mobile games and it's the Nikkei game that they made, this was their first actual proper console game that they made, kind of like Black Mouth Wukong. These are like two new studio developers. This is the first time they're actually making a console game Fair enough, not something that's kind of you know, gacha related, right.

Brandon Hurles: 50:52

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I'm definitely excited to get this back in, so hopefully it comes tomorrow. I'm looking forward to playing that next week for sure.

Mark Trobough: 51:03

Yeah, I feel like this next thing would have been more relevant on the podcast. We might do a shout out, but it just happened this week. For those that remember back on Cartoon Network 20 years ago, Hi Hi, Puffy AmiYumi premiered on Cartoon Network.

Brandon Hurles: 51:20

Hi Hi, puffy AmiYumi show.

Mark Trobough: 51:23

Same difference that's correct like this is probably like the root cause of what actually got me into J-Pop.

Brandon Hurles: 51:31

This is 100% this and DDR. So I don't know if you remember back in the day, but there was like a collective of people that would play DDR on their computer on a keyboard. So you would play, I would. Their computer on a keyboard, so you would play. I would see Joey's brother playing it. There was this game called Kissy Kissy. Do you remember that song? It was popularized.

Mark Trobough: 51:54

Is that like an?

Brandon Hurles: 51:54

Usher song or something like that. No, it's a Japanese song.

Mark Trobough: 51:57

Oh then I yeah, I don't, it's not immediately coming to mind.

Brandon Hurles: 52:00

Look it up real quick and see if I don't know if you can listen to it with uh without anybody hearing it. But anyway, um, that and this for sure, 100. You are obviously craz the manager. Uh classic show. Um, I left. I loved it back in the day, dude loved. I thought it was great. It's totally random.

Mark Trobough: 52:23

Oh my, my god. This feels like oh, what's that weird Japanese Nightcore? This feels like early version of Nightcore you know what I'm talking about. They take pre-existing songs and make it high-pitched Change the tune. This feels like early on. That's what DDR is. It's a Nightcore version of's what DDR is that came out. It's a hardcore version of a lot of stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 52:47

Middle school. I think it was in middle school or when.

Game Junction: 52:49

I remember hearing that song for the first time. I had it on my MP3 player.

Brandon Hurles: 52:53

I had it on a.

Mark Trobough: 52:54

DDR physical MP3 player. Oh yeah, no, because. I pulled this up Like this DDR SmileDK Kissy Kissy that I pulled up.

Brandon Hurles: 53:03

Yeah, smiledk, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Trobough: 53:05

It's got like 2.3 million views, but it was posted like 17 years ago, October 2007.

Brandon Hurles: 53:09

I was in middle school when I heard it for the first time.

Mark Trobough: 53:11

This was posted before we started high school on.

Brandon Hurles: 53:13

YouTube. Yeah, that's what I said. I was in middle school. I remember very well and that song. What is that song?

Mark Trobough: 53:21

in this Is there a popular one like Ooh, ooh, ooh, oh, oh, or something like that, like a really popular DDR song.

Brandon Hurles: 53:30

I don't know, because I'm not like a DDR guy. This just happened to be. A friend's brother was into it, so I heard it. It wasn't like a thing I was into.

Mark Trobough: 53:44

I think this is like peak DDR. It's the Caramella Girls.

Brandon Hurles: 53:49

Look it up.

Mark Trobough: 53:51

It's like a Swedish song that got really popular. It's like the peak DDR music.

Brandon Hurles: 53:58

I believe it 100%.

Mark Trobough: 54:00

You've heard it before. The first thing that pops up is a furry.

Brandon Hurles: 54:01

It pops up and it's like Car. First thing that pops up is a furry. It pops up. Type in Caramella Girls and it's a furry. That's not what came up, literally the first thing that comes up on Google For the Wikipedia.

Mark Trobough: 54:13

It was like 16 years ago. It's like 64 million views or something like that.

Brandon Hurles: 54:16

Type in Caramella Girls on Google and see what comes up for you. It's literally the picture Internet phenomenon. The comes up for you because it's literally the picture internet phenomenon. The meme started as a 15 frame flash animation loop showing my and me characters of the Japanese visual novel Puppeton doing a hip swing dance with their hands over their heads to imitate yeah, 100%, because they're doing it but it's a furry weird.

Mark Trobough: 54:39

Thing for the Wikipedia page but this is like peak DDR early nightcore music. It reminds me of another band at the time.

Brandon Hurles: 54:48

The funny thing is, this is European. It's not even Japanese. It says it's in Swedish.

Mark Trobough: 54:57

It reminds me of Eurobeat, but that's not what it is Stockholm.

Brandon Hurles: 54:59

Sweden is where the studio is from.

Mark Trobough: 55:02

There's another style of music that came to the US. It's like a cousin to Eurobeat, but I can't remember what it was.

Brandon Hurles: 55:08

It was like the 90s or 2000s. Yeah, yeah.

Mark Trobough: 55:10

Yeah, I'm trying to think of what it was Like some of the bands that did it. One of the lyrics from the song translates that You're the music guy, you should know what I'm talking about. What you're the music guy, you should know I'm talking about that that european dance style music that came to the us euro dance in the 90s and 2000s wasn't it just called euro dance? I think it is it's well yeah they're like cousins. They.

Brandon Hurles: 55:34

They both split from like the same genre music like back in the day one of the the lines from this, this song of theirs, is I don't want. It translates to I don't want any balsamic vinegar after all yeah, it's crazy.

Mark Trobough: 55:47

Oh yeah, that's good. I pulled it up. Yeah, the right version. Barbie girl is like the epitome of the genre music that I remember, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 55:53

I just remember there was like a, there was a whole not Barbie, but the band Aqua is a whole.

Mark Trobough: 55:58

Yeah, the Venge boys, or Venge boys or Venge Boys. However you say that name, you know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm trying to say.

Brandon Hurles: 56:11

I don't know if I do. Oh boy, one of the things we get into.

Mark Trobough: 56:17

Crazy Frog is another style of music.

Brandon Hurles: 56:19

Oh gosh, let me talk about some of the iconic early 2000s did you remember that music video? Listen, though. What's funny about that is? Rgt just tweeted about that yesterday. He put the image of the crazy frog. You can pull it up on his ex-account. He just tweeted that. He said this was the downfall of society.

Mark Trobough: 56:40

It was the crazy frog, but I mean, I was the crazy frog, but I mean I don't know, I thought it was pretty annoying myself of the of the of NGA boys. However you say their name, the most popular one you're thinking of is, like the boom, boom, boom, boom. I think you in my room it's been the fact together, you know, I don't remember that one legitimately.

Brandon Hurles: 57:03

It's been the back together. You know exactly what I'm trying to say I don't remember that one Legitimately, I don't know, but I mean, I just remember there was like a whole community of people that played DDR on their computer, on the keyboard.

Mark Trobough: 57:16

I thought it was wild. Yeah, we got a whole rabbit. Yeah, because it's like boom, boom, boom boom. I want you in my room, let's spend the night together, from now until forever Does the boomie. Then I want to go Boom boom, let's spend the. Essentially, it's a song about sex, more or less. Let's be fair, that's what it sounds like.

Mark Trobough: 57:32

It's a little cotic song that you listen to as a kid Like, oh yeah, that's really catchy. Oh my god, we went down a whole rabbit hole. Yeah, hey, puffy Amayumi to. Oh yeah, let's just talk random Euro.

Brandon Hurles: 57:52

I love it. So we got Sony is in talks To acquire Katakama, is that how you say it? Katakawa, sorry, katakawa.

Mark Trobough: 58:02

This was more relevant Because A subsidiary of Katakawa Sorry, Kadokawa. This was more relevant because a subsidiary of Kadokawa is the developer to From Software.

Brandon Hurles: 58:13

Oh yeah.

Mark Trobough: 58:14

I saw this yeah. All From Software games.

Brandon Hurles: 58:16

That'd be wild, that'd be crazy, because you gotta think From Software is not just doing the Souls games. You gotta think Armored Core, you gotta think the RPGs and stuff Like they're doing. They do other stuff. Look up From Software and their catalog is massive, like they do a lot of stuff.

Mark Trobough: 58:35

Yeah, because you got the yeah, the new Armored Core just came out what this year or last year? Yeah, some of their older games, like Echo Knight, like Eternal Ring.

Brandon Hurles: 58:45

Obviously, we talk about the GameCube games that we like a lot. What is it Lost?

Mark Trobough: 58:51

Lost Kingdom. Lost Kingdom yeah, just because I saw it, because it was on this article, ign gave a 5.9. Yeah, that's some bullshit I love the crap out of that game.

Brandon Hurles: 59:03

I do too. I like the sequel too. You probably did. I love the crap out of that game. I do too. I like the sequel too. I probably sucked at it, you probably did. I like the sequel too, though I think it's good, but yeah, it should be interesting 6.2 wow it's like incrementally better. I think the whole .2 and the 1 and like those whole the point, like how do you even that was always the dumbest scoring system ever I even knew. Then how are you giving a game a 6.4?

Mark Trobough: 59:30

I'm just saying they're having like 5 to 10 different criteria, that they're grading like a 1 through 10 and then you're just getting like those half numbers. To be fair, I don't know if it's like a 4 or a 5 or a 9.

Brandon Hurles: 59:42

You're not going to get a whole number when you average those together I assume that's what they do. I don't think they do. It's IGN.

Mark Trobough: 59:50

I mean to be fair. Ign is known as the. They don't give anything below a seven at this point.

Brandon Hurles: 59:54

Everything is seven. There's scumbags, if you ask me. I'm sorry.

Mark Trobough: 59:58

I said it IGN's trash, it's trash. We don't care about this. Let's be real.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:04

All these games media are trash. The only people I trust are people I watch or I know aren't sold out by some corporation. They have some skin in the game for it. What's up? Yeah, facts 100.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:21

I mean they're just like. It's like legacy media as a whole. They one foot out the door. They're, they're on their way out, they're not. I could be around much longer games sucks, dude.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:29

Just watch your favorite youtuber that you know is sold out to a company. Well, I mean because of social media?

Mark Trobough: 1:00:35

you you don't. You can get all your information directly from publishers and other people in the industry.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:40

You don't even have to go to another party now to get your news.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:42

You can just go around directly and go to the source, which is one of the few good things about social media, on top of the hundred bad things about it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:50

Truth. That's the truth, man. Alright, so we've got. Bandai Namco is making a big change to its online operation, so it looks like Bandai Namco Online and Bandai Namco Entertainment will merge in April of 2025. The merger is it's a weird merger Both Bandai and Namco.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:13

It's like they're bringing everything under one umbrella. I don't know how much this is going to affect, but it's you know it was gaming related. Everything's going to become under one umbrella between Namco Entertainment and Namco Online.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:23

I don't even know what they really do, to be honest well, it looks like I'm trying to see what Bandai and Namco Online does probably deals with their online specific games, so like the Gundam games, gundam Breaker, stuff like that, blue Protocol, a bunch of anime games to be real, all the screenshots.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:44

They're like a whole separate studio that probably worked on them.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:47

So it looks like more than 14,000 People in the video game industry have been laid off In 2024. So it looks like this is Going to have some more layoffs.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:57

It's a possibility. When you merge stuff under one of the yeah, you're probably going to see some layoffs.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:01

Bayonetta, amco developed a free-to-play Gundam Evolution team shooter, which ended its service in November of 2023. I don't know if it's done anything since. The announcement of the impending dissolution comes after Bloomberg reported it in October that Bandai Namco had already started to cut its workforce. I mean, you know, fair enough, I guess, but they did just launch Sparking Zero, which was a huge success, huge success, but it doesn't mean that they still at all they're not hemorrhaging money somewhere else yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:35

Because I doesn't mean that they still at a high level, they're not hemorrhaging money somewhere else. Yeah, because I mean being that Namco is a really large, large company. They develop a lot of games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:43

Yeah, I'm looking at Tekken 8, gundam Breaker 4, set to release Fate Extra Record, little Nightmares 3, and Sin Duality Echo of ATA in 2025. That'll be interesting to see what happens there I went over it and just because I know there is an audience there for it.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:07

I'm not playing Fortnite. I'm never going back to that game. I played it at launch and I didn't care for it. But apparently there's rumor that the Monster vs Godzilla could be coming to Fortnite. How that's going to work, I've got no idea.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:20

Well, it came the day of the diver.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:23

Yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:24

He's coming to something else too. I just saw it. Oh, Super Monkey Ball. We didn't talk about that.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:29

He's coming to the new.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:30

Super Monkey Ball. I tagged you in it.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:32

Oh, I may have missed you tell me, we tag each other in a lot of stuff sometimes.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:37

We do tag each other in a lot of stuff. Yeah, it's going to the new Super Monkey Ball. How it's working exactly, I don't know, but there was a screenshot for it. You can look it up. I'll see if I can find it real quick. But yeah, I don't know that. That's kind of I don't know. I do love Godzilla, though, not gonna lie, I haven't played Fortnite since probably 2019 or something.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:02

Maybe I played it the month it came out, whatever that was. I only played it the first month. It came out and I just dropped it. I didn't care for it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:11

He's just gonna be. Hatsune Miku is also coming to the free 2.0 update next week. So Godzilla and Hatsune Miku Godzilla's really collabing with a lot of stuff here lately, isn't it?

Mark Trobough: 1:04:23

Godzilla's like what 70 feet tall Would you?

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:26

look it up. What it looks like. What Godzilla looks like in Super Monkey Ball it's hilarious. He looks like a little toy. It's ball. It's hilarious. He looks like a little toy. It's funny.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:39

He's smaller than some of the other characters. Which is wild, he just gets. Oh it's like a chibi version yeah, that's essentially what it is but it's still cool.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:44

I'm not gonna lie, which I still haven't picked up, the new super monkey ball. I just I literally just picked up the last one that came out, which probably like six months ago or something, so I just hadn't picked it up yet. But yeah, I always liked the Monkey Ball games. Monkey Ball takes me back to the GameCube, it takes me back to a better time, just like.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:04

That's where it started, wasn't it?

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:05

That's where it started. Yeah, it just takes me back to the GameCube days Every time I play it. I played that one that I was just talking about. I picked up like six months ago, Freaking loved it Is that Banana Blitz for the Switch. Yeah, Banana.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:17

Blitz HD.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:19

Yeah, that's the one I picked up. I haven't picked up the Banana Rumble, which is a new one, but now, with Godzilla, now I have to snag it.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:27

Did you play that originally when it came out on the Wii? The Banana Blitz one, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:34

I've played Super Mario Monkey Ball. I mean I played it on the DS, played it on the 3DS.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:38

Here's the real question Did you play the Japanese import of Banana Blitz?

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:42

No, I did not, it's on.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:45

Amazon. Right now you can get it for $78.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:48

Yeah, I'm going to pass on that one. That's a lot of money, man, sorry 2024,. Can't afford 78 for monkey ball. I'll buy it when it's 20 bucks though yeah, probably.

Mark Trobough: 1:06:02

Yeah, yeah, you go over there and buy it for like 20 bucks.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:04

I mean I would to be fair, I waited until I found this one for 15 bucks, so now I finally picked it up. Now it's a new one. But uh, yeah, no, no, godzilla's really taken over a lot of stuff here lately, so it's kind of interesting to see what do we got next. Mark, I gotta move this broadcast.

Mark Trobough: 1:06:21

We had some rumors. Ps5 Pro just came out, but we already are starting to have some rumors starting to circulate as far as the PS6 and some of the hardware that could potentially be in it. So this was posted. That I saw by Pirate Nation over on X, but it's getting some information leaked over via a message board called piphellcom, which looks like it's either a Chinese or a Taiwanese message board. I don't know which one. It actually would be, to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:58

I was just going to shout out. We got a comment. So Fortnite is crazy. Now they even have a Guitar Hero type mode. I know they sold those new guitars for the PS5 and Series X just for that mode in Fortnite.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:10

Yeah, because this was also reported over by Gamera as well. But essentially they're saying no more rdna5 or a codename. So apparently they say no more rdna5 for it's udna. That's the, the codename, apparently, sorry. Uh, I guess, as I was saying, the MI400 and the RX 9000 are using the same UDNA name. So the architecture that they're using, the GCN, like ALU design to me. I have no idea what these actually mean, to be fair, yeah, no, I don't either.

Brandon Hurles: 1:07:50

But I mean, does it sound good? I don't know, I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:56

I don't know what most of this means. The gaming GPU, tentative plan 26 for quarter two, mass production, which I mean considering. You're probably trying to launch this another four years. You're probably early on in the development of trying to figure out what you exactly want and starting to make sure the hardware comes together.

Brandon Hurles: 1:08:12

What I will say is this better than 5, because the CPU that's. The one problem with the PS5 Pro is that they didn't upgrade the CPU. They upgraded the GPU, but there's no CPU upgrade. It's sort of bottlenecked a little bit, but they should have upgraded that.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:37

Probably cost too much. It wouldn't have been obviously resolution.

Brandon Hurles: 1:08:41

We would have been talking about the frame rate here. It could have jumped up in a lot of games.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:46

When you upgrade your GPU, your CPU, those both matter. You want to upgrade them both together. You're not bottlenecking one or the other. But yeah, they're saying it'll either be using the Zen 4 or Zen 5. It's nothing. They didn't know which one they were going to go with. Yet, right, they're saying that Sony's handhelds will also use the AMD hardware, so essentially they're sticking with an AMD style of hardware.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:11

Which is fine. I mean it's fine, obviously. I mean it's either. Nvidia or AMD.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:20

You're picking one of the two. Yeah, I mean it's fine, they're usually pretty equivalent.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:25

Pretty equivalent, I would say Minor differences.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:28

But it's kind of like all the leaks we got. Obviously this is a leak. You're still realistically probably at least another two, three years from this even getting announced. So who knows what can change. But I mean the fact that we just got the PS5 Pro and then a month later we're starting to get the PS6.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:43

I expected that. I expected the week the PS5 Pro came out, because if you think about it like, look at, like the PS5 or the Switch Pro, they were talking about the launch. When you go Switch, they were talking about the Switch Pro. I don't know if you remember that, but you go way back to that launch. They were already talking about the Switch Pro.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:03

To be fair, the only time Nintendo really did those midlife upgrades was with the DS line of handhelds.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:08

Yeah, it was. It was always with handhelds. You never really saw them on main consoles.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:13

It kind of showed you had the OLED, but that's just a new screen.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:18

That's the biggest thing for a console. I think that's ever happened. Because you just look at, you got like the SNES Junior and the NES Top Loader. You get like these, just redesigns that are cheaper when the next console is already out. So they make a redesigned console. There's no midlife upgrades.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:37

Like the Game Boy to Game Boy Color, which is a significant difference, but outside of the handhelds, the main console is like one console. Game Boy Color is a different system though.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:47

They get placed in different games.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:49

It's not just you know.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:51

It's a different system, bro More powerful, more powerful. It's like the only bro More powerful, more powerful.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:56

It's like the only proper mid-life upgrade they really did back in the day.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:59

It's not a mid-life upgrade, though.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:00

It's a new console, it's a new handheld the sales are still lumped together for the Game Boy and the Game Boy Color.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:06

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense to me. It's a different system. It plays different cards. Never understood that.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:12

I mean the 3DS play different cards.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:15

It's the same thing essentially the 3DS is way more powerful than the DS. Are you kidding me? You're wild, bro. This guy's on something tonight. Alright, so we got what we got.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:28

Next here we're going to talk about STALKER 2 a little bit. So hit a big milestone just launched this week. Obviously, I got the chance to play it for about an hour so I can talk a little bit about it, but it sold over a million copies in under 48 hours, reaching the top sellers list on Steam and drawing in Game Pass players. Despite its success, the launch faced bugs and glitches. So here's the thing about this game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:52

This is like Fallout, right, this is a massive game that you can play, ongoing for a long, long time. This isn't like a I beat it in 40 hours type game. This isn't that type of game. So there's going to be some bugs. It's an open world, big, massive game that you can play for 300 hours, right. So we expect that Because, I mean, you look at Bethesda, they're a massive company and they still do it. You know it's a. I mean, I'm not a game developer, but I imagine it's probably pretty hard, right for such a big game of that caliber. But yeah, anyway, I mean huge milestone on that, so I got about an hour to play it.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:32

I mean what? In like two days it's already outsold. Dragon Age Veilguard Crazy.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:38

Fair enough, which, by the way, I saw it for $20 on GameStop's website. Today I got a tweet about it $20.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:46

Yeah, because nobody wants the game, game just came out Game just dropped.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:50

How long ago, like a couple of weeks.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:53

Like three weeks ago, I think Three weeks ago Earlier this month 20 bucks at GameStop.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:57

I mean you can fact check me. Go on X and look, got the tweet. But yeah. So what I got to play with it, what I kind of got the vibe of it, was it's not a horror game but it's got those horror elements because it deals with Chernobyl. Essentially it's not a horror game, but it's got those horror elements because it deals with Chernobyl. Essentially it's called Horror Chernobyl, so you're dealing with some of the creatures, animals, that have gotten into the radiation and have mutated and stuff like that. Yeah, so the one hour that I got to play with it you got some horror-esque vibes, but it's not a horror game.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:37

That's not how close to the Metro games, would you say it is. I would say it's pretty close.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:44

I would say it's pretty close, yeah, and how it plays and the whole vibe of it, because it's not a horror game but it's got mutated monsters, stuff like that that that are kind of out and about in the open world. Um, it's just, it's very interesting, it's very fun. Um looks good, plays good. I didn't notice any bugs in the one hour I played. Didn't run in any bugs, um, so yeah, I mean I thought it was pretty good overall. I mean I recommend it. Am I going to play more? Yeah, I think I'm going to play more of it. I think I'm going to dive into it a little bit. I don't know how far I'll get, but I think it's pretty good.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:29

Yeah, that's good. I'm not sure if I'm going to get around to ever playing it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to get around to ever playing it. But I mean it's good that people enjoy it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:37

It's on Game Pass, so you can.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:39

A lot of games to play there's a lot of games to play. It's not like wanting to play, it's more of like having time to play. That's the problem.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:45

It's very good, though. I mean, especially, like I said, I played it on Game Pass. I thought it was really good. I definitely recommend with what I played, but again, I didn't get to play much. It's a big, massive game. They even put out a tweet. This is an ongoing game. It's going to get continued support. There's going to be more stuff coming. There's going to be bug fixes, bear with us type of deal. They put a whole tweet out about it. Any thoughts, mark? I mean, I feel like I about it.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:18

Any thoughts, mark? I mean, I feel like I said everything. I hadn't played the game, so there's only so much that I could say about it, unfortunately, I mean, are you going to play it?

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:26

Probably not to be fair.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:28

There's a lot of games to play. There's a lot of games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:31

No, I get it. So we got this one. I don't understand all. Mortal Kombat one fans aren't happy about new Tanya skin, so this one's a little weird because they gave Tanya like a black skin, so I don't really understand it. Looks like Nether Realm Studios adding new skin for Tanya like a black skin, so I don't really understand it. Looks like NetherRealm Studios is adding new skin for Tanya in the fighting game, but the fandom isn't happy with the design. The cosmetic is supposed to be modeled after the aesthetic of Mortal Kombat 2, so it just kind of goes over it. It's like a whole. I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it. Um, it says recent Mortal Kombat 1 leak has teased possible festive skins being added. I haven't played Mortal Kombat 1. Do I really care? At the end of the day, I don't care about how they change the design of the character I'm not playing.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:34

I mean yeah, to be fair, I'll say this it doesn't look like the other skins I saw some people posting under this tweet. It looks nothing like the older design for the character. It doesn't.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:46

Doesn't at all. No, I was looking through some of the stuff there. Not at all, but something good. We do have Metroid. We can talk about some metroid prime four, uh, so there is a whole thing that went up on the. Uh, I guess metroid websites essentially um metroid prime 4 is does have a confirmed release window of 2025, which I think. Here's the thing about that.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:12

I think we already yeah they announced this like months ago. Yeah, I think this is not new information.

Brandon Hurles: 1:17:17

But people are acting like. This is brand new information, but it was like a chance to sort of talk about Metroid Prime 4 some more, because I know we're both hyped for it.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:26

At this point. All we're waiting on is are we going to get a 2 and 3 remaster?

Brandon Hurles: 1:17:31

Which we. Are remastered, which we I would love to get, because I would love to replay those games and get refreshed on everything that happened, because I can't remember everything.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:39

I've played too many games, bro, and then forget the second, third game Like come on, they don't need the exact same treatment.

Brandon Hurles: 1:17:45

But you can't forget Hunters, or you can't even play Metroid Prime 4 without Hunters. You know what? Yeah, I mean, and largely it's hundreds can be ignored.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:00

Here we go again.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:01

No, it's not introduces all the hunters there's like there's no story like it's essentially non-existent what like six characters to be fair.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:07

Prop four could properly give you the backstory and you'll be fine in the mainline games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:13

The only hunters characters is the very end of 3, from what I remember, with Silex's ship oh yeah, I mean cause you, yeah, yeah, yeah, at least all the hunters ones largely not in, even not in 2, it's not in 3 for the most part which hunter were they talking about was gonna be part of 4 like one of the main villains, the one that the main villains. The one that turns into.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:36

Is it? Yeah, because he's at the end of three and we know for a fact he's in four. He's in the trailer.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:43

Yeah, he is in the trailer, you're right.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:46

We've known this for a while now.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:47

We've known this since I knew it was one of the hunters Since the.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:50

Wii era when three came out, since, like the Wii era when this, when 3 came out, like let's be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:53

Yeah, that's yeah. It's been so long since I played those games. I'd love to replay them, especially when they look like Metroid Prime Remastered game looks beautiful. Man on the switch on such limited hardware it's just not worth our time.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:07

I don't think it would be popular enough there's no story but, of those only one, but you don't even really know a whole lot about Silex in that game other than. He's another, not a hunter, but a bounty hunter that's taking part in this event with four. It's just like a standalone story that has nothing to do with the greater Prime trilogy.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:29

Yeah, no, I'm just sitting here thinking about, kind of this game has been so long in development that I don't even know the way that Metro Prime Remastered looked. It looked great. It's going to look very similar to that, obviously better, since we're talking about Switch 2. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, but it's not really news, but it was going around everywhere just because that website went up. I think it's just. Well, to be fair, Metroid fans have been just.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:03

I think the thing is because we're not getting any news about it, so it's like it's another reason to bring it up in the news.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:09

Yeah, I was going to say, If you've ever been a Metroid fan, that fandom has been so starved for the last 20 years of news.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:16

For how long?

Mark Trobough: 1:20:19

Anything to latch on to is going to make news for the Metroid as a whole. It just doesn't get enough love and unfortunately it just doesn't sell.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:28

It's just not a priority.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:29

I don't think it's marketed well, to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:32

Is it marketed at all? I can't ever remember a Metroid commercial.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:37

Prime 1 had a really good thing. The problem with Prime 1 and Prime 2 Is it's on a console that didn't really sell that well. At the same time, it's competing against the original Halo game, which does the same thing but far better, far more popular with the multiplayer aspect.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:52

I don't know that it does it better. I think it just does it in a different way.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:56

I just think Prime came out at the wrong time on the wrong console to be uber successful.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:02

Yeah, I mean a game. He was ultimately a failure. So I mean, that was the thing 1 and 2, it just didn't sell and the problem with 3 is on a highly successful Wii.

Mark Trobough: 1:21:16

But I mean, there's a lot of games on the Wii and a lot of people say like, oh, it's 3? Well, I didn't play the first 2, so I'm not going to play it. Yeah, those numbered games tend to have that problem, to be fair. Yeah, Especially since the story of 3 is technically tied to 1 and 2, even if it's barely, there is a continuing story there.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:33

Yeah, there's one. I said it starts right after 2, right? Doesn't it pick up right where 2 left?

Mark Trobough: 1:21:39

off. I believe the Prime Trilogy takes place after it's either between Metroid 1 and 2 or Metroid 2 and 3.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:46

I think it's between 2 and 3. I could be wrong. The whole Prime thing is weird because of how it's set in the series.

Mark Trobough: 1:21:55

It's like so early in the series, so you've got metroid one, slash zero mission, then you've got prime uh. Prime one hunters echoes, corruption federation, for that game doesn't exist. And then, assuming, prime four. So you got the prime trilogy. Then you've got metroid two, met 3, other M, then it's Metroid 4, then it's Metroid 5. That's the official timeline of the Metroid games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:19

Metroid 5? You mean Dread?

Mark Trobough: 1:22:23

Yeah, so you have Metroid 1, Slash is your mission. Metroid 2, Samus Returns. Super Metroid, Metroid, Other M. It's not a mainline game, but it takes place.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:32

I didn't realize Other M was so early in the series too.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:35

It's Fusion and it's Dread technically. If you don't know the 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 mainline title games you always thought it was weird.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:42

I would love to see Metroid 3D more later in the series. I would love to see that at some point.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:55

I guess technically looking back, because Prime 1 technically came out right around the time or just after Fusion. So in the established timeline of 1 through 4,. It doesn't really fit anywhere else between 1 and 2, unless you wanted to put it after, but I assume that wasn't the original plan. Dread was supposed to come out next, the DS.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:14

We knew about it in 2005 or something crazy.

Mark Trobough: 1:23:18

Yeah, so I assume when they actually needed to slot it in the timeline. It doesn't. I believe it doesn't make sense because I think the only gap is between Metroid and Metroid 2. Once you get to Super Metroid it's pretty much like a straight into a fusion, and then fusion kind of goes straight into Dread. Did you ever?

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:32

beat Dread. Uh no, I've played into a fusion.

Mark Trobough: 1:23:33

And then fusion kind of goes straight into Dread. Did you ever beat Dread?

Game Junction: 1:23:37

No, I've played it but I haven't gotten around to actually beat it, but I already know how the story ends so good, you gotta play the game, though it is a fun game.

Mark Trobough: 1:23:46

I just never got around to beating it yet. I haven't played it in probably almost a year at this point it's at least six months but it's been a hot mess since I played the game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:56

I was sucked into that game when it came out. I could not play anything else until I got to the end, couldn't beat the boss until the easy mode came out. Essentially, I could not beat it. It was impossible. I'm telling you, impossible. The way that people do it are crazy.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:14

if you look at YouTube videos but all I know is if you ever properly look into the Metroid like watch an actual like two hour long video or hour long video like on the Metroid timeline, it hinges on you having read manga related to the first two games and pre game one and two, because until until, I believe, metroid 5, you really didn't get any story beats in 1 and 2.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:36

Yeah, but that's the problem. Until you get Dread which its story is directly to 1 and what happened to it, especially with Samus living on the.

Game Junction: 1:24:44

Kind of like Zelda the Chozo homeworld For the longest time.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:48

Her background, that Chozo timeline, especially with 1 and 2, it's tied to manga. That actually properly tells the story.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:54

It's like Zelda which is a problem. It's like Zelda.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:58

Except Zelda's timeline isn't directly tied to the manga.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25:04

I mean you gotta read the manga to really get the story. I mean because have you played Zelda 1? Yeah, it's just a free-roaming open-world game. But to be fair, zelda 1 and the OG Metroid came out on the same console around the same time, so they I mean, you're just working with limited hardware so like, and they didn't know it was going to be an on running series. At the time they had no idea.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:27

So it's just a top down adventure exploring game that you could put on a NES, just a fun game alright, so we got limited running games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25:35

Let's team up with GameStop. This is kind of breaking news. It just came out today, earlier today, as of this recording but GameStop is going to bring back retro titles. We talked about this a bit before. Some of the popular titles include Jurassic Park, a Boy and His Blob Trouble in Bloblonia and Worms Armageddon as Blob Trouble and Bloblonia and Worms Armageddon. Limited quantities will be available, so fans should act quickly to secure their copies before they're gone. I don't like that part of it. I don't like the limited copy.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:05

That's their niche, but I guess the idea is hopefully moving forward. They do more partnerships with GameStop as far as releasing their games physical.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:13

Yeah, we got 16 games right now.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:16

The one thing that always sucked is you have to pre-order on their site and if you miss it, that's it, you're done. You have to go to Scalpers, essentially, but if they also release it in a store, at least, even if it's for a limited time, for all their titles, I think some of these games would sell far better.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:30

No, I think so too. One of the good things that Limited Run Games does now is that they have an open pre-order window, so you've got an open gap of time. But if you don't pre-order in that time, which is usually something like three months or something now, yeah, so you've got a long window of time.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:47

And then you have to wait, you're waiting, you've got to wait a while for nine months, six to like six months of this year.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:52

That collector's. I waited two years for Scott Pilgrim.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:56

That's way too long. Hopefully they fix that. To be fair, if it's an open pre-order, they need to have the pre-orders until they know how many copies to make, especially if the collector's is digital. If they're not just hard capping it, they want it to be open, then they have to manufacture. They're not manufacture some of the models until they know exactly how many they need to manufacture.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:17

None of it's manufactured at all until after the pre-order is over. So that's the problem. The collector's editions is the problem, not so much the base games.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:30

That's just a disc and a box art. That's far easier to produce. I think it's good GameStop's got, you know, a disc and a box art. That's far easier to produce, yeah, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:36

So I think it's good GameStop's got to do something, right, because yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:40

I think this is like the right way, I think, for both Limited Run and for GameStop. This is a way to drive people into a physical store buying physical copies and, I would assume, to make more money.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:52

Yeah, they're even doing some of the Game Boy, collar games, the Game Boy games, nes game. So like some of the actual, like physical carts that they do, they reproduce some of the SNES carts, nes carts, game Boy stuff like that. So I think it's good. I mean, I think it's good GameStop's got to do something, man, because digital only is right around the corner. I mean, we're looking at the next couple of years there's going to be, but I don't know that it matters. They don't have to do anything. Look at PC gaming.

Brandon Hurles: 1:28:25

They're just going to adapt to it.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:27

Yeah, but the main problem with that is that eliminates any possibility of backwards compatibility, which I think is the biggest problem.

Brandon Hurles: 1:28:34

They guess where they want to go. They guess where they want to go. They guess where they want to go. It's more digital sales.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:39

Will it actually sell, because we already know physical versions of PlayStation sell far more than digital only. Is there really an appetite for people to want to go digital only? No, there's not.

Brandon Hurles: 1:28:50

There's not. No, there's really not. I mean, you look at the ps5 digital sales compared to the, the physical model, you know, with the disk drive built in. You saw those sales.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:02

I mean the the sales are like 70, 30, essentially yeah, 25, 25 like it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:05

It was hugely in favor of the disk drive and you're paying more for the one with the disk drive. So, like people want it, like a hundred dollars more backwards compatibility.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:15

Plus, it gives you the option to buy physical and digital, like it's.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:18

I just think it's the thing is a necessary decision yeah, the thing is that the physical like you have the option of after you beat it, you can sell it and get some money back. You also have the option of oh, I'm going to buy this used, I get it significantly cheaper. You also have have the option of sales that happen way more often than the digital sales and are typically way cheaper. Look, I'm getting Stardew Blade today for $50, which I wouldn't say is still even a great deal. The $40 would have been a great deal, but you don't see that with the digital in that capacity it's like 10% off, something like that 15% off.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:52

It's whatever the publisher wants to do essentially.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:54

Whatever they want to do and it's never good. It's never a great sale. You look at Steam sales. Steam sales are great, but you look at digital sales on consoles they're not good People that have Steam.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:05

they have other consoles usually. But to be fair, I think another thing that's going to cause problems is because they get started in California. It's going to spread elsewhere the fact that you have to say, hey, you're not buying this game, you're buying a digital license.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:19

Yeah, that alone is going to cause discourse and problems when the next console is announced and it's digital only, Like how iPhone had to adapt now to being USB-C because of the European laws and stuff like that, Because they're a lot stricter and more user-friendly. What's the word I'm looking for? Consumer-friendly. Consumer-friendly I mean because they are User-friendly consumers.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:44

same thing.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:45

Yeah so.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:47

Well, because the idea is just the whole purpose behind USB. Is the universal usability Right correct? You're trying to make everything it's simpler on the user part. To be fair, some manufacturers don't have to make two or three different types of ports on their motherboard.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:03

Mr Coffee said Mortal Kombat has a problem just retaining interest. People dropped it fast. That's why I didn't grab Mortal Kombat 1 yet. I'm waiting for a $20 sale because the game just doesn't look great and people aren't saying great things about it. He said OG DS and updated DS was a good hop. Yeah, you jump from the DS to the DS Lite. I mean the screen was way better, form factor was better, felt more comfortable. Well, I don't know about the feel more comfortable part, but the screen was significantly better. I don't know about the feel more comfortable part, but the screen was significantly better. So I didn't have a.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:38

DS. I don't know how much of like a hardware.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:40

The only problem with the light was that they got rid of the GBA slot at the bottom no, the light, they didn't.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:47

That was the DSi, that was the one where it had the no, ds light has it let me pull up a picture of it. Positive DSi does not have it. That's the one where it had the eShop, dsi wear shop, whatever they called it. I have a DSi and doesn't. I don't have a DS Lite. Um, dsi doesn't have a GBA slot.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:21

I'm reading stuff that says DS Lite can't play backwards.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:24

compatibility 100% positive. Rafter said, dsi was still great. Yeah, dsi was cool because it introduced a shop on there so you could buy digital games.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:36

I guess you're right, because I'm seeing covers for the.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:40

Yeah, it came with the slot cover. I don't know he's like I don't know what I'm talking about. Did you have anything else to bring up for this week, mark?

Mark Trobough: 1:32:50

No, unless you had some physicals. You wanted to go over real quick.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:54

I didn't grab anything. Pickups Do I have any pickups? They haven't came yet.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:00

I don't have any pickups.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:01

I technically had a few. Okay, all right, show us all of your pickups. I'll double check to make sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:05

So I talked about it and I'll let you know. But yeah, the Godzilla Minus One, the 4K um steelbook came in the mail today, like a few hours before we went live. Um, probably gonna do uh, I mean, it's not a whole lot for like an unboxing of something like this, but I might do a quick little video on this, uh, just like an extra poster and some stuff, just because this is like the first godzilla movie that I've ever owned physical in my life. I love the movie.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:34

It's a good movie, man. It's a really good movie.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:37

The rest of the stuff is stuff I picked up when I was down at a bookstore this weekend, at Barnes Noble. So I've got another volume of High School DD. This is volume 14, so I'm slowly collecting all the light novels of this. I'm still missing a handful. That's a light novel, not a manga. All the light novels of this.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:52

I'm still missing a handful.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:53

That's a light novel, not a manga. I've got a few of the manga. They didn't have any ones I didn't have, but this is the light novel version. It's originally a light novel. To be fair, I know we talked about this. I don't know if it was on this podcast or the Anime Junction cast, but you know the Dark Souls Redemption manga that we talked about. I haven't played the games, but I picked up the first volume of Redemption.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:16

It's the Humanity Lost. That's cool. It's a manga, but there's also some neat artwork and stuff on the back.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:24

Oh nice.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:26

Drawings and stuff you don't usually get.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:28

That's pretty cool. It's really cool.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:32

And then if you have seen the Enemy junction cast, it's make a lot more sense. I got the first four volumes of the manga of don nice, because I don't. I don't want to get ahead of the this season of the anime, but 100% I'm probably gonna start reading past it once it stops airing in the fall.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:49

Yeah, fully read up on the monk, because I absolutely, absolutely love this anime so they had the first nine volumes but considering it's like $12 for the first three and then it was like $10 for the fourth one and everything else that I picked up, I already spent like $110. I didn't buy all nine like I wanted to.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:07

They had nine of them.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:09

There's nine volumes out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:11

How many volumes are out?

Mark Trobough: 1:35:14

I'm not sure that's what they had.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:17

Curious how far the manga is in here, as we're getting people pouring in.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:23

That makes sense. Now I've got to Google it Because, yeah, it's being done via this media.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:30

Rafter said better screens but no GBA slot. Mod it and play the GBA games there anyway for the DSi. I forgot my DSi. It's covered up right now though.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:45

Let me scroll down In English. There's officially 11 volumes released. It probably makes sense that Volume 9 was released back in October. Okay, so there's in English. There's officially 11 volumes released. Okay, so it probably makes sense that Volume 9 was released back in October. So you know, no, sorry, there are only nine Volume 9 released in English on October 15th. Volume 10 comes out December 17th. Volume 11 comes out February 4th of 2025. Okay so there's only nine volumes in English, but as far as volumes as a whole, there's like 71.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:25

There's like 170-some volumes. What Over in Japan for this already out?

Brandon Hurles: 1:36:29

Dang. This is a long-running series. I didn't realize it was that old or no. 170-some volumes? No, sorry, sorry, there are about. It's a long running series. I didn't realize it was that old or no sorry, sorry.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:37

There are about there's 175 chapters of the manga that's a lot of volume in Japan. Volume volume 18 comes out in January, so there's a lot of volume sorry.

Brandon Hurles: 1:36:50

Sorry, I corrected myself, because this it started airing it doesn't seem like it's an old series, like manga wise either no, the manga started in April 2021.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:02

Like it's not super old, but usually it's like about a 3-4 year old manga.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:05

It's fairly popular to get picked up that quickly yeah, especially now there's so many anime to get announced. Alright, cool pickups. Man, you got anything else that you want to bring up for the week, or?

Mark Trobough: 1:37:20

no, that's the only stuff that I had alright.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:23

Well, everyone, I definitely want to transfer you over to the anime junction cast, because we got some cool stuff over there. If you're interested in anime, manga, japanese culture, any of that, what is it?

Mark Trobough: 1:37:34

the national segue and in anime manga.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:35

Japanese culture, any of that? What is it? The Nassil Segway? And definitely give us a follow on social media, on Facebook, tiktok, instagram, x, all the big socials, blue Sky, now we're on everything, so definitely give us a follow over there. Stay updated on the podcast. Stay updated on Game Junction. Anime Junction Cast.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:54

It's going to get published on. Game Junction Anime, junction Cast. It's going to get published on. We need to publish our stream schedule 100%. Next week I'm pretty sure it's Wednesday I will be streaming the new DLC for Stellar Blade. Cool, like a week late, but I will be. I'm going to stream that next week.

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:08

Sweet. Yeah, I don't know when I'm going to stream yet, because I kind of wanted to play that, but we'll see, I'll figure something out. I'm not sure yet, but we are streaming. If you're watching live or live viewers, sorry for the audio listeners, but we do stream every Saturday together at 8 pm Eastern Standard Time. So tomorrow we are playing Age of Empires 2, right, yeah, okay, age of Empires 2.

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:34

So got Mr Coffee in there saying great show, gentlemen, and also thanks for the stream. Have a great weekend, guys, appreciate it, definitely appreciate it. So, uh, definitely tune in tomorrow for our live viewers. It'll be fun. Um, I haven't played. I have no idea what he's doing. I have no idea what I'm doing. A little bit I'm like kind of nervous about it. To be honest with you, I'm a little nervous. Wish an idea. I'm kind of nervous about it. To be honest with you, I'm a little nervous. Wish I got here earlier. Thanks, I appreciate you coming in though. Definitely for sure. So we'll be live again next Friday, 8pm Eastern Standard Time for the Game Junction podcast, and we'll see you all later. Everyone, have a great night.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:08

Peace out everybody.