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Episode 201 - Scatman

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 28m·analyzed·Sep 3, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers EP201: Star Wars lore, pinball industry hires, ranking random Top 100 games

Summary

Eclectic Gamers Podcast Episode 201 covers Star Wars lore debate (Galactic Empire as 'the good guys'), pinball industry personnel moves (Tom Capera to JJP, Kevin Payne to Stern), and a game segment ranking 10 random Pinside Top 100 games. Hosts Tony and Dennis discuss employment shifts at major manufacturers and play their 'Rank Random Pins' game with titles like Metallica, Cactus Canyon, and Avatar.

Key Claims

  • Tom Capera hired by Jersey Jack Pinball as chief operating officer; he was previously director of mechanical engineering at Stern Pinball for a few years

    high confidence · Dennis states this as confirmed news during pinball industry segment

  • Stern Pinball hired Kevin Payne as director of mechanical engineering to replace Tom Capera's old position

    high confidence · Dennis confirms this was already announced by Stern

  • Stern Pinball has completed their factory move, with Ray Tanzer (director of operations) overseeing it; Tanzer was previously director of mechanical engineering

    high confidence · Dennis provides this as confirmed news

  • Multimorphic is now shipping Final Resistance

    high confidence · Dennis states this as current industry news

  • Chicago Gaming Company may not make their 2023 deadline for Pulp Fiction release

    medium confidence · Dennis speculates: 'I'm telling you, I'm going to say that I'm not sure that they're going to make 2023' citing CGC's historical build speed issues

  • Josh Sharp indicated Pulp Fiction's license terms forced CGC's hand to reveal the game when they did at Texas Pinball Festival, despite being far from ready to build

    medium confidence · Dennis paraphrases from an interview or Discord post he cannot precisely recall

  • TPF 2024 had unprecedented concentration of new game releases (Galactic Tank Force, Godfather, Foo Fighters, Scooby-Doo, Pulp Fiction, Queen, Final Resistance) released simultaneously

    high confidence · Dennis describes this as exceptional: 'I don't think there's ever been it was just insane'

Notable Quotes

  • “The Galactic Empire, for all its flaws, and it had a few, for all its draconian-ness, for all its evil, for all its sithiness, it was preparing for what is then the unknown.”

    Dennis @ ~10:00-12:00 mark — Core argument defending the Galactic Empire's role in Star Wars universe as structurally necessary for galactic survival

  • “You can't do anything without keeping the established bureaucracy in place. That was how powerful, how important, how critical the Galactic Empire is.”

    Dennis @ ~12:00-13:00 mark — Key supporting point about institutional necessity, referencing Ahsoka show as evidence

  • “Metallica is a it's the arts. Cool. The Sparky's cool. It's a fun game to shoot.”

    Tony @ ~45:00+ mark — Opening the rank game segment; establishes positive sentiment toward Metallica pinball

  • “Cactus Canyon. The original Cactus Canyon with the limited code, not nearly as fun as the Cactus Canyon reloaded code”

    Dennis @ ~50:00+ mark — Distinguishes between original and reloaded code versions; acknowledges code quality impact on game experience

  • “I think Metallica is a it's probably my number two favorite music pen.”

    Dennis @ ~47:00+ mark — Dennis ranks Metallica highly among music-themed pinball games

Entities

Tom CaperapersonKevin PaynepersonRay TanzerpersonJosh SharppersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyChicago Gaming CompanycompanyMultimorphiccompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern Pinball completes factory move with Ray Tanzer (formerly director of mechanical engineering, now director of operations) overseeing transition

    high · Dennis states this as confirmed recent completion

  • ?

    community_signal: Eclectic Gamers podcast continues 'Rank Random Pins' game format with Patreon voting on ranking accuracy; receiving feedback on voting option preferences

    high · Dennis explains game mechanics, voting results (57% vs 43%), and adjustments for next iteration based on community requests

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Pulp Fiction licensing terms reportedly forced CGC to announce/reveal game at Texas Pinball Festival before development readiness, per Josh Sharp statement

    medium · Dennis paraphrases Sharp's account of forced reveal timing due to license constraints

  • $

    market_signal: Texas Pinball Festival 2024 featured unprecedented concentration of simultaneous new game releases (7+ titles including Godfather, Foo Fighters, Queen, Scooby-Doo, Pulp Fiction, Galactic Tank Force, Final Resistance)

    high · Dennis describes as exceptional and speculates this may be EM era-equivalent crowding

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Tom Capera transitions from Stern Pinball (director of mechanical engineering) to Jersey Jack Pinball (chief operating officer), with Kevin Payne filling Capera's Stern position

    high · Dennis confirms both moves with specificity about tenure and roles

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.266

0:00
Welcome to the Collected Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, September 3rd. This is episode 201. A new era, a new time. A new hope. There is no hope. Both of the Bethans weren't involved in the new hope to bring us that information. There's no hope.
0:36
No hope. Don't worry. We're going to get into some Star Wars here in a moment. Good. That's what we should do. Just so you know, I'm Tony. You are. I am Dennis, I think. Most of our listeners probably know. This could be somebody's very first time. If this is your very first time, welcome to the podcast. Welcome to your very first time, and I hope you're ready. Yeah. We'll be gentle. This one's going to be, well, I don't know how gentle the video games are going to be. Because it looked like you had a lot of stuff. Some stuff has happened. We don't have as much in pinball. However, we'll play a game again. It seemed to go over pretty well last episode. And so that will fill some of that out. So hopefully people will get to play along. And if you're new to the game, it's really easy and should be fun for you to do. But before that, we would do our introductions. So what's going on? I am being forced to take some vacation. Oh, no. So I'm in the middle of this major debate because I'm not going anywhere or doing anything, but I'm maxed out on vacation, so I have to take some. So I'm in the debate. I'm going to be off the entirety of the week of the 11th, so I guess technically my vacation starts on the 8th. But do I get Baldur's Gate 3 to play for vacation, or do I get Starfield? To play for vacation. Well, this is an interesting conundrum. I would normally say Starfield because you are more a sci-fi fan than a fantasy fan. Correct. And if it was based solely off genre, I would feel very confident in that statement. However, while I have been reading that Starfield's reviews have been okay, Baldur's Gate has been extremely well endorsed. So it's probably the stronger storytelling experience would be my impression.
2:24
And I've kind of gotten the same feeling, and I've been afraid of the normal, out-the-box Bethesda problems. Though the reports I've seen said they're not there. Yeah, I've heard it's probably the most polished. Actually, I haven't seen anyone say it's more buggy than anything they've done before. I've only seen that it's the least. Yes, that's what I've seen as well.
Metallica
game
Cactus Canyongame
Avatargame
Final Resistancegame
Pulp Fictiongame
Silver Ball Chroniclesorganization
Dennisperson
Tonyperson
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Dirty Donnieperson
Pinside Top 100organization
David Dennisperson
?

announcement: Multimorphic confirms Final Resistance is now shipping; hosts note timing lag behind other recent P3 releases due to TPF show crowding

high · Dennis: 'Multimorphic has indicated they are now shipping Final Resistance'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Chicago Gaming Company's Pulp Fiction release targeted for October/November 2023 but host expresses doubt about meeting deadline given CGC's historical build speed issues

    medium · Dennis: 'I'm telling you, I'm going to say that I'm not sure that they're going to make 2023' citing build speed track record

    • 2:47
    You know what? I would say Starfield for you. I'd go ahead and say, you know what? Baldur's Gate is still going to be there. You already went in on Diablo 4. And got burned. You got burned. The listeners who came into our Discord and pressured you into getting it. Granted, they didn't know that there was going to be the patch that ruined the game. None of that was their fault. They didn't know that even before the patch, you were going to take the worst character in the game and choose to play. That's also valid. It's like, let's play Final Fantasy the original with all four white mages. What an idea. Great job. Why don't you just make it terrible? Why don't you just go and have your teeth pulled out without anesthesia while you're at it? So do Starfield. You want to go into space. Space.
    3:33
    So that's my recommendation. Tony and Max go to space. Tony and space friends forever. So, yeah. M-I-S-S-I-O-N-C-O-N-T-R-O-L. Wait, no, it's supposed to be come in control. I misspelled it. I spelled mission control. C-O-M-E-C. The too long movie.
    4:00
    Yes. Yeah, Space Camp. Okay. So that's my recommendation. But is that, would you be able to get it? Yeah, no, because it comes out next week, right? It comes out on Tuesday. Yeah, so you'd be able to. If you bought the $90 version, you could be playing now. Right. I've been, I was going to wait. Because my birthday's next month. I was planning to probably just chuck it on the list and wait an extra month. Because I still, I'm like barely into Resident Evil 3 still. So I've got stuff to play at this point. So, but that would be my suggestion for you. Yeah, I'd go ahead and do that. And then maybe Baldur's Gate for Christmas time. Maybe. We'll see. Maybe throw a, if anybody has a strong opinion, throw it on the Facebook. Or in the Discord. We have an invite in the show notes so people can click on that. Either way, because like I said, I'm planning on deciding on Thursday or Friday.
    4:51
    Yes. One of the days so I can set it up and do the download overnight because, you know. So get that in soon because Tony does not wait around to make decisions. Once he's committed, the course is set.
    5:04
    Once he's committed, he's in a stray jacket in a padded room. Yay. fun times speaking of fun times uh thank you to dave b who joined our patreon we have a link in the show notes if you want to join our patreon you can click on that and become a supporter for as low as one dollar a month we rely on our patrons for several things including casting votes regarding games which will come up later in the show in terms of what i've been doing i have continued to play phoenix right i actually got through another case last night uh i am not on vacation technically i am unemployed now so my job ended and i have this week uh coming up here off until i start my new job when you start your vacation basically a little bit after you when you start your vacation so i've got that uh right now so i have just been uh get a job yeah get a job you bomb you bomb so in the meantime i have been actually doing a lot of wristwatch videos for my YouTube channel because Geneva Watch Days is going on right now. It goes on for several days. It's not as big of a shindig as the Watches and Wonders that happens in the late winter, but there have been a number of things. I actually put out a couple of standalone videos. Tony, in fact, came on along with Silver Ball Chronicles co-host David Dennis a couple days ago and did a video. It was a game, basically a game. There was no winners or losers. It was picking watches and arguing why we would want them. We called it 3-2-1 Watch Off. I'll actually have a link in the show notes. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. Actually, it went about two hours, but I – this is just my opinion. You'll have to see what the viewers ultimately end up thinking, but I thought it was one of the – actually, I would argue it was probably my best live stream I feel like I've done on that channel. I mean I've enjoyed all the live streams I've been on, but I think that was my favorite easily. I just think where it wasn't about having to – everyone just threw out all these ideas, and it was just – you got a lot. We all picked six, so that's why it went so long. We talked about pinball at the start, so if you're into pinball, hey, there's a whole pinball. Because we have viewers there who subscribe to my channel that aren't into pinball, and they ask things like, is there a holy trinity of pinball and stuff like that? Which questions is like, I never really thought about it that way because there's a holy trinity of watchmaking, so it's interesting. We found some interesting stuff out about each other and each other's interests and likes, some of which might have not have been super obvious until we threw the note. You know, I did not realize I guess maybe I kind of did about myself, but I maybe didn't look into the mirror the way I had to. There was. Yeah. Whoa. I'm really predictable. I'm almost ashamed of how predictable some of my stuff was, but everyone was predictable, which in a way makes sense. Because it's just like everyone has a type, right? Right. So it's like that. Everyone has a type of watch, a type of car they like, a type of everything, a type of person they're attracted to, all of that. So it was just really like all of a sudden became in our face. Oh, someone's into frosted dials. Okay. Somebody. Oh, somebody likes the fancy dress watches. Oh, look, somebody's in love with the color blue. Yeah. So I was like, okay, it's getting a little obvious here. Get a little on the nose. Getting a little uncomfortable. Can you pick a non-blue watch, please?
    8:35
    Could you maybe find something not in steel? I don't know. No, no, actually. I don't think I did. That's actually hard in the field itself.
    8:44
    Because I think I did every – I think I had one thing that wasn't on a steel bracelet. Yeah, probably. But I mean, some watches are in steel. then finally before we get into the meat of the episode this was uh i had asked patreon people to provide us with things to talk about on episode 200 and i missed one in my show notes i just i just looked over it and i went on because we just kept going well that happened that happened on several things or some some of it was by design like you had a planned uh discussion in our video game that we punted because it was like we had so much episode content already it might get punted This time, too, looking at our content list. That's a great thing. We can just keep carrying it over in the OneNote. That's why I love OneNote. Yep. So this was from Mike H., who wrote to us on our Patreon and asked us if we could explain why the Galactic Empire were actually the good guys because they were. You may begin.
    9:37
    How crazy do we want to get? Do we want to go into Legends? Do we only want to stay with what's considered canon? Mike provided no guardrails to it, so you do. however you want to do it do it i will let you give your opinions probably more canon based i'm assuming because i don't think you've touched legends nearly as much as i have not like i haven't read any of the books right i've heard some people sometimes tell me things about legends and you know and i i totally lost track when the whole canon was restructured because there used to be a whole expanded universe and it kind of went away like i used to hear about legends right Because what Kylo Ren is is loosely based on what one of Han and Leia's kids was going to be like and things like that. Yeah. All right. So in the context, in the framework of what Mike has explained, I think the thing that's noteworthy, and we've started to see it in the Disney Plus shows that take place after the fall of the Empire. And you can even go to the movies, the three movies, the trilogy, the Kylo trilogy or however you want to think of it, the Rey trilogy.
    10:46
    The Galactic Empire provides structure, a structure that's very, very important in order for, I won't even say humanity because we're talking about other species as well, but for a unification of the known galaxy. And the reason for this that I think is so important, this is something other sci-fi authors have touched on as well. Isaac Asimov was doing this when he was writing Foundation is the idea that in the unknown space there's stuff out there that we are not ready for you need something unified you need something powerful enough to bring it all together and the Empire was the best chance of doing it the rebellion upon its success as we've seen in the arc that's happened with the Disney Plus and the movies does not have the Republic the New Republic does not have that strength And that's why you end up seeing this whole first order thing ultimately rise up. But even in the in-between times, they're completely reliant on the structure, the personnel of the Galactic Empire to run the Republic. In fact, that is a in the now ongoing show Ahsoka. That is a key principle. They recognize they can't do anything without keeping the established bureaucracy in place. That was how powerful, how important, how critical the Galactic Empire is. In fact, you want a real world example of what happens when you don't do that? The invasion of Iraq, when they fired like the entire Iraqi civil service because they thought it was too associated with Saddam and then no one knows how to run anything. Same thing. Nope. The Galactic Empire, for all its flaws, and it had a few, for all its draconian-ness, for all its evil, for all its sithiness, it was preparing for what is then the unknown. And if the unknown comes to the known galaxy, how would you survive? Only with the iron hand of the orc, or emperor in this case. So that's my theory. legends is very similar with the difference being that, uh, when you go deep enough into legends, Palpatine knew about the threat, not just that there could be a threat actively knew about the threat itself, the threat of extra galactic origins, the original buildup and design and the whole purpose of the empire. Yes, It was to provide power, but it was to also ready the universe for the coming of the Vong.
    13:18
    I don't know what Vong is. The Yuzhong Vong was an extra galactic race of conquerors that were not visible to the force. They actively were non-affected by the force. So was it not a part of them? like it's supposed to be with all the things? Correct. Okay. Because they're from a different galaxy, so the Force wasn't part of them.
    13:44
    But in Legends, they showed up after the Empire had fallen, after the New Republic had risen, after the remains of the Galactic Empire had been beat down and pushed to the side and was a fraction of its former strength and ability. They showed up. And the New Republic forces couldn't stand in the way because they were nowhere near as large, nowhere near as organized, nowhere near as put together as the galactic empires had been. And the surviving portions of the empire, the imperial remnant, was the same way. They were weak and nowhere near as strong as they had been. The entire galaxy at that point did not have anywhere near the strength that the empire had when it was originally put together, and it led to the deaths of untold trillions. and that was the entire purpose was to ready the universe for this event that was known to be coming.
    14:41
    Okay, interesting. Well, I mean, it's a good trope to turn to. It is. It's a really solid trope. To make that type of government, that type of control, you have to have an external threat. That's what is necessary to make something like that work in a way that could be considered them actually being a good choice. There needs to be an external threat. Right. An external threat makes everything okay, even their excesses.
    15:20
    Yep. So there you go, Mike. I hope you liked our logic for why your acknowledgement of the Galactic Empire being the good guys. I'm not saying they're perfect. They made a few mistakes. Some. A couple. But those things happen. So anyway, I was here on my computer doing my research. De-bathification. That was the Iraqi process. It's been so long. That was like 2003.
    15:47
    That's right. They removed. We removed. They got rid of the bath. The Ba'ath Party was removed from their position of power, and they were not allowed to work in the public sector anymore. But it was very controversial even among academia at the time because it's like that's where all the expertise was, even in a country as corrupt as that. But this is not the Eclectic Political Podcast. We have not started that one up yet. So let's go to – I'm going to put that one a little bit farther down the list than eclectic pop culture, eclectic movies. I don't know. Based off of our wide-ranging watch discussion in the video that's in the show notes, we did have a discussion about the policy of supersonic Canadian jets and how – We did. Nope. You're not going to be building those anymore. We did have a light touch on that. Oh, such a travesty. It's what we do. What we also do, Tony, is we cover pinball. And the first thing is – there's not a lot of news, so that's why I have a game for us. We'll play the game last, but I want to go ahead and get through a few of these things first. So there have been some employment moves that have been happening lately. Most people, most buyers – Would you call it a shakeup or just some small moves? Yeah, neither. I don't think it's a shakeup, but it's not exactly a small move set either because these are pretty impactful positions. So Jersey Jack Pinball hired Tom Capera from Stern Pinball. Tom is going to be Jersey Jack's chief operating officer. So that's a pretty important position. That's an important position. However, I don't think he'd been at Stern all that long. I think it's only been for a few years that he was there. And he was serving as the director of mechanical engineering. Okay. Now, Stern had already announced that they hired Kevin Payne as director of mechanical engineering. That's Tom's old job. So now it all gets pieced together. Stern immediately had – this was known. So they have a replacement for that.
    17:39
    When I first heard – I heard about the Tom news first. I didn't know about Kevin until I saw that posted in one of my Discord channels. However, Stern just completed their factory move. That's another piece of news. Ray Tanzer is like their director of operations. He used to be the director of mechanical engineering, and he oversaw their move. So I knew they had someone who knew the job anyway, but they actually had already had a replacement in place, in line at least to come in. So those are the main industry news. And in game news, honestly, there's practically nothing. The only real thing I have to say is Multimorphic has indicated they are now shipping Final Resistance. You remember that game? I do. How are they on Weird Al shipping? I don't know. How are they on full-on machine shipping? I didn't look into it. I don't know. I can say because there's been a bit of a blitz, maybe would be how I describe it, of stuff related to Final Resistance. I think it would be safe to say they're attempting to relaunch the game because they dropped it in a sea of five other pinball machines that pretty much, other than Pulp Fiction, have all come out whereas they had not gotten this out.
    18:54
    Yeah, because I guess Pulp Fiction is coming. That'll be the big drop here in October or November. Well, that's what they said. They were saying that was the plan. I'm telling you, I'm going to say that I'm not sure that they're going to make 2023. I don't know if that's that particularly bold of a statement because CGC and Build Speed has never been there. That's never been the company's, like, their quality control and stuff has been pretty well respected. Their Build Speed, and especially on new releases, has not been great. And they've continued to struggle, though, do better on getting the Cactus Canyon remakes out. It's just been a whole thing. Plus, I think it was Josh Sharp, if I recall. I don't remember if this was an interview or maybe I read him post on one of the discords. I apologize in terms of the inability to properly conjure up where it was and what exactly was said. But I believe he conveyed that their license terms with Pulp Fiction essentially forced their hand to do the reveal when they did at Texas. Like they had to. Even though they were so far – like they wouldn't have done that. Ideally, because they were so far away from being able to build the game.
    20:08
    And I suppose one could, and we're a podcast, we ask questions. Rhetorically, we ask questions. One could have probably asked the same thing, though obviously not nearly to the same degree as Pulp Fiction, with Multimorphic and Final Resistance. Because clearly they weren't remotely ready to ship when they went ahead and brought it and showed it off at TPF. But that is Jerry's local show. I was going to say, that's Jerry's local show, and they always have a strong show in TPF. I think that was why they wanted to be there. Because otherwise they wouldn't have had a showing until the game had been out for like six months. But I think, and this wasn't obviously on them. In fact, I would be surprised if they knew, at least on all of them. But who knows going in that they're, I mean, does Multimorphic go in going, oh, yeah, no. I knew that there was also going to be Galactic Tank Force, Godfather, Foo Fighters, the first experience for many people of Scooby-Doo, Pulp Fiction,
    21:02
    Queen. It was the first experience for a lot of people for Queen. It was just like you did your reveal and they only had like two games with Final Resistance in it and it was up against all these other games. Several of them from very well established companies. And we've never really seen a blitz like that at TGF where I think any convention has ever had such a blitz and tight packing of new releases if it ever happened before i bet you it was the em era i don't think there's ever been it was just insane yeah it was it was weird because i remember when we were going to tpf and the announcements were coming at what all was going to be there and we're just like this is a nobody releases like this they they they nobody's ever done this this is going to be crazy and that was our obviously just after starting to accept patreon and that helped us, covered our trip costs. It did. So we made something we'd never done before. We made a concerted effort in order for the listeners to know to play every single new game and we did Oh my gosh Was there a lot Basically over two days we broke it up where we be like all right here the order we going to go in and here's the lines we're going to stand in in order to try all of this stuff. So you and I have played Final Resistance because we did make sure we played it at the show. And I thought it was a very fun game. I did, too. I think I put it right behind Foo Fighters, I think, on my ranking. Maybe I put it third, second or third. I put it farther down than you did. I put it very high. It was still quite high. Because it was fun. Fun to play. Not a game I would buy myself because I won't buy the platform. Correct. And it's tied to that because that's what the system is. But anyway, so that is now coming out if that is something you are interested in. All right. That's it for pinball. So we can now play our game. Now, on our last episode, we played a game which I guess I'm just going to call Rank Random Pins. It's just Rank Random Pins. We're just going to do some random stuff. We take ten numbers and we rank them. And I did put a poll up with our – I took our results. I put them in a spreadsheet, put the image up on our Patreon, and our Patreon members voted. I only gave them two choices. They could either vote if they felt my ranks were the most accurate or your ranks were the most accurate. I barely won. I had 57% of the vote. But we did have requests for other options. Now, one was someone just didn't want to pick between the two of us, and I'm just like, you know what? Grow a spine and pick. Pick. I think you should just put in both are good for their own reasons and we love and support them maybe I will because I do like to listen to the Patreon people we did have another person who basically said we were both wrong the pin side rank was right and I should have had that as an option that's a very fair point I will make sure to at least have that one in on this next go so we're going to do this again for those that don't know the game is simple I took randomize.org and I just had it pick 10 numbers in the range of the Pennside Top 100. The Pennside Top 100 actually is more like the Pennside Top 300. And then figure out what those games were, list them out, and then we go through and we rank them ourselves. And Tony and I have actually already done that, so we will be able to transition right into it. That said, I did run into a new issue. Last time we actually ranked 11 games because one of the numbers that was selected had two games, so I just included both. this time I ran into the opposite problem where a number would be picked and there was no game in that rank because the prior rank had multiple games in it so in those instances I'll declare those I went back to the prior number and so that we don't it could have ended up with us ranking like 15 games so what I've done is I think moving forward whenever there's a tie like that I'm going to go ahead and I just use randomize again to pick like 1 through 3 if there were 3 games And that's the one, whatever's the one, right. It's the one we'll do. So that way we keep it a nice tight 10 because I think that makes sense. So here are the games that we were given. This is the order that they were given to us by random.org.
    25:13
    Ranked game 241. That's Gottlieb's 1979 game Genie. Then there was game 217. That's Williams' 1988 game Jokers. Then ranked game 10. That is Cactus Canyon and the way it works with Pinside. That's both Cactus Canyon from Williams 1998 and the CGC remake from 2021.
    25:34
    Next game was ranked 232. That's Gottlieb's Big Hurt from 1995. Then ranked game 62. That was actually a tie to get. In fact, Getaway was one of those games. We had Getaway on the list last time. However, the randomizer said we had to go with the second game in that set of tie. And that's Heist, Multimorphics 2020 game. The next number we were given was 15. There is currently no rank 15. There were two rank 14 games, and the randomizer said we're doing Metallica, Stern 2013.
    26:05
    Then there was rank game 277. That's Gottlieb's cue ball wizard from 1992. Then was rank 175. There's nothing in that rank currently, so we were randomly given the 174th game, Elvis, because there were two games at that tier. That's Stern's 2004 title. Then the ninth game was rank 123. three that's avatar stern 2010 and finally we had rank 114 there was no game at rank 114 there were three games at rank 112 and the randomizer says we're doing nba fast break that's a williams or wms game from 97 so those are the 10 games so the way we do it is we kind of just alternate back and forth or kind of cycle back down then down back up so i'll go and start us this time I went ahead and put rank. My rank number one is Metallica. Same. Oh, OK. So it's I mean, for me, Metallica is a it's the arts. Cool. The Sparky's cool. It's a fun game to shoot. I I actually don't like the rules on this game nearly as much as most other people, because to me, it's it's a very it's not as much of a woodchopper as a 90s game, but it's a woodchopper. There's a lot of repeating the shots. But, I mean, it's integrated well. The shots are fun, like going for the inline tombstone targets. I really liked that multi-ball. That was my favorite to go for. In competitive, I'd usually just try and get Sparky started because that game can – the ball times were not long on that game in my experience. The hammer ball, especially if you've ever played like the Primo where it knocks it into the play field, that's a pretty cool attack. That's great. And the snake's fun too.
    27:40
    Not as easy as the Gene Simmons hit on Gene Simmons' hit game, Kiss. But it was fun. So it's a really well-integrated package. Dirty Donnie did a great job tying it all together and definitely one of the pinnacles of the DMD era. Yeah, it is a truly great game. I would go so far as to call it probably my number two favorite music pen. Okay. What's your number two game? My number two game is Cactus Canyon. Okay, that's mine also. Oh, clones. Where it begun to clone wars has. Oh, don't worry. That's going away with number three. I guarantee it. Okay.
    28:21
    So why the cactus? Cactus Canyon. The original Cactus Canyon with the limited code, not nearly as fun as the Cactus Canyon reloaded code that was created for the old game or the code for the new version, the extended code. But it is still been a fun game. it has some fun shots. I like the, I actually don't hate the pop-ups. Let's go with that. Some of the pop-up targets, some of the pop-up shots. I like the little quick draw event. And all in all, it's a game that I always, whenever I had a chance to play it, I would play it to the point where I was kind of surprised when they did the remake that I talked to so many people who had never actually played it before. Cause I'm like, But it's at all the conventions.
    29:15
    I guess they didn't want to stand in line for it. I mean, they didn't make a ton of them, so I get that. No, they didn't make a whole lot of them. I mean, it makes sense. We had one pretty close locally that we had a chance to play a fair amount, and then I always played them at TPF several times. So it's definitely one of those fun little titles that I think really encapsulates that era. Okay. Yeah, I don't love this game. I was surprised that they remade it because other than its rarity, I really – I wouldn't have put it high on the list. But the layout is fun. Yeah, the quick draw with the – that's probably the – I would say it's the best implementation of the pop-up thing like Trolls or Hobbit's Trolls or the pop-up Scolari's. This is definitely the best implementation of it where it's actually fun to shoot for them.
    30:05
    So, yeah, it's just a neat layout. The train – it's got cool toys. It's very 90s Williams. Oh, very. Plus, it's very approachable. So if you want to like if you want to feel like a great player and get to wizard modes, this is a game that that's very achievable for. So, yeah, it's simple. It's easy to understand. It's a really good implementation of the Western theme. So, yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, that's why I also put it number two. So my number three is Avatar.
    30:34
    And the reason that I picked that is the Navi need my help. I've actually always just enjoyed Avatar.
    30:42
    We've had it from time to time on location. I've never played the LE. I've only played the pro. The game, yeah, it's only got one ramp. But the coffin lock is a fun shot. I've always tried to – all right, maybe I've done it a couple times when I'm not doing well. I try and shake it so it doesn't give me my ball register so I can get my multi. You're not supposed to do that. It's not ideal. So that was a bug in it. But shooting that coffin shot, as everyone calls it, the link shot, I think is the technical name. It's a tight shot, and it's cool. It just prongs and locks the ball in, and it's a captive ball. And then there's the mech suit. The call-outs are awesome. The guy who was the bad guy in the movie did the call-outs for it. So he just goes complete ham over the top if you can get into his mech suit multiball. It's a lot of fun. You try and plunge in. You've got to watch out a little bit from the drain out of the pops because it can straight down the middle of you. So it's actually a dangerous pop cluster, which is something that I often lament not existing anymore with games that choose to do pops in the modern era. So it's a pretty basic stripped out game. And that's not too surprising, given that's 2010. This is a couple of years into Stern's. We are broke and we are just trying our best to get the games out.
    31:54
    But for all of that, I think it's a pretty good experience. And it's got that weird 3D Translight effect going on, too. So pretty good package for a theme I don't care at all about. Yeah. So that's why it's my third. It's also my third. You said we were diverging. I figured for sure that we would diverge. You're a liar. I was incorrect. If we're tied on all of these, I'm not putting a poll up because that would just be stupid. I'll put a poll up. Were Dennis and Tony right or was Pinside right? That's what I'll do. That's what the poll is. There's no way that we're tied all the way through. The fact that we've been tied for three is – This is a record, I think. It is a record. Granted, we've only played this game twice. But even from other similar games that we've done and other types of things, it's – How many drops is this for you, Lieutenant?
    32:41
    Two. Or, no. What was it? I forget what he says. Like 18 or something. How many combat drops? Two, including this one.
    32:54
    All right. So, well, that was your three. Do you have anything to add to it? I don't. All right. What's your four? my fourth is heist okay we have diverged okay i don't have a lot of time on heist i enjoyed every minute that i have played on that game i would like to have more time on that game and play it more but it is i would consider it the most enjoyable game up to that point that i had played uh on multi-morphic uh it yeah no i think up to that point it was the one i enjoyed the most uh when it had come out so i i definitely ranked it pretty decently but yeah that's what i got you put it in the top half of the list i um my fourth is elvis so we the same collector who owns an original cactus canyon has an elvis so that's where i've played i think maybe i played it one time at a show but i played it quite a bit uh at this collector's house there's a lot to do on elvis it's actually i know a lot of people will look at world poker tour and say that it's steve richie's oddest layout compared to because it's so drop target heavy compared to everything else he's done but elvis is another steve richie game that looks very unlike pretty much anything else he's done the upper playfield with the the what the house and everything is really well done there's a little dog shop because a hound dog and all of that. It's just, I just think it's, again, it's of the era, so this is a 2004 game. So this is before they were cheaping out. There were a lot of toys and stuff on it, but still pretty basic 90s style code. But for what is all in there, there's a lot of shots to do on it. And it still plays pretty quick, even though it's not the more, what you think of as more traditional Steve Ritchie layout. So I've always just really enjoyed playing it quite a bit. I also understand why you didn't put it at fourth because i do recall one time we played it in a tournament and i think you lost on bonus it wasn't to me you lost to someone else but oh was it tell the story because i it wasn't me i just remember you being really annoyed i lost on the extra ball plunge oh he plunged the extra ball and it bounced just right and activated multiple yes that's right the thing that i remember was it wasn't like it was that close it wasn't like right like oh yeah he's gonna get bonus on the extra ball and easily have this like no no no it was bullcrap it was bullpucky he he plunged and it hit the bounce just right and it bounced around and we're just standing there and then all of a sudden it activated the multi-ball and more balls started shooting in and they were bouncing and the ball save was going and it wasn't a little score it was a very large jump because i had a decent lead that he caught he got close to but he did not come to where i thought a normal just plunge and bonus would have done anything right and he beat me not by a lot but he beat me and i i don't know if i have ever been so angry at a tournament as that because that is just the most BS thing ever. Okay. So Tony's memories of Elvis are not quite as fond as my own, where that has never happened to me.
    36:49
    All right. So that was my number four. You already did your number four. So my number five is Cuball Wizard. Oh. So I have maybe played this in person once or twice. This is more known to a lot of people, I imagine because the pinball arcade, the video game has cue ball wizard. Look, there's one reason why this needs to be in the middle of the pack for no other reason. And that would be rowdy ramp rounds. Rowdy ramp rounds. You got to have your rowdy ramp rounds. Rowdy ramp rounds. I love rowdy ramp rounds. I say rowdy ramp rounds when I play other games, when there are ramps and I'm just shooting them. And it's rowdy ramp rounds. The people by me say it with me because they love that I'm obnoxious. Like, no, they don't. They don't. They're probably mad. Those people aren't there. Rowdy Ramp Rounds. I just didn't have voices in your head. Rowdy Ramp Rounds. So I love Rowdy Ramp Rounds. It's a fun layout, I think. I was actually surprised it was this low on the pin side list because on the pin side list, this is the lowest ranked game of all ten of these. And I'm like, no way. It's got that giant cue ball. Yes, it's Gottlieb. It's the 90s. The modes. Oh, my gosh. Some of the modes aren't balanced. There's a ridiculousness that happens. But it's a fun shooter. I think it's a fun shooter.
    38:05
    Would I own one in my collection? Probably not long, long term, but I've thought about it. I've thought about trying to get one. So anyway, Cubot Wizard is my number five. I doubt it's your number five, though. What's your number five? Elvis. Oh. Oh, it wasn't as bad as I thought. It wasn't as bad? I thought you were going to put it in bottom half, not smack dab in the middle. I do really like the game. I just have a little PTSD off of the game. Because that wasn't the only thing. I've also had that game have some issues before. That's the game where I got the ball stack on the multi-ball where the balls all trapped themselves on the flippers so that it was a perfect stack at the bottom, which wasn't trauma. It was just funny the way they landed. But it is one of those games that was just – I enjoy it. I like it. It would have probably been my number four, but I've got a little rage at that machine.
    39:04
    I think I've only played it three times since that happened. Oh, okay. Well, there hasn't been an event there. No, there hasn't. We used to host like twice a year party, and since the pandemic, we haven't had one.
    39:19
    Okay. Well, what's your sixth game then? NBA Fast Break. Okay. um nothing really special about it uh uh it's a game i've played i mean it's not like it's harlem globetrotters that would have been like number two if that had been in this list but nba fast breaks not a bad game uh i enjoy it well enough on the few very few occasions i've played it there's nothing huge jumpy about it uh unlike some of these other games but yeah no number six okay my number six is heist so uh at this point i i would need more i just don't have a ton of time on it just like you like i don't know yet if i would rank heist ahead or under weird al i still lean towards putting it ahead of weird al but i'd probably put final resistance ahead of heist is kind of where i'm at but i'm in the same very few place uh what i like about heist is um I think the module looks really cool, like the whole thing, the little cityscape that they went with. And I think it's very 90s kind of in its approach. I think it's pretty easy to understand and comprehend. I think the modes and stuff they did were good, good uses of the space and all of that.
    40:39
    But in the realm of overall pinball games, it's also, compared to a lot of the other games, it's the crane, I think, in that game is the big cool. and that mech is really really cool um but i i don't know i just like it's fun but it it's not it plays it aside from the crane it's also a pretty safe i think it played it very safe which is fine i think it would appeal to a lot of people so anyway that's why it's kind of in the middle of the pack it's just i like it but i don't love it but actually all most of these games i really love them that i didn't we didn't win a lot of dennis like faves here in the list so uh just the way just the way that that is so anyway that's why i went ahead and put it at number six and my number seven game is nba fast break now back in the day nba fast break was an excellent game for one main reason you could part it out to fix your good williams games we had one on location for a while at one point it didn't last all that long which was just as well It looks like a basketball court. I think people started to fall in love with it or convince themselves they fell in love with it when they couldn't afford anything else. So you start turning to the C-tier Williams games, but it's not that good of a game in my opinion. Yeah, it's neat to go and play for the baskets and stuff, but I don't love the layout. I don't love the rules. The whole gimmick to it is really the linked system, which I've never played it that way. And most people aren't going to because who's going to own two of these things when you could fix an attack from Mars with it? So it's fine. It's not offensive. Definitely, like, again, you mentioned Harlem. I'd mentioned hoops. There are better basketball games. This one's like middle of the pack. Right. You might like this more than, like, the Stern NBA. You might like this more than, I don't know, name another. Is there any other basketball games at that point? Those are the ones that jump out to me. Oh, there must be something that's going to work. I respect it in the fact that it actually does try and be most basketball games.
    42:49
    Harlem and Hoops are the exceptions. Most I think it's so there may only really be four, four big ones. I mean, I'm not going into the era because NBA fast break in the Stern NBA. I think they try and be the court. That was the idea. I think the Williams with the WMS one does a good job about really trying to look kind of like a basketball court with the layout in a way that still let it be playable. So kudos to that. But – oh, Super Hoops. There's Super Hoops from European – and they did the same thing. They're trying to recreate the court. Harlem, as old as it is, doesn't try and – like nothing about the shots or basketball. It's just themed Harlem, and then this is just a bunch of spinners. Right. Kind of is the thing. And then Hoops – I'm just going on a tangent. The thing I love about Hoops is they didn't try and capture the basketball court. They tried to capture the concept of the shots in basketball, like the alley-oop and the three-pointer and stuff. And that's how they made the three-pointer, the really far away shot and stuff. So they tried to emulate how it feels to be the player. So that's how a lot of games in basketball have tried to do it. And NBA Fast Break went with the, let's try and be the court. And maybe they're the best one of that, but it doesn't make it to be the best player. So anyway, so it's seven for me. What's your seven? Jokers. Okay, System 11 game. We've played it a number of times. Yeah, we've played it quite a number of times. It's not terrible. It's nothing special. I'm not going to go out of my way to play it. It one of those games that when I saw it on this list I had to think uh it wasn quite to the I had to look up stage but I had to think about it to recall it So it not non but it just it there It's a game. Okay. What's your eighth?
    44:33
    The Big Hurt. Okay. So same thing. It's a game that I vaguely remember and I've played a couple of times. I think at TPF, but I have no special thoughts or memories on it. Okay. My number eight is Jokers. So the only thing I really remember about Jokers is it has a ramp that raises in the middle of the play field to make a jump shot.
    45:05
    But it's the late 80s, so it's not a great ramp. It raises really slowly. You have to wait for it. It makes a whole like almost like a catapult or roller coaster sound as it's going. Right. Which is I mean, it's a neat effect, but like compared to and I know it's not fair because of the modern era, but compared to like the cool jump rap shot on Toy Story 4, this is a very lackluster ramp. In the realm of jump ramps, I really find it pretty uninteresting. And that's the only memorable thing about Jokers. It's definitely a bottom half System 11 game, maybe closer to half than bottom. But I have no desire to ever – like I don't care if I ever play it again or don't. Like I'm indifferent to it. Right. So that's why it's fairly far down on my list at number eight. My number nine game is Big Hurt. I couldn't remember if I've ever played it, the baseball-themed game. I thought maybe I tried to at TPF, and I thought maybe it wasn't working right the way it was. But this was right at the end of Premiere. I mean, Barbed Wire was their last game, which is – oh, my God, it wasn't that good. Barbed Wire is a terrible game, terrible, terrible game. But no, it didn't leave an impression with me. But honestly, I can't remember ever legitimately playing it either. So it's almost just down here because I've never really heard a lot of good stuff about it, which is not fair. But that's life. So what's your number nine? cue ball wizard okay because i couldn't actually recall ever playing this game i'm sure i never played it in pinball arcade i might have but i don't recall it okay all right well that's that's fair enough so based off of that that means we both put genie at 10 yeah wow another all right why is genie your 10th game i also don't recall ever playing okay it's I played it in Pinball Arcade also. I may have played it in – all right. This is where I'm going to lose people and you'll end up winning even though we both picked it at 10th.
    47:16
    I talked last episode about how awful Space Invaders was in the game. You might recall that. Oh, I do recall. I had someone post on Facebook upset at what I said about Spy Hunter in my process of destroying Space Invaders. and I pointed out I did in fact put Spy Hunter ahead in Space Invaders, thereby making Space a Spy Hunter the winner in the hypothetical matchup of awful versus awful. And I stand by that, because at least Spy Hunter was creative.
    47:50
    Genie is the Space Invaders of Gottlieb. Genie might not be the worst System 1 game, but it is the worst system one game you likely will ever personally play the only thing worse than how gotlieb's genie plays is having to hear people try and pretend that it plays good because they do they look at it and they're like look at this wide play field look at all this amazing stuff they did the game is carved up into four quadrants because they didn't know what to do with it and all the quadrants are bad is one quadrant worse than the other absolutely they're not all equal because that would be silly they would have to be identical for laid out quadrants and that would be nonsense that space invaders might have tried to do but in this case you have the opening plunge with all your top lanes that's probably the best part because it's before you've the ball has rolled in and the ball itself has learned how bad this game is then you have the openish lower right quadrant where you feel like you spend most of the time. Then you've got the whole waterfall pachinko thing. And you know what I think about pachinko. You love them. That's right. In pachinko. But I hate that is what if there's no other reason when people talk about like the nostalgia and there's not many left that do. But there's some people that will they may not say it this way because they know they'll get burned in the comments. But they basically want to argue that EMs are better than solid state era games. And they're forgetting about all the waterfall pachinko nonsense that happened in the em era where it's just metal against metal watching a ball and arguing oh you can nudge it and you can have yeah whatever go play your bingos no one cares no one cares and no one cares on this game either i've heard there are three things you can do to make genie be better number one i know someone who owned one once who put a power ball, a ceramic ball in it. I have not played it that way. However, I have done that. I've put a lighter weight ball in my Buck Rogers, and I will say that can help quite a bit because the System 1 games were so EMS that they're very floaty and Buck Rogers ain't a wide body. So I imagine it will, it definitely should pay dividends on Genie. So if you happen to have a Genie for some reason, and you haven't tried that, I would recommend trying to do it. If you can't power balls are super expensive. So what I recommend is you can order like the balls that are more, uh, like what we're designed for Viper and I drive in like the glow ball style, like they're lightweight too. And they're much more affordable. So I have a whole pack of them. Um, I'm not offering to give them to you though. Go buy your own pack. The, uh, number two, I've not heard of anyone doing this, but it logically makes sense. And I've thought about doing it with Buck Rogers, prop the back legs up more, either get extended leg levelers or put like two by fours or bricks or something under it to try and give it some more verticality i'm normally someone who argues against just jacking the games all the way up because it actually kills the side to side action but as i mentioned there's like the four quadrants going on in that game those quadrants are so unfun just try and keep it in the middle just try and keep it and that will help you with that just help you drain it don't go into the pachinko waterfall area don't do don't experience genie the way they thought you wanted to experience it experience it the way i want you to straight down the middle that's the best way and the third thing is if you happen to have this game you could get rid of it that's probably the best answer and that's what you should be doing you get this people love the art people love the initial like music little beep beep startup sound like you can you can get rid of it and get something else something smaller get if you you don't want something smaller get space invaders because it's better than this and you know what i think of space invaders have you heard episode 200 yeah it's a bad game but this is actually worse it again i don't know that this i've heard close encounters of the third time and charlie's angels are really and i think i played charlie's angels once i've never played close encounters to my knowledge but this is bad this is like of the popular got leaves this is the one that doesn't deserve to which of these is not like the other system once this one this is no countdown this is no joker poker. This is no Sinbad. This is no Cleopatra. This is trash. It's pronounced genie in the original flyer, but in English it's pronounced trash.
    52:18
    And that's why it's 10th. Garbage. I cannot believe this was ranked several, like a dozen higher than Cuball Wizard.
    52:29
    Wow. Talk about, talk about, and it's like I was going to say bias against Gottlieb. It's bias against premier godly talk about bias to put cuba wizard with rowdy ramp rounds beneath genie where the only magic that happens your wish is granted when the game ends to put the one meme potential in a game a game that gets ranked due to just meme potential yeah gosh it's just ranked it's just don't get me wrong it's rank as bad as it should be right it's only ranked as high as it is because of the art that's the only reason garbage i'm done with the pinball segment i'm done with this game the patreon people will get an opportunity to vote i'm glad we were in agreement tony that this is the worst game that we have ever voted on video games what's going on with it bring us back well first off we got a completed game review from our oh okay yes i posted this end this morning thank you um guys they're like i'm gonna round they're like 20 of you that have reviews pending where are our reviews we have not forgotten pepperidge farm doesn't forget i don't forget genie ain't making me forget i have all your emails saved for those of you who have not yet sent us the reviews we gave you a free game there was a condition where's the review robert g followed through he acknowledged it was three months later but he followed through separate from that, if you've already done a review before and turned it in, or if you've never done a review before, Tony and I still have free Steam codes. We will let you have a free game. We do not know what it is. We were not told what they were when we were given the codes. They're probably garbage. They're probably garbage. With that in mind, you can have one for free. You don't have to be a Patreon member. Doesn't matter. Just email us at eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. Say, I want a Steam code for review. I'll get you one until I'm out. I'll get you one. We still have them. We're over halfway through them, but we still have some garbage so this is what robert wrote i'll go ahead and read it here from his email my code gave me ice age scratch nutty adventure which is a single player 3d platformer action adventure game as an aside tony i think i've this is the first game i've actually heard of i think i heard of this maybe i'm wrong and i've just heard of ice age but i'm telling myself i heard of this game it's entirely possible it might have been one of those silly little speed runs at an overnight session of Games Done Quick. Could be. The player controls the titular Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel from the Ice Age animated film franchise. Armed with small jumps and an ending supply of throwable acorns, Scrat hunts through the worlds from Ice Age in search of four crystal nuts that will unlock the Acorn. Capital T. Capital A. The Acorn along the way, he solves. He said the acorn twice. Along the way, he solves simple puzzles, gathers crystals, and fins off animal enemies. The gameplay is simple enough that even as an old man just getting used to the controller more complex than a Super Nintendo, even I quickly got the hang of things. It could serve as a good instruction to gaming for kids. The game does a nice job of slowly introducing new mechanics, new ways of interacting with the world, making the puzzles more complex and the enemies more difficult. as scat progresses even offering more sneakily hidden treats to find that said i'm unclear who this game is for the controls still feel a bit advanced for the kind of kids that would be really into the ice age films my five-year-old who's at a great age to be introduced to the franchise would have a hard time playing this game but my seven or eight i would bet she'd quickly get bored with the very mundane objectives and tedious actions necessary to complete each level the The music is pleasant, but unfortunately, to my ears, the sound effects are kind of grating. As someone who's never seen the Ice Age films, the repetitive sounds coming from that little squirrel get annoying quickly. The game autosaves very often, so if you ever need a ball to bail quickly on your game, you'll pick up pretty close to where you left off next time you come back. Unfortunately, given the lackluster story and overly simplistic gameplay, that next time may never come. Thank you, Robert, for completing your mission and providing us with this key review. I know if you would like to re-listen to The View as a drinking game, you can take a shot every time Dennis says scat instead of scrat. Did I? Yeah. I tried not to. I'm a scat man. See, I saved that. You were thinking naughty scat, but I was thinking I'm a scat man.
    57:12
    I like that song. I didn't put it on my list. It is a good song. It is. All right, Tony, now save us. here it is all of the big news all of the great amazing things that have happened there's a lot there's been a fair amount of stuff uh the fallout of embracers group restructuring due to that two billion dollar fall through that we talked a little this is fine this is fine yeah yeah yeah uh it has taken a victim a violation uh has been closed immediately i thought it completely is it Violation or volition? Or volition. Or is it scat, man? Either way. Volition? Sure. I thought it was volition. I don't know.
    57:56
    Yeah, because there's no A in it. Oh, okay. Yeah. But they made Red Faction and the new Saints Row. That's the game I was trying. I knew they did a franchise. I really, all right. Anyway, I apologize. Yeah, they did the new Saints Row, and they also did Red Faction. But they're gone. They just shut them down hard. Didn't they do a space game you used to like? Free space or something?
    58:20
    They did do a space game. I don't remember. I remember seeing it when I was reading the news. I don't remember what it was.
    58:27
    I'll do a quick check. If it wasn't them, it was a precursor to them. I'll do a check, but continue while I look. Yeah, so that's the first of the major shutdowns, I think, that we've heard from this restructuring. We know that they've canceled a bunch of games and that they've reduced staffing at several of their studios. But I think this is the first studio where I remember them full up just shutting down and completely ending.
    58:55
    Sony has also renamed its handheld gaming device to the PlayStation Portal, which, again, it's a screen on a DualShock controller, basically. that's not a standalone, so it's not like a Switch that you can take with you, but it's designed so that while you're somewhere on Wi-Fi, you can stream games off of your work. Right, yeah, you covered it. We talked about it a little bit, a few episodes back. Yeah, when they first announced it. Yeah, that's interesting. They did say, they did give us the price. It's going to be $200, and it does not support PSVR2 games, that require the headset or games streamed through the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming. So it'll only play games that are installed on your console.
    59:45
    Alright. Going back to Parallax, or excuse me, Volition, which used to be Parallax. Here's the list of the games for people. I was going to go ahead and opine. Red Faction Gorilla was one of my favorite games to play on the Xbox 360. It was one where you had a big hammer. The buildings were all destroyable. Like you could destroy them with your hammer. That was the big thing with Red Faction. Yeah, and it was – and I played the next one. It wasn't nearly as good. That first one, though, the way they had the physics with the buildings was just really – they were just like – really, like everything was just made out of Popsicle sticks. There was something about it. But all right, so here are the games that they were known for. Now, back as Parallax Software, which they started in the mid-'90s, they made Descent and Descent 2. then as Volition they made something called Descent Free Space The Great War they did Free Space 2 and I thought you played Free Space I've played all four of those games Summoner, Red Faction Summoner 2 I wasn't a Summoner player but I've heard of it The Punisher then they started Saints Row which was like a serious attempt to be a GTA clone in 2006 Saints Row 2 which was the first game I played and the first one where they were like, all right, it's GTA, but silly. Not manic, just silly. I love the Saints Row games. Then Red Faction Guerrilla 2009, which as I noted, I really enjoyed that game a lot. They did Red Faction Armageddon. I did play that. Saints Row the third, which was off the rails silly, but I did play it. Saints Row four. Which is beyond off the rails silly and completely insane and great because of it. And then they had the Gat Out of Hell, Saints Row. Also a great standalone. I didn't play that one. Agents of Mayhem and then the new Saints Row, which is called Saints Row. Which was a complete flop. It was a complete failure. And then, so those are the games that they did.
    61:37
    So, yeah, Free Space was. Yeah, because the Descent games and the Free Space games both I played. Okay. Because they were a lot of fun back in the day. So, yep. Nope, they're gone. Shut down and gone. Bye-bye. But you know what's not gone? Starfield's not gone. Starfield is not gone. Reviews from Starfield, we kind of touched on this a little bit in the opening. Reviews on Starfield have been pretty solid overall. Now, I wanted to bring something up because I read that I didn't dive into it because I'm also trying not to put spoilers or anything. But in some of the commentary, one of the things I heard someone complain and that purportedly it was like acknowledged this isn't just the Bethesda thing. It's definitely not just a Starfield thing. But in order to pump up the Metacritic score, supposedly they were looking at review groups, especially that do like the five-point scale and have a tendency to score closer to the – like a good game is a seven out of ten and not giving them early copies. And they initially pumped it to those that tend to do more nine out of ten gradeflation style. I've heard that as well. Okay. I've heard that they were very systematic about who did and didn't get review copies. Like some crew people who work for Eurogamer got copies, but Eurogamer itself didn't get a copy to do a review of. And some of the YouTubers that will just be like, it's the greatest thing ever. Yes, they got copies and then more. Yeah. So, I mean, it's a grain of salt at this point. So that's why the more impressive thing to me that's come out is the sheer number of people that are like, this is not the normal Bethesda buggy mess. Right, because it's early access. So we are actually hearing legitimate feedback at this point. Right. And it's been positive. Yeah, and it's supposed to actually look pretty good and run fine on both Xbox consoles. Okay. I don't really care about the S. Right. Now, I have read some reports that there seems to be a lot of loading, but a lot of it is hidden by stuff, like you would expect. The old Mass Effect elevator scene. Yeah, but there seems to be a lot of loading. It's my favorite store on the Citadel. But we'll definitely be getting a lot more reports coming in this upcoming week.
    63:54
    The Call of Duty franchise is trying something new. they are going with real-time voice chat moderation how ai oh wait duh okay i'm really i'm gonna listen in on your conversations yeah that's my what's your hey what's your occupation uh i am a call of duty real-time voice chat moderator what do you do i listen to 13 year olds talk about banging each other's mom that's wow how much does that pay not well and it leaves me with massive mental trauma. Tase and trauma. Okay. No, they are. They do not currently, supposedly, according to them, have the AIs doing the moderation. The AIs are flagging stuff to be followed up for moderation by human listeners. Okay. So we'll see how long that holds.
    64:49
    And that is live on the North American servers now as a beta, and will be going live globally in November when the new Call of Duty comes out.
    64:59
    But what's interesting and arguably kind of understandable, currently the moderation only works for chat in English.
    65:10
    Oh, okay. Huh. You know, a flashback. You remember Final Fantasy XI? Oh, I do. You remember Final Fantasy XI was an MMO, and it had, because of its economy, its player-based economy, there were a lot of people, not bots, but there were actually just a lot of people that were like gold farmers, basically. They would go and they would harvest all the resources to sell them for real money and all of that. And you see them like fishing and stuff. And whether it was true or not, everyone just decided that they were all from China. Well, yeah. All the gold farmers were from China. And so you just see players, and they were like trying to fish and there were other people like trying to catch the whatever the special fish stars like legendary things always go and people i just remember it was kind of like how if you've ever seen the the uh documentaries of like how bees certain bees like uh japanese honeybees and stuff will will fly and they'll swarm an enemy and and heat them to death like heat a hornet to death by smothering them it was like that in final fantasy 11 except because no one playing knew chinese all they do is they swarm them and they just start like saying ni hao ni hao ni hao ni hao ni hao and it just hello in mandarin but but it being done in a super toxic like ni hao ni hao it was like they just swarm them until they try and drive them off to get them to quit or log out or whatever run away run to the town or whatever just follow them you just see these people going ni hao ni hao ni hao it was like what is this madness so that's what they're trying to prevent here yeah they don't want their ai bots to be doing trying to they didn't want to be using the the the final fantasy 11 built-in translation thing yeah always give me your Oh, gosh. Yes, yes. So that was another side. So because there were so many Japanese players and English players in Final Fantasy XI, there were certain phrases that had auto-translate where you could type something. You could tell it to use the auto-translate tool so someone – like looking for group. Right. You'd be able to say looking for group, and it would have a little notation like it would be in braces or something so you know you said it through the auto-translator. And that was because there were – people don't understand. The servers were blended, so there were tons of Japanese players on the server. You weren't on an American server. You were on a server. And make sure that server was good overnight. I mean it was good. Yeah. So when you start – the problem was – so what do you do when you get into an argument with Japanese players? Well, or you're trying to say things. You're using the auto-translate. But the thing is the words don't mean the same things. Because we have words like, let's say you wanted to say, oh, that's a burn, right? You could literally mean a burn with fire or an insult is a burn or something like that. So people would use those auto-translates thinking they were telling the Japanese player something, which doesn't make any sense when translated Japanese. It's not an insult. It doesn't make any sense. But I think they started to pick up on it. Sometimes they would say things only. and uh there was uh the biggest thing i remember a lot of english players hated is sometimes you'd go and you'd look and you could look at people to they'd have like a summary they could sit because a lot of people just sit afk in the game right and because you could set up a little bizarre and you could do and you could do like announcements and stuff and the one that everyone hated was the jp only yep which was japanese players only they didn't want your american butt in their group and then people like that's racist and they'd be mad and then they start trying to say mean things to them with the auto-translate and it just didn't work right. Because you'd be all like, define lumber your behind your taru or something. It doesn't make sense to them. You're not actually telling them to stick a piece of wood up their bum.
    68:57
    Anyway, okay. Sorry. AI. No, it's a beautiful segue though. Yeah, but none of our listeners understood any of it. True. Except for those of them who played Final Fantasy.
    69:09
    I'm a scatman. But speaking of MMOs, we are going to segue to another MMO that we both played, World of Warcraft. That's right. We played that F-11. We did. And we've talked recently because they've got the World of Warcraft Classic servers up so you can play. Vanilla. Vanilla and just Burning Crusader or whatever. They've got a new version of the Classic server coming out.
    69:38
    Hardcore. Okay. If you die, you're dead. Oh, if you die in the game, you die in real life. It's permadeath. Oh. I mean, Blizzard does that with Diablo, so I'm not too shocked. It's permadeath. If you die, you pop up in the game and back up in the game as a ghost, but you can't retrieve your body. You can't come back to life. You are as a ghost. There are some interactions you can do to basically finish out, and then you leave.
    70:04
    They do have an option, though, so that you could take your character and have them move to a standard classic.
    70:14
    That's a little bit of soft serve. I think it's a little soft serve as well. I don't know, because I think everything else sort of functions. It's basically they just made it so you couldn't take your body back. Here's what I'd like to do as a concept. I mean, I don't want to spend the money to go to this trouble, but conceptually I like the idea briefly would be I'd want to form a guild of just ghosts. I like to call it ghost mode. and you just go around and we just like haunt a person we just find a player and our whole guild of like 40 people is following them just like saying ghost stuff or just like I had the time of my life is that song from that I don't know whoopee we do whoopee quotes we'll do Patrick Swayze quotes occasionally we'll throw in a roundhouse line instead But it's an interesting concept for a game that's designed with entire raids and fights that are designed around the concept of intentionally having people die. Just imagine the grind to go to Molten Core, and then you get owned by some lava monster. Right. You're just like, oh, come on, guys. I just think of all of the times we'd have a wipe in Molten Core on trash. Imagine if you lagged out. Oh, yeah. They did say that they put in – one of the things they did to make it more viable is they reduced the timer for lag out or drops so that if you lag out or you lose your connection, it will disconnect you faster. I'm just – Than the normal minute where you just sat there. Everyone's playing hardwired, sitting there with their Ethernet cord in their hand, like laced between their mouse fingers. It's just like, we're about to lose. I'm yanking this cord. Boop. And then you respawn with the boss. and was like, oh wait, no, that was a bad idea. And they also removed a lot of the PvP. They put in a new PvP option, but it requires 100% consent before. It's basically you have to activate it. You've got to have a hardcore PvP server where someone will gank you coming out of the earliest. Well, the early areas were, I'm going to collect flowers for Miss Daisy. Yay! You're no Daisy at all. I'm your huckleberry now. you're sitting there and some orcs just sitting out there hey kid where are you going today just like got a little balloon down and down underneath the wooded storm drain why don't you come under here get your boat we all float down here oh that would be fun oh man and then we have some sad I don't know. This news is... It is sad, but understandable-ish, I think. Maybe. Maybe it's sus. We'll see what people think. Maybe it's suspect. Could be. But Nintendo has announced that Charles Martinet is no longer the video game voice of Mario. Let's-a go away.
    73:27
    Okay. Well, I mean, he's been doing it for like ever. Yeah, since the 90s. He's been everywhere. He's definitely at a point in his life where he could full-on be retired. I don't like to tell people that it's bad when they retire because it should be good that they get to retire. And they did announce that while he's no longer the voice for Super Mario Wonder, and he's also not doing the Luigi or Wario voices anymore, which he also did, but they did say that he will now become a Mario ambassador whatever that is and they are going to be putting out a video from him and Miyamoto at a future date but that hasn't been announced or released yet so that's here's the thing here's the part where I would be The sad part because of the way it was announced, it's extra weird because this whole Mario ambassador thing layered on top of it. I.
    74:35
    No one that I saw ever explicitly said, including himself, that he retired. Yes. So there's been a lot of people wondering, was he basically fired? But they're letting him have some other role still so that it doesn't look like he was fired and he's cool with it because he's getting paid or what? And that was my thought because his response was he retweeted or whatever the crap they call that stupid thing. X'd, he re-X'd. He re-X'd. I don't know. I don't use that service anymore. The message and added, my new adventure begins. You are all number one in my heart. Hashtag woohoo.
    75:12
    My new adventure as not the voice of Mario. Well, and it could be. I mean, it could totally be a retirement. it is why hasn't he just said i'm retiring i'm retiring from the voice of mario i'll still be loosely involved though as an ambassador right they created a new thing i'll like i'll come out to eve oh wait no i was gonna say x or e3 i'm gonna have to eat i'll be on a mario treehouse once every other year with the new game and you know i'll interview the new voice actors Right. But they didn't say that. It's all like he's got a new position, but it's a made up position just like there are no other Mario. And I think until the video is released, I think that'll probably answer some questions. I just again, maybe they just didn't think they need to phrase it that way. Or maybe they thought it's not they didn't want to say retirement because he's doing the Mario ambassador thing. He's not really, truly retired. Well, and it could be. I don't know. It could simply be that doing that much voice work is getting to a point where it's harder. Sure, but we also look at how much voicing does he do for – I don't know because I haven't played the recent games. Does he do a ton of voicing? In the old days, there wasn't a lot of call-ins. And where – I mean this isn't like – where is he career-wise, age-wise versus say – or was it Peter Cullen who's Optimus Prime and stuff?
    76:36
    Yeah, who's still doing tons and tons of huge work. And maybe that's not fair. I do know people, especially if they use their voices a lot, as they get older. We see this more with singers, I think, than voice actors, where they can't do it anymore. They can't do it to the same level anymore. Like I remember this was years ago where Bob Seger, you know, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. He was not – he scaled back his live concerts because he couldn't maintain his voice if he did it at the pace he did when he was 10 years younger. so i mean he is 67 okay so he then i'm gonna say i'm not but yeah peter colin is 82 correct i just looked him up i'm just like wow okay and he's still got the most amazing i'll kill you yeah the the fact that the trailer for season two of invincible was bad was built around announcing that peter colin was being a voice in the show that's awesome too i'm excited so i i'm I'm really excited. Okay, I'll say, given his age, he's definitely at retirement age, so I will go ahead and choose to interpret this as a positive that Charles just wants to retire. And Nintendo is cool with or suggested the idea of keeping him loosely involved in some way, and he was amenable to it, so yay.
    77:53
    Yeah. And I look forward to our new Chris Pratt overlord, making Mario just be Chris Pratt. Yeah, I haven't seen any announcements about who's going to be voicing. Me, Star Lord, I mean Mario.
    78:06
    I took all of the drugs. Hey, don't you remember when I was on that, what was it, Parks and Rec? Parks and Rec. When I was fat and people actually liked me. Do you remember? Pepperidge Farm remembers maybe? Now I'm ripped. And everyone thinks that I'm a terrible person for some reason. But it still remains somewhat mysterious to me. And somehow people liked when I did that movie where it turns out that I was like a complete monster, yet they tried to play me as a sympathetic passengers. I haven't seen Passengers.
    78:41
    It's like, oh no, I got woke up from suspended animation. I'm the only person awake on the ship. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to wake up the hottest woman on the ship as well, so she's trapped with me.
    78:55
    Because that can't go wrong. People just can't accept Chris Pratt not playing anything other than Chris Pratt, so they turned him into Chris Pratt. It's like, oh, you're like all your other characters. Anyway, we're talking about Chris Pratt. That's not fair. It's quasi-fair. He makes enough money, he doesn't lie. He does. This isn't the eclectic Chris Pratt. He might have written to us at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com and said, you know, it's okay if you guys want to make fun of me and Mario for a little bit. Yeah. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, that'd be cool. Have fun. Tell Blue I said hi. You know, I hate – Tell my Blue I said hello. It's not just Chris Pratt, though. But this whole new, I don't know if it's new, but it's been a very common thing where fighting anything with anything anymore is like, I'm just going to hold my hand up in his face and say, smell my fingers. Yes. As some sort of, stop. It's just, yeah. I hate it. They do it in Stranger Things, too. like everything every time 11 uses her power you just know because like she starts bleeding from the nose and she's holding her hand out it's like it also loosely reminds me of when uh ian mckellen i remember the scene the clip you you've probably seen it where he's just like there on the set of the hobbit and all the green steam stuff and he just breaks down sobbing because he's like he doesn't know what to do he doesn't know where to look it's all this amorphous thing and they didn't do that with lord of the rings they right there's a lot of cg and lord of the rings but they used a lot of practical stuff so the actors could play off of things and the hobbit was so rushed that they couldn't do it like i i think peter jackson would have done it the way that he did lord of the rings but maybe make it one movie you know just but anyway uh right that's a bad movie i don't recommend seeing it it's okay it's a bad trilogy it's a bad trilogy it's it it's not horrible. It's just very bloated. It's way too CG, and I felt bad for Ian. I love the Lord of the Rings movies, and I've watched the extended editions multiple times. I normally do it once a year. Last night, after I got done watching my inspirational basketball movie on Amazon Prime, I went upstairs, brushed my teeth, sat in front of my computer, and played the Rite of the Rohirrim, and then went to sleep.
    81:15
    Because I needed inspirational sleep. I've done that. Sleep scenes. I've done that before. That's right. My favorite scene in the whole trilogy. And then you wiped your tears and went to bed. It's tough because the writers of Rohan don't want to go too far because then they have to form the line and fight the elephant. And then you're like, next thing you know, you're watching that second movie. You're just watching the rest of the movie. So it's just like, no, you've got to stop. As soon as they hit the orcs and the music stops, that's where you stop it. Right. But it just gets you going. Because they don't have enough. There's no hope. It doesn't matter. You wipe your tears and you lay down. You learn that all you need to do to have a chance is to have horses that are tired and still willing to go and just start yelling death at your enemy. And you know what? You can get a lot out of it. Maybe you can't beat some elephants, but some orcs, you can do some orcs. You can do that. Do your worst. Nothing like a nice charge of the cavalry. A little light brigade in Tolkien's world. I always like to think of it, but that was his interpretation of that. great thing yes uh speaking of scenes forlorn hopes they have made an announcement that microsoft has agreed to sell the streaming rights for activision blizzard games to ubisoft okay so games released over the next 15 years will be given to ubisoft with the rights existing in perpetuity to do for those games. For streaming. So basically that removes the rights from being with just Microsoft. This guarantees the rights are now with at least two sources. And Ubisoft can transfer rights as well. So that way they no longer have the exclusive rights to, like, Call of Duty. And the thought is that this is a – well, it's not been formally announced that this is a concession that was required by the UK. Now, this, though, would only apply to the call of duties that are made in those 15 years. Yes. It wouldn't be franchise control. No. So after that point. It is a 15 – 15 years is a long period. It is basically 15 years for other companies to get up to that level of streaming capacity. Yeah. Okay. So – Well, I would assume that that's going to be enough to appease the CMA. But hopefully the CMA hasn't really said anything yet. The the last thing they said is that they had to make the Microsoft would have to make changes from their original plan. I would call this a major concession. Here's here's my theory. This I think this I think this works, I think, for twofold reasons. One, I think there has been obviously it is a it is a major concession. Let's I mean, 15 years Ubisoft, which you normally you were like Ubisoft and Microsoft don't seem to have any sort of special relationship. whatsoever. It's just yet another publisher that plays on all platforms.
    84:08
    So there's that aspect. And then I also think there's been a lot of blowback, as we've seen and heard, in the UK with UK leadership and such about the CMA's decision. But this allows them to save face and say they still got a concession so that they won. So it lets them say that they still won, even though Microsoft's getting, in reality, everything they actually Right, and Microsoft will be getting money for each game that's put up there. Right, because this isn't something for free. They'll be getting money. They make money. They're getting money for the rights. They'll get money when each title releases.
    84:47
    However, that stuff's worked out. There ain't no charity. So they'll still be getting paid. Sure. They'll still be getting paid, but it still opens abilities, and it's the concession that could probably allow that to be finalized. And then once it's finalized and Microsoft buys Ubisoft, victory will finally be in their grasp. Fifteen years and one month, Ubisoft purchased by Microsoft. I wouldn't be too shocked.
    85:12
    But we'll just have to wait and see. That or this is all signed and everything's finished and one month later, Sony purchases Ubisoft, which would give Sony that right in perpetuity. That would be interesting. I don't know if Sony's in the position to buy Ubisoft. I don't think Sony could. Because I don't think either of them – Ubisoft would be a big bite, I think, for both of them.
    85:35
    I mean, bigger for Sony. Sony might be bigger in the console market, but I think of actual spending budget, Xbox way blows them out of the water. Oh, sure. It's just because of the – I mean, I don't know how much is allocated to the division, but they have the Microsoft resources. The problem with Sony, not fanboying and being judgmental on their system or anything, uh the problem that sony as a company has is like playstation is like their most successful thing and part of it is sony's really dragged down by their movie studio yes doing well whereas with microsoft xbox sure they make money with the xbox division but it's a drop in the bucket their money is in business cloud infrastructure stuff like office space software like office 365 makes them so much my people love the subscription microsoft yeah um they they that it's just as i i saw on reddit the joke of like why is word the standard like uh you want to insert a graphic fu you want to you you want to format this table how about no you want to you want to print you want to print uh new margin sizes how about go print how about you go print them nuts just like that it's just Like nothing about Word in a lot of ways makes any sense, but it is the de facto standard. It is. Word is so terrible. I like use PowerPoint for stuff because it works so much better than Word. Sure. And OneNote, of course. Of course. OneNote. OneNote is just like the perfect product. It's like the solution to everything. It's like there would be one note. Yeah. So they got it right. They got it like exactly right. Every blossom. Perfect. I'm going to go ahead and punch our discussion. This has been a good, solid, full-long episode. We have to go in about 90 minutes. Yeah, and that's the target goal. I think this has been a good, solid discussion. So we'll once again punt our deeper discussions. It's going to be really good when we get to it. We will eventually because one of these days there won't be video game news just like there's not pinball news. Right. One of these days it's going to be like, okay, 45 minutes into the episode and we're almost done. Now, I could have dropped the pinball game, but here's the thing. We can get others of you who write in who really only like to listen for the pinball stuff, and then you complain that the pinball was too short. So I had to put the game in. That's just how it works. And if you are a Patreon supporter, you will get to vote on how we rank the games versus the pin side rank of the games. So look forward to that. And if you want to join Patreon, it's patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. And it's as low as a dollar a month to be a member of that. You can also, again, always reach out to us via email, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. And we're on Facebook at facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast. And we're on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks with all the latest news, possibly a deep genre-based discussion for video games. We will have to wait and see. But until then, my name is Dennis. And I am Tony. Goodbye. Later. Woo-hoo.