Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, April 27th. This is episode 244. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. Tony. What's going on, Tony? Okay Story time Uh oh So many stories Buckle up everybody I hope they're buckled That they're driving After our last episode Literally Like three hours After our last episode I took my children To see Minecraft Oh no Because they really wanted to go see Minecraft I did not know this is where this was going But it is somewhat gaming related It's gaming related I'll allow it So we went to see Minecraft. With Jack Black. With Jack Black and Jason Momoa. Did he say it's time to Minecraft? He did not. Okay. But he yearned. He yearned for the mines. Okay. Oh, man. Here's the thing. I've seen some Reddit videos of kids really loving this movie. Like I saw one where a theater basically got destroyed and one of the workers afterwards with the popcorn everywhere said, well, at least they didn't set it on fire. I've heard most people say it wasn't like that with others like throwing popcorn and kids running. Like this was like unruliness. But that kids like it's done better than the Mario movie. So it is better than the Mario movie. That's the logic. It hit its opening weekend, a higher opening weekend. Making it better than Mario because it made more money than Mario. It hasn't made more money than Mario at all. On the opening weekend, but that's all that matters. Opening weekend it did. Just like with American Godzilla had a great opening weekend. It hasn't hit. And you saw that too in the theater on opening weekend. I did. There's a pattern here. There is. There is a pattern. All right, but I'm making assumptions because I'm currently assuming that you're going to say this was better than Mario in every way. Oh, I went into this movie with expectations that were very low. Well, you're not a big Minecraft player. No. I mean, I've played it. It's fun, but I didn't expect anything of it. My expectations were very, very low. I was disappointed. Oh. You should have reduced your expectations to zero. Here's the thing. The absolute funniest moment in that entire movie was the Lilo and Stitch trailer. The second funniest moment in that entire movie was the Superman trailer. And that's how I – Was this a comedy? Yeah. Okay. I didn't know what genre it was. I thought maybe drama. It was really bad if it was that. It would probably be worse than if it was a – I did. Luckily, when I got us our seats because we get to pick – because it's one of those where you get to pick seats. I got seats all the way in the back, as far back as you could against the back wall. So all the way up. So there was nobody behind me. So I wasn't bothering anybody when I pulled out my phone and I adjusted the screen dimness down low so I could read a book. No. Because I literally wanted to walk out of the movie like 20 minutes in. Wow. So my youngest daughter unironically loved it. Oh, no. I mean, you pleased them. My older daughter. Yeah. What of the elder? She thought that it was better than she expected. She said it wasn't great, but it was funny and it had some good stuff in it. Okay. So your purpose for going was successful. I successfully allowed my children to have a good time. Yes. And it only required me to suffer. Yes. And we didn't have where the thing went nuts and there was popcorn thrown everywhere. No. But there was definitely screaming at different parts, and there were people quoting the movie throughout. Like little kids, you could hear them quoting the movie throughout. Like they'd obviously seen it more than once. Oh, okay. Or they'd seen the stuff online, and they were ready for it. But it is – I was so – see, when I went and saw Mario, I was like, I didn't expect anything. I thought Mario was a legitimately good movie. Mm-hmm. But this, I expected nothing, and I was disappointed. Mm-hmm. I would rather go back to theaters and watch Blood Rain. Oh. Blood Rain, though, is amusing because it's so bad. It's one of those so bad it's good, in my opinion. Yes. Like, I own Blood Rain. Yes. Because of that reason. I haven't watched it in years, though, so, I mean. But it is. It is so bad. It is good. I mean, it's true. It's Uwe Boll at his finest. And maybe he should have taken this. It's a video game movie. Yeah, maybe. Maybe he should have. Oh, man, it was so rough. It was so rough. Other than that, I spent like four days super sick. So I haven't done a lot, but I have played a game. Okay. beautiful game it's been out for a little while um so it's not like a new release but it was it's surprisingly fun um have you heard of bro tato oh no no i no actually i've been playing dave the diver okay i picked it up on i've heard it i picked it up on the steam sale and we've been playing Dave the Diver, which is a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I'm not huge into like pixely stuff, but it's like this pixely and it's, you go diving in this magical blue hole that changes and you hunt fish and are you like spear fish? And then you go up and you help run a sushi bar at night. And it's actually really fun. It's pretty cute and it has been fun. But I have also been playing Brotato. I'm in no way surprised. Thankfully, no one these last couple weeks has written in about Brotato. So I think you've gained as many taters as you can out of this audience. I'm good for them. I'm happy that they have found the true joy that is the Brotato. Okay. Now I have I was watching The I don't know I was watching a podcast Yeah a lot of them do that now Yeah that I follow And they got into a big conversation About this new game that's out That I'd seen some trailers for And I hadn't really paid that much attention to Claire Obscura Expedition 33 I don't know anything about this And it's like a turn-based RPG, very much like Final Fantasy IX or X style, where you've got some quick time events, but it's still turn-based. It's not the active combat style ones. But it is set in this weird stuff has happened France, and it's got this motif. but i want one they were talking about it so i watched one of the guys had a video up uh where he started playing it so i watched his first like hour and a half or two hours of playing it and the combat system looks really interesting the game looks really interesting i don't know if i have the energy to put up with that much french stuff uh when he fought the giant headed mime i was like what in the crap is going on but it's actually i mean the art is nice uh and the concept seems really interesting so i might i might throw that on my list and wait for a sale or wait to see how the reviews really shake out on it but the initial reviews look pretty good uh but i just don't know if i've got the time to dump into a big old rpg like that right because i've had tendencies lately with that kind of stuff to ooh shiny halfway through. It's always a risk. But how have you been? Fine. I've been pretty busy work-wise, so I haven't accomplished as much as I might have thought I would. But before going into that, I will say we do have some Patreon additions to thank. So hey, that's a happy thing. So we actually have one person, Brandon L., up to their Patreon level, so we do appreciate that. And then Adam R. joined our Patreon and someone who's used the name Butts with a Z joined. So we've got the butts. Butts. Butts. So firstround.com slash eclectic underscore gamers if you want to support the show. And we have a tier as low as $1 a month, unlike all those other podcasts that have higher tiers like $3 and $5 and $10 a month. Not us. One. One simple dollar. One simple dollar. Been playing some Yakuza. Actually, I was playing that when Tony came over for us to start doing the recording. But I do want to put in a little plug. there's a game that has fallen into shadow for quite a period of time called overwatch 2 which has been making some moves ever since marvel rivals which i put i have and i've still been playing marvel rivals um has been doing a lot of stuff and i think it's been forcing some innovation but one way or the other i do have to say the new season of overwatch 2 just came out less than a week ago and they have added a mode called stadium mode it is super fun is it yes so my daughter has been playing a lot of overwatch too okay so stadium mode it defaults i i switched it to first person shooter midway through the first game but it defaults to the third person and part of that is for because of everything going on so it's a it's a 5v5 but um it's a reduced roster at least currently so it's not all the characters but you have your you have a tank two dps to support once you lock in you cannot change and then a lot of the stuff that i guess was kind of promised theorized speculated expected with pve is in there so you activate an ability out of a list of like 16 and then there are talents that you spend coins on that you earn during the game and there are weapon talents ability talents and survival talents and there's just like i mean there's dozens of them. So you customize the build. And the abilities every couple rounds you can unlock. So if you get all the way to round, this is best out of four. So you could go all the way to seven games potentially. First to four wins. The abilities you pick lock in, but any of the talents you take, you can sell at full value. So you can swap them in between games. So at the start of every round, it gives you an armory and you build out the specs that you want on the character that you can no longer change and so you just like go forth and do stuff like i haven't played as soldier 76 one of the characters i haven't played soldier 76 like the most prototypical like uh shooter character in the game right well one of his abilities as you know tony is a healing circle you can do a healing build where he runs around the circle follows him he earns rapid alt by healing other people the healing circle can hurt enemies too Like, he can do that. You can go Ash. The sniper can have a little bob, a little tiny bob. I don't know what he does other than be small. Moira, the support TikTok attacker type, she can take, like, multi-balls. So when she throws orbs, she throws three at a time instead of one. When she throws an orb, she'll throw the opposite orb at the same time. It'll do reduced effect, but she'll have multiple ones out. When she fades, she'll leave an orb behind where she's at. like so and that's just a like that's just a the ability setup you can also go in and i had a mode where i was i was playing as um i think it was arisa the horse and i just like i just turned her into like almost pure armor and shields i took a ton of survival abilities so that and gave gave her abilities to like every time she landed a javelin she would generate health she'd life steal with her attacks this you all this stuff it's it's madness it's totally mad and there's like an announcer talking to you you give it you can take abilities where it's like when you when you die three seconds later after the first death you res oh okay yeah you're auto-mercied just all that and again in between rounds the the applied abilities which not the not the ability abilities but the perks, I guess. And you can have, I think it's up to six or eight or something. So you're earning more coin as you go along, and the better you do, the more coin you also earn there as well. You can, if you do super-duper well, like the other team is terrible, there is a mercy rule where you can be done in three. If you've won all three in a row and you've earned enough points ahead of the other team, it'll just be like, it's done. This other team is not worthy. So just all that. Mercy rule. So, again, I know I'm saying a bunch of stuff that a lot of listeners do not care about or don't understand. Reaper, DPS, that can tell. You can give him a – this is like an early one you can easily give him. You can give it to every time he teleports, he teleports into Blossom. Oh, Jiminy Christmas. It's a reduced damage Blossom, but it's a Blossom. Yep. You can do all sorts of things. Moira can fade, and if she fades through someone, they're 50% slowed. but just there's all sorts of things uh ash dynamites that when the dynamites explode they explode into more dynamites uh just just all sorts of anyway so it's a war crime bill yes yes yeah she basically we don't like her uh may turns into a snowball when she cocoons you can control it and hit people with it and roll around as a giant snowball so she's as terrible as she was back when the game launched as overwatch one it's so it's it's it's really madness because there's so many different things you can do you basically can't memorize you know until you see what the other team is doing it'd be just like you can have a genji and the genji will be dramatically different between the two teams because of the specs they choose right so anyway it's it's a lot of fun because it's just it's really maddening i have heard though that switch does not play this mode well uh ps4 cannot really play the mode and i've even heard people say their ps5s have overheated pc and xbox supposedly aren't having too bad of a time but there some people have reported frame rate drops and stuff because there's just so much stuff like Dixie Reinhardt can flame strike and his strike leaves the torbjörn molten lava behind Oh, that's so awesome. And D.Va can do the same thing with her, I think, with her boosts or something, where she can leave lava. There's several characters that can leave lava. So you can leave stuff everywhere. Yeah there all sorts of things that can just start appearing Again it just a question of the abilities and perks you choose Anyway I going to give a plug for it because it is the freshest thing that they have done This should have been Overwatch 2. I'm going to say that. It's a lot of fun to do. Okay, so quick hot take. If somebody hasn't been playing Overwatch 2 or Marvel Rivals right this second, which one would be the better one to install and play? Oh, gosh. That is an interesting hot take. I will say Marvel Rivals. Emma Frost. Emma Frost. Yeah, she is in now. Yeah. And she's not too hard to play. There's a bigger roster. You're going to know the characters, so I think it's going to be easier for you to get in. And one of the main things that I would say about it is there are a lot of losers in that game. Like, they don't know how to play. so you're going to have a better chance of actually getting wins and stuff because there's just a lot more people that have no idea what they're doing in Marvel I think more and more people because it's free to play people are very easy to adopt Overwatch but there are a lot of people who have played a lot of Overwatch so it's very easy to get schooled really quickly it's not like Rainbow Six Siege bad where it's like if I go into Rainbow Six Siege I'm like you don't belong here you didn't start launch year you do not belong in this game it's not like that But yeah, again, there's a huge roster and stuff. I mean, they're just, yeah. So I'd go ahead and say, yeah, if you had to pick between the two, I'd say try Marvel Rivals first. If you like it, go ahead and give Overwatch a try after that. That'd be my recommendation. Okay. Because, yeah, I'm still playing Marvel Rivals. They came out with their new season just like a week and a half ago. Right. With Emma Frost and a new map finally. That's the one thing with Marvel Rivals that's still really frustrating. There's not nearly enough maps. It's very telling. and their system is not nearly as good as Overwatch. I have played where I have to play three matches to finish a daily. They've all been the same map and I've been on the same side of the map every time. Like your defense on Kakao three times in a row. And it's just like, oh my God. Put in some logic here. I've never had back-to-back maps in Overwatch. I don't think ever in the years I've played. I've never got Havana and then got Havana again, which is good because Havana is trash. I hate that map. It's the worst map in the game. Now that Paris isn't in there anymore. Paris was designed by cats. Literal cats walked on a keyboard and made Paris. Anyway, now that we've lost all of the viewers and the Patreon people are questioning their life choices, let us go ahead and jump into the pinball segment finally because we do have pinball news. Pinball, pinball, pinball. We knew this was coming. We talked about this on the last episode. But before we get into that, I think we have to deal with some email. We actually got an email from Doug. He emailed in because last episode, you'll probably recall, Tony, we had a conversation about should people buy King Kong or should they buy Harry Potter? And we had that discussion about how Harry Potter, they're not limiting the CEs. They just have a limited window, which I don't know how to interpret that because anything licensed has the limited window because eventually the license expires. So everything licensed has a limited window. Anyway, this is what Doug wrote. Hi, let me try that again. Hi, Dennis and Tony. Hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it. I think you are exactly right, and I think that is precisely what I plan to do. I will purchase Kong first, and since JJP stated that there will be limitless games, pressure is off. So, I may go for Harry Potter later, maybe years later, but not before playing it on location. Additionally, I feel much more comfortable buying an Elwynn game before playing it than Harry Potter. Let's face it, you already know Kong is going to shoot great. but can you guarantee that same confidence out about hp given jjp's track record i can confidently say no that's how he wrote it i'm telling you that's how he wrote it jjp's games are pretty to look at and have lots of lights but i want games in my collection that i enjoy playing that's the reason my collection has no jjp games in it before elton john their layouts simply were not are not designed to shoot well and i really don't and really don't make me coming back for more. Jaws, however, I would play this game and enjoy it as much on game 4000 as I did the first time I played it. I can't say the same about GNR. It just gets boring fast. On a side note, which is very subjective, I also dislike the giant LCD screen JJP Games have. The backbox art is a huge part of pinball and the history of the game. Replacing two-thirds of that art with a giant confusing LCD where it is next to impossible to find your score or what ball you're on is not for me. Dig the show. All right. Well, thank you, though. I will note in, I guess, the defense of anyone that might criticize it, Doug, that your side note, which was very subjective, did follow your main note, which is also very subjective because it was all very, very subjective. Not that I disagree. I was going to say I don't disagree. I like this point about the screen thing and where is my what ball am i on i still was it wonka i think it was wonka i never knew i basically were like when i play it in tournament at 403 club i just rely on someone else to kind of figure out whose turn it was because i couldn't figure anything out no and i i mean that's in the giant lcd screen i think there's a balance so that you still have the traditional back glass and stuff and then an lcd screen but when they're too big uh it does feel like it hurts the game overall yeah it's it's unfortunate but but otherwise yeah no i mean thanks for the email i i don't really disagree with you on anything yeah no i mean i've never owned a jjp game um i've been i've thought about in the past getting like a used dialed in and elton john was a lot of fun i could see getting an elton john maybe if i got rid of my star trek or something since it the layout room is reminiscent right and that's the thing is i i would say if i was going to own a jjp those are the two it'd be one of those two well if you don't want to own a jjp we have a couple of new games from a couple of other manufacturers that have just been revealed so let's go ahead and have a conversation about them we don't have to spend a tremendous amount of time on these because unfortunately as we warned everyone on episode 243 we were the last to know we knew we were going to be the last yeah so you've already heard everyone else opine about these you've probably already seen gameplay about them you've almost assuredly already seen pictures of them unless you're not primarily into pinball at all which is fine so let's go ahead and run over those i'm going to start with barrels of fun which launched dune i just like to say dune i do have a link in the show notes for people that would like to read about it uh nap arcades article on this is the one i have linked to but tony there's only one model okay you don't have to worry about an le or premium or whatever. Game design was a combination of David Van Es. and Travis Travis Moseman, who Travis also did the mechanical engineering for the game. The programmer on it is Eric Pripke. The rules were done with Bowen Kerins and Phil Grimaldi. Johnny Crap did the art package. They're currently expecting to build about 20 of these a week and the price to purchase it is $1,000 more than Labyrinth was. the game is $11,600, so not insignificantly priced. For our internal discussion purposes, Tony, you'll see I have a sort of a 45-degree angle shot of what the game looks like from a cabinet basis, and then I do have a shot of the general layout. So basically, what would you like to start with in terms of discussing this game? I know on the Discord and such, I shared links to like the trailers and stuff when it was being revealed and all of that. I mean, toy-wise, this one has a sandworm that rises out of kind of the center, really kind of the center left back portion of the play field. You can either, that sandworm can eat the ball, but it can also rise up with the ball on top of it on the mouth part, and that's to convey you riding the worm. And then you've got a lot of 3D sculpted sort of plastic on the right-hand side to convey the siege system um there is a there's a thumper that's kind of in the mid left far left side of the game it does thump uh and there is the harvester in the back left corner of the game so those are kind of like the main toys that your eye will be drawn to and otherwise uh i mean it does look very sandy a lot of blues and oranges used in the game like a like a born identity poster almost but um yeah i mean where would you like to begin i i i think it i think it looks fine. I mean, I like the sculpted plastics. I like the toys for the most part. I really hope the thumper has the proper thump sound effect coming when it fires. I can't remember which trailer or video it was, but it did when a mode was starting, you heard the thump like you would expect. It was a proper thump. I mean, I find that cool. I'm looking at the play field and I'm not i can't really tell if how well this is going to shoot not not to me uh i don't see anything that's jumping out at me and say what are you thinking i see it has it has one of those joyful uh upper flippers to hit a shot yes yeah um so it's interesting you brought up the geometry because yeah i had a i had a similar reaction i look at this and the geometry didn't look uh inherently problematic there was a media event day by the way we were invited to media event days i didn't respond to them because they were all during work week work week times and such but um uh the people who recorded at the media events they struggled just like how labyrinth is by all accounts a very hard game. I don't have a lot of time on Labyrinth, and my time on Labyrinth was very brief and brutal. People who have owned Labyrinth, I've heard opine that it is a hard game. For most people, they can't really get through it. And this did not look easy when we saw those media folks play. And unfortunately, at least at the time, last week when I was really paying attention to all of this, while they got a teaser trailer out, and they got an actual trailer out, Before the media event thing, they didn't have a gameplay reveal. They didn't put together a trailer highlighting gameplay. So you didn't actually see someone making shots in a structured environment. And they didn't assemble a live stream with high-skilled players making shots to really show you a lot. So that's the verdict's out. because obviously when you're first playing a game, it's quite possible to have a brick fest and then end up finding shots and finding out the game and it doesn't play nearly as hard as you first thought it might. Also, a lot of the assets, while they are getting them in, there's a lot of license or approval that was not yet ready. So a lot of the call-outs and stuff are not yet in the game. Stuff from the film, not yet in the game. So it was sort of hard to get a feel for that, I'll mention on the screen asset front. I actually really like the art package that Johnny did. Not so much the cabinet and Translight, which feels very formulaic to me, but I like the big center above the slingshot set piece where it's not like a whole bunch of little windows trying to convey everything from the movie, but instead it's just a shot of the Fremen on the sand. Yeah, that's nice. That looks good. I also like the apron. Oh, the apron's awesome. Yeah. I can't remember. Was that book cover art on one of the – Not my edition. It might be maybe an older edition. But regardless, that worm look, that's really awesome. I'm glad they didn't stick apron cards on it and just let it look all wormy and cool. Yeah. Toy-wise, the Thumper I think actually is a really great touch. It looks really – I think the toys look fun overall, I will say. I think that the worm, riding the worm, I don't know how often you trigger that. but it seems even slower than a Godzilla building drop. So we're kind of getting in the realm of Maverick Riverboat ball locks here. I worry like, yeah, that's going to be great the first, what, six times you look at it, and eventually you're going to be like, okay, well, time to make a sandwich. Sandwich making time. Yeah, because, I mean, it's just, you know. What looks cool up front, once you start playing and playing and playing, Remember, these are mostly at over $11,000. These are going to be in homes, not arcades. You're going to see it a lot. I even get frustrated with the Godzilla building drop, and it's not all that slow, but it's still a little. Actually, my biggest problem with Godzilla, as an aside, isn't that. It's when I have balls locked at the top, and then the game ends, and the building has to drop to release the balls. I have to wait for the building to go back up before I can start a new game. that's what you don't get your rapid reset i've tried if you want to let me and i'm just like you know what no make it go fast go boom boom so anyway um i don't know what your overall thoughts uh there i think the limit on this is going to be a thousand units so less than what they said they were willing to build the labyrinth but not tremendously less i i don't know that they sell Oh, a thousand. I don't know. I mean, at 11.6, that's my question. It's not inexpensive. That's high, and I don't know if the new Dune was that popular. I mean, it made a lot of money in the theaters. It did. It did. But so did Minecraft. It had some amazing visuals, and it was very good, even with Timothee Chalamet. He was, I thought, the weakest part of those movies. I felt like he was the weakest actor out of the cast. I just felt like he didn't have any personality. I think that's the thing. I've heard he's done very well in other films. That's really the only one I've seen with him. But I was not really impressed with his performance as Paul. No, I thought everybody else did a much better job. I think he got overshadowed. Maybe it was just that. I mean, there were some heavy hitter names. Maybe he was just. He may have done better than Christopher Walken. Yeah, probably. But like I said, yeah, he may just be – he's a fine actor. But then you've got all these huge names standing around. Being a fine actor isn't enough when you're surrounded by like titans of the industry. Do you think they should have had Patrick Stewart back as Gurney? And they should have had Kyle MacLachlan back as Paul. As Paul. I mean, Kyle McLaughlin looks the same today as he did back when he did Dune originally, you know, when he was like 45. Yeah, so he looks like he's in his 40s. 45 playing a 16-year-old. Yeah. It was a different time in the early 80s. The Spice, man, Spice rough living. It's rough living. it's just like the old old days where everyone started smoking and drinking coffee at three so that people in their look like they in their 50s when they like graduating high school yeah i saw on Reddit there was a picture of a side by side of some guy I don know who he is He looked all of 12 who supposedly I think in the photo was 34 And beside that was a shot of Sean Connery at 34. And I'm like, this is very different living between these two. It's like kids today like put on sunscreen and lotions and care for themselves. And Sean Connery probably had been smoking for 33 of his 34 years at this stage. So it's just very, very different lifestyles. So, okay. So Dune, we're kind of like, eh, it looks interesting. Yeah. All right. The next, the nether release was King Kong. The nether release. Nether release. Stern Pinball. Finally. King Kong, Myth of Terror Island. I mean, I can't dog on King Kong too much for coming out as it did, because I do think they timed their D&D release for EGP, and we can't expect them to always bend to our schedule for proper announcement. Right. But nonetheless, this time I have a link to an article at Kineticist in the show notes for those of you who would like to read more about this and look at some of the imagery. This is a cornerstone, so it's going to follow the typical pattern that you would expect. There is no price increase. All three tiers are the same price as D&D was. Pro, premium, LE. LE is capped at a higher number than D&D, but not back up to the old 1,000 level. They did 932 units. There's a reason for that. I think it's 1932 release of King Kong or something. No one cares. It is Keith Elwin design. Rick Nagel handled programming. Harrison Drake is the engineer for the game. Art is an interesting combination. So Zombie Yeti is now the art director for Stern, incidentally. So congratulations to Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) for securing that job. But this is a combination with him, Greg Freres, and Kevin O'Connor. And the reason is there was like a Data East version. I think it's the last image I have in our internal notes, Tony, of the Near the Flipper shot. There was like 10 prototype units or something were made of a King Kong game. So that art was used as a basis and incorporated into this version. so that's why you'll see like kevin o'connor on here because some of his art is in the playfield so anyway uh so that's why we have such a diverse uh mixture of artists involved in the project jerry thompson handled sound and uh for custom call outs they've for some reason gone with Brian "Q" Quinn from impractical jokers i i've heard he's done a great i i have not been able to hear this game very easily and appreciate the call outs and i haven't played it in person yet so i've heard others say he did a good job but they're calling this out as a highlight so i'm noting it here but i i i really don't care and it doesn't seem like anything to do with king kong in any way like i would have gone back to the i mentioned this over on the pinball show i just said just get i know it's i know this is a uh original approach there uh but just get someone who was involved in the peter jackson version to do some call outs get jack black get jack he's busy minecrafting he can do this dude come on guys come on you got such a first we mine yes then we craft is that what he said oh my god you didn't laugh at that you laughed at superman more i'm sorry um hey so so uh so um all right i have watched some of the the gameplay and stuff of this I know this is going to shock you. Maybe you've seen it yourself, but yeah, it looks like it plays awesome. All feedback I've had is highly positive of how it plays. Here's the thing. What is the thing? Let's just be honest. Until an L1 game plays poorly, there's no reason to be shocked. I know, but we have to say it. I mean, we have to cover it. I mean, here. I'll be the controversial one here. The devil's advocate? Dune has a better art package. Oh, I agree. I agree. Controversy! Yeah, I've seen some people push back on that, mostly people who are selling games. I'm just saying, there's a sameness to this rainbow color palette. And I didn't love the – again, the art quality is good, but I never loved the palette choice for Godzilla either. I've just – and that's bias from seeing other more desaturated approaches to Godzilla art that I think are really, really compelling. But Pinball still has this. We've got to catch the eye on location. And Sterns, Stern Pros in particular, do end up on location a lot. So perhaps that still needs to be a motivator for them, whereas a home-based game like Barrels of Fun Dune can go with a more restrained art package because they're not trying to draw quarters. I mean, it's an argument. I mean, I haven't heard that argument. This is me trying to give them a hand. But the bottom line is, as I agree, the Dune art package is vastly superior, at least on the play field. I think it's more debatable in terms of the cab art and stuff, which I'm totally fine with in this game. Toys-wise, again, it depends. The pros do look pretty stripped down. The gong shot is not a gong on the pro. Instead, there's like an image, I think, of a gong, like a plastic of a gong above the shot. Right. So you don't have to interact with the toy. The spider on the left-hand side, that actually is a really interesting little mech. The spider itself is not attached to a coil. What it's sitting on is a metal plate. So when the electromagnet underneath it activates, it makes the spider go. And look all creepy. Yes. And bouncy bounce. So that actually ended up looking really cool with those little bouncy bounce methods. There's the subway ball lock on one of the ramps. And King Kong can block that with his. He's got his Kung Fu grip hand, which yet again is another better implementation of the Kung Fu grip than JJP's avatar with the mech with the knife. which i continue to mock as one of the worst decisions it's like they should have just made that they should have just gotten rid of that mech like not even have the mech on there not give it a kung fu grip like every other choice was better than that i still don't know why they did it but other than to try and do something uh so um i have not really looked too much into the rules here other than you're you've got you know you're going along you're you're doing they've done like a custom animation approach rather than anything trying to clip from old movie which make which makes sense i thought trying to generate their their kind of own some some have pushed and i i will i will give credence to this push about again like using the old original king kong footage or something again looking at godzilla that's what they did is they went to that early era of godzilla films and got a bunch of clips right i just think like king kong they didn't have as many movies Correct, right. Like, what are you going to do? You're going to, like, do King Kong, and then you're going to jump to King Kong from the 70s and pull a clip from there? Yeah, it wouldn't have worked nearly as well doing it. There's not the continuity. And I will say, that's one thing, while we were talking about the color saturation, I can see in the art where it's almost like they went for a very much that kind of 30s pulp feel to it, like an old pulpy comic type thing, an old pulp novel cover type look. And I want to think, I can't remember, I heard someone else. This is secondhand. I didn't hear it with an interview or anything, but someone had conveyed like a desire to do like a like an art deco approach, which some of the like there's some building art on the play field, like further up kind of near where the spider is where. OK, well, yeah, because the. All right. Not to look, I'm not an art person. Like, I don't know a lot about art, but here's the thing. Yeah. The Empire State Building is art deco. So if you're going to include the Empire State Building, you've included art deco. When I see this art package, I do not see art deco. Art Deco is a very specific design language, and it's not what most of this is. Most of this is jungle. But I'm just saying the jungle is not Art Deco. Art Deco is – It's Art Jungle. You could argue Art Nuevo, which is naturally inspired, natural forms. I know this solely because the Vacheron 1921 is an Art Nuevo inspired watch, whereas things like the JLC Reverso is an Art Deco design, which is mechanical in nature, streamlined, smooth forms, embracing modern techniques at the time, plastic, bake-like concrete. That's Art Deco. Uniform symmetry. Bake-like. Yes, bake-like. I've had so much experience with old bake-like. Look, mistakes were made. That's all I'm going to say. That's all I'm going to say. Overall, I think they did a really good job embracing the kind of the world under glass. Not the greatest job. Most of the stuff, as I noted, is really there's a lot of jungle aspects to it. And again, you're fighting the T-Rex. You've got the spider. You've got all of that. You've got the gong. So when you start seeing things like a subway there, it's just kind of like I get where they're going for. They felt like they really needed to have some of that New York element in there because the story being told is still the general story we've always heard. Right, the original tale. All right, we've got custom animation. I thought the animations – I don't have any images of it. I thought the animations actually looked decent for what they were going for. I thought it looked – I think it looks fun. I know. What a shock. What a shock. But we should probably be able to play this one here on location relatively soon. They're doing the LEs first, so it would be a little bit of a wait. But I think maybe next month we'll hear one or more of our locations will have it. So I'm looking forward to it. But any other thoughts you had on it? No, I think that covers the highlights. Okay. Well, there you go. I know not the super depth of what some might want, but trust me, there are plenty of other YouTube channels and videos now showing you these games. So I don't want to belabor the point. Right. Well, it's one of those things. Until we actually physically put hands on it and play it ourselves. It feels weird to try and talk about something when I've not actually played it. It's hard to criticize the parts that would matter. Right. How it shoots, how the rules are. Like when we finally played John Wick and we were like, oh, no. Right. Oh, no. Because looks-wise, all right, I didn't love the art, but I thought the game itself looked okay. And then I played it and I was like, I just don't like this. Anyway, I don't want to be sad right now. So let's go to video games so we don't have to be sad. I do have a couple emails we actually got more emails this time on the video game front so Jeff emailed us and I noted it was specifically on the subject of Diablo 2 classic game it is a classic game he says I don't know if he said it like this but I haven't used my southern one in a while I've been a fan of the podcast for pinball for many years now I've recently gotten sucked back into Diablo 2 after a couple decade break after I got suggested a few speedrun videos on YouTube and I'm loving the easy mind free grinding on my Switch. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this game. Cheers, Jeff. What are your thoughts? Diablo 2 is the best Diablo game. I mean, it's the one I have the most time in. Yes, but I mean, there are, I still, to this day, I have memories, especially when it first came out and there was some seriously broken stuff. Like, I remember... Item duping? Well, item duping, yes. But, I mean, at one point you could, like, seriously stack skills to break corpse explosion. Oh, yes. So that you could end up, like, basically vaporizing the entire screen by holding a button. And you could beat bosses in, like, a second. Yeah. And there was a similar skill set up pathing that if you were very careful on how you set your skills as the Amazon, where you could beat the first boss in under like three seconds. Because you could stack up the rapid spear thrust thing just right if you built it just right, where you would basically stun lock the boss from the first hit and they'd just die. and they patched and fixed most of that stuff. But even after that, that game is still fun. That game has a ton of replayability. I think the only game even close to anything like Diablo 2 that I've really put that much time into is Torchlight 2, which is just another of the exact same type of game. And honestly, the only reason I had as much time in Torchlight 2 as Diablo 2 is because I was playing Torchlight 2 with a ton of mods, which I never did with Diablo 2. Okay. But no, I full-on understand. It is just grinding fun, enjoyment. I'm like you, Jeff. I've not played it in years, but I still have nothing but pleasant memories from it. Yeah, I put a lot of time in it. I didn't play it nearly as much. I haven't really thought about revisiting it. The main things for me is I kind of remember doing it like in LAN settings and doing groups. Oh, yeah. But it wasn't our main LAN game that I played. We tended to – we did sometimes, but there's a mix of games that one would do in a LAN and just in the world of – with Quake and like Warcraft 2 and Starcraft and stuff. Total Nuclear Annihilation. This one just didn't rise as high up. Ultimately, it just didn't get as much time played. It did have a high degree of replayability, including by yourself replayability, which gave it a lot of value. But I just started to drift into other games at the time. So it's still, I mean, I do remember it fondly. I thought it had a really cool aesthetic. I kind of hoped that, just loosely hoped, because, again, I'm not super passionate about it, that they could do a new Diablo that would get that same feeling back. But it may just not be possible. Yeah, 3 and 4 didn't do it. They didn't do it. Maybe they'll do a Diablo 2 remaster and it'll come out on your Xbox. So if I were to replay an old game, I would be more likely to go back and play the isometric file games and get back into those. Oh, yeah. Those were good. So. All right. Next email. Matt R. He wrote in. I'm not quoting the email because what happened is I actually got an alert on EGP email that we had a humble bundle gift. He submitted a copy of some game called Gato Roboto. Do you know this game? Gato Roboto. No, I've not heard of it. Well, here's the thing. So he basically, his email said we could share it if neither of us had it. And I was like, I went ahead and I just installed it because I decided you own everything with Humble Bundle, so you don't really get a say. Okay. And if you want it, I'll just buy you a copy. But I've added it to my Steam library last night, so I had it installed. It is installed now, but I've not played it yet. So my hope, though, is that I will provide some feedback on Gato Roboto on the next episode. It looks like cutesy and maybe pixely, so I figured you might hate it anyway. I do admit, a game's got to be really good when it's pixel-y. I've never gotten into the pixel thing. Yeah, it looked kind of like you had one of those more crude art styles. I don't know. Until I start the game, the game itself is pixels or not. But I'm going to say that so you feel good about me just taking it. That's fine. You can take it. Let me Dennis What I just took it I took Gato from you It fine I didn even give you the Roboto option Let me talk Let me finish What I just took it I took Gato from you And it fine I didn even give you the Roboto option Let me finish There's this beautiful game out there. Don't you say it. It's just so good. And you just play. And you can just play for a couple minutes and then walk away. Or you can play for hours. And it's so good. And it's just fun. and even when it goes terrible, you still feel happy having played it. There's this beautiful little potato game out there. It's called Rotato. Quick, bring me up a potato game. Don't want to hear it. This is terrible. It's terrible. This is bad stuff. This reminds me of when we talked too much about the Golem game and then I got it for Christmas and I had to play it. And it was painful. It was like I wanted to throw that game. It was so glitchy. I still think about it. I think about how ugly and potato. Maybe that's why I won't play potato. It's because potato face Gollum accompanied me for hours upon hours. I got out my capture unit. I captured the entire game. All of it. Edited up footage to get like all of 90 views with my super hard work on my experience playing Lord of the Rings. The Adventures of Gollum the potato. No more taters. I'm done with them. Taters are done. Never mention it again. that won't stop you but it's a suggestion have you suggested you're not thinking about my trauma have you heard the good word of rotator why don't you tell us about resident evil we need to hear about resident evil 4 But, Brian, trash. Video games. Other video games. All right. All right. Well, Resident Evil 4 Remake came out a couple years ago. I played it. It has hit 10 million copies, sold faster than any Resident Evil game. It's very good. And it was always a beloved game. Right. Right. So, yeah, just the remake has hit 10 million copies sold in two years, which is faster than any of the games have made. Like the highest selling Resident Evil games are only in like the 15 million range. So it's already so the remake is already closing in on that. So I would say that remake went over very well. And speaking of remakes, because I'm going to switch my notes around a little bit here. Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered. Yeah. I saw people were talking about it. I was like, what? Everybody's known it's been being worked on. I didn't even know he died. Yeah. All right. A little Norm Macdonald inspiration there. It didn't even – everybody knew it was being worked on. It was like one of those worst kept secrets of video games type thing. but literally there was like a leak and an announcement that, oh, there's going to be a trailer coming out. And then they dropped the game and the trailer at the same time. They like shadow dropped. They even remastered the horse armor. They remastered the horse armor. They kept in the line flubs. They kept in everything. One of the original primary designers behind the original game was interviewed after the remaster dropped. And he's like, it's like a whole new game. It's not just like a remaster. It's like they've gone above and beyond. To the point where I've heard people talking that a lot of the stuff they've done is feelers for stuff for the new Elder Scrolls. Interesting. That they're trying things out to see how it goes over in this. Some of the changes they made, they're seeing how it goes over in this because that's what they're looking to do in 6. Have you played Oblivion? I've played the original. Right. I wasn't asking you. You're too busy playing potato-based games to have gotten through this this quickly. Right. All right. I really liked Oblivion. I actually went back and played it after the following Elder Scrolls game. I don't remember which one that was. It wasn't Skyrim, was it? Yeah, it was Skyrim. Five was Skyrim. Okay. Maybe I did go back and play it afterward. But anyway, it was enough that I didn't feel too janky or anything. Yeah. Yeah, it was an interesting game. I did see an interesting thing because since it was this shadow drop, it wasn't expected. It wasn't on anybody's radar, and they just kind of dropped it out of nowhere. apparently there were like four mid to high popularity looking forward to like indie games that dropped on the same day and they're just like our sales are nothing like we expect everybody's playing elder thanks a lot oblivion guess that's what you've just confined the whole indie industry to. But Expedition 33 dropped the same day and they sold 500,000 copies. Oh, okay. So, it didn't destroy everything, but I don't know what that is. That's that kind of Frenchy game I was talking about back at the... Oh, I forgot the name already. Yeah. The giant robot mime head thing. No, I think this is great, especially for people who, I mean, it was a good game, just like Skyrim. I think Skyrim was better, but... Yeah, Skyrim, I actually remember the DLC more for Oblivion, where you went to the weird island. I don't know if you've played the DLC. I never played the DLC. There was a DLC one, and it was just, it was shockingly colorful and bright and vibrant, which is not how Oblivion looks otherwise, and it was just, this is a really interesting aesthetic choice, and it had a good sort of story. It was one of those instances where, I can't remember the name of the DLC just like I can't remember the name of the DLC for Bioshock 2 which Bioshock 2 as a game was a step back from Bioshock but it had like Minerva's Den DLC and it was really good like the DLC was great I wish the whole game had been like that anyway good for them I think Elder Scrolls is kind of like Final Fantasy people love Elder Scrolls even the bad games are good and this most definitely wasn't one of the bad ones. Funstock. Don't know that name. They're a company. They sell the Evercade retro consoles. Okay. So they're one of the, like, 15 people who make, like, retro consoles and emulators that look like the old Game Boy SPs and Game Boy Advances and a variety of other. A nostalgia dealer. A nostalgia dealer. they have stopped all orders and pre-orders for U.S. customers due to the cost of tariffs because they're going to increase the cost of the units so much. And they're not the only one. There's been like two or three other little nostalgia dealer retro dealers that have basically stopped everything in the United States. I bet a lot of their stuff is from, if not outright, just built in China. Oh, a lot of it's drop shipped from China. So that's the reasoning because otherwise people are – the way it hits is prices are just crazy. And we've been seeing that more and more. I know we don't really have a tabletop section right now, but a lot of companies in the tabletop world are pausing all production, and they're just selling what stock they have. Some companies have started layoffs. Some companies have flat out folded because shipments have come in that were ordered and then their tariff bill on the import is so high that they literally can't pay it. Catalyst Game Labs put out a huge thing. We're talking about they've been opening up international fulfillment centers so that they don't – because they typically ship everything to the U.S. and then ship back out. So they've opened up other fulfillment centers. So it doesn't have to pass through us. So it doesn't have to pass through the U.S. but there's a whole lot of Kickstarters that have basically just said, all physical rewards are on pause. We'll let you know. So that's kind of that whole zone of the stuff is being affected right now, and we'll see how that turns out over the course of the next several months. All right. But I thought we'd be in with happy news. Yay! Switch 2. Antonio Cruz Control finally went on presale in the United States. The worst kept console secret ever. And then, of course, the delays from the tariffs on the presales had haunted many American and Canadian. And Canadians. But they finally went on presale, and it went real bad. Yes, I heard. I mean, it went real bad. And like apparently some storefronts, specifically like Target was the one I heard, they would let you put it in your cart and go to your thing, and they would let you pay for it, and it would be all good, and your preorder would go through and everything. And like 20 minutes later, you would get an email saying it was canceled. You'd get your money back because they didn't have any way of – they hadn't put anything in place to like say it was sold out so you could go all the way through. other places had things where people like literally refreshed and it was like instantly sold out their screen went from goes for sale in three two one on sale sold out they never had they couldn't even click the buy button uh but yeah no they it has been just as terrible as we thought uh it would be so there's no surprises i i know someone i mentioned on discord that they got a pre-order in um they're asking they would been successfully able to get one in i didn't even try uh since we'll end up with one if not two at the house eventually but there's nothing at launch uh that we feel the need to get it uh for so we'll probably aim for more like a christmas type thing for that. But one big change that did get announced is the accessories prices were all increased due to tariffs. They did not increase the console prices, but the prices of all the accessories were increased. And there are reports that they're hoping to get more stock in place before launch, so they might have pre-orders reopen. I don't know if it's a thing where they're going to announce pre-orders are going to reopen or if somebody will just randomly click on the thing and go, Oh, look, it's not sold out anymore. So we'll see. We didn't really talk about it when we talked about the Switch 2 announcement party, but part of Nintendo's thing is they are releasing a completely different version of the Switch 2 in Japan than anywhere else in the world. They're releasing a Japan-only version that will only play Japanese games and can only be accessed with a Japanese Nintendo. Yeah, I've heard about this. Yeah, I didn't really bring it up and talk about it. Well, because most of our audience isn't in Japan. Correct. I didn't think it was a big deal. But the other thing is it's cheaper. Yes. I know someone who really was planning to get a Switch, and they were quite annoyed at this sort of, It's like how Jackson County residents get to buy cheaper chief tickets. Exactly. And it's like, what about us? Right. I mean, because it's not like, oh, it's $10. It's like $100 cheaper. Yeah, significantly. Like where everyone had dreamed it would have been priced at. Right. But that has its own problems because it means they have to have a separate manufacturing line, obviously, where they're doing the differences. but nintendo opened up uh their pre-orders as a basically it was a lottery system where you went to nintendo's website and you applied and you got into the lottery and then they pulled they they pulled you know okay numbers at random they had 2.2 million people enter the lottery. That sounds high. It was way more than they expected. Like more than double their entire stock of the Japanese ones that they had planned on. And they're working on getting more. But they flat out came out and said, we're completely overwhelmed by the desire in Japan for this. We are. It's going to be a while. Well, at least they said something. Yeah. No, I mean, they did, but it was way over the top. We also got some more confirmations of stuff that we'd heard about, which is the stuff that initially made me hate Steam back in the day, as Dennis will remember. Yeah, I do. Me and Pepperidge Farm. A lot of the majority, actually all but one confirmed third-party Switch 2 launch release, is using their physical release cards are game key cards, which are their announced cards where all that is on it is a game key. It says you have the game and you can download the game. There is no game data on it. Right. So you can't plug it in and just play the game. You have to plug it in and then download the entire game. There's zero purpose to buying a physical thing like that. Exactly. the only reason is it's still if it doesn't lock to your account you can still sell it yeah but since it's a code I don't know that it doesn't lock to your account that hasn't been confirmed I bet it does because how are they going to treat it different because I remember the civilization game the play by email civilization game we played I was so pissed off and I did not buy I did not buy another game on Steam for years because of it, because I bought the physical copy because I wanted the physical copy, and I installed it. All that was on the disk was the key code to install on Steam. Yep. Pissed me off so much. Dark times, those were. It was dark times. And now I'm Steam's living boy. And now you're downloading potatoes constantly. I'm playing with potatoes. They're fun. They're so much fun. Join me, Dennis. Join the potatoes. Well, I think we've reached the end of the show. We're talking about potatoes again. People can always email us at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. Please don't email about potatoes. Or you can reach out at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. And as I said back at the start, you can always support us, patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. We're available on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. We'll be back in a couple weeks. Will Harry Potter finally be revealed? will we know more about the locking mechanism of the physical copies on the switch too my gut tells me no on both but we will find out we'll find out but we'll plan to have an episode regardless so until then my name is dennis i'm tony goodbye everybody potato