oh my god i cannot believe we're back can you we are back isn't that amazing yeah let's not get crazy, everyone. This is degraded from every other week's show to twice a year. It's a twice a year show. So I used to say we were stampeding towards show 50, but that's going to be in about 2039, I think. Anyway, this is, of course, We Suck at Video Games. My name is Mal with me, as always. Craft Brew Sally. Yes, and this is Big Show 33. You'll remember show 32. I did by myself and that was about six months ago. Oh, man. Yes, the cobwebs are literally on the show as we speak. That's so sad. You know, and one of the things that is like this show now, okay, in all honesty, this show, we like doing it, but it just doesn't, we just don't do it. Yeah. And one of the things that hurts my heart is a lot of times we get emails or we get people that come up and buy our merch for the Pinball Junk Drawer. they always say, oh, I also listen to the We Show. Every now and then somebody says, oh, I don't listen to that. And I was like, yeah, I understand. If you don't care about the We, you don't listen. But when people say they listen, I feel like I'm doing a serious disservice. Right. Because they're listening. We're letting everyone down. We are letting everyone down. We're going to try not to let you down anymore. They've been lied to so often. I know. I don't even think they trust anymore. I think we need to make a schedule. I do. Every week we do something. That's my schedule. Yeah. Yeah. Well, now that I don't have to work long hours anymore. Okay, maybe. Hopefully. We'll see. We'll try, everyone. All right. So all that being said, I will start the show by saying this is going to be kind of a 2024 wrap. We're not going to talk about, we're not reviewing a show this, or a game this show, but we will hopefully get into a new routine. We have gotten one picked out to play. But yes. So, you know, 2024 was a weird year in gaming for us, I would say. Yeah. The biggest thing, now this is, we're talking about this on the eve, supposedly on the eve of the Switch 2 reveal from Nintendo. So we're doing this on January 15th, 2025. This is the show date. but the uh you know it's long been rumored that nintendo was gonna reveal the switch to all the details about the switch to blah blah blah so they've been leaked like there's been a lot of like information and images and stuff leaked but you don't know if that's nonsense or if it's ai generated now or if it's real you know you have to kind of wait till nintendo actually says hey we're having a press conference, hey, here's the new system. Is there a game show going on right now, isn't there? Is it CEC? C-E-S? Oh, C-E-S? Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. I don't keep up. I used to keep up with them when they, I remember the game shows used to be a big deal. They used to have like that, what was that one? It wasn't CEC. It was that one that had always had the booth babes and it was like everyone wanted to go to it, but then they just stopped having it. like it literally just, I went, you remember the name of it? You remember what I'm talking about? Even, I know it was a year. Well, every year there were, and then the, they always tried to outdo each other. And then like slowly they realized it wasn't efficient, you know, and then they slowly just tapered off and then it just became nonsense. So, you know, I did read an article that was kind of talking about, uh, there was like, everyone was kind of saying, uh, not everyone, this article was kind of noting that, you know, the industry needs for the Nintendo switch to, to be a hit. It's not like, and you know, like love them or hate them. Cause some people don't like Nintendo. I, we love Nintendo. Obviously we're a huge Nintendo. How can you not like Nintendo? I don't know. I don't understand that whole thing, but whatever. I don't, cause I don't hate PlayStation or Xbox. I don't, we don't own them anymore, but I don't care. Right. You know, I have a PS two. I had a PS three that we sold. Right. Um, I know, you know, PlayStation five, they're all, they're fine gaming systems, Whatever you like doing, that's fine. But I guess this industry's been slumping. And almost like pinball, the decrease after the COVID effect is dropping and dropping and dropping. But in the gaming thing, they're laying people off. They're closing down studios. It's kind of serious. Yeah. So everyone's like, look, because of Nintendo Switch 2, whatever they're going to call it. I hope it's not Switch 2, but whatever. If the Switch 2 Electric Boogaloo is a hit, then that's going to give an injection into all gaming. Would that be the Switch EB, maybe? Sure. Why not? You know, so I hope they're right. And for a more greedy reason, I hope that the Nintendo Switch is a hit. But I also hope the Nintendo Switch has a cartridge slot. Yeah. Again, for different reasons that I'm going to go to in after this segment. So did you read anything about the Switch 2? Do you know anything about it? I do not. Yeah, I don't either. I mean, I read stuff here and there, but again, I don't even know what to trust anymore. Right. Even if something's printed by IGN or a trusted source, you don't know where they're getting it from. Now, they might say industry leaders or so-and-so, but whatever. that doesn't seem to be correct information doesn't seem to be readily available even from trusted news sources anymore right I'm not saying that the phrase that makes my hair stand up but it's just like you're like okay well then what is this what are we going to see do you envision us buying it day one um maybe I don't know I don't know because I love the switch I think if it is if you can put cartridges in it I have a feeling we will buy it day one you think day one Well you know we might pre it just so You get wrapped up in FOMO fever Yeah, exactly. What happens if it's gone? What happens if it sells out? Oh, my God. We'll never see a Switch 2 again. Because you remember the Wii. Oh, I remember the Wii. Like, when we got the Wii, because we had pre-ordered it. And then I don't think that you could get them for a long time. Because we were sitting in line. And it was us, the dorks. We were at Target. Yeah, we were all sitting there. It was the group that we affectionately call the dorks who were all sitting there. And we were actually just like joking about it because we were so excited. But you had an in, which is how we got it. I don't think I did, though. Oh, really? I think we pre-ordered it because we got it at that Super Target. And I didn't work there, so I didn't really have an in there. Yeah, you used to be able to get games and stuff like that every now and then. It was fun. It was exciting. I don't see the Switch 2 being that. But you never know. Who knows? It depends what it is. Like the Wii, the Wii became kind of more, it got labeled casual and that was its death knell. But it was a fun, great little system for the time. Oh, yeah. We had so much fun. It was such a social system. It was. That was the other thing. People had Wii parties and sports parties, and it was just this neat thing that it was cool to play again. Yeah, and for us, it was every week because the dorks were coming over and you guys were doing your podcast. Yeah. So it was every week. Yeah, it was every week because back then we were doing the Bunch of Dorks show. So that was just an event. I would make something good for dinner. We'd eat. We'd screw around. and whatever exchange student was there would be playing with us. You know, it was always a fun time. Yeah. It was an interesting time. I remember that one time. I think it was, oh, goodness. Me and Tao boxing? No. Well, that was funny, too. But it was you, me, and man with no name. Oh, Ed Boon blocks. Okay, yeah. And it was, like, midnight or 1 o'clock in the morning, and we all were laying on a couch or in a chair, just like flipping the Wii mode because we couldn't stop playing, but we were all exhausted. Yeah. I love Ed Boon Blogs. I still love Ed Boon Blogs. It's a fun game. It's just a goofy game. I don't know. Like, I'm hopeful that the Switch 2 is a hit. I don't know if we would need one or not because we're so entrenched with the Wii, or with the Switch, but I always get the Nintendo Switch. Yeah. We're going to have one. Oh, yeah. I mean, if we're not an early adopter, sometimes early adopters get penalized, though. Yeah. The next one's come out and it's like a couple months later and they're like, oh, we fixed that drift problem and all this other stuff. You know, like you're kind of the guinea pig. Kinda. Yeah. You know. So we'll see. It might be awesome. Mm hmm. You know. Yes. Now we'll see. And then we'll probably talk about that a little bit more. even though this is a we show, we'll probably talk about whatever the switch to is, was, or will be as it kind of develops. This year I've learned some pretty harsh lessons. I tried to do something I thought could work and I will say to this day it still might work. I haven't given up on this. I've just stopped buying though because now I have like this. what I was seeing when I'm going into these retro game shops is the limited edition stuff, the limited run, super rare games. There's a couple makers that make this physical media. It's a capped number usually. And we're going in and out of these shops, and I'm seeing these crazy prices on these things. And I'm like, well, we're buying from these places. Why don't I get two and get one to keep and one to sell? it's a sound principle but uh i'm not good at dealing with humans is the that's the not good at haggling i think is yeah maybe i'm not i'm okay with it but i also get very frustrated quick and just cut all ties yeah like the first what happened was right out because now what was happening is as they were releasing and i made a few mistakes where i didn't realize these weren't capped yeah so we're stuck with these ones that are just kind of common but they're out there I was buying two knowing, okay, these are getting shipped from Germany or from all over the place. So you're eating the cost for shipping. So $39 game times two plus shipping. So I have this spreadsheet of what each game actually cost us and when it arrived and all that kind of stuff. And right out of the gate, I had a couple for sale and a guy arranged with me. I shipped it to him. and it was a decent price and we cleared good. It wasn't the home run because honestly, if one game you own becomes like one of those $6 or $7 game, the whole experiment paid for itself. Right. Times 10, you know. Those aren't around anymore. But, you know, so I'm watching and I go on price charting and I'm looking at, I have this all our collection in there and the sales collection, the stuff for sale. And I'm like looking, but I'm making the mistake of like thinking that's what they're worth and they're not worth that like now price charting should be a very relative number because it's scraping all the sales but I think everyone in these groups I'm in because I'm in the Nintendo Trader I'm in the Nintendo Switch Physical I'm video game collecting I'm in these groups that sell them but everyone either has the same idea or looks down upon you because you're doing that. Yeah. I don't know why. These weren't even games that sold. I've had a couple games that I bought that sold out immediately. But for the most part, you had a couple days to get these. They weren't like the 4,000 games went away the moment they went live. Yeah. That's kind of... And they cap them at two, so they know the deal. Yeah. You know. They're allowing it. Right. They're allowing people to buy two. Because if you bought 20, I would see that. If you're buying two, eh, whatever. Who cares? trying to get yours. And that first one went well The second one went terribly And I haven gone back since I have the stock I have it all very carefully wrapped in its own little area that is away from our little kittens But now I'm like, okay, so when do I start rolling back into this? Now I'm kind of hanging back going, well, let's see what happens with the Switch 2. Because if that one has the slot, the cartridge slot, and is backward comes back. They've already said it's going to be backwards compatible. But they could just mean digital. Why would you say backwards compatible then? Because it's a hook. You know. Like, who knows? You know what I mean, though. You would think it means that, but it might not mean that. I'm not going to use my jump to conclusion, Matt, until this happens, you know. Okay. If it is that it has the slot and is backwards compatible, well, then all of a sudden these things I'm sitting on, Well, now an entire next generation is there to discover them, and holding onto them might be the way to get tons of money. If it doesn't, maybe not. Like envision the Switch 2, some teenager or some kids start liking it and they're playing it, and all of a sudden they want to try and get all the catalog. Well, now we're sitting on sealed games that only had 3,000 of them back in 2021. one. Right. And that's ten years from now and they're like, holy crap. That's where the worth comes. But it's a very speculative thing. New games, there's a lot of people collecting them. There's a lot of people caring for them. The old stuff's only worth money because no one gave a crap. Everything was open, beat to crap. You wrote on them with marker. You traded them and gave them to each other. No one was like, oh, this is going to be worth money. You said that to somebody back in 81 or 85 when the Nintendo came out. I'm going to keep this sealed. They'd look at you like you were a lunatic. You'd be like, put him away. He needs mental help. Right. So, I don't know. Part of me thinks cut your losses, get back on eBay and get back on the marketplace and just turn these things over and use them for what they are, their product. Yeah. The problem with us is we haven't been on eBay in probably 15 years because... Yeah, I bought a couple of things on eBay. I bought a couple of 5678s things, signed records and stuff. But, I don't know. We have a 100% rating, so if we do start up again, it's not like it's a bad thing. It's just, I don't know. We'll have to talk about it. I don't mind selling these things and making some money. It's just all going to go back into the Elvira fund anyway. We owe the bank big for our latest pinball purchase. But I think we also owe the bank big for the things we bought. Yeah, that's what I mean. You know, it's, we'll see. I know. So something tells me no matter what, we should just probably start turning them over and selling them and deal with it. Like, I should be less of a baby and just start dealing with it, you know. The other part of that whole thing is we have amassed a Switch collection that's probably about 140 games, 150 games. We have a lot of games and a lot of really good games that are sitting there sealed, you know, such as seals. We have like so many, and I'm like, why don't we play these? And we come home tired from work and flop down, and I'm just too tired to even look at a video game, which is crazy to say that, you know. I don't know. There's a lot of interesting facets with the Switch. Yeah. Now, the last thing I had for us is, of course, I talked about it a little bit, I think maybe the last... I don't remember when we talked about it. The retro gaming Ed Boon, has it busted? Or is it just busted for me? Or is it... You mean... Like... Finding stuff? Oh, finding stuff is long gone. When was the last time we found anything at anywhere? Other than a couple dusty Xbox games and some Wii games. Like, we never find... You don't ever see anything out in the wild anymore. You know, that's... Well, I think what happened was a lot of people are, a lot of these game places have people out there looking for them. Yeah, because they know they can sell stuff. Maybe. I think that's probably part of the problem. The other part of the problem is everything became worth gold at some point because they watched like Pawn Stars. They watched those, what's that one with the, I thought moving your thing would eliminate that big thunk. Nope. Nope, just doesn't. Nope, it's a cattail. Ah, great. But the other thing is, and what's that one with the storage wars? So everything is worth, oh my God, a Nintendo game, that's worth $10 million. You're like, well, it's not. It isn't, but. And those WADA games where they have these, they send them out to get graded. Oh, yeah. And now that's like artificially inflating it, which now there's people that are collecting graded, sealed games. The subsets of this nonsense go so deep, it's like a look into insanity. You know what I mean? You're just like, holy crap. Now, if you can afford that and you want to do it, alright. There was that one dentist in Hollywood, Florida that had like... Everything is a sealed 9.0 or higher. He has this collection of sealed, graded WADA Nintendo games. No, you're saying WADA? Well, that's the name of the company. I guess there's two companies that do the... You can send a game. Like, we can take every game we own and send it to these places. And they're going to grade it, put it in that acrylic case, and send it back with a grade on it. Okay. You know. All those sealed Switch games, I could send them, and they're going to get like a 10. Or not a 10. Like a 9.4, a 9.5, because they're sealed from the factory. now that's a big gamble because we're paying them probably like 200 bucks or whatever the hell it costs to grade it and put it in that little case in the hopes that a sealed Switch game that's graded is going to be worth X amount of dollars I don't understand it but it doesn't offend me that this happens like you know like they always say like oh great games are made to be played and comic books are made to be read and all that kind of stuff But that this stuff been around How many sealed comic books are you know out there Were they sealed to begin with? Well, they put them in those plastics like those. Yeah. You know, I mean, not not the early stuff. Yeah. The early stuff was just junk. Everything was just junk. They needed all that pulp for war. They couldn't just have stuff sealed away. Think of the war. Take those baseball cards and trade them in to help make bullets or something. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know how that really actually worked. I know. Everything had to be for the war, rations for the war. You're like, okay, I guess. Now we just go to war with our bank accounts. I think we're rationing for that. So I don't know. I don't think the retro gaming craze can sustain, but maybe it will. I'm sure maybe it's just me maybe I've kind of gone past that and I'm like eh screw this but how many people are buying digital downloads of things instead I mean that's for no that's so it doesn't take up space but that's also you're renting they always say you're renting it you're not owning it I don't like that but I don't know I guess I mean modern kids does a kid nowadays care about any of that stuff I don't think so. Yeah, they don't own a single CD or record. They don't own a single anything. No. Everything's on a phone that gets discarded, and who cares? Yep. So maybe that's just our generation's viewpoint of a physical thing, and maybe that just goes away because who cares? Movies go away. Music goes away because nobody cares. Yeah. Huh. Right? Yeah. I mean, I would rather buy physical, but I've said that a million times. That's why I have tons of crap all over our house. Right. Our house would be empty. There's nothing. We just have one little main cabinet with all the games and all existence in it and one MP3 player with all the songs that's ever been listened to and nothing. Cats roaming around an empty house. Yeah. No, that's not right. No, that's not going to happen. I don't think so. So I don't know. So we'll see. I guess long story short, do you have anything else to talk about? We have an email. We received an email. Oh, that's right. The Amazing Rando. Yes. It was actually an email for our Pinball Junk Drawer. Well, so what we're going to say is this is an email that we're going to include, but we're going to do the actual email is going to be on our Pinball Junk Drawer. Yes. We just wanted to have a shout out to the Amazing Rando. The Amazing Rando. For taking the time to reach out to us. And said he liked the show. Yes, he said enjoy the show, the We Want To. All right. We're not going to say his actual name, but I think his email was something something. Rando was in there, and I said, well, from now on, he will be named. Henceforth, he will be called The Amazing Rando. No, it just says Rando. The Amazing Rando. He should change it. Well, that's an MST joke. Yeah. So that's, unless you're, write us if you're offended by being called the amazing rando, but I can't imagine you would be. So thanks for listening, and we are writing in, actually. We will be reading your email a bit more thoroughly on the main show, because that was for the beer selection, I believe. It is, yes. Everyone loves Crafter's Salad. Maybe we should have a beer segment on this, but then you'd have to do one every week. I don't think you can keep up. No. We could just do a thing where people can write in how many times you hit the microphone thing. It's just, that was me. The other two were Mishpail. So if you're out there keeping track, write in and just say the number three, because I have zero, as always. But someone else has a little bit more trouble maneuvering around that microphone stand. Hey, this is my first time with this, so give me a break. I will not. Obviously. I could never do that. All right, anything else? Are we going to actually get back on track with this week? I would like to say yes. I'd like a lot of stuff yes I think we should make a schedule okay well the schedule is get off our lazy butts and play games and we say we're gone too yes well what do we pick for next week it's like it's like ATV super challenge or some crap like that yeah we're going to surprise you next week but then I think we're going to surprise ourselves surprise well the older you get the more everything's a surprise every day I walk into work and I'm surprised because I forgot stuff from yesterday like hey look at that I'm wearing pants what a surprise no so yeah we'll be reviewing an actual show we'll be back on schedule whenever you hear us I want to say in two weeks but I want to say a lot of things right maybe it'll happen I hope so anyway thanks for listening thanks for making 2024 an awesome we suck year yes and you know the way stuff we do have other shows we have the pinball junk drawer we have slow robot a go go and we have two Radio St. Pete radio shows, one called The Indie Circuit, one called Sucky Bama Go Go. We are seeing some people buying up some of our merch. So if you go to silverballswag.com and search out the pinball junk drawer, we have some t-shirts and we have some pint glasses and we have some stickers on there. And who knows, if we start hitting some good stuff, maybe we'll have some We Suck merchandise. If you would like a sticker, just send us your... Yeah. send us an email with your mailing address and we'll send you a pinball junk drawer sticker and who knows maybe I'll send some personalized item from the house maybe you're going to get a wee fit in the mail I got a whole stack of them why not you never know what mysteries you might get in an envelope along with your sticker so if you want something wacky send us an envelope or not an envelope an email with your mailing address and we'll get one. Send us a self-addressed stamped envelope. No, that's never going to happen. I kid. If you send us an email with your address, we'll send you a sticker and maybe some surprises. All right. I got anything else to craft for Sally? That is all. That's all for me, too. We'll see you next time, maybe with a game review. That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over.