all right hey guys uh welcome back i'm here actually with chris this week we've it's been a while since we've done something like this uh so i just figured we would and and um just only because there's so many crazy news items right now with Arcade 1-Up, and Chris has some news to share, so I just figured it would be a good time to do it. So thanks for joining. Hey, how's it going, guys? Long time no talk to, it seems like. I've been stuck doing Argonist videos, and my daughter's behind me. Anyway, I've been beta testing this new game called Argonist and doing trailers for it and doing all kinds of stuff, So it'll be really interesting to finally get it out to the public and be able to play sometime here. And I think it's late summer, early fall. Maybe you can provide some footage and I'll put it in here so they can see a little bit of it. That'd be cool. Oh, yeah, absolutely. All right. So Chris was kind enough to give me a sneak peek. So I'm going to roll the trailer for you guys. Check it out. I've spent it all Falls over me Carried on waves Of blackest night Dark waters rise, rise over me Your spell of hope falls over me Unsalted wing, be on my side Dark waters call Call out to me Dark waters call Dark waters call Calling me home Calling me home When shall my hate of its fill? When shall it be placated? Never. we know exactly when the release date's coming. So pretty cool stuff. But we'll get back to the regular scheduled program. Hopefully you guys enjoyed that. So I do want to ask you about something. So one of the things that kind of killed my wallet this, was it this week now, was the two things, was the Star Wars pre-order for Arcade 1-Up and then the Marvel Super Heroes, the special edition. So I took a little dent in the wallet this week because of that. But what did you think about those? It was totally unexpected to me that the pre-orders were coming that quick. I didn't actually anticipate that at all. Yeah, I didn't expect those to come out at all either. I saw the special edition one that was coming out. Honestly, I like the blue better than I do the orange. But like on the trim? Oh, yeah, the trim, yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure I understand other than the trim what the difference is between... It comes with a certificate of authenticity or something like that. Oh, on the special edition versus the regular one? Yeah. So the things I discovered, and hopefully keep me honest on this, but it looks like the light-up marquee is one of them. So the regular one's not going to have a lit marquee. The special edition will. And that makes sense because the one they showed at E3 did not have a lit marquee. And then it's going to have Sanwa joysticks and buttons versus the standard ones, which I think are Sanwa clones. in the um or they're you know somewhat somewhat whatever's in the mk2 is what i think they're going to put in the in the standard version which those aren't bad the mk2 i don't did you leave your stock they're actually not that bad the only thing i changed on mine um is i added four pound springs to the joysticks to make them a little more um sturdy so and chris is a the resident mortal kombat expert so that makes total sense we're gonna get to that here just a minute yeah Yeah, so I think that's it. And the cabinet trim being a different color. The one thing that's interesting is, for some reason, it's being... I don't know if it's everywhere, but certain little articles I read, they call it T-molding. It's definitely not T-molding. If it's what's on the cabinet at E3, it's not T-molding. So yeah, the Marvel cabinet's really cool, I think. It's weird because I didn't... Did you get Star Wars? Yes. Hopefully Kim doesn't watch this. so i got the one thing i'm afraid of that cabinet will 100 be like one of those showcase case things like someone will come into your house and be like holy crap that's cool no doubt anybody will i just wonder like how much will i play them i think it'll be more of a conversation piece than it'd be a system i play a lot of because i feel like those games on an lcd maybe haven't fully stood the test of time i could be wrong that's kind of my i can i can i can see that you know It's weird because I remember when they were talking about the that it's gonna be the Star Wars trilogy and they were like, okay It's gonna have Star Wars. It's gonna have Return of the Jedi and Empire Strikes Back and I was like I've never played Empire Strikes Back I had I had never even seen Empire Strikes Back Until they had announced it and I was like I need to go find a video on that because I've never I'd never seen it And I was like, yeah Like I don't think I would have liked Empire Strikes Back this first Star Wars one was pretty good Return of the Jedi was a pretty cool arcade but Empire Strikes Back was just kind of like a rehash of the first one but it was I didn't think it was as good as graphics that's why I say graphics it's the different characters and and stuff you had to fly around I just like yeah yeah yeah actually the funny thing is that when I was doing um that video on all the I mean I was kind of on this Dreamcast kick where I started doing all this Dreamcast um these Dreamcast games and there's a really cool Star Wars racer game on the dreamcast and i didn't think it was cool when i played it by myself but then my son Ryan Tanner like picked up one of the because i have it in an arcade one-up the re-dream build and uh he's like this is cool and then he never says anything that i play is cool so i was like okay i'm gonna i'm jumping all over this because he never plays any of my games so then he's tried to teach me how to play fortnite but that's just brutal i i can't even i don't know i just can't do it i don't know You know, it's funny. My daughter I starting to get her into playing computer games with me And you know she been playing Left 4 Dead She eight years old She been playing Left for dead with me she loves left for dead uh then i was like well you know what if let give her something a little more a little more story so we started going through half-life 2 uh where you can play cooperatively through the whole game and she's getting yeah she loves she loves it and she's getting really far in it and uh she she's not having difficulty i like i thought she'd have problems with like there's a part where you have to you know get this hovercraft and you have to ride it around i was like there's no way she's going to keep up Totally kept up, 100%. I was like, oh my goodness, that's crazy. No way, that's cool. I just can't. I couldn't imagine doing that at eight years old. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, so you asked me about Star Wars. Did you pre-order Star Wars? No. You didn't? No, I don't have room for that. My friend Zach might have because he's a huge Star Wars guy. He's already talking about getting it and stuff and how his wife's going to kill him for it. So I did want to just briefly talk about this because having room for these is a big deal now, I feel like. For the people that went, because some people are getting on the arcade one-up thing now, right? So they're wave two forward. But I feel like the people that started with wave one, they may have had three cabinets now. So that takes up, you know, they're small enough, which is good. You can move them around. It's great. But, I mean, three cabinets still take up some room. so i'm wondering like i i if there's any opening for at games it's probably that because i do feel we've talked about this before in the past yeah people i think love the arcade one up because of the graphics recreating the graphics because a lot of people just love them and it's that nostalgia value and and it is cool from a collecting standpoint but at some point it's got to end you can't you don't have endless amounts of space so i do feel like there may two people like this I don't know do you agree that maybe there's two audiences there's someone that just doesn't care about the thousand plus games in one system because they just really love those games and that was like their nostalgia is tied to that so I I do truly feel like there's a market for both of these products um but I'm trying to figure out who I am I don't know like am I because I kind of feel like I have a problem when you have to have a storage unit to move your arcade one-ups too so i don't know which one i am because i want both i want to own both but i don't know i just want to get your take on that yeah no i you can see my arcade one-ups in the background over here they've got i've got three of them and they're they the one thing the arcade one-ups have uh that are really nice is that uh people who are ocd they're all the same they're all the same size they're all the same shape um they have different graphics on them and you can put your own graphics if you want to do it that way too but um they're they're uniform so if you get one of those uh at games ones it's not going to be the same uh so people are going to have issues with that um the fact that that games one as far as i know doesn't come with standard graphics that they are replications of other games not least yeah that we that we know of yet so yeah um at least i think they said it was going to be moddable or something like that you're going to be able to put your own graphics on it well let me tell you this really quick because this was weird so at e3 I didn't bring this up in the video, and I don't know if they told me I couldn't or whatever, but I think that's probably come and gone at this point. But the graphics on the demo unit that they had, it was a magnet. So that whole thing on the side was magnetic, so he peeled it off. And I thought to myself, holy crap, that'd be super cool as a product to sell. Imagine being able to just re-skin it at any time because it's a magnet. and he kind of like oh my goodness him and the product manager guy were kind of caught off guard because they're like well we didn't think of selling it that way this was just for the show and i go oh my gosh like that would be the this was when we were off the record i go i i just think it probably the cost wouldn't make sense because i asked him i said how does it stick to the side of the cabinet he said well the cabinet right now has like a thin metal layer that it's that it would stick to but i thought how cool is that and who knows maybe they will do something but I was like that's kind of cool because that is actually that's brilliant oh my gosh because then you can change it anytime you want it you have some Mortal Kombat news right I've got two things in Mortal Kombat news have you ever seen one of these does that have Mortal Kombat on it this one's Rampage right yeah yeah I've seen them before okay so Walmart sells a bunch of these um they've got Pac-Man they've got uh Joust they got Fix-It Felix and they've got Rampage and well it turns out Walmart's getting Mortal Kombat one of these no way have you seen it Is it MK1? Yeah, MK1. It's got six buttons and stuff. It actually looks pretty interesting, although it's weird because it's got the block buttons on the far right. There's two block buttons, and then it's got two kick buttons and two punch buttons. But I'm a diehard Mortal Kombat fan, so I can't wait. Apparently, there was some guy on Reddit who actually had one because he showed a picture of it when he was at Walmart, and he's like, oh, I'm picking this up. And I was like, because it's not even up on their site. Oh, it's not? Huh. No. so i guess what's that i would say they're just it seems like they're just coming out in spurts now yeah my buddy's daughter um liked wreck it ralph and i got her the fix it felix one of those and she plays it all the time yeah my son plays it too and he actually got through the first set of stages where you know they pick him up and they throw him off the building and stuff and so he's he's got through the full full first set of rounds and he's four and he absolutely loves it and i think it's a great game i think it's a really fun game i kind of wish that it had been a thing when we were kids so you anyways let's get to the mk news you know me i'll just babble for a million years so let's talk about the mk i'm fine so yeah so uh one of the cool things about um growing up in the 80s and 90s and stuff like that was you didn't hear that you know going to arcade going to arcades right you didn't hear that did you chris hear what you don't hear this get over here never mind i just when you started talking i played scorpion get over here but you don't no i didn't hear it get over here you don't hear it okay all right all right sorry okay add no that's fine so anyway uh yeah no i uh i'm growing up in the you know the arcade generation where we got a chance to go to the arcades i remember back in um you know the 90s where i would go to the arcade every day and one of the things i i would do is i would play mortal combat too and uh i played it uh it's the only game i've ever played competitively uh i would go there and challenge anybody that was at the arcade um anybody who was playing i would just walk up and put two quarters in and and you know join in and and try and beat them and i got really good there were only a few handful handful maybe two three maybe four people in indianapolis that frequented the arcades that could beat me and um that's pretty so yeah it was it was it was a lot lot of fun i mean i i played hardcore um i still do having the mortal combat arcade one up i play it like every friday we have a game night over you know somewhere and i usually am playing the arcade version somewhere can any one of the guys can any one of the guys beat you your your group of friends yes uh there are there are days that um my brother and my friend john uh they can just you know walk all over excuse me um they can walk all over me uh but there some days i can me beat it it it honestly is so weird it like the day like there something with that particular day um i can i can even explain it it like i can't win to save my life or no one can beat me and touch me and i kind of have to throw my game a little bit to at least give some guys some confidence of staying in there because if i beat them too badly they don't they stop playing and it's like well dang it i need them to to play so but regardless um the the memory the fond memory of actually going in and playing mortal combat 2 is something that is near and dear to my heart. So meeting Daniel Pessina recently, doing an interview with him, it kind of re-sparked an interest. I actually wrote a book for Mortal Kombat 2 several years ago. This one was the first iteration of that. It's an okay book. It's got probably 60 pages, 60 or 70 pages. But it was before some of the things that recently came to light, like the EBJ menu, the Ed Boon, ed jb menu the edward j boone menu that got revealed that you could actually into it and do all that stuff so it was like okay one okay so that book is missing that and um there's a few other things that i didn't cover in there like some of the rumors and things like that that were going around at least not in any detail and so i redid the book after the interview with daniel pacina and i wanted to make it so comprehensive that it'll cover things like arcade one up It'll cover all the iterations of the arcade versions, all the rumors, the story behind it. I wanted to get into an extremely comprehensive book. And I created that book, and it's actually up for sale right now on lulu.com, L-U-L-U dot com. And you can purchase that as an e-book or in physical format. It's 104 pages long. So the page count went up dramatically. yeah uh i believe the the physical book version is right at 30 and the digital version is 10 right now so are we gonna be able to put the link in the description for that or yep yeah i sent you the sent you an email with the links so you got them so you can put those down um and then uh so yeah so you can order that right now if you wanted to it takes a couple days to uh process to basically them to make it and then they send it out to you uh if you're a diehard Mortal Kombat 2 fan like I am, this book should quench that thirst a little bit. You can look through it. It's got sheets for a couple pages dedicated to each one of the characters. It goes and shows pictures of the actors that played them, what they look like now, as opposed to what they looked like back in the day, kind of what they're up to now. Yeah, go ahead. No, I just said that's so cool. Yeah, it's got a quick reference in the back of the book, So if you need to get to the special moves and fatalities, you can get to them really quick. I actually found myself doing that. I was playing with my son on this machine over here, and he wanted to see some of the friendships. So I was going through them like, oh, man, I can't – like I can remember a lot of the friendships, but there were some I just couldn't remember. I was like, oh, I need that book. So I grabbed it and checked the quick reference out in the back real quick, and it was really cool. So I think, like I said, if you love Mortal Kombat 2, this book is definitely for you. I think you'll get a kick out of it. I think it's completely entertaining as far as keeping your interest. It goes into all the special characters. Like I said, just the rumors alone is a really cool page. I've got a two-page spread with the arcade one-up information, and it's also got the codes on how to get to the menus, so if you need to get to them at any time, for each one of the Mortal Kombat games, the EJB menu is in there too for each one of those. That's awesome. I feel like all the mystery around that game, all those weird rumors it was a different time then because in the arcades you almost like this box shows up and it plays this game that you've never seen before it's not like you could go like call up the developer you a lot of times their name the only tie you had to them was that if you beat the game or if you sat there and watched the intro menu you might see their names pop up but it's not like they were as accessible as they are today so it was like i feel like video games in general were just more mysterious at that time but then to pile it on if you have these rumors there was no real way to validate it so they just kind of kept spreading which made for even more bizarre rumors which is kind of cool yeah yeah so there's that's like i had i actually found and what kind of one of the things that helped me uh spur me on to make this book i found my original sheets that i used to sell at the arcade for a dollar a piece they were four it was four sheets long but it was in that uh dot matrix paper so it was all perforated but it was is there any way that you can send me some pictures of those so i can put those in this video i do have pictures of it okay cool because i think that'd be fun for people yeah i've got pictures so were you making on that were you making money on that back in the day or dude i was banking i was paying for my entire uh addiction to play mortal kombat 2 with the arcade was it funding your was it funding your gameplay pretty much is that how it was but there's this really really funny story behind that not only was i were i documenting like all the uh the you know what we thought were animalities what we thought were new dallas what we thought were like all these different things uh these black raiden and uh new nobo saibot is what we thought originally thought his name was and like all these different like things going on but uh i would sell them for a dollar a piece and we would i would make a lot of money i would you know make 10 or 15 bucks every time i go to the arcade and then i went to the arcade right next to my house um and when i was selling it one time the manager came out and he was like hey you can't sell that here and we were like we've been selling it for weeks like what are you talking about and um so he he grabs me he grabs me and my friend and he walks us out to the front of the the store and we're like really we're getting walked out for a buck like really what's going on and then he he we were he pulled us out there then he leans in real close and he's like so those are only a dollar can i get one does he say can you get yeah yeah yeah so we sold it blind out we we weren't allowed to come back for the rest of the day we'd come back the next day or whatever but he bought one off of us and we had a good laugh as we were leaving the arcade that day that's so funny i do i do um you know just you talking about that story and and just mortal combat the cabinet and all that it does i think part of the reason why i enjoy all these cabinets and everything is the is just i miss those i miss those times and there are arcades that are popping up now but they're more like arcade bar kind of things but um yeah you know i mean it's fun it's just you know it's still not the same but there was something yeah i was kind of thinking about uh you hear this a lot when people talk about arcades like they were kind of gross in a way like no one was really cleaning them that well you know at least the one i went to so it was just like but that was all part of the whole atmosphere, right? There was a little bit of a... I hated going to arcades and getting shocked by pinball machines. Did that ever happen to you? We were doing something metal and it's like, like, what the heck? I plugged in a Q-Bert machine when I was like six or seven so I could play it and the first time I was ever electrocuted it, it hurt bad. I was like, oh my gosh. I think it actually made me not play pinball for a period of time. You get scared of stuff like that when you get electrocuted. I don know Oh yeah I know It like what else is gonna happen You know you afraid to touch anything at that point But yeah no it was a good time And like I said the book is to help relive those times I recount a couple of different stories we had in the arcade Every time I hear Tom Petty, I think of Mortal Kombat 2. And that's such a weird thing to say because one of the arcades I went to, Fun City, over here on the west side of Indianapolis, they would always be playing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers CDs in the background. and every time I hear like three or four different songs from that album like in my car or whatever it just reminds me Mortal Kombat too when I tell people that's so weird we're tied to Mortal Kombat all right well well congrats on the book that's really cool and I'll definitely provide links on where people can get it I think that's awesome I got I got a chance to glance at it I didn't get to read the whole thing all the way through I did order it so I'm planning on I don't know I'm weird with books I like to actually like have it in my hand to read it I don't know I'm not a weird i'm not a like big digital digital reader i don't know i'm just not even though i have e-readers but um well we try i definitely try to make this more visual um there's a lot of visual to it uh you could you could skim through it if you wanted to and get uh get a lot out of it it's got a couple things with the comic book and the merchandise and things like that they were selling at the time so yeah yeah um so i guess to wrap it up the only thing i was going to talk about is i know i'm being kind of like vague and weird about this uh oh your project the special project but i'm not gonna even share much about it here but it was just uh i just kind of noticed myself not being bored by arcade one up but it um you know i think when we first when i met you and and things were starting to get rolling for arcade one up it was it was kind of like still a relatively unknown thing like not that many people knew about it like we seemed like it was a relatively you know this this thing everyone knew about but really it wasn't i mean it was pretty low key in the beginning and i just feel like now and this isn't anything against i mean obviously everyone has the freedom to do whatever they want on youtube but i just like noticed that there's so much content and so much repeated content about arcade one-up and i just was like you know what i think it's time for me to do a project that isn't arcade one-up related and i've done a lot of like little things so it is an arcade project it's not arcade one-up related and but it but it's but it's really cool Like it's a, it's a really, it's a very unique, but it's a very time consuming project. So it isn't like something where I bring it home, unbox it. And in 45 minutes I'm using it. This is like probably going to take me a week and a couple of days to finish, but that's just cause I can't work on it day in and day out, but it's, it's going to be pretty neat. I think, I think people are going to really enjoy it. Yeah. It's going to be really cool. And you can try to ask me questions, but I may or may not answer them. So if you have some, I'll, I'll potentially field them. Yeah. Nope. Nope. I already kind of know what it is, so. Hey, you be good. But yeah. The Mortal Kombat 3 book, obviously. Yes, I'm writing a Mortal Kombat 3 book now. I actually, yeah, no, I'm not doing that. No book, speaking of books, and this is something I'm sure you just can't wait to be released, but I actually am excited about it. I haven't heard much about RGT-85's 32X book. Oh, yeah, the 32X book, yeah. But the 32X was just such a weird thing that I'm just so interested because I think his plan was to interview a lot of people that might have worked on the project. So I liked it, but for I don't know what reason. I think it's just because it was Sega and you know, you'll bust on me. It's just anything Sega I just liked and it didn't matter if it sucked or not. I just liked it. True fanboy. I wouldn't say it sucked, but I think at the time, I don't know. Consoles were going through a transition. It was neat to be able to push a little bit more out of a Genesis, I guess. But it was short-lived. Yeah, you'll be proud of me. I actually watched the whole documentary on the 32X and the Saturn. So, yeah, it was like all the stuff that was going on with the history of that. And I'm up to par on it. I understand what was going on. And the Sega of America did not want to push that at all. they really didn't they were like no this is not a good idea and they were like sega japan was like do it okay they they had they had the shia labouf came out and they went just do it you've seen that video right oh i've seen it um i thought about a million times working him into an intro but i don't know if there's like legal reasons why i can't i don't know i mean he's on it's on the internet everywhere but i don't know anyway that's all uh that's all i got chris what else what else I'm going to Gen Con this weekend it's going to be awesome four days of gaming the biggest gaming event in probably America as far as tabletop board gaming and card games and things like that and Farron's going to go with me I'm going to start teaching her how to play some games like she went with me to do an escape room last weekend did you guys get out? we did too the first one we didn't get out we missed out by three minutes and the second one we did get out with 15 minutes to spare so it was pretty cool I'm a huge escape room guy. I absolutely love it. I just did a virtual reality one with my brother a couple days ago. Oh, nice. It was a blast. But yeah, we're going to be doing that this weekend. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be four days of nonstop walking and playing board games and doing all kinds of stuff, crazy stuff downtown. It's going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, so cool. And the only other thing... We're going to the Batcave, aren't we, Dad? What? We're going to the Batcave, aren't we, Dad? We're going to the Batcave. we call the the uh parking garage is the bat cave i thought that would be your brother's house because he is obsessed with batman which i don't know if a lot of people know that but chris's brother literally is obsessed with batman so yeah so yeah if you see on my shirt like he's batman yeah um yeah the only thing i wanted to mention is i'll uh even though i'm a little bit uh yeah it'll be interesting but i have that um panel at game on expo which is next i think it's next weekend already so that'll be it's not this coming weekend but it's the next weekend so uh i'm looking forward to that it's a panel of one it's just me it's on sunday and uh apparently there's a typo that says it's from noon to one o'clock in the morning so i will not be talking from noon to one o'clock in the morning because that would you do like to talk though i do but that'd be brutal so uh so i'm looking forward to that so if anybody is in phoenix or planning on going to that it'd be cool to see some people that uh that we you know watch the channel watch the retrospect stuff be neat but yeah that's all i got for right now i'm just uh i gotta get my kids in a couple minutes and then i'm gonna work on that cabinet like or whatever it is tonight sounds good sounds good all right chris well i guess uh anything you want to plug before we uh before we maybe arganist stuff or anything uh we well we got my book we got uh talked about arganist um we'll we'll hit up arganist here shortly when the second trailer comes out okay alright well that's it guys thanks for joining and we'll see you on the next one take it easy guys Outro Music