Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, February 15th. It's the day after Valentine's Day. And here we get to talk about the love of video games and pinball. And maybe tabletop, but not today. Not today. There's no love for Tim. No. I just, I play so rarely anymore. There's only so much time in the world. This is episode 265. My name is Tony. I'm Dennis. We're here. We are. I was trying to think, have we finally, I think we've crossed the threshold, so it's been 10 years now. Yes. Yes. Because it would have been like- It was like end of January, start of February. End of January, start of February. Yeah. Okay. Well, happy anniversary. Happy anniversary. Yay. Happy anniversary. 10 years it only feels like 5 maybe I try and think back to the format early on how long did we do the tabletop as a consistent segment it was at least a year did we do 2 maybe at least a year because at the time I was attending a regular tabletop session so that made it a lot easier And then life finds a way to ruin life. And things had to give, and that was the thing that I chose to give out of all of the stuff that could give. Indeed. Now I go to a convention like once or twice a year to get my tabletop and RPG stuff. I'm actually because we've used OneNote for so long I jumped into our archive and just now loaded up episode one's notes because we have them I like this intro introduce ourselves talk about what we have been doing in general lately aka movies, books, etc before moving on to primary topics pinball talk about upcoming game releases Spider-Man Vault Edition was discussed. Wow. Alien from Highway Pinball. We talked about Hobbits from Jersey Jack. We discussed the Big Lebowski from Dutch. We also talked about Rob Zombie from Spooky. Here's the thing. We talked about Big Lebowski from Dutch. We did not play that game until like two years ago. Yeah, it was about two years ago. um in video games uh on the been playing list we were we talked about binding of isaac that was probably me oh it's that is such an interesting tie-in because i've been playing eugenics which is the new game from the creator of binding oh that's okay yeah i saw that was in your intro notes this time um pony island that wasn't me that was me that's that was that That was that weird playing a computer meta. It was in that big round where they had all sorts of meta games where you had to do weird stuff, and it interacted in a weird way. Star Realms Mobile. I still play that on occasion. That was you. Tharsis. That wasn't me. I don't know that in a game. I don't even remember that game. Darkest Dungeon. I do still play that. Well, not in a couple years, but I've played that. There's a second one out. It's really good. Fallout 4. Yeah, we played Fallout 4. Massive Chalice. I remember the game. And Tales from the Borderlands, which I did not end up playing, but I'm familiar with. Yeah. I didn't end up finishing. I played the first couple chapters. Your list of 2015 best games. Fallout 4. Grey Goo. Grey Goo was a good game. Sunless Sea. Also a good game. Rebel Galaxy. Also a good game. Well, it is your best. Rebel Galaxy is interesting because it's like a space combat-y little fun game, but it also has a very old-school track or Firefly feel to it where it's got a very cowboy bent, and the music is all country music style type stuff, and it's got a very country and western kind of feel to it for being a space game. Tales from Borderlands and Planetary Annihilation Titans. Okay, I can see that. I'm still playing variations of Planetary Annihilation because Planetary Annihilation was a variant of Supreme Commander, which was a variant of Total Nuclear Annihilation. Games you were looking forward to. XCOM 2. Yeah, that did hit its 10-year. I just read an article about it hitting its 10-year. And, in fact, the notes do indicate we did this on Sunday, January 31st of 2016. So, we have passed it. And what a shock. Battle Tech from Harebrained Schemes. We've got, like, 2,500 hours in that game. Tabletop. I've played more Battle Tech than some jobs. jobs i put more hours into into battle tech than some jobs i've worked in in in my past and then in the tabletop the games looking forward to were secret hitler and planet mercenary and that was basically all we had on tabletop back then on the first episode so secret hitler was fun planet mercenary was fun planet mercenary is the schlock uh rpg game where basically you play like a squad commander and you would have uh your health points were your your squad so the people who were with you as like meat shields and you'd write out information about them and like make them real people on like three by five note cards but if you were going to get shot one of them would take the bullet for you and then you'd have to rip them up so anyway it's now 10 years later we're we're so much more experienced so you've been playing eugenics i've been playing eugenics yeah That's what was interesting. Mugenics is the new game from the creator of Binding of Isaac. It is a very XCOM 2-ish turn-based tactical combat thing. But what it amounts to is your characters, your players, are cats. They earn skills and stuff. They can only go on a single adventure and then they're retired. They can't go on any more adventures. So when you beat whatever you're doing and you go back home, they're retired and they just live in your house because you're a cat hoarder. And then they get together and have kittens. And then your new adventurers are the kittens who get abilities from both parents. So they get stats from both parents. They get skills from both parents. So it is literally a breeding game where you play the game and you try to breed better and better cats with better skills so you can go farther in the game. It does sound fun, but as a former master Chocobo breeder, I was very much on perfecting the lines for proper Chocoboism. You spent a lot of time on the Chocobo breeding. Yes, I bred them for speed, flight, and hate. They were the three things I think you need in a good Chocobo. What is Rouge Trader? Me misspelling? Oh. Yeah. I've still been playing Rogue Trader. I only trade reds. Red is the god's color. No, I actually – no, it's a new cargo simulator where you work and develop different types of cosmetics and then raise – no, I've been playing 40K ProTrader still. Yes. So I just – basically, I played a bunch of that like all of last week, so the week right after. And then this week, I was playing some of it, and then I started playing Mugenics when it came out. So it sounds like Mugenics will be very distracting. It could be. It's very it's interesting. I've been enjoying it. Cool. So what have you been up to? Not a lot. I've made more progress in the Jedi game. I'm on Jedha, which I hate that planet moon or whatever it is now. Like, we're going the back way. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, the platforming is just I finally had to look one up. And I always feel so stupid because it's like, oh, you didn't see this. The marks to run on the side of the wall right beside you where you're at the moment you pause to look this up because you've gotten mad because you've fallen 12 times. I'm like. I can do it. I just I don't always see it because everything's brown there. It's a sea of brown. It's all brown. So I'm chipping away at that. But but I have made progress. So speaking of progress, we actually have a pinball segment. And we have a couple of things, but we will start with, well, we'll almost start with the big news, which is Stern's new reveal and release. However, I do want to note that we were reached out to, perhaps by a certain Stern insider, to let us know. We had asked the question when we were having the conversation about where is Pokemon? What is going on? When was the last time Stern Pinball didn't actually get a release out in January? And the response was Foo Fighters. Foo Fighters did not drop in January. That's more recent than I was thinking. It was. They qualified a maybe you weren't thinking of impacts due to the pandemic. And I was like, no, I was thinking of everything. So I didn't remember that that was not revealed in January or in December to come out. It didn't come out in January. So there you go. Actually, it has happened fairly recently. So this is not all that new. This is normal. This is basically – yeah, this is basically – We're just reaching for a controversy that's not there. Yeah, yeah. So while it may not be the majority of what happens, this is not outside the realm of realism based off of what we've already seen from the company. However, Stern Pinball has finally revealed Pokemon Pinball. I do have a link in the show notes for people that want to read more. So in this instance, I've gone ahead and I've linked to the Kineticist. They have a pretty in-depth article talking about it. the modes kind of the approach of the game and all of that i don't know if you what you've seen of pokemon because we haven't talked about it at all this last week um in terms of if you've seen the game trailers or okay i've seen that i i did watch a little bit of uh footage from uh travis murray with the pinball company actually had a video i don't have the link in the show notes because i i watched it separate from my tablet and my computer when i was doing the one note but um he had a like a walkthrough kind of going over some aspects of the game so i watched some of that too to get a better look at what was going on with the game um so let's go ahead and get some specificity out of the way the design team is credited uh as jack danger and george gomez so as the rumors speculated this is the game jack was working on uh and it is thus the game that george gomez came in to actually complete looking at the layout i don't feel a lot of jack danger in there i feel a lot more of i would say i feel a lot more of george gomez but this uh this layout is pretty, I would say, fan-oriented. I think when you look at it, it's very easy to see how, at least how it's laid out conceptually is very, it's very approachable, would be my thought. But anyway, continuing on. Coding, I think this is one of the exciting things. This is a three-person coding team was credited, Tanya Kleist. Tanya did Deadpool's code. And I think that, I don't want to say it's underappreciated because I think a lot of people really do appreciate Deadpool. But what I like about Deadpool's code is I think it's pretty approachable also, which I think is a really good choice for Pokemon. Andrew Andrew Wilkening and Joshua Henderson were also credited as code. This was all from the Kinetis' article. Pricing is unchanged. So, so far our prediction on that, I think we gave a prediction on that. So good. $7,000 for the Pro, $9,700 for Premium, $13,000 for the LE. LEs are capped at 750 units. I have heard these are all spoken for already. Maybe there is a distributor or you can still find one from, but it's been sounding like from what I've been tracking that these got gobbled up quick. And why wouldn't it? This is the first video game franchise that has come out in who knows how long in the world of pinball. What was the last one? Street Fighter II? I really don't know. The Super Mario game from Gottlieb? Again, it's been a long time. Now, personally, Tony, when I looked at these, I thought the pro looks like you're getting an awful lot, which, again, I think is a nice thing. Yeah. An awful lot versus the premium LE in terms of the main. There's usually one main feature that gets to carry over, and that main feature is the Meowth balloon. So a lot of this is really leaning on the cartoon. Did you watch the cartoon? I've seen it. Okay. I wasn't. I mean, that's the thing is that show came out when we were in college. Right. It's after our time. However – I remember playing the game before the show, before seeing the show. I remember playing the game. See, I haven't played the games. Other than Pokemon Go, I've never played a Pokemon game. I remember the cartoon because when I was in grad school, I had – I lived off campus. And so I got – it was the first time I had high-speed internet. I got cable internet. But I had to have a basic cable package with it. But I didn't have a lot of channels because I was living on the cheap. Right. And so I didn't get, like, HBO or anything. So whatever channel I kept on for the news, for Carl Weathers and stuff in Syracuse, it played on Saturday mornings when I turned the TV on. Pokemon was one of the shows. So I would hear it in the background while I would do whatever. And so I was familiar with the Meowth balloon and stuff because the formula was a formula. Team Rocket was in all of it. They came in in this balloon. So I just remember because you hear them do their little speech, and then the balloon would come in. Meowth, that's right. So I know the cartoon better than the games. The difference is, because the balloon's on both, and that's the center toy, center bash toy. Pikachu. So there's a Pikachu, animatronic Pikachu that moves around while delivering speech from Pikachu on the Premium LE. On the Pro, it still has the speech, but it's a static sculpt instead of a head-moving sculpt. There's a Pokeball on the left. On the Premium LE, it's animatronic. um so it it it's it's it's for the ball lock and it has like the rgb lighting the pro one has the rgb lighting but it does not shake like how when you capture the pokemons and the ball shakes it's static also on the pro uh squirtle ramp so the um on the premium le there's a whirlpool shot reminds me of creature uh spinning bowl uh and that spinning bowl charges squirtles water energy squirtle sorry i'm gonna try not to do a bunch of the voices people hate them um but i had a squirtle squirrel squad where's squirrel squad i need them sunglasses on them squirtles i remember that part uh and the pro version it just feeds the left left flipper and stops uh stops the ball to catch is what i saw in the summary um psyduck so psyduck has a stand-up target on the pro The premium LE version has a scoop. And then the premium LE comes with the arena area has a magnet to cause more chaos. That magnet is not there on the pro. And then the one other thing is the LE version, not the premium. The LE version's plunger is the master ball, but whatever that means. I don't know what the master ball is. uh master ball is a ball that you could get one of per game and it has a 100 guaranteed catch rate okay so there's the master ball uh for that um that one or maybe it's the master ball in the actually let me let me hedge a little bit i'm a little confused where the master ball is it's it's the punch run okay i thought that's what i thought okay i see it um the thing that i i heard was that that all right and it looks like the the yes so well i see standard that all right i took this from kineticist i'm seeing it saying a standard pokeball on the pro and premium however to me in the in the images from the company it's just a regular plunger on the premium and le or i don't know if you're seeing anything different yeah they've got the the on the plunger it's just a regular plunger yeah yeah so yeah i mean there's a there there's the pokeball on the left side of all three playfields. So I think my notes are wrong there. I think it's just the master ball is the plunger on the LE only. Yeah. All right, so that's it in terms of my summary. I've talked way too much. Thoughts, I guess. Do you have a favorite art package? I think the LE art package is pretty good. All of the art packages, they all have that little, the big fancy art in the back on the sides, and then the Pokemon up front. But overall, I really like the LE's overall package. Especially when I showed the trailer and I showed everything to my Pokemon-loving young'un, they liked the LE art package too because of the whole Pikachu and Eevee super cute thing on the side. It is pretty adorable. I agree. I think overall, Translite and Cab Sides, I do think the LE looks best. I always like a good yellow cab. Stars are least willing to do that. They did that with Dr. No. Maybe just because it reminds me of Silver Slugger, a very yellow game. Silver Slugger was a very yellow game. But, yeah, no, I mean, I think the art package is pretty solid. The play field art, I think, looks fine. Yeah. It looks like Pokemon. So it achieved what it needed to do. What do you think of this decision to, I mean, I do believe this is a two-flipper game, right? It's a very, it looks, I mean, it's a fan layout. What do you think about that move? It's going to make it approachable. I think that's the whole point with the, I think, as a theme, Pokemon has such a widespread of people that it's going to target and love that making it a very approachable, easy game because of that is a smart move because that'll get – because you know kids are going to want to play it and people who grew up with Pokemon are going to want to play it. Yeah I feel that the biggest mistake that Stern made with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game was and I get it A lot of adults are I mean it adults who are buying this stuff but the it such a it so hard Yeah I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a Borg game, I understand, because he tends to, he tends to always, I feel, have favored doing pretty hard layouts, but, oh my gosh, that game is so brutal, like, I don't enjoy it, it's so brutal. I like some hard games. Maybe if I owned it, I would get into it. This looks like it's going to be a lot easier to understand and follow along. Now, in terms of the rules and stuff, yeah, you're capturing Pokemon. They're doing the 182 or whatever, so it can go in very old-school original. Do you think that's enough? Do you think they should have expanded into more Pokemon? I think for the 30th anniversary or whatever it is, I think that makes sense. I think it's 30th anniversary. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, because the 30th anniversary logo is a giant Pikachu head, but where the cheeks, instead of being the little red round discs, it's a three and an O. How on the nose of them. But yeah, no, I think going with the originals is a solid choice. because, again, even with them keeping their prices down, it's still a high rate of entry cost-wise. And so the Pokemon that are going to be more well-known to the people who can actually afford to buy into this ecosystem are going to be the originals. And Pokemon has done a very good job of keeping the originals relevant even up into the modern versions of the game. Yes. uh so anyway i mentioned earlier that it sounds like the le's are already sold out so the demand is definitely uh high on this game so far um i i'm not personally i want to try it because for me it comes down to gameplay i don't have again like you mentioned we were in college when pokemon came out so my nostalgia for pokemon isn't a childhood nostalgia it's just it's i remember I remember it as background noise I think a lot of people though might really like the games even though they came out later on like for me in the world of video games I would much be softer on like a Final Fantasy or something like which one do you do? Well we know they do 7 I mean yeah obviously but still you know sort of thing but I really hope that what I like about this and the LE's doing well obviously speaks well of it though the last couple games jack danger was involved with also did very well initially too and again uh i'll get to that in a moment but um i'm we've talked about it before but i really think pinball has missed the boat not doing video games for so long i'm kind of hoping that this will be the impetus to start seeing more of it because i i'm just tired of it always being bands and movies and the occasional TV show thrown in. I agree with you. And I think there's a big video games have a huge wide breadth of places that they can pull from. And in a lot of cases, I think it might be easier on some of the licensing, not all of it, depending upon what it is. But I think it gives them the big options. I mean, look at Portal. It was a beautiful pull and worked really well. and that was another video game, a recent video game related machine. I just think there's a big open chance of stuff to go to there. There's enough classic titles out there or things that are big enough and historically seen that it'll be a quick place for them to kind of mine for ideas. I think the last thing I wanted to bring up was just, all right, So we don't usually see two people credited as designers. A lot of times when Gomez has stepped in, the other designer has been out and he does the game from the ground up. The most famous example of this is Deadpool, which was originally supposed to be a John Trudeau game. Right. And he had started it and Gomez scrapped the design. Now, there were some there are a variety of reasons that was probably a smart move, even if he didn't like Trudeau's design. But my understanding is he did not like the direction Trudeau was going with that game anyway. Right. In this instance, you're seeing Jack Danger and Gomez credited. When I look at this layout, because it's such a fan layout, I don't necessarily see a designer. But this stuff doesn't look weird like Jack Danger's games have been. Like Foo Fighters and Uncanny X-Men had Gottlieb-like elements to it. Nothing about this. the mouth balloon reminds a lot of people of the junkyard crane um you could also say it reminds it could you could if you want to bring up trudeau you could say it might remind you of the slimer on a stick on the premium le that moves around um so i i guess just sort of a speculation do you think a lot of this layout is jack danger do you think it's mostly gomez or do you think it's uh roughly an equal split personally i think this is pretty much all gomez's design and my suspicion is jack explained how to what needed to be integrated related to pokemon like he knew the found out and knew the lore about what to put in in terms of like the layout like you got here's pikachu this is what pikachu should be doing here's how here's an idea for the like i could see him having the idea for the balloon mech for example and being like that's a big thing from the cartoon let's do that as an idea but i look at the layout and i don't see those sort of gottlieb tropes and stuff that jack has been known for wanting to pull from this is this is the safest layout jack name jack danger's name has been tied to i agree with you i think that's very much how i feel like just from looking at this and that's fine all that really matters for them is sales honestly um but yeah it doesn't i don't usually really associate gomez with fan layouts either so it's kind of weird that's why i kind of asked the question because it just i almost feel this was um and again i think this is probably a smart move because of the potential audience the potential this has to get new people into pinball uh maybe not buying but like wanting to play them like kids who know pokemon today going oh there's this other thing with pokemon you get to play it and I want to go to Pizza West and drop quarters in it and try, you know, sort of thing. Like, so I think it was a very corporate decision to do a fan layout, but I do think it was the right decision for this game. I do too. Uh, I've said that when I showed the trailer and stuff to my, my, my Pokemon kiddo, uh, they are, they ask when you're going to buy it. No, but they are interested in actually going out whenever we get one locally. to take a look at it. Yeah, watching the KC Discord, it does sound like one of the locations is going to get it relatively soon. I don't know which one. All I know is that I saw them talking about the order, like Nick talking about the order. I think, yeah, with this theme, it'd be silly for it to not go to Pizza West or Nubz or like... You're saying not 403, but Chateau Scrooge could be a spot too. Yeah, basically not 403. Or like replay or any, not a bar. Yes, right. No, I agree. I mean, if you're only going to get one to put out, not a bar to me feels like the right choice for this. Yeah. Otherwise, if you want to get, you know, sometimes in the past they've ordered, like if you get two, I guess, put the pro at the kid location if you want. This is probably going to get played more. And then put the premium LE at that 403. Right. Where we won't demand everything's perfectly balanced. All right. So that's all I have for Pokemon Pinball. So congratulations, Stern, for the first course of the year and for it being a video game. Very exciting. Speaking of exciting, we got some – I hate ending on a downer, but I thought we really needed an open with Pokemon. DPX. PX. PX. PX. Do you know what – I'll tell you. I'll say it for people that follow the other shows, but even though it's not profane, I'm not going to say it out. But slam tilt has a certain saying for DPX. Remind me after the show and I'll let you know what they say it stands for. What it really stands for is Dutch Pinball Exclusive. It's done, Tony. Done. We're out. We are out. We are out. They're not German, but we're out. We are out. Apologies to all Germans for my bad German accent on that. I have a link to a NAP Arcade article in the show notes that really it has the entire official statement from melvin brower williams but melvin who has been associated with i mean he created dpx he's been associated with dutch pinball for a long time he is the creator of the alice in wonderland game that version that that dutch has been making for dpx he has completely cut ties now with dutch pinball well i say completely but he's yeah they're done they're done and thus dpx is done And from what I've been able to gather from some other posts and such that I have read, it sounds like Dutch Pinball took on some new investors and Melvin doesn't agree with the direction that they are all now going as a company. I don't know what that direction is and why he doesn't agree with it, but it's not the way – it's not what he signed up for, I guess, is the idea. So Tony's got the – he's doing his thinker pose right now, but with a smile, a weary smile of doing this for 10 years. Alice in Wonderland. So regarding that, Dutch Pinball is still obligated to finish doing those builds. They are way behind, as I believe we've discussed. Dutch Pinball behind on game production? I know. It was a mere 10 years ago where we were talking about issues with Big Lebowski. However, the code for Alice is still on Melvin and his team, and he indicated that it will not be forgotten, but it's going to be slower. All right, Tony. I think you have thoughts. What are your thoughts? I'm not overly surprised. Are you not? What do you think this direction is? Is it less trailer park in our games? I'm sorry, I don't mean to be really rude about it, but that Atlas game, I would want to go in a different direction the moment I saw the art. That's literally kind of what my thought was. I mean, that's just my subjective take. In my head, it wasn't worded quite that way. It was more maybe the direction they're looking for is less harem. Perhaps. Excuse me. I'm not surprised, A, that Dutch brought on investors. It's a thing that if they're going to survive, they've probably needed to do for a while now. I'm surprised it didn't happen while they were hand-building the final Lebowskis and trying to put that whole thing together. But this whole different routing that comes with getting an investor, we've seen it in pinball so many times, a different vision that that's not a surprise. yeah i i've never been able to really fully understand the difference between dutch pinball and dutch pinball exclusive like in some ways it just sounded like the the higher end like i again sorry to pull from watches but like king seiko under seiko it's like it's still seiko proper but they have a you know they use a better finishing and better materials it's not a new whole subsidiary like grand seiko but but you know it's supposed to be better orient star with orient um sort of thing like i i guess it's not really that it was more independent but dpx's entire strategy that we've seen has been papaduke stuff just like zidware 2.0 so i could also regardless of what you might think of the alice game that dpx is doing might be really understanding of the notion that dutch pinball does not want to continue to go down the papaduke train because they don't see that there's a lot of money in his unrealized ideas maybe there's money in remaking his old ideas but you know continuing to draw up and uh all those memories of zidware because they're like uh in the case that because dpx's next game was going to be rasa so now you've brought up memories of zidware's failure and and the uh what was the deep root Deep Root's failure. Yeah, Deep Root. So it's like I've never understood this DPX route. Honestly, I always took it almost as a poke in the eye to a part of the community where it's just been like, no, I'm DPX. I love John Papadiuk stuff, and I'm just going to make it happen. And I guess now you're not. By the way, it's written DPX. Well, I'm not being called DPX. Like Melvin and his crew are going to go do stuff. John Paul DeWin or J.P. DeWin I don't know if it's John or not J.P. DeWin the lead animator for J.J.P. left and went to Dutch recently that was announced just after Harry Potter so I'm wondering if that's part of this new investment thing I think it probably would be and Dutch Pinball now has more money to work with J.P. DeWin is Dutch so he probably knows some people that are working for Dutch Pinball I think I read something not in that press release because that release was from Melvin but Dutch Pinball I guess has explained some desire to do some more original games but original I think meaning like I won't say it's a dig but I think it's a not Zidware stuff but not unlicensed stuff either so I don't know what any of this means for Back to the Future Back to the Future was not a DPX game it was supposed to be a Dutch Pinball game However, there started to be statements like, if you stay in on Alice, you'll get to have your Back to the Future. Like, you'll be earlier in the line. So there was like a tie-in. Like, buying DPX stuff meant you got goodies out of, like, you got incentivized on what you really wanted from Dutch Pinball. But I don't know what the status of any of that is. I've had zero confidence and remain at zero confidence that Dutch Pinball is going to do a quote-unquote good job with Back to the Future. I've never understood the desire for a Back to the Future game. And we could have a whole thing on that. There are a lot of collectors in the community who are, again, nostalgia-driven that really want – I mean it's just – it's a reliving childhood thing I guess. Here's an interesting thing because I'm kind of done with the DPX discussion. I see this come up a lot and maybe – it's probably different people and it's really not like any sort of hypocrisy or people that change their mind, quote-unquote change their mind. But I see people that go after – it will be like – here will be my 2026 version. after pokemon and transformers come out i'm done with putting myself on interested lists because i'll have all of the themes nostalgia wise that i've ever wanted but then every year i see new like as soon as i have back to the future and he-man i'm gonna be done as soon as i have snorks and gremlins i'm gonna be it's like they're never done they're never done something always tickles always some new 80s or 90s thing that that as soon as it's in the rumor mill list people are like i I'm a day one no matter what buyer, and there are a lot of no matter what buyers. It's so weird to me. I mean, it is one of those situations, and we've talked about this in the past on multiple occasions, that being so desireful of that nostalgia hit to find something to have, even if it's a terrible player, and just to have just, oh, yeah, no, I'm a true fan. I'm a real fan. That's like, why? well i mean if it's bad it's bad it doesn't make the make whatever the the show or the band any less good it doesn't mean you enjoyed the band or the show less because the pen mall machine wasn't good it just means that you don't have to keep it in your collection yeah it's i mean i you know i i do understand from the angle of like if you want if you're like a super fan so you know you're gonna have to get in probably pretty quick to get an le for example so i could right i could see that and then but if you start seeing the game sucks like getting out of it or selling it i and again some of these people who get these games do end up selling i mean i'll use you know joel who does the does the triple drain podcast in the and the flipping out uh wednesday stream uh you know we met joel uh he's a big teenage mutant ninja turtles fan tmnt isn't in his lineup right now I don't blame him. It used to be. He's actually a pretty big defender of that game. Not as much as Deadpool. We know he worships Deadpool. But that left his collection eventually, too. He even loved the games can. Yeah. That's a whole other discussion about when people say something's bolted and whether they really mean it or not. Because some people do and others do not. But, yeah, I just find it fascinating. It's just a different philosophy. Because, I mean, case in point, you know I'm a big fan of a number of things. I'm a huge fan of Lord of the Rings. I don't own it. Nope. I don't like the price that they go for. I'm a big fan of Alien and Aliens. I didn't like the gameplay. I don't have Aliens in my collection. I mean, it would make sense for someone like me to have Aliens as much as I have watched those movies. I mean, of everything that I can think of that's out right now that I have a huge nostalgic latch feel to, The only one that is like on the, like right now, if I had room and money was no object, the only thing on the list I would buy is still a Godzilla. Because that game is amazing to play. And I'm a huge Godzilla fan. Yeah. But even then, nothing would say that it's not at the, oh, I have to have. I don't. and I don't know that there's anything out there that would be such a big connection that I wouldn't feel that. Oh, I have to. I have to have this. There's no way I can live without this type of thing. I played Godzilla last night, actually. I still roar when he drains. Poor little guy. Video games. We actually had a couple of emails come in that were related to video games, so I dropped those in after you got most of your notes in. One, Richard A. has supplied some news updates in the realm of virtual pinball, as he likes to do. I don't insert the entire email. I just bullet this out like we would do other news stuff. So I'll go ahead and run through those in the other email. So he noted, Zacharia released some new tables a few weeks ago. They also have the license to a game I haven heard of Tony called Fallen Aces Sound like an aircraft game That what it sounds like but I don know Xen has re the Bethesda tables We talked about that recently so that has finally happened Steam did not have them on FX, though. They only had it on their M platform. Speaking of that, Steam is having a big pinball FX and M sale right now, with some games up to 75% off. What's the okay? Okay. We're wrong. It's not an airplane game? Fallen Aces is a crime noir first-person shooter published by New Blood Interactive June 14th of 24. I do like film noir, crime noir games. I often like those two. Okay. All right. We were way off because my second guess was going to be a card game. Right. Those would have also been my first. Anyway, I'm just used to it. That's how it would have been in pinball. and final point on the virtual pinball side of things is richard noted that in regards to our discussion you know we had that question that came in about someone wanting to kind of like build something that could do a good job playing virtual pinball he wanted to suggest uh considering uh rather than like computer well computers could be included but but uh like building around pinball fx as a strategy because other than steam if you buy pinball fx games the tables work on all of the stuff so like you could buy it on xbox and though you can play the same games without rebuying them on playstation so if he's wanting to build a thing for it and likes what pinball fx does it might be something to consider if he also likes it like if someone likes to play the game on i don't know if you've got it on switch and you but you want to build something around a playstation for your big TV room or something. That could be an option if you're looking to save money. Yeah. And so he just wanted to throw that out there. Man, I wonder if they make one of the things to bolt your TV to the wall, but it's got enough motion that you can rotate it 90 degrees vertical. I mean, I'm sure you could buy an arm to do it. That's what I mean, an arm that has a rotation built in so you can do it portrait instead of landscape. I bet there's someone who builds them. It might not be on Amazon, but I bet there's someone you can talk to. Yeah, there's always some weird niche little guy who does some CNCing on the side for supplemental income. And then we also had an email from Doug M. Doug wrote, hi, guys. My 15-year-old son and I want to get back to our video game and roots. When he was little, we would play a lot of sofa two-player co-op games. We finished nearly all of the Lego games and other side-scroller platforming games like Rayman Adventures. Great game. We love these. Are there any similar platform games that have come out like this that we could check out? We both have a Switch and a PS5. Thanks, Doug. Well, thank you, Doug, for writing in. Oh, gosh. Okay. Okay. Tony, do you have ideas? I have multiple. All right. Let me give one that's going to be, because I don't. So I was hoping you would be my savior on this one, because you are the video game expert. Here's what I would say. But the problem is he said Switch and PS5. But this is one you will know because we've played it. And I'm going to say, what? Oh, you're Explosion Man. Explode again. Explode again. Those little loose meat sandwiches. It's one of the first things that came to my mind. It was an Xbox exclusive. I do not know if it still is because this was back. So there was Explosion Man. All right. Doug, listen. There's Explosion Man and Ms. Explosion Man. And I think we did both. I have to hesitate a little bit. I know Ms. Splosion Man had co-op, a couch co-op up to, I think, four players. It was because we played it. And then Splosion Man, I don't remember exactly on it. However, it's challenging. It's not super meat boy hard. We won it. It's on Switch. Okay. It is. All right. Both of them? At least Splosion Man's on Switch. Okay. Splosion Man, as I ask you all that. Why am I asking you? I could look these up, too. I was going to say, is it multiple? I couldn't remember if it was multiplayer. I thought it was at least two-player. Modes include single-player and a separate 50-level co-op campaign with a unique two-girls, one-controller mode for Ms. Splosion Man. Oh, for Ms. Splosion Man. Okay. But Splosion Man, does it have both as well? Tony's checking. I'm looking at Ms. Splosion Man right now. Yes, well, Ms. is the one that stood out to me. You don't have to play the one to play the other. it's um so it's got a an interesting platforming mechanic because you're basically all you do is uh jump by exploding you explode so yeah explosion man has a story mode of a 50 level story mode with four-player co-op okay yes all right so you can do both uh so okay definitely since it's on switch switch i'm gonna say get both explosion man games uh the humor is is super nerdy and silly uh and in a way that I think teenager would enjoy. Also, it's not, they have ridiculous lines. Everybody Loves Donuts song is perfectly good enough reason to want to play Explosion Man. And so that one, and it's hard. It's not, as I mentioned, it's not Super Meat Boy, Death, Defying, Annoyingly Hard, to that degree. Again, Tony and I were able to beat these. We were younger back then, but we were able to complete them. But But that's the first thing. And really the only thing that came to mind after you said you've already – well, you wanted a platformer. You've already done the Lego games, which is the obvious one. Yeah, that's the obvious one. Because a friend of ours, she and her son, and he's like 25 now, they still play Lego games. Because, yeah, couch co-op, awesome. All right, Tony, what do you got that is not – Explode again. so last year there was a big co-op release called Split Fiction yes I heard about that one and that's highly recommended there's another one that I don't remember if it's on Switch or not I would love to tell you to play Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles because the remastered is on Switch but I think the remastered requires multiple Switches I don't think it's couch co-op and is it a platformer It's not a platformer. He has been specific for platformers. It's just an adventure game. It's just an adventure game. Is that someone with the basket? Yes. All right. Don't play that one. Some people go rogue. Don't play it with Tony. Teenagers are going to be just like you. They're going to abandon the basket and go into the miasma, and we have to save them, and it's just a chore. Just don't fall into that trap, guys. Doug, don't fall for it. So Split Fiction is available on PlayStation 5. It's on Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S. It is a mandatory co-op game. There is no single player, but it does support couch co-op. Okay. So it is a – I don't know if I want to call it just – it's not like a strict platformer, but from what I've seen, it's kind of an adventure platformer type thing. That's close enough, I think. It's just a platform. He didn't specify the subgenres or blended genres thereof. And, again, Splosion Man was definitely going to be on my list. That's a fun game. It was a super fun game. It's very silly. I'm trying to think if there's anything else. Let me see if it was on. There's Brothers. There's Brothers. I'm looking to see if it's on Switch. Yes, it is on Switch. Super Meat Boy. So Super Meat Boy is an indie platformer. Actually, wait a minute. I don't remember if it's got multiplayer. I've never played it multiplayer. um so let me let me double check it might not have multiplayer it might though i it's i don't know if it's cooperative in the same way or not but tony's checking i'm gonna i'm gonna urge caution with super meat boy it is in it's like n plus it's incredibly hard i've played some very hard platformers that i wasn't able to complete i did actually win super meat boy on the 360 but i like when it came to what was it uh cotton candy alley as bandage girl i was done i was like no way okay it does not have a multi-player code all right well it's uh like the whole family would never talk to each other again by the time they got right superman boy it's incredibly difficult um that was just me latching on to a platformer ideas uh splosion man misplacement gonna make you work it's you're gonna have to like you're gonna have to have some skill but like get good isn't like a just a snotty line you will be able to beat it right um uh it just takes practice uh but not like super my boy practice where it's like, all right, your life is now super meat. You are, you are super meat boy. That is your life. That's super meat boy is one of those. It and dark souls are like the two games where I'm like, I, I, I guess the closest I could describe it is that I'm proud. I beat them and I will never ever play them again. Right? Like dark souls. I, I, oh gosh, sorry. I still, but I love the atmosphere. Uh, the mythos, the story, uh, even the mechanics by and large with dark souls. Oh, I hated the gameplay. Um, just like from the, the AI was incompetent at like, I had bad guys that would walk off cliffs. It wasn't a well-programmed game, quite frankly, but people, you know, it just, it was, there's no difficulty setting and they'd have safe points far away. It was so tedious, tedious, tedious. And then I was stupid and bought Sekiro and I can't get anywhere in it. Cause I don't know how to Perry. And so I'm very, very bitter to this day. What I'm not bitter about is the rest of our video game news. Well, I have one last idea. I'm not – I can't vouch for this because I've not played it, period. Oh, no. But I have heard that it has multiplayer support, and my kids love the game, though I don't know that they've played co-op, and that is A Hat in Time. Okay. Yes, very hat. Both of my kids love A Hat in Time. It's like one of their favorite platformers, but I've not played it myself, but I do think it has couch co-op. Okay. Well, the moral is Doug gets Splosion Man, Miss Splosion Man. But I'm not 100% on that. Yeah. And split fiction is supposed to be good. Yeah. All right. What about Sony? Are they splitting fiction? Oh, man, Sony's so great. Sony's – we love Sony. Sony's the best. So they've patented a plan for a beautiful thing that we love, and it's got to be nothing but the best, to have a personalized AI-generated podcast hosted by game characters of games that you have already played, pulling information from your player profile data to create the personalization so they can make a podcast just for you. So you can have Eloy talk to you about how you're doing in your games and news about games you play and games like the games you play and give you hints about things you can try to better your game play. and it just sounds like the greatest thing ever. Oh, my God. We could retire now. The games will replace us. It's what the people want. Now, I did have a conversation with somebody once where they took a manual of operations and fed it into Google's podcast creator just so they could listen to them talk about the manual of operations and basically while they were driving. Instead, it was surprisingly digestible and made it kind of easy to actually grasp the manual of operations thing that they were doing. I just thought it was hilarious. But, yeah. I did one once with some pinball thing. I don't know if I linked some news article, and it did a two-person voice podcast. Man and a woman. But it was a J-pop thing that I gave it, so they kept going. Oh, yes, a lot of people really love JPOP. Are you down with JPOP? They'd always take you right out of it. No, he's got some really popular games. Tales of the Arabian Nights. World Cup Soccer. Yes, Jane, but JPLP hasn't been doing so well. Anyway. Yay. So, yay. This is great. You know what else is great? Jetpack Cat. Jetpack Cat. That's right. Meow. Jetpack Cat. There's already more band now than Sombra. Yeah, I've heard that. Because he's a problem. I've heard he's a very large problem. The cat's a problem. The cat is a problem. I mean, you could have stopped at the cat. Yes. Cats are problems. It is. We know this. But, yeah. Now, Overwatch 2-1. Yes. As they've rolled out their latest update, which includes dropping the 2 from Overwatch 2, so it's just Overwatch again. As if people weren't just calling it Overwatch to begin with, since Overwatch 1 literally ceased to exist when 2 came out. But when they did the big update with the rebrand, they dropped five new characters, I think was what they were supposed to drop. They did. One tank, two DPS, two support. Yeah. One of the support being the aforementioned Jetpack Cat. That's the actual name is Jetpack Cat. Yeah. My daughter who plays says it's horrifying and terrible. It's difficult. I've tried them all now. and then they're releasing five more this year. And from what I've read, they are shifting to doing bigger story events stretched over the course of the year as opposed to as many smaller events as they've been doing. But I don't actually play Overwatch, and I haven't played Overwatch since 2 came out. And the name change is probably not going to make me continue to play Overwatch. Probably not. I've, unlike some people and unlike Doug, I have all but abandoned multiplayer games at this point because I am the old man yells at cloud who just sits there and goes, Man, why did I die? I had to get up and put the dog outside. Why can't the game pause? Stuff like that. Don't understand it. I can't just sit here and play. It's tough. It's tough out there. It's tough out there with 2-1, minus 1. 2 minus 1 equal 1, which is 0 because we don't say 1. Yeah. Yep. Yep, pretty big stuff. They changed the whole menu system too. I'm assuming you've played it a chunk since you've played all the characters. Yeah, I did. Do you have a favorite of the new characters? Huh? Do you have a favorite? Uh, Genji light. Genji light. Yeah. I think his name is Yuzuki. He's the, one of the new supports with it. He's got Ronan's hat from more of a combat. He's okay. Jetpack cats too hard on console to play. Um, there's, uh, Emory. He's kind of like a soldier 76, uh, sojourn hybrid. He's all right. Uh, the flame girl. I don't remember her name. Flame girl. I don't like very much. Uh, she's too much of a flanker. Is she the one that they're changing the art due to the backlash? Yeah. A lot of people love to play her, but I'm not any good. It's like Tracer. It's a flanking type character I'm not very good with. The new tank's okay. She's like Symmetra. She's Vishkar. So she's using hard light shields and stuff. She's got a beam weapon as well, but it kind of fires and bursts. Yeah, she's okay. But she's got, like, there are some pretty good counters to her as well. So, yeah, no. Yeah, no, most of them, I mean, a lot of people seem to like a number of them. I would say, yeah, the only one I actively, like, I need to practice on Jetpack Cat. But Jetpack Cat, that thing is, that was the most broken. Because it's like taking Cassidy's and he's high-nuding from the air and all that stuff. And it's just like, oh, my God. And all it does is meow. It just meows as it goes. It flies around. Now, it's movement's fun. because it's got a... It can stay up in the air permanently. Not like Pharah. Jetpack cat doesn't need to touch the ground ever. It's a cat with a jetpack. And it can carry your teammates. It can also ult and carry enemies off cliffs. That's its ult. I will tractor beam you to bad places. Like cliffs. It does like a slam thing and grabs them and then flies up. So I think it also does impact damage, too. Does this have a special meow interactions with what's his name? The hamster. Oh, yeah. Ball. Hammond, I think. Hammond. Yeah, we call him Ball. But I don't know. There are a lot of new voice lines and the voice lines in the spawn are now, I think, advancing the story stuff that they're doing, too. Yeah, I've heard that they're modifying the voice lines to take part of the story. they're modifying even the older maps to be more representative of what's happened in the story. Yeah, Watchpoint, Jeff Barlter's on fire now. Yeah, and they've got versions of the game where you can take the sub-characteristics that are continuing that they pushed out, so you can specialize your specific play of the character in one game mode. Yeah, I haven't tried that yet. They've gone back to kind of how when Overwatch first came out, And, you know, you had, like, offense and defense for the DPS. It was sort of divided up. Now they've more clearly categorized the characters. So it's still tank DPS support. But within that, you can quickly go and see, like, these are the flanking DPS. Here are the marksman DPS. And the supports will be, like, here are the, you know, here are the, like, primary healing ones. And here are the ones that you want them to heal and they never do. So it's organized. So here's the healers that have to heal. It's their job. And then here's the healers who you would love if they healed. Right. But instead they just go Moira stuff. They wanted to be DPS but didn't want to wait in the queue. So they went support and became Jetpack Cats. Jetpack Cats and Moira. Jetpack Cats. Moira is going to at least accidentally heal you But then you got yeah Izuki is kind of like a way like his actually his he got a healing aura like lucio does however its ability it has multipliers he will heal more the more he the more he kills so or damages so and not dies so he can snowball healing very well i want they may need to rebalance it a little bit is he is he fast like lucio so can he deploy with flankers like no can no he's not he doesn't have inherent speed he does like because he's using like um soul society style so like he deploys a paper doll that he can teleport back to for example he doesn't get very long time period before it dissipates though so no not really but he has meant to be more frontline he um kind of like junk rat he ricochets his shots oh okay so he doesn't have the same distance on it but he's like throwing fans or something and he can bounce them off walls and knock them into people so he's kind of meant like geet to be up with the with the with the fighters because he's doing aura healing like that but right you know that's because the problem with lucio's is they don't ever stay with the team because they're too busy like wait i have speed boost and i can try and knock people off maps and then they just go on a little adventure of their own right i don't like lucio's very much except when i play him right i lucio was one of my mains yes well uh he's easier to control on a mouse and keyboard setup so he's also with console ones you tend to get um they just they're just not good unless you're like me no because i remember getting to the point with lucio where it was when the game first started you there there were certain plays where you would dash forward as rapidly as you could to get to certain parts to go for the big boops, and then I would spend most of my time finding the flankers and sliving with the flankers because I could keep up with them. Yes. Yeah. And they loved it when you damage boosted them. Oh, yes. Well, speed boosted them. He doesn't boost damage. I thought he boosted damage when he ulted. That's a sound barrier. It's a shield. Maybe there's a modifier. I don't remember anymore. Now, in Stadium, he might. The Stadium mode complicates everything. Yeah, I don't remember. I haven't played in forever. Yeah, you probably have not played Stadium mode. I've never played Stadium mode. Like I said, I haven't played since 2. Honestly, I hadn't played for a while before 2. Yeah, it's dead to you. Yeah. What isn't dead to you is the Steam machine. Not yet. Steam machine is coming, but due to the RAM delays and the storage trace price surges, they have pushed it later in the year. It was supposed to be first quarter of 26. Now they're saying mid-year or towards the end of the year. Okay. And they were also supposed to have released all the prices by now, and they haven't. My guess is because they're trying to secure RAM and storage in a price that could make them sell the machine for something somebody would actually buy. And so we'll see how that goes. we'll see what happens when those announcements come out. You had spoke earlier about being on your pinball Discord. Well, Discord is changing their rules. They're going to start rolling in March globally. They are going to a teen by default approach where they assume anybody on Discord is a teenager unless you provide them with a copy of your ID, or you let their cameras capture a picture of you to use age software to decide if you're old enough that you're an adult. Supposedly, that data will never leave your machine, and it'll only be on your machine just long enough to do the verification, and it goes away, except for that's already come out that that's not actually what's happening because instead they're holding it for like a week, And when they were doing a test rollout in the U.K. with this system, their data age provider was holding onto it just period. It was a subcompany of the Palantir AI company. And they are having some issues with that. And they've broken ties from them due to the way they were holding data and stuff. So we will see how that continues to roll out. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say anything you give them, all of the AIs will have. To be fair, at this point, the AIs have your face anyway. Yes. Because they had to search to find a missing dog, obviously. Yes. Apparently, there's been blowback about the missing dog. I don't know why they would possibly think that there was going to be blowback from that commercial and that ring concept to the point where Amazon has completely severed ties with Flock and been rolling all sorts of stuff back. I like their little announcement that that deal was still being finalized. I'm like, you took out a Super Bowl ad. Yeah. Come on, guys. Who does that? Speaking of Super Bowl ads, and since we talked about Pokemon, there was the Pokemon Super Bowl ad. It was a one-minute ad talking to a bunch of big-name celebrities about their favorite Pokemon, most of which were hilarious and I rather enjoyed. But the best part was somebody did the math. and for buying two 32nd Super Bowl commercial spots, so they'd have that one minute, and paying for those celebrities and everything, the estimate that that commercial cost three times as much money as the entire development of the newest Pokemon game to release, ZA. Wow. Pokemon. because Game Freak has been developing a whole other non-Pokemon game, Beast of Memory or something like that. I've not really talked about it. But rumors are starting to come out that basically they have put like a quarter-ish of Game Freak's development team on making Pokemon games and keeping money roll in while everybody else, including all of their A-team people, are working on Beast Reincarnation or whatever it's called, which is supposed to release later this year. Okay. Well, it's a choice. It is a choice. Riot Games has started downsizing the 2XKO team, which launched about a month ago. 2XKO is Riot Games' fighting game, using their Riot characters, the League of Legends characters, and all of that. They stated in their announcement that the overall momentum hasn't reached the level needed to support a team of that size, so they're reducing to a minimal support team. Right. Not surprising. It's not. It's one of those things that Riot has actually been doing very, very well in the tabletop realm. Riot has put out a card battling game that is doing amazingly well. It's going gangbusters. It's like up there with Pokemon and Magic level of popularity right now. It's kind of sweeping around being this huge, super popular card game. So that's at least working out well for them. But their fighting game, not so much. Last week we talked about High Guard releasing. They have laid off an unspecified number of their development people. It's not surprising either. Keeping just a core group to support the game. The rumors From a post on LinkedIn Appears the majority of the team Something like 75 or 80% of the team Has been let go What's interesting is This game did not exist Nobody knew anything about it Until it was the final trailer At the Game Awards And the buzz was not great Yes Yes, as we talked about. The final trailer, and it's like, High Guard? Right, and the buzz was not great, and they did not communicate afterwards very well at all. Everything kind of dropped back. But since all of the layoffs has happened, more stuff has been coming out that they were shocked by, A, the blowback against the trailer, and, B, how unpopular the game has been on launch because all of their feedback internally and from the people that they had let see it and all of the influencers they'd brought in to try the game and do all this, everything was positive, super positive. Everybody was telling them that, oh, this is going to be, this is the next Overwatch, this is the next Fortnite, this game is huge. it's like this game can't fail this game failed hard and and but at no point was there any feedback to them that this game was not going to be just the next enormous thing so that brings up questions of were those people telling you because what they told you because you flew them out so that they could look at your game and you gave them special stuff and you did all sorts of special happies for them it reminds me of the interviews um the day of the people who first saw phantom in this you remember how it was and i mean even you know it was just so exciting to finally see a new star wars movie i can't even say i was as i probably harder on it after the fact that i was at the time too right though there were you know there was just a lot of i don't know it was just I remember just that volume of stuff, and it was just like, it's the worst one Lucas was involved with, I think. I think so. But it also has the best music of any Star Wars movie. Duel of the Fates is so good. That whole thing went. Mixed feelings. Duel of the Fates, that song goes so hard. so i still i still hum it when i um do like how uh and zelda when you like pick up things it does the da da da da uh when i accomplish a platforming jump in the jedi on jedi i go and then i just do i'm very obnoxious you're just very obnoxious i am because sometimes i'll do it like three times in a row because i made an extra it's like every jump i beat a i beat a stormtrooper It's like the final music from Final Fantasy VII when you beat – Yes. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Yes. I will admit I've done that. I was. I've vocally done that as a tick before. Even worse. I watched it by myself, so of course it – but still, even to me, I thought, God, I'm annoying. I was watching The Meg 2, that movie with Jason Statham. So have you seen The Meg or The Meg 2? I've seen The Meg. Okay. All right. So there's a sequel. I was watching it. And there are multiple Megs from the get-go. There are multiple Megs in the movie. And it's like everything went along. And a person would die. I'd go, you just got Megged. Tony, there's a whole, like, villainous plot going on. People would shoot other people. You got Megged. I didn't care if the Meg got the kill. everything was you got me there's a someone else oh no explosion got someone you just got megged how how does it feel it's like two hours long i'm just like you got megged man i don't know why i my brain's i was trying to remember it was like when when did i see that movie and i realized we watched that movie like friday morning uh before tpf opened up last year the mag yeah We watched that and a bunch of Westerns. Was that last year or the year before? Maybe the year before. Okay, I didn't remember. I remember us watching Tremors. Well, we watched Deep Star Six, which you hated. I've seen Deep Star Six like multiple times. Yes, but you still hated it. It's know the abyss. Right. And the Western ones that we watched, Quick and the Dead. Did we watch Unforgiven also? It was a different Western. It was a different one. It wasn't Unforgiven. It was Quick and the Dead and Tombstone. That's right, Tombstone. Yeah. Well, bye. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Sorry. None of them cared about any of that because they just got megged. They got megged. You've been megged. You just got megged. I did try and start just doing it when the megs killed people, which was plenty. There was a part where it's Meg Cam. You're looking from inside its mouth as it swallows. These people are in their floaties. Yeah, how did that movie not win cinematography awards? I don't understand. Speaking of movies that I'm sure is going to win all of the awards, They have announced for the Oscars. No, no. Helldiver's movie. Jason Momoa. Because Jason Momoa is in everything now. He's Blanca in Street Fighter. Jason Momoa is in everything. He was in Minecraft. He's going to be in Minecraft, too. I think Jason Momoa just does video game movies now. It's a living. I mean, got to do something after Aquaman. Yeah, that's true. But yeah, he's going to be in the Helldivers movie. Blizzard is rolling out an update for Diablo 4, the Warlock. And to hype it, they also rolled it out as an expansion for Diablo 2. The remaster of Diablo 2. Yeah. So Diablo 2 has new content for the first time in like 25 years. So the Warlock was never in that one. I guess it was in 3? Yes. Okay. I was like, I thought there was a Warlock. There was a Warlock in 3. I haven't played 4. So if you've got Diablo 2, there's new gameplay possibilities. Exciting. Diablo 2 still is. I've played all the Diablos. Diablo 2 is still the best one. A lot of people say that. Also, like we were talking about Highgards failure, someone and somebody had mentioned it to us, but neither of us have played it. Ark Raiders. Ark Raiders is the exact opposite of a failure. Just PC players last month, they had 1 million concurrent players, and the game has sold over 14 million copies today. That's a lot of plays. How did that not win the Game Awards? It's multiplayer. Yeah. It should have. It was multiplayer, obviously. Yeah. Why would a game with good story that makes you feel things possibly win? Who plays single-player games anymore? Losers that don't know how to put the dog out on a schedule. Yeah, that's who. That's right. That's who. Us losers that just, like, occasionally stand up and walk away from your machine. That's right. I'm just like, I was with this. I just wanted to get up and walk away. I can't be committed to this 10-minute match. that's right right that's too much i don't understand but the arc raider bros are like they're going to point at this and say this is why we should have won yeah million concurrent it's tough i mean that that is for that is a solid that is yeah that's not pc that doesn't account console nobody plays it on console so so nobody plays consoles consoles are dead that's right pc's won a long time ago they're the skynet i mean to be fair at this point consoles are just PCs designed with a cruddy access. With a shiny HDMI port. Yeah. And a really cruddy and a controller, which does not necessarily make things better to play. Yeah. Controllers are dumb. They have their places. Yeah, the trash. No. I will say controllers are superior for platformers. Isometric shooters. That's about it. That's about it. Tetris. Like twin stick shooters, stuff like that. Yeah, well, very much any option. Bullet hells. Yeah. Because you're sliding side to side. But otherwise, people like mouse is almost always superior. Especially like typing games. It's really important. No, no, I think typing games are better on control. Yeah. I did, that's one, I do have a new game that's nowhere near new that I started playing. Typing Dead? It's not Typing Dead. But talking about older games and this and that and the different control things, I did pick up on sale Peglin, which is like a combination roguelite Peggle game where you're a little goblin guy who plays like Pachinko, the Pachinko ball drop like Peggle. but you earn like weapons and different orbs and stuff to, and you're fighting enemies that are coming across. I remember having seen it, uh, on games done quick a couple of years ago and I'd put it on my list and it was on sale like real cheap last week. So cool. I picked it up. So I've been playing some Peglin too. Peglin too. So the Peglin, well, actually it's just Peggles fun. I've been playing Peglin as well. Okay. So yeah, Peggles fun. Peglin is funner. Funner. Okay. Yeah. It's more enjoyable. Nice. So that's what I got. All right. Well, if people want to reach out about anything that we got for this episode, they can email us at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. If you don't want us to be taken over by AI and become AI Eloys telling you about your gaming and all of that, then the only way to do so really is to support us via patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers for as little as a dollar a month. That's the only way to stop Skynet. And please do anything you can to stop Skynet, including following us on Twitch and Instagram at eclectic underscore gamers. And in a couple of weeks, assuming Skynet doesn't terminate us, we should be back with more discussions. But until then, my name is Dennis. My name is Tony. Goodbye. See you.