Hello and welcome to Into the Aether. It's still a low-key video game podcast and my
name is Brendon Biggley. I'm Stephen Hilger. I realized what the recent intros of yours
have reminded me of. It reminds me of the David Lynch, "It's Friday Once Again."
Oh yeah, maybe that's like deeply ingrained in my psyche at this point.
It's Sunday, February 12th, and if you can believe it, it's a Low-Key VIP podcast once
again!
That's honestly very good.
Thank you.
Before we get into-
It's Fire Emblem once again!
It's not, it's not. I promise you it's not.
Sorry, David.
We're not talking about Fire Emblem today. So you can put your pitchforks down for all
the people who are protesting. I don't know. I do want to actually, I should probably mention
we are also today recording Ocarina of Time, our bonus episode about that video game today.
That is going to be the specter looming over this whole episode for me because all I want
to do, we may be now that we're now that we've hit record, I'm thinking maybe we should have
flipped the recordings. I was thinking about that. I think we're still on the right track
because once we're done with the Ocarina bonus, the idea of doing another thing after I think
we would be tired. It's probably true. I do think you're right that like you and I have
actually been very self-restrained and not sometimes we talk too much in the lead up
to an episode and we have like kind of microwaved the things we want to discuss and it's not
as fresh as it would have been. So I think we're both bursting at the seams to talk about
that game, which I think we've, you know, we've also been playing it for longer because
we decided earlier that that was going to be this month's bonus. So anyway, very excited
to do that later today. Yeah, that's happening later. And that episode will be out at some
point this month in February of 2023. So look forward to that. The thing that we did want
to talk about today, though, or at least like the crux of most of this episode is almost
just kind of a part two of talking about the Nintendo Direct from last week. So if you
missed it last week, we released a normal episode on Wednesday. And then Wednesday night,
late in the night, deep in the twilight of the evening, released a second episode called
Bach MP3 that was all about that Nintendo Direct, which was great. It was great. It
was a great Nintendo Direct. It was awesome. Yeah, I had a great time. And what was wonderful
about the Nintendo Direct, as with all of the best ones, is that there were a lot of
day and date drops, mostly demos, but a couple like full games and then some other stuff.
And honestly, you and I have been playing Ocarina of Time pretty much exclusively all
week. But you and I have both had time to dip into all of the stuff that Nintendo released
during that direct. So I think that's going to be the crux of today is talking about all
of the demos and some of the other stuff. I haven't played all the same ones as you
and perhaps vice versa. I did download and purchase the Metroid Prime remake as well
as the demo for Sea of Stars and Octopath Traveler 2, which I have played, which we're
going to talk about later. Yeah. So that's all very exciting. Yeah. I almost preordered
advanced wars and I'm like, I can wait. I'm not getting a good benefit from preordering
One actual like unrelated to stuff that was released.
One of the things I've been thinking about a lot and something
that I haven't seen a lot of people talking about is the tears of the kingdom.
Price increase to $70 is like obviously a hotly discussed topic on the Internet.
You know, which I think rightfully.
And you and I talked about it a little bit in that episode.
But specifically, just like you would expect that Nintendo would do that
when there's new hardware.
It's kind of weird to say like this system is seven years old
and now we're going to increase the price of all the games.
But that second part is actually, I think, the most important
because everyone's very fixated on Tears of the Kingdom.
And like, is that game going to be worth $70?
For me, no brainer.
Like the amount of time that I play Breath of the Wild, it's like a fucking
no brainer.
Where I start to question it is thinking about other Nintendo
first party stuff like, is this just a Tears of the Kingdom thing?
Or is this also like a Pikmin 4 thing and a Metroid Prime 4 thing?
Are they going to make like an ARMS 2 and charge $70 for it?
You know, because for me, weirdly, and maybe this is just years of spending $60 on video
games, but for me, like the $60 to $70 price increase is the threshold for me to feel comfortable
taking a chance on things.
Yeah, same.
I think the last game I can remember spending 70 on was Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, which
was one of the few like PS5 exclusives that like fully utilized that hardware.
And that was like an incredible spectacle and like still is one of the few games that
I'm like, Oh, this could be the future.
But even still, I mean, it's like that that was a lot.
And I think for a lot of people, that's going to be like the one game they play all year.
So it's just I think especially for Sony now that they're discontinuing their subscription
service like it's an even more limiting business practice where it's like choose the one game
that's $70.
Yeah, really?
Yeah, so that's the only thing we haven't talked about on the show at all. But but what
they've done is they've they're closing the PlayStation Plus collection, which are like
essentially that collection of PS4 games that you get if you subscribe to PS Plus, you still
do get the other stuff like you still get that like game pass adjacent offering that
they have, but you don't get new games. So you're still you're still left in the dark
if you want to play like Ragnarok or Rift Apart or Horizon two or whatever. I mean,
games are still all $70, which, you know, as you and I have talked about, I think works
to varying degrees of success for PlayStation Studio stuff, because it's all kind of homogenous,
I think, in terms of like the gameplay style and structure, like they have a very clear
artistic direction at PlayStation Studios, very much inspired by The Last of Us and Uncharted.
But for Nintendo, I don't feel as good about spending $70 on like a wish, a hope and a
dream that like, you know, there, I would say like more tertiary IP is going to work
out like even even a thing like Kirby in the Forgotten Land if that had released you know
later this year for $70 I would not be as gung-ho about getting it like day and date
you know yeah especially given that Nintendo games almost never go on sale and when they
do it's like a bizarre transaction like like the voucher system they have right now in
retrospect the voucher system is definitely just to kind of placate people who think that
the $70 is too much for tears of the kingdom right is like because that that applies technically
to that deal so you could get the two vouchers
and spend one of them on Tears of the Kingdom
and then wait for the next $70 Nintendo game
and then use it on that also?
- I don't know, I mean it's hard to know
what Nintendo is planning.
I would guess, I mean has there been a consistency
in pricing amongst their current first party games?
- For the most part it's all $60.
For the most part all their games are $60
with the weird exception of the Metroid Prime remaster.
- Yeah, which is 40, which is nice.
I remember there was a lot of debate too,
I think Skyward Sword's remaster was full price.
- It was, yeah. - I think that was also 60.
Yeah, I mean, it's, I think this kind of bleeds
into a larger conversation that we've had a couple times
on the show where I just think the idea
of pricing games this way, it just feels like
it's reaching a boiling point where something
has to change one way or another.
Like, for both the consumer and the businesses themselves.
'Cause like, I mean, Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox
have infinite money, but like, for more
third party publishers, maybe smaller. I don't know. I just, it just feels
unsustainable across the board for a variety of reasons. And I don't want to
say game passes the future because I think that like everything being a
subscription, I don't want, I do think there we, we now, especially, you know,
post HBO max, the value of physical media has like quadrupled, right? At least
just in spirit. Um, but I'm sure in price as well. I really regret, I, I used
used to have this like cursed college era binder full of DVDs that I no longer have.
And I'm like, man, I mean, it was probably like South Park season four. I don't need
that. But like, you know, I do kind of miss like I have a collection of Blu-rays of like
movies I really love, but I used to have so much backed up and now I don't anymore. Anyway,
I'm just saying that like I can't see the $70 being a sustainable future for anyone.
So that's that's where I'm coming from. Yeah, especially I mean, you and I are I think kind
of edge cases in this scenario. But you know, for people like us who have a PlayStation
five or an Xbox Series S or X, and the Nintendo Switch, asking for $70 for each individual
video game on all of the systems you own is like, that's going to greatly limit the amount
of stuff that people are buying, I think on a on a yearly basis, which is a bummer, I
think. Again, happy to do it with tears of the kingdom. I think that's a no brainer.
That could be a hundred dollars and like ruin my credit score, and I would still
Like for real I yeah, no no-brainer scenario get strep for a week and and you have to live next door to your
High school bully. I would still get it. I think I would still get it - yeah
Can I hear them through the wall? I guess is the question
Like do I have to see them or because I'm getting tears the kingdom I can just hang out inside and play tears of the
Kingdom you know I mean, I don't I don't even have to see them really maybe it's a bridges the gap and you become friends
Oh, that'd be nice. See it all worked out in the end. The voucher system is great
One voucher for me and one for my high school bully now, we're friends
Yeah, so it's it's very strange especially like the thing about the $70 price - is like, you know, there's a whole
district of YouTube waiting to point out any
Graphical shortcoming of this game. Yeah, I'd be like, you know, fuck Nintendo. Why is that?
I'm like again like I definitely have the consumers back here
But I also think like this is already planting the seed of like a Mass Effect 3 reception
Yeah, I'm nervous about totally I think I think you're totally right. Yeah. Oh my god
I have some stuff to say about that in regards to Ocarina of Time, but I can't wait to get to
Yeah, right, I'm saying the looming specter of Ocarina of Time, it's it's a cloud hanging over me
Yeah, at all times today. But anyway, all that said, I just I think it's interesting
to extrapolate the $70 out to future releases, you know, like looking at everything that
Nintendo announces in Nintendo Direct now that's like a first party release and thinking like
that might cost $70 is going to really actually change my consumer behavior. I think not in the
way that Nintendo wants. Arms to $70 weirdly feels like the warning. That's like the job
It's like, no, no, no, we can't do this anymore.
Didn't they make the first ARMS free for a day
and it still didn't help anything?
Like, they were like, what if we just made this free
for a little bit?
- Yeah, they did.
I think for Nintendo Online subscribers,
you got it for a weekend or something.
- Yeah.
- And then there was also a discount on the game.
- I played it when it was freely available.
It was fun enough, but I think,
I am curious if they do do a sequel.
I will not get it if it's $70,
but I wonder if there's room for iteration there
to improve it.
I just think like it's a big ass
to do motion controls these days.
I think we're all still a little bit tired of that era.
- Yeah, I would be interested in a sequel to ARMS.
I think that that has the potential to be interesting
and I appreciate that they added,
what was her name, Min Min to Smash, right?
So they didn't add Abe Lincoln
from Codename Steam to Smash.
You know what I mean?
We're talking about Abandoned Steph from Nintendo.
- It was a cool kind of like mesh
of like, what if Nintendo had a Street Fighter
kind of mixed with Punch-Out.
- Yeah.
- So that's a cool idea.
I would love to see that kind of done again
with a little bit more going on, but we'll see.
- But maybe just give me more Punch-Out.
(laughing)
- Yeah, maybe just more Punch-Out, but not at $70.
- Dude, Punch-Out is so good.
You wanna talk about other stuff?
So Nintendo released--
- You don't wanna talk about the Wii Punch-Out
where Donkey Kong blows a kiss at you?
- Don't fucking bring up the Wii Punch-Out
and expect me to not talk about it.
That game is amazing.
- I take back what I said about us being over motion controls
'cause the idea of doing the Wii Punch-Out
does make me very excited.
- Let's jump into Metroid Prime Remastered.
(laughing)
A game that was announced and released
during the most recent Nintendo Direct,
which is pretty cool.
As we mentioned in Bach.mp3,
that has been rumored for a long time.
And one of the interesting things,
I think some stuff that's kind of like bubbling up
or people are starting to like
put the puzzle pieces together
is that we've now seen or we've heard at least rumors
that Retro Studios has been working
on the Metroid Prime remaster for years at this point,
like five or six years, somewhere in that vicinity.
And initially when Metroid Prime 4 was announced,
it was not Retro Studios working on it.
And some people have speculated and now been led to believe
that Nintendo being so impressed by the work
on the Metroid Prime remaster said,
"Oh shit, you should be making 4."
'Cause 4 wasn't where they wanted it to be,
etc, etc. And then they pushed it said we're moving this over to retro. And honestly, I
mean, I have been playing the Metroid Prime remaster a little bit. I think we'll probably
talk about it more in depth at a later date when you've played more of it, etc, etc. But
I love Metroid Prime. I have for a long time. I think those games are great. I don't think
I've played the GameCube one ever, but I did play the Wii trilogy collection that they
released, which was like, okay, so you played all three on the Wii. Yeah, with motion control
specifically, which I thought was amazing because the Wiimote, I feel like wasn't used
to great effect as a light gun or in the ways that it probably should have been. I feel
like we either joked about this on or off the show. I forget, but we were talking about
Red Steel recently and like Red Steel was a launch title for the Nintendo Wii, which
is a first person shooter where you had like a gun in one hand and then a katana and the
other one. And you would like point at the screen with the gun. And if you wanted to
use the katana, you would shake the nunchuck. And that game was not great, but I think proved
to a lot of people that that control scheme could work. And the Metroid Prime trilogy
on the Wii was like, oh, shit, this is also great. And then nobody else really made first
person shooters. I think there was like a spin off of Call of Duty that released at
some point. But I was curious when it came to this remaster on the switch if they were
going to include the motion controls. And I asked that question in Bach dot mp3. And
I didn't realize it until I started playing the game. But they do have the motion controls
on the Switch version and they were surprisingly well. The interesting thing about the Switch
version beyond just the fact that they've like obviously remastered it gone in and changed
all the textures. There's like even new like geography in certain situations like it really
looks like that. This is like one of the more lovingly done remasters I've ever seen. It
feels akin to like a Mass Effect Legendary Edition kind of situation where it's like
cool. No stone left unturned with that. I haven't noticed anything by way of quality
life improvements or anything in terms of the actual like gameplay, but where they are present
is in the control scheme. So there is the original tank controls if you want to do that from the
GameCube. I would not recommend that. I think if you do that, you're gonna be like, wow, this game
hasn't aged well. What you should probably do is the twin stick controls, which is new for this
release and weirdly similar to the emulated version of Metroid Prime that exists if you
download the Prime hack version of Dolphin, because Prime hack essentially exists to like
like you shit in the GameCube ROM. And then what it does is just like upscales everything
adds modern controls to it does a bunch of stuff to make that game just like play like
a more modern, like a more modern video game. And I feel like the Metroid Prime remaster
hasn't like undone the need for prime hack, obviously, because two and three still exist.
And prime hack is great for those. But for me, between the two having played a little
bit of prime hack and having played a little bit of this, I think I will prefer this switch
version forever now. Cool. Yeah. The twin stick controls are amazing. Like it just it
feels so good and says so much about how incredible Metroid Prime is. I think, you know, by modernizing
this game in any way at all, it only serves to highlight how incredible it was when it
first came out and what like a huge monumental shift it is also very much like Ocarina of
Time in a lot of ways. But first 3D Metroid, yeah. Yeah. But all of that having been said,
I went into the control scheme a little bit and was like, I wonder if anything else is
in here and then found the motion controls, which you use, you know, one of the one of
the joy cons to look around. And it feels like great, which is weird because I've tried
other motion control stuff like that on the switch and usually it doesn't feel very good.
Even like switch sports, I have some issues with sometimes like the joy cons just don't
register the way that I want them to. I don't know what they've done here with the Metroid
Prime remastered to make it feel like almost exactly the way it did on the Wii, but it
It really does.
This is like, I can't believe that this is real.
I can't believe this exists.
And if this is any indication of what Prime 4 is going to be like, I am so fucking stoked.
The big thing that's like waiting in the wings hypothetically is that apparently, and this
is just another rumor, but it's kind of been stacked alongside the Metroid Prime remaster
for a long time, is that they're not going to remaster 2 and 3 to the same level of depth
that this first one was, but they are going to re-release them on the Switch with these
added control schemes, which I think is a great compromise in that case.
Yeah. I'm really excited to play one and two and three as well. I played like the first,
I don't know, five to ten hours of three back in high school, but like have very little
memory of it. I remember there was like a lizard on a boogie board at one point. That's
about it. So yeah, I don't remember the lizard on the boogie board, but I'm excited to eventually
get to three again. And that might have been a projection. Yeah. There are a bunch of like
other bounty hunters that you meet early on. They're like, "Hey, what's up? I'm a Capri
Sun-esque man."
The Metroid Primary Master also being $40 is kind of like a no brainer for me. You know,
as soon as they announced it, I was like, "I'm getting that. I'm going to play that
and I'm gonna have a great time."
Yeah. I also feel like the "It's available later today" almost felt like conceding to
the fact that this has been a rumor for years. It was like, "You don't have to wait anymore.
It's just here now. Go get it."
It is so interesting. Yeah, the going rumor has been that this game has been done for
about like a year or two at this point. Yeah, like just waiting to be released, which, you
know, I think raises a lot of questions about how many other games Nintendo just has finished
and waiting. Yeah, I mean, that was the rumor too for Fire Emblem Engage as well as the
Advanced Wars reboot too. Yeah, I mean, the Advanced Wars reboot from what we know was
like almost gonna get sent out to reviewers to get reviewed like right before it got pushed.
And the other rumor has been Wind Waker and Twilight Princess have been waiting to be
released for a long time.
I'm just hoping that that happens this year.
Yeah, I don't know.
I wonder if, I know we talked about that a lot, but I wonder if we get the Wind Waker
and Twilight Princess ports, if it's just going to be like ports of the Wii U HD remasters
or if we're going to get like new remasters akin to what they did to Skyward Sword.
That would be wild.
I don't really know what else they would do because I feel like the Wind Waker treatment
was essentially you could take selfies and they like fix the tingle part of it.
Yeah. Yeah. Because in the in the original you weren't playing as Tingle and now you
are playing as Tingle, which is pretty cool. Link and Tingle switch places in the Wii U
version.
In the Zelda timeline, Wind Tingle is actually an offshoot. It's it's the only nautical chapter
of the hero loses a branch of the timeline that actually ends with Wind Tingle. It would
- It would be more fun to play as Tingle
in that chapter of the game
because you would just be waiting
on the island named after you
for Link to give you thousands of rubies.
(laughing)
It would essentially be like a city management game
- Yeah. - as Tingle.
- I feel like you would receive those thousands of rubies
and then it would become a Yakuza game.
Like at that point,
(laughing)
you go to Kamurocho and you just like blow it all.
- Oh man. - On mini games.
- That's a crossover I need.
I need Tingle-Kuwami.
(laughter)
- Fuck.
- It's kinda weird too how like,
Beetle and Tingle have become Zelda mainstays, you know?
- Yeah.
- Like, Tingle was a bizarre addition
to the cast in Majora's Mask,
and I always read him as like,
the flip of the Kokiri,
'cause the Kokiri are kids that never grow up,
and Tingle is a fully grown man who acts like a kid.
- Yeah.
- But now he's just like around forever.
- Yeah.
You and I have speculated that Beetle
represents the empty piece in the Triforce.
- Deals for bargains.
- Yeah, yeah, courage, power, wisdom, and deals.
And I'm wondering what Tingle is in that respect.
'Cause Tingle does seem to be--
- Tingle is the shadow of the Triforce itself, yeah.
- Oh yeah, maybe, yeah.
I just feel like it's interesting that Beetle and Tingle
are also reincarnating constantly.
(laughing)
Specifically, you know?
- That's the biggest question.
- That's very strange.
- So yeah, the Metroid Prime remaster is now available
on the Nintendo Switch.
- I cannot wait to play it, I'm really excited.
I mean, this, I always have a special place in my heart
for the series that I have become a fan of during the show.
Like I entered the show with extremely little
to no Metroid experience, and now I've been, you know,
fully on-boarded with Super Metroid, Fusion, Dread,
and I'm really excited to see the Prime games.
They're so radically different in some ways.
- Yeah, and as you and I mentioned in the last episode,
but with the more recent Nintendo Direct,
we're almost at the point where every Metroid game
is on the Switch, which is really cool.
So the original is there, 2 is there,
the Super Metroid, obviously,
Fusion is coming down the line, Dread,
and now Metroid Prime 1, and hypothetically 2, 3,
and then eventually 4 as well.
- They're all there.
I wonder if they'll ever be all the Zelda games.
How many are there now currently?
- A lot.
(laughing)
- I don't know if they'll ever feel the need
to port Zelda 2, although you can get that on the 3DS
currently for like $3.
- You can, I wonder if they'll do
Four Swords Adventures ever.
(laughing)
- Oh, that'd be fun. - I feel like that's
the one everybody forgets.
- Yeah, that came, it was the dual,
it was sort of like the Duck Hunt Mario combination,
but it was Game Boy Advance.
It was the port of Link to the Past with Four Swords.
- Yeah.
- Capcom had a really cool run of Zelda.
I wonder if they'll ever come back for that.
- I hope they do, that'd be nice.
- Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, be safe.
- I feel like we'll never get Link Between Worlds
on the Switch though.
Probably not. I don't know. I mean I would love that again with the 3ds kind of fading away
That would be awesome to have and and to have like a second win for that games. It's so remarkable still
But yeah, I'm excited for the Oracle games though
We should we should get into this the Gameboy and Gameboy Advance
Stuff also released a and date with an antenna direct which is pretty cool
Have you dipped into that at all only very little so I downloaded both of them
I haven't played the Gameboy Advance games yet, but I did dive right into Gameboy because I
I couldn't remember Game Boy. I couldn't remember exactly. I was going to comment on that and
I was like, "Oh, I'll let him just keep going." Thank you for not being my high school bully.
Dude, can I have a voucher? Have you gotten the voucher for the free Game Boy? Anyway,
I forgot what games were there and I started playing Super Mario World or Super Mario Land
2, the six golden coins, right? The six golden coins, yeah. I have very fond memories of
game, but I hadn't played in forever. Two realizations. Immediately. I played the first
few levels, had the time of my life. One, I kind of like the green screen. I kind of
like the Game Boy.
The DMG vibe. Yeah.
Yeah. For games that came out on that system, it is kind of fun to have the option to see
the Game Boy screen, but like properly lit. The other thing too, I knew that this game
was sort of a precursor to Wario because the next Mario Land game was Wario.
Yeah. And then at that point became its own series with Wario 3 and Wario 4.
And then Wario kind of pivoted to WarioWare, although there was that really
bizarre Wario game on GameCube that no one talks about.
Master of Disguise.
No, that was the DS one.
Yeah, there were there was a bad air.
I feel like once WarioWare came out, all the Wario games
that followed in the main series were like disasters.
But that era on early Game Boy was awesome,
and it's interesting to play a Mario game
that feels way more like a Wario game,
and that's Super Mario Land 2.
- Yeah, it's interesting because that,
I understand why they didn't put Super Mario Land 1
on this collection, because that game is rough.
I dove into that game recently.
Weird thing, I picked up a Retroid Pocket 3 recently,
which I got for a friend for their birthday,
and then they were like, yeah,
it's gonna take like five or six weeks to show up,
'cause it's shipping from China.
So I was like, okay, well that's not gonna make their birthday then and got them a different
thing. But I was like, when the retro shows up, eventually I'll just like use it myself,
I guess. And one of the first games I played because it was after this event was Super
Mario Land one just because I was curious, like why wouldn't they put that on there?
Also, it feels like such a no brainer for you, but the second one, but the first one
also, and man, they like, that is the perfect example of like, yeah, you can put a Mario
game on the game.
Sure, that's the game that comes to mind, you know, whenever we talk about handhelds
and sort of the pre Game Boy Color era of handhelds. Yeah, that game and and did a Kong
land come to mind where it's like you could tell there were sacrifices made, but the novelty
of having this handheld at the time is what made it popular. Right. But yeah, I mean,
that game is even more archaic than the original Mario by a pretty large margin. Super weird.
It is super weird. I kind of like the submarine. It's kind of fun. Yes. I, I, part of me almost
like morbidly hopes that they added eventually just so more people can experience how strange
it is. Uh, cause it's obviously not easy to get right now. So I hope that they added eventually
cause I think people would love to like at least dive in and see what we're talking about.
But I'm glad that they added to Marlin too. Cause that game is like equally bizarre. The
whole like six golden coins idea of being able to go into the different lands kind of
at your own whim. And they all have completely new, never seen again enemy types in a Mario
game. It's in a completely different land. It's not even in the Mushroom Kingdom. It's
like such a strange video game.
Yeah, it feels akin to like Mario World 2, where it was like, or, oh no, Mario World
2 was Yoshi's Island. Actually, still, like all the Mario 2s are like dramatically different
games. Sunshine as well. Yeah.
Yeah, the game, the Game Boy stuff is, I think, very interesting and very cool. They added,
If you go into the settings in the Game Boy stuff, you can switch between the original
DMG things you were talking about, like DMG filters, it's like the greens, all the shades
of green, the Game Boy Pocket, which is kind of more monotone, still has a little bit of
a green hue, but more monotone, or a Game Boy Color mode, which I think is really fun
because they just kind of like added color to games that didn't have color initially,
which is kind of fun.
But one of the cool things that you can do also is turn on the setting called Reproduce
Classic Feel, which changes the frame rate of the games to match what it was on the Game
boy. It also adds like, like an LCD kind of screen filter. So it adds like the scan lines
and the grid lines and stuff, which that's cool. Doesn't work as well on TV, but looks
really cool on the switch and handheld mode. Yeah. But specifically also adds back a lot
of visual effects that some of the people at Nintendo, like very, I would say, uh, like
genius level moves. Uh, some things like one of the examples I saw on Twitter was, uh,
the chain chomp in links awakening, the chain that connects the chain chomp to the post
that it's chained to is kind of like phasing because they're essentially creating a chain
that will phase out every other frame. So it looks transparent when it's moving around.
So it kind of has like a kind of shimmering vibe to it. So it's cool that they added that
stuff back in like when you and I talk about game preservation, like weirdly enough, that's
the kind of stuff that I'm thinking of that like usually gets lost in these conversations,
you know, like the actual like the fact that there's a little checkbox that literally says
reproduce classic feel. So it actually feels almost exactly like it did on the Game Boy.
I think it's like a really nice thing for them to have done that they didn't need to
do. And I feel like even when you look at how the handling of their N64 library was
launched, like I feel like they're kind of juxtaposed against one another is like there
was the shitty way that they could have done this. And there's the cool new way that they've
decided to do this. Yeah. I wonder if they took some feedbacks. The N64 launch felt like
the most fumbles of all of these, you know, like, I mean, like not to get too into it,
like the port of Ocarina, now that you've played the game,
like it's pretty rough.
Like it's, it plays fine, but the pre-rendered backgrounds
are all pretty heavily distorted.
And like, you know, again, I know that game
like the back of my hand, so it stands out to me,
but like, I'm also not a stickler for that kind of stuff.
And it also gets in the way for me.
- Yeah, for the Ocarina of Time episode,
I've actually gone and played a little bit
of the Switch version.
And then I also played it emulated on the Retroid Pocket
to get like kind of the more one-to-one vibe.
And it is noticeable.
It is noticeable the difference between the two.
It's nice that they've gone in and fixed a lot
of like the major issues with the N64 library,
which is good.
'Cause there were some like really troubling things
like huge input lag and like some rendering effects
that just didn't work at all.
Like in the water temple where Dark Link shows up,
like there was no fog.
So it would just look like a big empty room
with a tree in it.
(laughing)
And they fixed all that stuff, which is really great.
But there still is kind of like a noticeable difference
between emulating it and what they're doing here.
- That is a game that is going to sell subscriptions
to that service, you know?
So it's like, if you're not putting,
I'm not gonna say like no thought into it,
'cause I'm sure all this stuff,
even if it ends up looking bad, it takes a lot of work.
- Totally.
- But it still just shows like a lack of consideration
for like to release it in that state, you know?
Alongside like, hey, you can buy an N64 controller,
and it's like, eh.
- Yeah.
Yeah, it's weird, especially coming hot off the heels
of our conversation about Metroid Prime Remastered
being done for like a year or two,
it was kind of weird to have the N64 one come out
and feel like they just put it together
like the week before, you know?
- Yeah. (laughs)
- Kind of strange. - Yeah.
- But the Game Boy Advance one is the weirder one for me
'cause that's like the plus expansion pack thing.
So like you have to pay extra
on the Nintendo online subscription to get that stuff.
And at the moment it's only six games,
which I feel like probably should be more.
Like I don't wanna feel like a greedy little shit,
but like it's weird to open this up
and only have six games here
and have one of them be Super Mario Brothers 3,
which is already available via my Nintendo Online.
- Yeah, I, again, like I don't wanna undercut
how excited I was that that stuff is being added there.
Like that era to a Game Boy Advance and GameCube
is like the least preserved by Nintendo.
So I'm really happy we're like getting that at all
and the Metroid Prime remaster, like that's wonderful.
But I also think like Nintendo has to be aware
of the competition of retro handhelds at this point.
Like I know it's sort of like sometimes kind of gray legally
in terms of emulation and all that,
but like it's a common enough thing
that like a person now will be like,
well, do I wanna pay Nintendo X per month
or do I just wanna buy a handheld
and have all of those games available to me?
Like I feel like it's kind of like if they really,
I don't know, like it shouldn't have to be a competition.
It's just, I don't know if they're doing enough
to prevent people from like going that direction.
That's what I'm trying to say.
- Yeah, I think I'm with you on that.
The thing about the six games that they released
for the Game Boy Advance is like,
they're good though, you know?
Like, I think again, it's one of those situations
where if you and I hadn't recently played
through the whole Game Boy Advance library,
I would be so excited to boot up Minish Cap
and start that game and play through the whole thing again,
you know, for the first time in years,
but you and I have recently done that.
Also, for people that are maybe not knowledgeable of that handheld emulator scene, this is
incredible.
And a lot of people who maybe haven't played these games yet are going to get Superstar
Saga and Minish Cap, which are life-changingly good.
So I'm very happy about that.
One of my low-key favorites, which is Mario Kart Super Circuit, which I feel like doesn't
get a lot of love and is in some cases actively hated upon, but I like that game a lot.
I think it's a better run at the first one, which is I think how you pitched it.
Yes.
The first one is like accidentally Dark Souls, but right.
More frustrating.
Yeah, but I'm excited.
I'm glad that this stuff is here.
I'm excited about the stuff that they said that is coming down the line.
Like getting the Oracle games is going to be great.
Getting Metroid Fusion on here and Kirby.
Fire Emblem.
It's going to be cool.
Fire Emblem.
Golden Sun.
Yeah.
Having Golden Sun on here by itself, I think, is going to do very well for Nintendo.
I think that's going to shut up half of Twitter.
I think Twitter is no longer there gonna be no replies now and intend because you like
Nintendo could announce anything like a Luigi plushie and someone would be like what about Golden Sun now like that entire
Part of Twitter is just gonna peacefully move on I guess yeah
Well the big thing for me is are they gonna also release lost age right? What about what was the DS one with all the dads?
Yeah, dad done. I'm just curious are if they're gonna only release half of that story
Where's lost age, yeah, that's that there it is. It's a new one. My other my other lingering thought is is Japan gonna get mother 3 on there
Talk about shutting up Twitter. Oh, man. I mean I will see what happens
I don't you feel like only Japan is gonna get it though. Probably
It just feels correct, right? Doesn't that feel like a like a huge Nintendo move?
We did get Earthbound, but you know Mother 3 I think it has more challenges to to you know
It wasn't officially localized. So yeah, it would make sense if only Japan got it
What's been interesting about the Nintendo online stuff though?
Is that each of the systems that they've released with the exception of the Game Boy and now the Game Boy Advance?
Each of them has one game that had never been released in the States before that they localized
That's right, like the first Mother 1 is there.
Yeah, and I forget what the one on N64 was. Was it Sin and Punishment?
Sin and Punishment, yeah.
So, I mean, maybe it's possible. I don't want to open that Pandora's box again,
but like there's a world in which that's how they release Mother 3 in the West, which would be
completely wild, but maybe.
In the interim, the fan translation is incredible.
Yeah, it's amazing.
We have a whole episode about Mother 3. If you haven't played Mother 3,
It's definitely worth checking out. Yeah. I've heard of it. The other,
the other thing, uh, that is kind of like lingering.
And you and I talked about a little bit is the lack of Pokemon.
And now people are starting to speculate that maybe cause Pokemon day is
happening at the end of the month.
Some people are speculating that maybe that'll be a Pokemon day announcement
specifically. I think we're only going to get yellow. I feel it in my bones.
Just Pokemon pinball and Pokemon yellow. Yeah.
Yeah. It's going to be pinball. You called it. Yes, exactly.
Which are both great games. I mean, I think Yellow in some ways is an improvement on Red
and Blue. I just don't like the mandatory Pikachu. You know, let me have my Guy Bulbasaur.
Although you can trade, if you have the cartridges, you can trade your Pikachu to a red version
and then evolve him. And then he's just gone and yellow. It's one of the cruelest things
you can do.
Yeah, I would never do that.
I did it once and I felt too powerful. It was like one of the, like, alchemists can't
do this. It's one of the forbidden things. Yeah. Alchemy. Making a philosopher's stone.
Yeah. And trading a Pikachu. Yeah. If you have Nintendo online plus expansion pack,
I would recommend playing Minish Cap and Superstar Saga. Those games are fucking great.
Yeah. Minish Cap is is one of the best Zeldas. I'll say it. Yeah. I'm right there with you. At
the very least, one of the best looking Zeldas and has some of the coolest items. I love the
like weird like vacuum you get in that game.
Yeah, the pot that shoots air out.
Yeah, there's also like a kind of shout out to four swords.
Like there are a lot of puzzles that involve like making duplicates of yourself
temporarily.
Yeah, that game, that game is incredible.
And it's really fun.
And looks great on a TV like.
Yeah, this is one of the things that you and I said in the Game Boy Advance episode
when we were hoping to God that Nintendo would do this and release this stuff
on Nintendo online was like, you take a game like Minish Cap
you put it on TV and it looks just as good if not better sometimes when you blow it up. Yeah. Yeah,
it's remarkable. It's very cool. Some of the best pixel art on Game Boy Advance, especially the like
those moments where you are transforming from tiny to regular size and like you're in like
the mushrooms the way the world looks when you're small. Yeah, so cool. That game is so smart. Yeah,
it's incredible. I wonder the thing. Okay, I'm just thinking about the Pokemon thing again. But
like if they release I just I don't know what they would do if they were to release the Pokemon
games like do do on the Game Boy for example do they release gold silver and crystal or do they
just release crystal you know do they release Sapphire and Emerald or is it just Emerald
what if everyone I think in the case of uh second gen it would probably be crystal that way just
like cover all bases but I just had the idea of what if like half the world gets red and half
the world gets blue and you still have to trade. You still have to trade online. Yeah.
It's like just a toss of the coin who gets what. Ooh, trading online. That's pretty cool.
That's what I mean. I think like it would be fun to have online play for Gen 1. Yeah.
Interesting. Just for the novelty of it. Yeah, right? Yeah. That's a cool idea. I mean, I'm
here all week. Okay. Well, in that case though, it would probably make the most sense to have
yellow. That was an evil laugh. I got like sick at the end. Let's move on.
Let's take a break and then when we come back we'll talk about all the demos we've been
playing. How about that?
That sounds good to me.
All right. Goodbye then.
See you soon Gary Oak.
Steven, can I tell you about the intrusive thought I had earlier?
Please, share with me.
night I started watching Get Back that Peter Jackson directed Beatles documentary.
Oh, interesting. How is it?
It's, I mean, look, obviously there's a lot of stuff that you could say about the Beatles.
Get Back is a really interesting documentary because it's so focused on like the moment
the Beatles broke up, you know, and like, you're just watching these four people in
a room like arguing and their relationship falling apart, you know, and every once in
a while Peter Jackson will like interject with like clips of how great they were at
at one point, which is weird, but the thing that I couldn't stop thinking
about, which is so stupid, this is one of the dumbest things I've ever said
on this show. I can't wait to be clear. I'm on the edge of my seat. I kept
thinking to myself, it's so wild that video games didn't exist yet.
I just kept thinking to myself, like, stop arguing, go play Mario. It was
like, oh shit, that's not real yet.
You ever see Gladiator? Nah, no games.
- They don't have video games.
- No games.
I love that, that's amazing.
- Just like that.
- I mean, to give that thought some merit,
I do think it's interesting that we are,
like games are recent enough of a thing
that we could watch like a,
obviously that was a while ago,
but it's like recent enough history
where like a medium didn't exist yet.
- Yeah.
- It's kind of interesting.
- Right?
- Yeah.
- It's fascinating.
- I'm with you.
I would have felt the same thing.
I'm like Ringo, chill the fuck out, get ring fit.
Right now. Ringo Fit Adventure. There you go.
Ringo Fit Adventure. I would, uh, I would, yeah, I would pick up that game in a heartbeat.
But the idea of like George Harrison pulling out a Game Boy and just playing Super Mario
Land and being like, "Oh, it's cool. They did it. I don't know if they should have though."
The novelty of handheld.
Yeah.
All right.
Anyway, you want to talk about demos?
Yeah, let's talk about demos. Actually, speaking of the past, do you think demo disks could
ever come back and make sort of it. Sorry, do you want to finish the sentence before
I say no or... Have you ever taken such an opposite approach to yes and that it became
high art? Just said no during a friend's sentence. This could be a fun conversation. No, not
Not even like a passionate note, just like a swift dagger through the chest.
I'm just thinking discs don't even exist anymore.
I guess, yeah, maybe discs was...
I shouldn't have gone on Shark Tank with disc technology.
I was thinking of like limited edition physical releases and like fan-made instruction booklets
and strategy guides.
And I'm like, I wonder if there's a way to have like a purposeful collection of demos
in a fun delivery.
Like there used to be like PS1 demo discs where there would be like a landing page of
games and all that.
But I'm just like, I just wonder if there's a version of that that could be relevant at
all today or like fun other than just like events like this where a bunch of demos are
announced and you can download them.
I was just thinking about that.
On the worst eShop Nintendo has ever put on a console.
It's amazing how much the Nintendo eShop feels like using Netscape when Internet Explorer
had already come out.
You know?
Yeah, it's dial up adjacent for sure.
It's wild.
It also like the Switch is like giving all its might to just like search Zelda.
Like this, the Switch chugs and burns if you just search the name Zelda in the eStore.
There's only like four results and yeah, it's like, yeah, yeah, I found these. Did
you want high rule warriors? Now when you said recently released, did you mean every
game? Yeah, yeah, every single game on the shop sorted for most recent. Yeah. Oh my God,
your choices are like here are the eight games we've decided to feature and here's everything.
I will say this, if you, dear listener, like me,
hate using the Nintendo Switch eShop,
you can very easily just do it from a web browser
or your phone, and it will also,
when you purchase a video game,
download it to your Switch automatically.
So you never have to visit the eShop ever again.
(laughing)
Just a heads up on that.
- Also, if you buy something that's on your wishlist,
it's not taken off.
- Is that true, really?
- Yeah, your wishlist just stays the same.
- Okay.
- Which just, that just feels like the death rattle
of a bad eStore.
Oh my goodness.
- Yeah, also to find your wishlist,
it's like, you have to use touch controls to find it.
It's like weirdly out of the way.
- Yeah, you have to tap on your own profile icon
and then wishlist, right?
- Yeah, something like that.
- So anyway, there's a bunch of demos
that got released on the Nintendo Switch.
You and I have been playing them.
I guess the first one that I could get out of the way
very quickly is Kirby's Return to Dream Land,
which is that port of the Nintendo Wii video game.
And they've added a bunch of stuff to the game,
which I don't know if it's actually available in the demo,
but they added the Magolor mode or Magolor's Adventure
or whatever it is.
Magolor is a character from that game
and what they're doing with that character in that port
is a very cool idea, but I did not get to play it.
But what they're doing is essentially
you have this character named Magolor
and as you continue to make your way through
different levels in this game,
you get skill points that you can add
that kind of give Magolor like Kirby adjacent power ups,
which is fun, but you can invest all these.
It's kind of like an RPGification of Kirby, which is a fun, fun conceit.
What they have in the demo is like very classic,
like do the first couple of levels and then also you can go visit the amusement
park, which is like full of mini games and it's, it's fucking good, man.
It's interesting to play, I think,
in relation to Forgotten Land because that game it's almost like playing three
houses and then going back to an earlier Fire Emblem. It's like, Oh yeah, you know,
these games are cool, but I've seen the future, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
It's interesting to go back and play a side scrolling Kirby game after playing Forgotten
Land and it still works and is very cool.
And I have not played that game.
That's like one of the Kirby games I haven't played.
But some of the stuff that they do with with that game is very fun.
So they I would say most notably if you're talking about like what's the big Nintendo
hook that got that game greenlit if I was to guess outside of the fact that it's four
player co-op, which is obviously very cool, is you can get like mega versions of all the
powers.
So every once in a while, instead of just like a normal sword guy showing up, it'll
be like a sword guy that's glowing. And if you inhale him and take his power, you get
a sword that's like the size of the whole screen. It's kind of like New Super Mario
Brothers where you get the mega mushroom and you like become Mario the size of the whole
top screen of the DS. It's very similar to that but with Kirby powers. So whatever power
you have just kind of like takes up the whole screen will destroy everything. And you can
use it to kind of like destroy pieces of the environment as well. For like puzzle solving
abilities, which is a cool idea. I mean, it's good. It's Kirby. It feels very akin to the
classic Kirby games. And honestly, that's enough for me to want to pick it up. And then
all the additional stuff is great. I will say the many games all require motion controls
and I was playing with the pro controller, so I didn't feel like trying them. So I haven't
yet. Yeah, I forgot that the pro controller also has much controls in it. It does. It's
weird. Yeah, it's really weird. I work better with the joy cons. They're sort of like we
remote ask. Yeah, I remember trying to use the pro controller for Super Mario Odyssey
and it's a real hit and miss experience. Because sometimes it works great and sometimes it
was really strange because you had to like kind of shake it left and right to throw the
hat and that didn't always register or work the way you wanted it to. Yeah, I'm reusing
it for it was Galaxy also that you do and Galaxy's motion controls are weird because
it's like it's just the cursor for like the luma and like collecting the sprites and you
You don't really need it, but you still can't not have it.
It's a strange, they couldn't have gotten rid of it,
but it doesn't really help the game at all.
I eventually switched to Joy-Cons and had a great time.
- Yeah, yeah, same.
And then there's the Skyward Sword port,
which is kind of the worst of all worlds,
where it's like the motion controls are pretty rough,
and then also the button controls are pretty rough.
- The thing about Skyward Sword is that,
in the case of that game, it was built from the ground up
to have one-to-one with the sword,
and I think that was just a bad idea.
I actually don't think Skyward Sword is a bad game.
My take on it, which I've shared before,
is if that wasn't a Zelda game,
that would be a quirky cult hit from the Wii
that everyone wants to be brought back.
But it definitely suffered from the reliance
on motion controls.
And I don't really think there's a way to save that.
- Yeah.
So that's Kirby's Return to Dream Land.
The other one that I played,
before we get into the one that you checked out,
is Sea of Stars.
- Yeah, I'm very curious about this one.
Yeah, it's it's kind of been a long time coming game
inspired by Chrono Trigger very, very overtly.
I think they've even said that
in a lot of the marketing material.
One of those games that just been in Nintendo Direct
after Nintendo Direct and eventually will come out
later this year, thankfully, I think in August, they said.
But they have a demo on the eShop right now,
which is kind of a vertical slice of the game.
It's not one of those like, you can start the game
and then carry your progress over.
It's like very, it's a deliberate choice
by the developing team to show you one thing
that the game is doing.
And it's good, it's really good.
The thing that I said,
I made a video about this for YouTube,
but the thing I said in that YouTube video
was something to the effect of like,
I was excited about Sea of Stars
and Chained Echoes kind of like dropping out of nowhere
for me, took a little bit of the wind out
of the sails of Sea of Stars for me.
Like I was really looking forward to that game,
but Chained Echoes was like,
that just did a lot of the stuff
the Sea of Stars wants to do very, very well.
And that doesn't mean the Sea of Stars is gonna be bad,
doesn't mean I'm not excited about it,
but it was like the thing that I was hoping for,
I got already.
A sea of stars is kind of like a cherry on top of the chain deco situation for me.
And see if stars has a lot going for it.
I definitely fucked up in that demo because I did not read the how to play
stuff because I just assumed that it was going to be like Chrono Trigger.
Right. Like I just assumed that I have played a JRPG with turn based combat
before, like I know what I'm doing.
There's a lot of mechanical stuff in that demo that is not explained
because it's, you know, just again, a vertical slice.
And there's really no tutorialization.
So highly recommend if you play that demo, read the how to play stuff,
because what they're doing in combat is actually really cool.
It's really interesting.
The main thing I would say that that sets it apart
that I didn't realize for the longest time until until I eventually read
that how to play thing is that it has kind of like Mario and Luigi
or Paper Mario timing stuff built into it.
That's what I've heard.
Or like I can fell, which is another game, you know, I love that.
How that stuff. Yeah.
And that by itself, I think, is cool and interesting.
So you can use it to obviously power up your attacks or also
Take less damage when you get hit if you time all your button presses correctly
But on top of that you can switch to any character at any time
So in combat you have your three party members and as long as they haven't gone in this like turn cycle
You can switch to them in any order
Which is cool by itself right just because of the synergy between the three party members that they give you in this demo
But on top of that the enemies have this really interesting thing which reminds me a little bit of Octopath which we're gonna talk about
It reminds me a little bit of Octopath, but every turn, every once in a while, an enemy
will be powering up like a bigger attack.
And when they do that, you'll see kind of like a roulette wheel that'll have a couple
of icons on it that'll have like a sword or a boomerang or like a sun or like a moon symbol.
And those, those denote different kinds of attacks that your party members can do.
And if you can hit that enemy with those kinds of, with those kinds of attacks, whatever
rolls up in that roulette wheel, it'll cancel their attack out and kill them immediately.
Oh, wow. And if you can't remove them all, if you can't hit them with all those attacks,
but you can hit them with like one or two, it'll power down that big move that they're
doing. So you're kind of you're kind of encouraged to like at least try even if you don't have,
you know, if you know for a fact that you can't do it, you should at least like hit
them once or twice with that thing that showed up in the roulette wheel just to like, make
sure you don't die because I found that the game is actually harder than I was expecting.
it is it is pretty difficult. And on top of that, the way that video ends on YouTube is
like I just didn't save because I assume there was auto saving and there wasn't. So it kicks
me back to the beginning of the demo. I was like, Oh, okay, well, I guess not. But I've
since jumped in and I've like finished the demo at this point. And it's like tough. It's
it's much harder than I was expecting. I'm looking forward to this game. I think I think
it's gonna be cool. It's beautiful. It is. Yeah, shocking. Incredible. How pretty that
art is. And then obviously you have the Mitsuda soundtrack. He's one of the guest composers.
He did Chrono Trigger and Cross and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 most recently. He's a guest composer,
so he doesn't do all the music, but you can like tell the tracks that he did because they're
stunning.
Yeah. Why am I crying and also ascending?
Yeah, I'm interested in it. I think because you haven't played much Chained Echoes, if
you still don't play much Chained Echoes before Sea of Stars comes out, I think that this
will be one of your favorite games of the year.
You know my tastes fairly well. Do you think I'll like one more than the other? Not to
put them against each other. But I'm just curious, since they've come around the same
time and they're going after similar vibes.
I yeah, I think the big thing I think this is going to be the big like the big difference
between you and me. This is the big line in the sand is I think the vibe of Sea of Stars.
I mean, it says it in the name is very nautical. But so that that has it has that going for
it for you. But also I think the characters and the writing are a lot more like irreverent
and goofier and kind of a little bit more endearing. And I think you will appreciate
that a lot more. Chained Echoes, I think was striking to me specifically because it's taking
a lot of tropes and ideas from those kinds of games and kind of flipping them or drilling
into them a lot deeper than I've seen any other game like that go. It raises a lot of
really interesting questions about these like these like fantasy game worlds that you kind
of end up trekking around and like the politics of like going into and out of cities and things
like that, which I find really interesting and I think pay off and are like great storytelling
moments.
Sea of Stars seems like a little bit breezier of an experience, even though it's a little
bit more difficult, I think, combat wise.
So I think they're both going after very different things.
Again, like not to pit them against each other.
I think they're both like really cool games and I'm excited about both of them.
I still love Chained Echoes, but I'm still excited for Sea of Stars to come out.
I actually had this conversation when I streamed the Octopath 2 demo, which we'll talk about
in a bit.
kind of using the term retro RPG to describe all these kinds of games.
Yeah.
And someone in chat was like, can we even really say it's retro anymore?
And that kind of made me realize, like, I do wonder if a new, not that we need a name
for every type of game, but I do wonder if it's kind of like a Metroidvania scenario
where like at this point, I don't know if you can say Metroidvanias are retro because
like we've seen the genre grow and evolve.
Yeah.
But I think we're at a point where like, I think if you're saying our influence was Chrono
Sugar, it's inherently retro. But I do wonder if like the frequency of these games coming
out and like the number of them we already have this year. Yeah. And the fact that they're
all going out to very different things. I do wonder if like simply saying retro is almost
a disservice because they're all like very new and fresh ideas. Yeah, I think you're
probably right. You know, I as we talked about in the Metroidvania bonus, I think that word
and that genre descriptor is helpful to just have like a nomenclature to talk about that
genre. And I think you're right. Like when I think of Metroidvanias, I don't think of
retro anymore. I think of like just that genre and what it's ballooned and blossomed into.
And there probably is something to be said about like, maybe there should be a new way
of describing these kinds of games as they continue to pop up and get more prevalent,
especially considering you not only have Indies like these teams making them, but companies
like Square Enix looking backwards and saying like, we can just keep making that stuff if
we want. Yeah. I mean, it reminds me a lot of, you know, with Zelda, it's clear that
there's a track for the 3D mainline games, but they're still releasing stuff like the
Link's Awakening remake, which, you know, inherently nostalgic there.
But I think like the influence of top down Zelda we see everywhere.
And that's also a case where like it's not inherently retro anymore.
Just another design tool.
I think at this point, we had this conversation with 8-Bit Adventures 2 last week, where that
game is, I think, also kind of similar to Sea of Stars, where they're just like really
in awe of those types of games.
It kind of sounds like 8-Bit Adventures 2 might be in the middle, where Sea of Stars
is like breezy, fun, love it, and Chained Echoes is more of a critique almost.
I think 8-Bit Adventures 2 is kind of in the middle because there's something going on,
you know, self-awareness-wise with the computer and all that.
It's also setting up more of an FFV kind of vibe.
It's cool that we can get three games and it's not a case where it feels that the inspiration
is shallow, you know, not to continue to dunk on like Lost Sphear, which, you know, those
games are totally fine. You can look at the Tokyo RPG stuff and see that maybe the homage
is a little bit more surface level. And I mean, to be fair to those games, those came
out at a time when there wasn't this surplus of games like it. So I think even when Octopath
One came out, like 2018, which I can't believe is four and a half, five years ago, but even
Octopath One coming out was at a time where like, I think there were a lot of eyes on
that game because it was, it looked the way it did and it was Square. I think it was the
first time Square was purposely looking back since like Bravely Default, which I think
that was like the first big one of like, we're going to make a purposely retro Square game.
I would go as far as arguing that I think Octopath Traveler's release was kind of one
of the death knells of Tokyo RPG Factory internally at Square Enix. Even in my experience playing
through the Tokyo RPG Factory stuff last year, a lot of the research that I did into the
ways in which people were talking about their games at the time that they were releasing
was this is cool, but I can't wait for Octopath Traveler to come out. And then when that happened,
when Octopath Traveler came out, if you go back and look at like forum threads and Reddit
and Twitter and whatever, and like see the discourse and the conversation happening around
Octopath's release in the forums that were talking about games like Lost Sphere and I
I am sets and a lot of them were like, do I get this game or do I get Octopath and nine
times out of 10, everyone would say Octopath. So I think I think there has been an appetite
for this kind of retro inspired RPG for a long time. And it's interesting to see like
not only has Square Enix kind of jumped on board, but I think the people actually paving
the way forward for that are Indies right now. Yeah, as is usually the case, right?
Because like, you know, totally unbound creativity, you can do whatever you want, because you're
not beholden to investors.
I just, even though we're still hearing like, I am inspired by Chrono Trigger, which like
good, if there's one game to be inspired by, that's a good one to pick.
But I also think the success of these types of games to me isn't tethered to you grew
up with them.
Like, I think I'm seeing people kind of seek these style of games out that maybe don't
have that nostalgic attachment to Chrono Trigger or older Final Fantasies.
cool to see that because that to me opens more doors for what these types of games can
do versus just being pure nostalgia. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. That feels like a good
lead into Octopath 2, which you've been playing. Yeah. So I streamed the Octopath 2 demo not
too long ago and it's on our YouTube as well. The demo is the first three hours, which is
interesting. And that's like whatever you can get done in those three hours is what
you can do, right? It's also pretty generous. So I would say overall that roughly gives
you time to do three chapters. But if you're like, so I hit the three hour mark at the
end of a chapter right before a big boss battle and it not only let me keep playing, I was
able to finish the boss battle, see the cut scenes after that. And it wasn't until I left
the town I was in that it gave me the thanks for playing. So it's like, it's like three
hours, but they let you finish whatever you're in the middle of, which I think is a really
a nice, it's a nice touch.
'Cause that way it's not like,
I'm gearing up for a boss fight
and then thanks for playing,
do you wanna buy the whole thing?
'Cause it comes out pretty soon,
I think it comes out at the end of the month.
Which is probably why Square has been,
they've been fond of the 10 hour demo.
But I feel like with some games,
like Dragon Quest XI,
if you're 10 hours into Dragon Quest XI,
your life has changed for the better
and you're gonna get it.
But other games, like 10 hours might be enough
where you're like, I liked this,
but I don't know if I want to play more of it. So I'm like, good. Yeah. Yeah.
I feel like on to go down the dragon quest route,
I think builders one and two is very much that way. Yeah. Like that,
that's about as much as I, I played about five hours of builders.
One talked about it on the show, bought the full game,
kept playing it and made it to about 10 hours before I put it down. Yeah.
Like I could have just played the demo. Right.
So I think Octopath, they probably learned the lesson. Like, well,
let's give people three hours of Octopath too. Cause this might be a, you know,
But so that gave me three chapters.
And basically what that means for most
is that you'll see the first chapter
of two characters story, potentially three.
The thing for me is that the character I chose
is a little bit different in that you have to play
his first two chapters back to back.
I chose Oswald V. Vonstein, I believe his name is.
And he is like a Count of Monte Cristo prisoner.
So like he has a muzzle and is like in prison
for the first two chapters.
So like, I have no idea how the rest of this cast
are just gonna stumble into Oswald.
I'm very curious to see how that plays out.
But for those who don't know, Octopath Traveler 1, I guess,
which is a funny title in retrospect.
Octopath 1, that was our first,
the first game we talked about on this show.
We had a few test episodes leading up to it,
but our first like, okay,
we feel like we're ready to do the show,
this feels like a good format, was Octopath 1.
So this game means a lot to me, if only for that.
And I think we've talked a lot about "Octobat Traveler."
I think it's a really interesting game.
One, I think it really did help popularize
the 2D HD or 2.5 HD look.
And I also think that the soundtrack
and the mechanics of the battle system are incredible.
It's like, if you want a game
that you can kind of just turn your brain off
and see numbers go up and experiment with character classes,
It really does do what I think Bravely Default was,
I don't wanna say trying to do,
'cause Bravely Default does it well
and it does it in a different way.
But I think like those, that branch of RPGs
that were inspired by the job system and FFV and tactics,
I prefer personally the Octopath approach
to Bravely Default.
- Yeah, me too.
- The thing about Octopath 1 is that
it just asked a little bit too much of you.
I think a lot of people feel this way about Octopath 1.
The two big things for me were that
the cast never really meaningfully interacted,
which on top of the story kind of being underwhelming,
I think that was the biggest flaw.
'Cause it's like, there's this whole ceremony about like,
there are these eight characters
and you get to choose who the main character is.
And then when you do that,
you eventually meet the other characters
and they join your party, but there's never,
like in D&D you need that, why are we a party moment?
It doesn't have to be a big deal,
but you just need a recognition
that these characters are traveling together
and there never really was that.
And then like, there is some interaction like--
- Yeah, the most you get are these like weird
kind of almost theatrical moments
where it's just the two characters standing under spotlights
and they'll like say what feels like
maybe a Animal Crossing level dialogue
back and forth to one another,
like one line each for each of them.
Honestly, weirdly the game that is most reminiscent of it
are the bond supports in Fire Emblem Engage.
When you talk to--
- Yes! (laughs)
- When you talk to the old Fire Emblem characters
stuck in the rings in Fire Emblem Engage,
the one sentence back and forth that you get
is very much what you're getting.
- It's even weirder if there was just nothing,
because at least if there was nothing,
you could be, okay, I am the writer here.
But 20 hours in, getting a scene
between Tressa and Primrose.
And that one stood out to me
because Primrose is who I chose as my main character,
and her story is extremely dark.
- Yeah, right.
- Maybe almost too much for a game
that is mostly lighthearted,
and then there's a story about human trafficking
that's thrown into the mix.
And her whole quest is about revenge.
And Tressa is essentially very Kiki's delivery service,
just sort of bright-eyed young girl
who wants to see the world.
So they just team up without a word,
which is already kind of strange.
And then they have a vignette together
where Primrose is like,
"We have to help this sad boy we met in town."
I'm like, I'm not a stickler for details, but like, why on earth would Primrose care
about this?
Like she has like one goal.
Yeah.
Her whole story is about revenge.
It just, it felt really at odds with itself on top of the fact that like there was no
auto leveling for characters that weren't in your party.
So once you've like seen everyone's first chapter, the game then kind of blossoms and
then there's the chapter twos.
Then you also unlock different classes and you can mix and match.
And that part of it is really fun.
But like at that point you probably have chosen like who your favorites are and whose story
you want to see.
But the fact that you have to see everyone's and the fact that like you have to grind to
make sure the characters you're not using are at the required level to see the next
beat of the story you already don't care about.
Like that's where I fell off.
Yeah.
One of the interesting things too that I feel like was a good idea in theory and I don't
know how well it panned out and I'm actually curious to ask if Octopath 2 does the same
thing.
I think it does.
about Octopath 1 or at least the eight characters is that there would be four characters who
were just like very straight up like JRPG trope characters, right? So you had like the
knight, the mage, the whatever, the thief, etc. And in the, I guess the other half of
that game, the four other characters were kind of like interesting twists on those four.
Yeah, it was dancer, merchant, beast master, and apothecary.
Right. So they were kind of like cool swerves of the four main kinds of characters that you usually
have in JRPG parties. And that was even representative in the actions that they
could do outside of combat. So for example, like if you were the thief, you could obviously like
try and steal from NPCs in towns and from and from, you know, just like random people that
you found all over the place. But if you were Tressa, the merchant, you could haggle for things,
you could like buy things off of them instead and not try and steal them, which is like a cool idea.
And I appreciated that like everyone was interactable in that way.
My favorite was Primrose, the dancer would just dance for someone
and they'd be like, Wow, I'm in love.
I'll fight for you.
And you just have like a summon that would follow you around, basically.
Yeah. And I forget what the what the flip of that was.
Do you remember what that was?
It was the cleric.
She would like inspire people to join your cause, basically.
Right. Right.
So it was like a platonic version of just the shallow like, oh, wow.
I think you had to pay them also, if I'm not mistaken.
Maybe. Yeah. Yeah.
So they had that, which I think was like a cool idea.
But what that really meant at the end of the day was like,
I was just kind of more interested in the more interesting characters
and their more interesting class quirks, which meant that the four people
that I neglected were the four, like just, you know, copy paste
kind of classes that I've seen and used before in other JRPGs.
What's interesting, though, is that eventually you could like combine them.
So that's where. Yeah.
So that's where, like, you could do some really creative stuff.
Like I had my scholar temporarily be a dancer to get a passive ability that regenerated MP every turn.
And then I switched his class to cleric.
So then all of a sudden, like he kept that dancer ability, but it's had access to all magic.
So like that stuff was really fun, but I agree with you.
I think like it was more and those characters too, if I remember correctly, had more interesting stories as well.
So it's just like, why am I, why would I care about like the knight?
Anyway, so Octopath 2, I've played, I've seen Oswald's two chapters and the first chapter
for the Thief.
Yeah.
I will say this about Octopath 2.
It's pretty much better across the board for all the things that Octopath 1 did well.
I think Octopath 2 is doing even better.
So like the look of the 2.5 HD I think is more fully realized.
Sometimes like-
That's cool.
It looked cool in Octopath 1, but it was a little bit hit or miss in some places.
And some environments were hard to just visually parse because there'd be too much light.
Every now and then it kind of mixed and matched.
Here, I really feel like all the dungeons especially feel like fully realized spaces
and it just works better.
And then when you're on the world map, it's hard not to get this feeling of awe and want
to explore and all that kind of stuff.
The combat is awesome.
The combat in Octopath 1 was awesome.
I forgot how much I liked it.
It's kind of a best of all worlds of like every popular turn-based combat game.
So like you have a little bit of persona where I would say the main strategy is you'll see
an enemy and you'll see a number on a shield and you essentially have to find out what
the enemy is weak to.
And if you hit them with an attack they're weak to that many times, it will break their
guard which will dramatically reduce their defense and you can do more damage.
And also, if you time it right, when you break their guard, they lose their turn for that
round.
So, like, there's a lot of strategies there.
And you also have, in addition to the sort of the standard, like, attack, spells, items,
defend, you have the Bravely Default system where every turn a character is getting what's
called a boost.
And you can use up to four boosts, which will allow your character to either do an action
multiple times or do a more powerful version of one action.
So like for attacks, you'll do an attack multiple times.
For spells, you'll do like a big dramatic version of that spell.
So often what I'll do is like, okay, this enemy is weak to daggers.
For my thief character, I'm going to attack four times with the dagger to break their
guard then get in a big spell while their guard is dropped.
That's like so much fun.
And just the way the enemies are designed is awesome.
I love, this is something that the first game did well too, where like, they'll usually
be like a big bad for every chapter that's kind of set up.
And then, you know, they're just like a Final Fantasy sprite.
But then when you're in battle, they're this like giant monster or like opposing foe.
And I love seeing how that's interpreted.
So pretty much like that, all that stuff was in the first one and it's here as well.
Also the eight characters are the same classes.
So like, oh, interesting.
It's scholar, whatever.
But what they've done this time is they've dramatically changed the vibe of the character
and also what their abilities are.
So Oswald V. Von Steen, the sort of like Jean Valjean, Monte Cristo character, is a scholar,
but his abilities are mugging people.
So like, he all of a sudden has a much darker vibe as the scholar and is sort of this like
man who's been wronged that is driven by revenge.
Like there seems to be like, uh, he's not quite as like, I'm focused solely on this
as primrose was like there, there's already this setup that like maybe he could warm up
a bit and find his own humanity again.
But like that's the scholar and this time the dancer is like much more of the lighthearted
character.
So like I haven't played as her yet, but I read all the bios and the dancer is very much
the like Miyazaki heroine type character this time.
Cool.
Yeah.
like a day and night thing.
So all the characters have different abilities
that involve townspeople,
whether it's the day or the night,
which you can just change with the button,
which is really cool.
- That's fascinating.
- There's also like passive combat abilities.
So the thief character, Throne,
she just makes your party do more damage if it's nighttime,
which is really fascinating.
I wonder if the enemies are gonna have
that kind of ability too.
What's fun too is like you just hit ZR
and it changes the time of day.
It will also change like who's in the room
and also the music, which like the score this time is somehow even better.
And there's a lot of variety too, because it's kind of a different time period.
Like I just went to an area where it has sort of like a Al Capone
Chicago energy to it.
Yeah. That was honestly one of the things about the first trailer that was most
interesting to me was it seemed like they were pushing more into the like
industrial era in the same world, which is a cool, it's a cool swerve.
Reminds me a little bit of like Avatar the last airbender versus the legend of
Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. Definitely like a Korra type setting. So the combat's great.
The new additions are cool. I'm not like, I do find that all the abilities relating
to townspeople is a little bit weird because like, it kind of makes townspeople feel like
expendable items. Yeah. But it doesn't get in the way for me. It just like, oh wow, they
really went all out. Like, so Oswald's two abilities are at night he can mug and at day
he can like kind of just read a person and like get their backstory. And everyone has
a backstory and they're all like weirdly intricate like this man, you know, was always unassuming
then learned like the the lull of like what being in a position of authority does to him
and now like that appeases him more than any drink does. It's like this is so scary and
it's like just a guard that has one line. Yeah, that's like I can take or leave. I think
the combat additions are really interesting. The other big addition is that everyone has
sort of a limit break now where they all have like a unique ability that is kind of their
ultimate, but it's not a singular move. It just sort of changes how they play. So Oswald's move
is that for one turn, he can, an ability that would normally attack all enemies like a spell,
he can have attack one enemy, but it does extra damage. So he can suddenly just change how a spell
works. Thronee, the thief, I think her move, I would be impressed if there's a ability better
than this. She gets an additional turn and that includes boosting. So you can basically like
go four times, then get a whole other turn. And it's just incredible. And it kind of,
it totally matches her vibe as a thief. And you know, she's like, her story, she works for this
like underground guild of assassins that are like controlling the city and she wants her freedom.
And yeah, I'm on board.
I will say the story is like, it's definitely hammy.
It's definitely a little melodramatic, but both Oswald and Throne's stories are better
than anything in Octopath-One.
Like, they're not blowing me away and I don't really need them to blow me away.
I just need to like have a variety.
You need to feel more.
Yeah, I need to feel more.
And I know exactly what Throne and Oswald are working towards.
And even better, as Oswald, there were two guys picking on a dog and I fought them.
And then Throne came over and she was like, "Oh, like, nice work."
Like, "Hey, this is like my quest right now.
Do you want to adventure together?"
And I'm like, "That is all we needed.
We just needed that one line."
And there's also some fun, looking cool,
Joker-esque battle dialogue where your party will comment
on what the other is doing.
So they'll be like, "Nice one, Professor."
Which is great.
- That's nice.
- So it seems like that feedback has been taken.
I don't know if it's going to evolve to anything
more meaningful than that, but that's kind of all I needed
is to sort of clear the elephant in the room.
And what's interesting too is when I got thrown at it,
Basically, the game was like, do you want to see her first chapter?
Like all experience and items will be carried over.
Or you can say no.
But any time you want, you can see her first chapter at a tavern.
And yeah, we live that.
They did that the first game, which I really appreciate it
because I revisited the first game last summer.
I want to say I played it for like another 10, 15 hours or something like that.
And it was nice to be able to skip the ones that I remembered like one to one.
You know?
Yeah.
The one thing about this game that's kind of like lingering for me,
I'm glad that you're enjoying it and I'm probably also going to enjoy it.
But I wish that they would take it a step further because the thing that I have in
my head is essentially Mass Effect. You know, like,
like if you could, if you can do it in Mass Effect,
you can do it in Octopath Traveler, but you know, maybe, maybe the third one.
So far, I think it's basically better in every way. Yeah.
But I still don't know if it's enough to fundamentally like
rectify the issues we brought up. But I, I'm, I'm really impressed by it.
I was honestly kind of ready to write it off.
Like in a world where we have Sea of Stars and Shane Deckos and 8-Bit Adventures 2, I
was like, "Do I really want to do Octopath again?"
I enjoyed it for what it was worth at the time, but can they really fit?
Especially after playing Triangle Strategy and that game having similar issues where
there's some really great things about it and a lot that gets in the way of what's great
about it.
I was like, "Do I want to do that again?"
And so far it feels like at the very least nothing about it currently is getting in the
It's just a matter of if they can keep this up or elevate it at all.
So I would recommend checking out the demo if you're curious.
And I'm very curious what the other characters are like, because there are six more.
There's definitely a chance for there to be a stinker amongst them.
But even just reading their bios, I was at least intrigued by everybody.
I think the cast here seems much richer than the first game.
I haven't had time to play the demo yet.
I kept opening it and then thinking to my like, I would like have something on the TV
and be like, Oh, what am I going to play on my switch? And then obviously like Octopath
is maybe not the game to play while something else is on in the background. So I'm kind
of waiting for hopefully this week I'll have some time to like really sit down and dig
into it and I'll play different characters than you picked and we can we can reconvene.
Yeah, please do. Everyone I've talked to also chose Oswald. He seems to be like the like
I was trying to figure out who to play as in the stream. And the minute we got to Oswald,
it was like, Oh man, like my, my brand has solidified this choice. It's like literally
Jean Valjean.
That's so funny. Yeah. I was probably going to pick the dancer. Um, I picked Tressa who
was the merchant in the first game. I really liked starting these kinds of games in like
very like a humble, nice towns and having a story get progressively darker instead of
starting dark and then being nice for a little bit and then getting dark again. So I, it's
probably what I'll do.
Yeah. She seems to be the Tressa of the bunch. Uh, I definitely, I've, I have now seen what
I can only imagine are the two darkest stories.
There's still a little bit of like,
sometimes there's like that kind of like,
tonal imbalance of the first one.
Not to the same degree, like,
I mean the thief story is pretty dark,
but it's not quite to the same intense level
as Primrose's was in the first game.
I just wonder like, you know,
I'm not against going to those dark places,
but it can be kind of whiplash if like,
one story is like in a different game.
So I'm just curious how they're all gonna intertwine
And if like, that's going to feel more meaningful than in the first game.
Yeah, I have heard and we've talked about this on the show,
but I have heard that the actual, like very literal end of Octopath Traveler
one does a weirdly much better job of having all those characters like
interact and feel like they're on the same page. I've heard that as well,
but that's like 80 hours. Yeah. That's a thing I will never see myself.
Unfortunately. Um,
so if you can take any of that energy and put it in the first 10 hours,
I'm going to be much happier.
Yeah. And they seem to have done that.
So I do.
I mean, Octopath was was a pretty
modest hit for Square and it was
enough to get a sequel.
And like, yeah, this division of
Square doing like the Live Alive
remake and Triangle Strategy, like
I'm always curious what they're
working on because like they're
they clearly like get it so well
mechanically.
Yeah. And I'm just waiting for the
other parts to catch up.
And it seems like they also seem to
have invested in not to be mean, but
like definitely a better voice cast
than like the triangle strategy game.
So I'm happy to see that like I don't have to,
you know, suffer through some of the voice lines,
but yeah.
- I'll probably just play in Japanese.
It's usually what I do with their stuff.
- That's what I was gonna do.
And then for the stream,
like it might be funnier to have it in English,
but then it was like actually pretty decent.
So I'm like, oh good, that's nice.
- Yeah, it's a nice surprise.
- They have some big names for the leads at least.
So that's cool to see.
- Yeah, The Rock.
- Yeah.
The Rock killed it as Oswald.
Although it's funny, as Oswald,
like the man who took everything from Oswald
named Harvey and I can never take it seriously when he's like, "I swear one day I will make
Harvey pay." It's like, why did you name him Harvey? It's so hard to take that seriously.
Anyway, that's Autopath 2 for now. I'm sold enough on it to pick up the full game.
Yeah.
I want to see where it goes. Maybe I'll report back either way once I get further in.
Yeah, I'm going to play all three hours of the demo and then figure out how I feel after that.
I guess you could technically make a new game file and then do that again and see everyone
if you're like really curious.
But I'm sold enough on it to be like okay I'm enjoying it and I want to see where it
goes and the idea of like again if they can keep this up or elevate it I think it will
be probably the best like one of these games pound for pound overall which is exciting.
Yeah, until Dragon Quest III comes out.
That's true, yeah.
And I still haven't played enough of the Live Alive remake which I hear is wonderful so.
- Man, it is so good.
I really gotta get back to that.
I really loved what I played of that game.
- It was hard to make time for it last year
'cause it was like, I remember I started it
and I chose what is largely considered
to be the worst story.
- Which one did you pick?
- The Feudal Japan one.
- Yeah, that one's pretty rough.
(laughing)
- So maybe I'll go back and start with a different one.
But I've heard great things and I hear,
it's a beloved game that was never released here.
- I would recommend either starting in the Wild West
or start with the martial arts instructor.
Both of those are unbelievable
and honestly really good kind of introductory characters.
- Yeah, this one has like a stealth component
which is never good in these kind of games.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is pretty rough.
- If you're not a stealth game,
you shouldn't have a stealth section.
That's kind of what I've learned in my time
during this show.
- Yeah, can't wait to talk about Ocarina of Time later.
(laughing)
- The worst culprit of this is one of my favorite games,
Gravity Rush 2.
Why on earth is there a style section for a game that is about flying?
Yeah.
Come on.
Know your strengths.
It's really tough.
Don't make me hide.
Let's wrap up.
That's it.
Thank you so much for listening.
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We are in the final stages of preparing for our 3DS bonus.
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to those who are able to do that. Yeah, very excited to record that, especially like before
the store is gone for good. Yeah, it's a little bit daunting. That's it. Anything on the horizon?
Anything you're excited about? Anything you want to add?
Not particularly, I'm just kind of more excited to dig into a lot of the stuff that just released.
I'm excited to play the Octopath demo. I'm excited to play more Metroid Prime remastered.
And I'm excited to play Daxter for the Sony PlayStation Portable.
I also got Season, per your recommendation, last week. So I'm excited to play that. I
mean, it's only February and there's already a lot of great games coming out across the
board in terms of like retro or not, which is cool.
There's a lot of good stuff coming at the end of this month. Also, neither of us played
the Dead Space remaster, which got like glowing, glowing reviews, critically loved. I think
people are like all about it. So can't wait to get to that eventually. I want to save
that for Halloween. That's kind of what I decide whenever there's a big hurricane that
comes out. I'm like, I'll save that for October. Yeah, that's what I've been thinking too.
I think I'll probably put that on the back burner for a little bit. But I am very excited
to check it out. Yeah, me too. I played the first one on Game Pass a while ago and enjoyed
it. But like that definitely feels like a good candidate for a remake. So I'm excited
to see what they've done.
- Yeah, cool.
Well, that's it.
Thank you so much for listening.
And yeah, Steven just told you where to find us.
We'll catch you later.
Have a wonderful, wonderful week.
- See you soon.
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- PWG, the worst garbage to online.
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you