For Super Mario Galaxy The Movie, We Get Help from Get Played

How do you talk about a film as strange as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie? You call in backup. Get Played’s Matt Apodaca joins us to talk about the blockbuster sequel. Does a film need a story? What’s the worst sin in adapting a video game? And which voice actor stole the show? Plus, Raccoin!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Plante?

  Hey, hey, hey, Matt, you free this afternoon?

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Uh, ish, yeah, like, I guess.

• 0:06Chris Plante?

  Okay.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Not to give you like a LA answer, but for what?

• 0:09Chris Plante?

  I was just thinking that maybe we could do like, kind of like a work lunch? Like a work lunch, um, at, uh, California Pizza Kitchen?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, no, that's really good, yeah, no, I'll, I can get, I, as long as I can order a white pizza with bacon and a peach lemonade, I'm all in, baby.

• 0:25Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah. Good, good, and, and, and, uh, uh, the only bad thing is, you know how it is out here, the waiters, they're just so laissez faire. I wonder if they'll ever get around to pick up the check.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know, yeah, they're so... They're kind of just like doing their own thing almost, it's almost like the, that work at the restaurant is secondary to their main thing, which is almost not taking care of me at all, yeah, no, no.

• 0:56Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Californians.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  That's good, dude.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  That was good, dude, that's actually like-

• 1:02Chris Plante?

  Sorry, that was a little holly weird for everyone.

• 1:04Griffin McElroy?

  No, I liked it, no, it wasn't weird at all, I liked it, it felt accessible to me.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Can we go to a TV taping afterward?

• 1:09Chris Plante?

  Yeah, oh, yeah, do you think that they can give us some like really stale pizza and not let us take a piss for four hours?

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Yes, we're gonna go eat pizza and then get free pizza at a TV taping.

• 1:19Chris Plante?

  Right, right, right, right, right, this is great, this is great.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  You guys know what I would do to go to a TV taping and you just say it like it's nothing?

• 1:24Griffin McElroy?

  It's, you sound like it's a fucking joke, I would go, I would, I would eat cold Domino's pizza at a taping of the, the Bob Hearts Avicola reboot, and you guys are making a fucking joke out of it.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  I've been on one TV taping, it was the TV taping of the show that I was on, and we wanged it so bad, they're never gonna ask us to do TV ever again. They canceled the show, and they, they never will let us do it. I would go see any show!

• 1:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  How fascinating to see how the sausage is made, the TV sausage?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Stop laughing at me, Matt, I swear to God!

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Stop making me laugh.

• 2:03Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I just want to confirm though, uh, Matt, for tonight, uh, CPK followed by Rizzoli and Isles.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's gonna be, that's, that's, that's my-

• 2:12Chris Plante?

  I'll see you there.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I'll see you there.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

• 2:34Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the highest grossing motion picture maybe of all time.

• 2:40Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best film of the week and I am not going to let the guest introduce himself.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:48Chris Plante?

  I made a mistake before the show started. I said that he could and I got harassed by some of my best friends for it. So instead I'm going to welcome our guest because that's what we do here. I want to introduce everyone here to the one, the only, the Xbox Kid, Matt Apodaca.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  I'm doing so things. First of all, I have to clarify this. I, at one point-

• 3:15Chris Plante?

  Hate the nickname?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Well, here's the thing. I have many nicknames on my show. I'm Get Played. They call me the finisher. They call me, they just recently started calling me the franchise because I've been digging in to-

• 3:27Chris Plante?

  Shit, that's good. That's a good one. That's a really good one.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Really good. That's courtesy of Nick Weiger. That's good stuff. The Xbox Kid moniker came because I got an Xbox Series S and I never had an Xbox before. And I was like, I gotta, I gotta see what this Xbox thing is all about. I gotta see what they're talking about. This is an Xbox. I gotta see what they're talking about. And now it's like the thing that I have that I think I hate the most on Earth is-

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Xbox Series S?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then I was-

• 4:01Chris Plante?

  You got the one that doesn't play video games. The one Xbox. Yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  I, I did then was gifted a Series X by my co-host Heather Campbell who was basically ready to throw hers away. It was like, I don't want this anymore. And now my cat sits on it. It just like sits on it like it's like a chair.

• 4:21Chris Plante?

  Yeah. It doesn't change anything. You have like a small cat chair.

• 4:24Griffin McElroy?

  You have two Xbox Serieses. So I think the Xbox Kid moniker-

• 4:29Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  So when a new Xbox exclusive comes out, you must be like, there's the time where you're like, which one am I gonna play it on? Like, you must be so torn.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. When that happens, I, I, I am always so torn. What do I do? How do I budget the time for this particular game? But if something came out that was good, I'd be,

• 4:54Chris Plante?

  If?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  I'd be a pig and shit. You know, it'd be great.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Chris Plant, what are this week? We're going to be talking about Super Mario Galaxy, the movie. The Super Mario Galaxy movie?

• 5:06Chris Plante?

  That's right.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 5:08Chris Plante?

  Sure.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Yes. What is that, Chris Plant?

• 5:10Chris Plante?

  This one's a tough one because you would think this is a movie adaptation of a Super Mario Galaxy, which it is decidedly not. It is a movie featuring Super Mario, other Super Mario characters, and also some characters not from Super Mario in scenes from various Super Mario games, but not those actual scenes. It also might or might not be a movie by any standard definition of that term, but we'll get into all of that after the break.

• 5:42Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of The Besties is sponsored by Alienware. You know, gaming today isn't one thing. It moves between cozy, chaotic, and everything in between. One minute you're exploring something slow and immersive, the next you're in a fast-paced match. And somewhere in there, you might be creating, streaming, or seeing where the session goes. That's why Alienware systems are built with the performance to handle it all. With Nvidia GeForce RTX, it delivers powerful graphics that bring every world to life while optimizing battery life. So whether you're playing, creating, or jumping between both, everything runs the way it should. No interruptions, no slowing down. You don't have to adjust the way you play. You just keep gaming your way, however that looks in the moment. Be more Alien at alienware.com/gameyourway.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  The Super Mario Galaxy movie is not an adaptation of Super Mario Galaxy. My daughter looked at me as the credits began and she said, I never played Super Mario Galaxy, so I'm worried I'll be lost. And I said, sweetie, I don't think anyone in here is gonna be lost. I think we're all gonna have a pretty good idea of what's happening at all times.

• 6:46Griffin McElroy?

  You can't be lost if you don't move. If you don't go anywhere, it's impossible to become lost. That's what I do enjoy about this movie is that the plot, I didn't have any difficulty following it because it was a static sort of object that, and it's just an easy rider, this flick.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I had, I had the luxury of watching this in Japan and it was the second night I was there and I was so tired. I felt physical pain while I was watching it. Like, I was just like so tired from the trip. I was worried I wasn't gonna be able to stay awake during the movie. And luckily that was not an issue because there was something to focus on every single second of the movie.

• 7:34Griffin McElroy?

  Awesome. Yeah. It's so cool. Yeah. If you're not enjoying the movie, if you wait, not a joke, 45 seconds.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:42Griffin McElroy?

  They'll be doing some totally different shit.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Like, for all of its faults, I do think it is sort of a masterclass in momentum because it is just like, there's this like Trey and Matt thing, this like, this, the South Park guys, they have this thing that's like, stories should be, this happens and because of that, this happens and because of that, this happens. There's none of that.

• 8:06Griffin McElroy?

  Literally none of that, right.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  It's truly just, this happens, this happens, this happens, this happens, this happens. And, you know, it could, it could be worse. Like, I, I didn't, it's not a good movie, but I didn't not enjoy myself. You know what I mean? I was like, oh, they're just always showing me stuff.

• 8:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Yeah. Hoops, I'm curious for you. I have a feeling I'm slightly closer of the movie. I don't know how I feel about it, but Hoops, I think you had almost an existential experience.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Okay. I, I like, what's frustrating about this is that I actually like Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelinek from Teen Titans Go. There's a, it's a, there's a lot of stuff on that show that's really subversive and really funny. And it is like a kinda chaotic and it bordering on nihilist sometimes like or anarchic is probably a better way of describing it where that can withstand 11 minutes. I think like you can, you can sit with that energy a little bit, but this movie happens, but it's not a it's, I asked my daughter who's 11, we were driving home and I said, I want to talk to you about theme and she basically understands theme. But I was like to drill down on what I'm talking

• 9:15Speaker 02

  about. What's frozen one about? And she says, love. And I said, what's frozen two about? She said, change. I said, wow. And what is the super Mario galaxy movie about? And she said, Mario.

• 9:30Griffin McElroy?

  I think that that's like, absolutely. It's absolutely and it's, it's the, it's the abstract. It's Mario in the abstract because

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, not Mario, the person just like Mario, the person, Mario, Mario, the person gets nothing in this fucking motion picture. Absolutely nothing in this.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  There's not a single arc in the entire movie. It is just, it is, it is a hundred percent. The movie is about Mario. Full stop. Yeah, that's it.

• 9:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. The Mario franchise and wider Nintendo property.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  The Mario galaxy.

• 9:59Griffin McElroy?

  Yes. Uh, can I just to, to really to folks who have not seen this movie and may not plan on seeing this movie. It, I, I really want to hammer this down of like, how they just kind of didn't really worry about a story in this one. Just to focus on Peach, Peach's plotline. She, she's talking to Mario or will they, won't they? A star comes who is like, hey, Rosalina has been kidnapped by Bowser Jr. And everyone's like, yes, yes, we know all about, we know these guys for sure.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, we saw that part already. Yeah.

• 10:33Griffin McElroy?

  She leaves in secret. For some reason, it goes to the gateway galaxy where they're gonna find him. But then a monkey steals their stuff. Well, you gotta get the stuff back from the monkey. Following the monkey, they end up in an underground casino, a zero gravity casino where they have a Kill Bill crazy 88 space fight against the antagonists of Super Mario Brothers two. And while watching, I was like, why do we do it? Like, how did we get here? Because movies, even the most threadbare plots will be like, and here's the reason why this is happening now. And this was just like, and now you wart, tell me where Bowser Jr. is like, why does wart know where? You didn't talk about this fucking at all. That's convenient that this dude works for Bowser Jr.

• 11:14Griffin McElroy?

  It's really not ever, nothing is ever set up ever in the whole movie. It's just stuff happens.

• 11:21Chris Plante?

  I have a theory. I have a theory about how this, how this movie came together. So at the beginning, you see like the executive producers, right? And there's two names and the second name is Shigeru Miyamoto.

• 11:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 11:32Chris Plante?

  And a lot of times you see that and you're like, oh, good. That person got to collect their check. This feels like somebody from Nintendo, because they're very, very protective of the series, came in and it was like, no, no, no. What works is what we do in the video games. And they were like, wait, were you like, say about three sentences of a story up top? And then you have individual levels that no story is conveyed. And they were like, precisely. And they were like, that's not how films. And they said, quiet. It made so much money. Just please be quiet. Um, and then they made levels, like the game is literally just level. Like this game, the movie would be a blast to play. I am convinced it would be a very fun.

• 12:17Griffin McElroy?

  It's insulting though, because it gets to the last, by the last scene, it is literally cutting back and forth between a NES style representation of a final level and how that is being represented on the screen to the point where you don't even need to bring nostalgia. It is like showing you like, I remember it's like this. Hey, stupid. It's like this.

• 12:40Griffin McElroy?

  The conversation around this movie has been so like weird and frustrating because there, there's so much to criticize just from a, I'm not a film guy fucking, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about ever. But even I was watching it like, there's gotta be some sort of connective tissue that just they decided that too hard. Uh, compared to the Sonic movies, right? If you want to talk about. Like here's a different way to do an adaptation of a video game with a fairly threadbare plot. They went through the effort of like having character arcs and having a reason for scenes to happen in the sequential order that they happen in. Uh, and this movie didn't do that. And it's still just, it kinda, it's not hugely unpleasant to watch.

• 13:25Griffin McElroy?

  Cause it looks so great and they do seal, they do sneak in some like pretty clever kinda like Easter egg shit that even I was enjoying. But my son, who is nine, was like ape shit going gaga for it, right? And so like, it's for them, right? That's great. And, but people who are critical get shit on it. Cause they're like, it's a, just a kid's movie. Enjoy it. Not every kid's movie has to be the wild robot. Not every kid's movie has to be Puss in Boots, The Last Wish. But just like a story, like any story would be like better, I think than no story at all.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  I want to hit you guys with a thought and I, this is probably something that the first movie I really hated. And it's largely cause Chris Pratt sucks so bad as Mario and I don't even want to talk about it. Sucks so bad. He's like really bad. He's not acting really bad at it. Um, it's not a character. It's not anything, but I, that's, that's a big part of it. But you know how many feature length Mickey Mouse movies there are?

• 14:27Griffin McElroy?

  Zero?

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Zero. There's none. Why? My theory is that Mickey Mouse has to be exactly the same at the end of the picture as he is at the beginning of the picture, right? Mickey Mouse cannot change. I would make the argument to you guys that maybe if Disney has not cracked the Mickey Mouse movie, maybe there ain't a Mario movie. You know what I mean? Like maybe this guy shouldn't be in a movie cause he can't change and he can't grow. In the first movie, he barely doubted himself. You know what I mean? Like, and it was, and, and his brother doubled out at himself. So they had the same arc, just more.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  This movie, they don't even pretend like there's an arc. They just sort of are going through, maybe it's just like not a good movie guy. It's like, maybe not good in movies, you know? Maybe just don't make a movie about him.

• 15:20Chris Plante?

  I I do want to play a little bit, a little bit of devil's advocate here. Okay. Because I I had a a slightly, I would say, actually probably significantly better time. I did not love this movie by any means. Yeah. But I saw the film Hoppers a few weeks before and I would take this movie over another movie that like gives me a milch toast political message and largely makes the movie for me and not my kid.

• 15:47Chris Plante?

  Every time. The sweet spot is when it can do both, like old Pixar nailed it. Yeah. Well, Sonic it closer, uh, but these are like two ends of a spectrum that I feel like I'm like having to choose from and I don't really want to be on either end. Right. This film, for for all of its problems, the action is good. The act like the action sequence, the the actual like staging of it. Yeah. I think kicks ass. That's what makes it even more frustrating that there's not a plot that is like holding me in with the stakes because like I was like whole, I was not expecting the choreography of it to like look this. Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Choreography wise, I agree with you.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  There's just zero tension ever because Mario can't ever be in peril. Like you know Mario's not in danger. Mario's never gonna get a cut or a nick or a scrape. So you can't, do you know, I think the best set piece in the first Mario movie is the one in the real world with the dog because the destruction has stakes, right? Once you're in the mushroom kingdom and blocks are getting smashed, who gives a shit? Then it's like the Superman problem of like, well, our hero can't ever be really in danger and he can't ever change or evolve. So like, what's what should we do in the movie? I guess. I don't know what to do in there.

• 17:05Chris Plante?

  Matt, you you you were in Japan. You are, uh, sleep deprived. You're watching this movie. You're in physical pain. What is the thing that like you're like, I I dig this or this is actually the the cruelest form of torture that I've ever gone through?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  I think that really did color my my viewing of it like, you know, I was on home turf, right? We were sort of like invited there for it. So like I was kind of like, there was already a little bit of buy in of just being like, I'm already having a fucking blast. This is awesome.

• 17:36Chris Plante?

  Sure.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Like, uh, and, um.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  We were sort of watching it with other press, like people who were stone silent in the in the theater.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  I thought you were about to say stoned. I thought you were about to say stoned. I was so happy.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, they they yeah, they they brought.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  They were all just like bombed watching this.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was tough. It was. Yeah, it was great. They were getting wild in there. It was crazy. They but they were being so quiet during the movie that I felt like an idiot, like like bonking himself on the head with a hammer while I was watching. Cause I was just like laughing my ass off. Like I was just like, this is like. They could, you know, it could have been tired. It could. It could have been jet lag. It could have just been that like I was like already treated so well, like while I was there.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  You're in the mood. You're in the spirit.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I was in the spirit, but like I I I I go see all these movies like I've seen every Sonic movie in the theater and I'm usually uh, you know, a solo childless adult with other dads and their kids at the movie theater.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  So this was a unique experience because there were no children and I would have been laughing as much as the kids were probably, but like this was like, I I I I enjoyed the action. I enjoyed like the the if things were of consequence at this pace, I would be like, this rocks. This is Fury Road with Mario and it's just going and going, but it's just fast with nothing really happening kind of. And I think that is probably it's it's it's greatest flaw, but I would say that it's not boring. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think a second of this is boring to me.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Uh, but it it is like, it's not, we just actually watched, because there's like a real spectrum of what can be done with these adaptations. You have Fallout in like sort of rarefied air where it's like it's that's good stuff. Uh, you have like the first season of The Last of Us, uh, these Sonic movies and there's like other ones. We just watched Return to Silent Hill for our Patreon.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  And this movie is.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Super Mario Galaxy deserves an Academy Award compared to

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Return to Silent Hill. That was like, that was a horrible experience because that movie's boring. And that's its greatest sin. Like, it is actually boring to watch.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  This movie at least is like, hey, this looks pretty nice. Hey, we're having a little bit of fun. You know?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't know how we want to get into like the spoiler territory and so much as you can spoil things, but there are.

• 20:17Chris Plante?

  You can have for a week.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  I, I know they've been sort of pushing it, but I, I would be hesitant.

• 20:21Chris Plante?

  I don't even know what you would spoil because they've talked about everything, I thought.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  They told us we couldn't spoil stuff on the show and then literally a day after we recorded when we were there. Uh, they like posted the big, what I think is the big spoiler of the movie. Which I think we can barely say now, Star Fox is in the movie.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. So let's say now, now that, okay, that was the one that I didn't know.

• 20:45Chris Plante?

  Oh, they're, they're, they did like posters and trailer. It, it's everywhere already.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, they posted it before the movie was out.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  When they did that, when there's the, the nod towards a different, like expanding the reality out a little bit to me. That got me pretty excited because I thought, okay, Mario's boring, but if you're going to use the Mario as like the fulcrum point for a Nintendo world.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  You know, broader Super Mario Galaxy thing. That has potential. That's like, that could be really interesting because there's characters that could learn things. I'd rather watch a Star Fox movie right now because at least that's like an archetype that you make movies about.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  His dad died.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  His dad died.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  His dad died. Mario's dad didn't fucking die. There's nothing for them to work with there.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  And Glenn did a great job.

• 21:31Chris Plante?

  He seems also like a piece of shit.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  But it, it is, that opportunity comes and goes. I mean, it's like, it's there and they have no fun with it. And it is like, does he say the thing? Yeah, somebody says the thing. Somebody says the thing about barrel roll. It's not even the person. They just say it because it's like, here, fucking swine. Here's your pearl. He said, do a barrel roll. Go home. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. The whole thing is that vibe.

• 21:56Chris Plante?

  Before we wrap this section, I do want to talk about the people who I think have had the most fun with this film. More than us, more than kids, more than anybody. Which is the people who are the voice actors for this film, who have been on a press tour.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:10Chris Plante?

  Specifically Donald Glover, who I think has three lines in this movie, but has been part of this press tour. Matt, you interviewed these people.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:19Chris Plante?

  What was the energy with them? Because I cannot imagine doing a press tour. I mean, I've seen and attended a billion slumming press tours.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:28Chris Plante?

  Doing a press tour as the voice of Yoshi is one of the most fascinating

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:34Chris Plante?

  things I've ever seen come out of Hollywood.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  It's really funny because like, I mean, because we were just one stop on their day. Like, and they were all so game and so we had to like, because we don't usually do that, right? So like, we had to very quickly onboard each of them. Uh, as like, this is what our show is and like what we normally do. And like, so this is like atypical for us, but like, it's gonna be fun, you're gonna be fine, we're gonna make you look great. Donald, uh, was like, Donald wanted to know where we record, like immediately. And I was like, oh, we like record in Los Angeles in Silverlake. And he just like laughed because he thought that was funny because like he lives nearby. He's like, why are we doing here? We could have done this at home.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  So he was already in a silly mood and we sort of knew that like, you know, he has like a, he's, he started as a comedian, like us.

• 23:25Chris Plante?

  Right.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Like from UCB and stuff. So we like hit him with some funny questions and like, uh, you know, questions we thought were funny. Some people who then found the clips.

• 23:35Chris Plante?

  Thank you for hedging that.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Cool, because like, it's funny because like then you post these clips and then it reaches people who don't listen to the show. And then people will literally comment, is this supposed to be funny?

• 23:47Chris Plante?

  Terrifying, terrifying. We call that breaking containment. Whenever a mobbing man's like, who the fuck are these guys?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Why do they look like that? It's like, no, okay, that's not part of, that's not part of it. Uh, somebody did say something like that about me and they had a, in their profile picture, it was them and their child. And I was like, hey, I just hope you do better for this kid in your profile picture. Like, what are you talking, what are you talking about?

• 24:10Griffin McElroy?

  Good.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Uh, and then, but-

• 24:12Griffin McElroy?

  It's a teaching moment.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Yes. And, but like Donald was like, he was down for it. Like, he was just like down for anything. Heather, my co-host, asked him if Yoshi has one singular eyeball or with two pupils, or is it two eyes separately? And he got a real kick out of that. And we talked about that for a while. Like, and like, he, so I think he was, he was down to clown. I think like some of those things are like, a little more sterile, right? Like, tell us about like-

• 24:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Being Mario. How cool is it to be Mario? And it's just like, really like softball kind of stuff. But like, we sort of positioned it as like a opportunity to like, be silly. And since that episode came out and the clips came out, there were two separate articles about how Donald Glover is silly again. And they linked to our show. And I was like, that's so funny. Yeah. Cause he was like, you know, he's like, he was like a serious musician for a while. And then he was like, I perform with my shirt off now. So I'm like, not silly anymore. I'm like a serious guy, actually. And now he's like, I'm silly again. I'm just like a silly guy now.

• 25:11Griffin McElroy?

  I like that once you get healthy, yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  My shirt's still off, but it's in a funny way now. Uh, like John Belushi, you know, funny.

• 25:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I think the news article I've seen the most that's come out about this press tour is Charlie Day's quote about his favorite, uh, Luigi.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:28Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, in recent American history, and he, without missing a beat, does say Luigi Mangione. Just sort of like, no hesitation, just drops it. And then everyone-

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Like, you know, there's not that many.

• 25:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure. That is a fair point.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  When I saw that clip, I had a question that I wanted to ask him, that then I pulled back on, because there was talk while we were recording that it was like, this is a kid's movie. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna pull off of this for a second. Then I see this clip where he's talking about Luigi Mangione. And I was like, I think I could have asked my question, which was, it might've been a Polygon article, I think, that, um, suggested that Luigi's hog is 3.7 inches flaccid. And I was gonna ask him if he considered that in his portrayal at all.

• 26:12Griffin McElroy?

  That sounds like some shit Polygon would say.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:16Griffin McElroy?

  What happened to our once vaunted institution?

• 26:20Griffin McElroy?

  I want to

• 26:21Speaker 01

  But I didn't ask you because I got scared.

• 26:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 26:24Chris Plante?

  I want to, guys, this might be a bit of a pivot, but I would like to take a break and then come back and talk more about the Super Mario Galaxy movie specifically. I'd like to go roll by roll and talk about each performance if we could very briefly. Would that be okay by you guys?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 26:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, we can talk about Recoin later, for sure.

• 26:42Chris Plante?

  Great, perfect.

• 26:46Russ Frushtick?

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• 27:27Russ Frushtick?

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• 27:39Chris Plante?

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• 28:22Chris Plante?

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• 29:07Chris Plante?

  That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Okay, welcome back. I just need like five minutes real quick.

• 29:17Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Just to draw some hot takes on it. And I would love to talk about Raccoon too. Just real quick, I wanted to give credits to people that I thought were doing a good job. Because you mentioned Donald Glover not having a lot of lines, but I will say this. Donald Glover does more with the very few Yoshis that he has. He brings more acting to that than some of the people who have more lines. I don't actually know if Mario has more lines than Yoshi in this movie. He's barely set dressing, but like,

• 29:44Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Uh, I think Donald Glover does a really, really good job. I think Charlie Day does a really good, I think he's really dialed in on Luigi as a character. Like he really, I think he really brings a lot to it.

• 29:56Chris Plante?

  I would rather have a Luigi's Haunted Mansion movie.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:00Chris Plante?

  More than anything else in the Nintendo universe at this point.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:04Chris Plante?

  I think that would be legit.

• 30:05Griffin McElroy?

  That would be strong. I thought that Benny Safdie turned in a great Bowser Jr.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  You know what?

• 30:09Griffin McElroy?

  To have a character that they hadn't fucking talked about even a little bit at all. Even a little bit, just show up and everyone be like, oh no, it's a baby Bowser. Uh, that's a, that's a tall order, man.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  I know that Benny Safdie is a name, but I think that it, it feels less like stunt casting than a lot of these do. And I really would love an era where like not every one of these roles has to be an out of left field Bizarro pick.

• 30:35Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  I don't think Brie Larson does very much at all. I don't, I especially when compared in scenes with Anna, Anna Taylor Joy, who I think does a really, really good, incredible job personally. I just, I think Brie Larson is, is not doing anything.

• 30:51Griffin McElroy?

  There is a, uh, there is a way in which Rosalina sort of like responds to the things other characters say in this movie that does suggest that maybe these lines were recorded in a half hour zoom call once. Uh, there's one, there's one where like, uh, Bowser is talking about how, or Bowser Jr. Is talking about how he's gonna destroy, Bowser Jr.'s plot in this movie is that he's kidnapped this woman to drain her powers to create a candidate can destroy the universe. That's fucking wild, Bowser Jr. But he says this and she says like, "The universe will never forgive you." And it's like, that's, the way that you said that was not really appropriate for the sentence that was said to you that like, I know that a lot of the time, voice actors aren't in the same room, uh, where

• 31:36Griffin McElroy?

  they, where they record these things, but this felt like, I don't know, man. This felt so out of pocket.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  That's also like a scripting issue though, cause that's an insane thing to write for somebody to say.

• 31:46Griffin McElroy?

  The universe will never forgive you.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  The universe's feelings will be hurt. The universe is gonna give you a guilt trip about this.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Ah, why'd you do that?

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Oh, Toad, Toad, Toad, solid.

• 31:56Griffin McElroy?

  Solid, not much, not much Toad in the movie.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Solid.

• 31:59Griffin McElroy?

  Um, who's the fool who plays Star Fox? I thought he did great.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Glenn Powell. I think he's everybody's lunch. He's great in the movie.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's fucking great.

• 32:05Griffin McElroy?

  I think so.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  He nails it, man. I want that Star Fox movie. Thank you, Glenn, by the way.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  And he apparently like, went to the Nintendo, like, went to the Nintendo, like, and was like, "I want, I wanna be Star Fox. Let me be Star Fox." And they're like, "Okay."

• 32:18Griffin McElroy?

  Glenn Powell, Glenn Powell's a, is a, seems like a real sweetheart. That's just, he seems great. What I've heard from people who've talked to, talked to Glenn and people who have loved or been loved by Glenn, just close personal friend, his dad, everyone I talk to loves Glenn Powell.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:35Griffin McElroy?

  I took, God, but I'll tell you, Matt, you guys are in LA. Let me ask you, this, this is fair.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  My brain refused to process Glenn Powell for probably eight years. That guy had to fight tooth and nail to get any sort of mind, mind grip on me.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think that's, I think that's fair. I think because he's like, he was like a supporting character in some good movies like, and then he, then he's like, actually no, I'm like the main guy now.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  And so then he's in like three or four movies a year. And you're sort of like, what? This is like more than I wanted. This is too much Glenn. Uh, and I was starting to get sick of him. And then now he's in this, I'm sort of like, he's kind of like, he's kind of good now. I'm, I'm, I'm in again.

• 33:20Chris Plante?

  It's like, honestly, hoops, it's kind of hard for people like, um, Matt and myself because being in, you know, like the scene and like in the mix in LA.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  We might see it.

• 33:31Chris Plante?

  I, I, we, we, we see Glenn, I mean, I've like eight years ago, we were seeing him at Max Fableman's parties.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:37Chris Plante?

  You know, every night. Um.

• 33:41Griffin McElroy?

  Chopping it up.

• 33:42Chris Plante?

  Listen.

• 33:42Griffin McElroy?

  Thank you, Matt. Thank you. I, I, I'm. That was just for Matt. That's, it's nice.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  That's good shit. That's, well, cause I remember the night. I remember the night. It was really fun.

• 33:51Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Well, the weird thing about that night is Max actually had to take his mom. We like, we were having this great party. And then Max left and like, where's Max? And he was with his mom in his closet.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:03Chris Plante?

  Showing her a film he made of his mom cheating on his father.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:08Chris Plante?

  And then she, he, he showed her Jaws.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. I sort of got two bangers for you. One, this one. Two, here's Jaws.

• 34:15Chris Plante?

  Uh, it was a fucking insane night. Anyway, Glenn was.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Still talking about the film. Listen. Yeah, Glenn did a much better job than anybody else in this. If we could take a little spoiler bubble, I just, if we just like for two minutes. The, what happens with Bowser in this fucking flick? It's so crazy to me. Not just the fact that he sells himself into slavery to ease it rates. So after he becomes friends with those guys for two minutes.

• 34:41Chris Plante?

  For forty five seconds.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:43Chris Plante?

  For five seconds. Yeah. And then.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Later in the movie, he falls into lava and dies. And he comes back out as a skeleton and then the skeleton's destroyed and he's just a skull. And it's like, I don't know what you want me to fucking feel about this guy at this point. Is this a, is this a, a being? Is this an entity? You know what I mean?

• 35:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  This is the problem with this movie. This is not a guy that has thoughts and feelings, right? Bowser is not a character. If he can be reduced to a skull that his kid carries around, it's fucking crazy.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Something, something I've always thought about. The characters of like dry bones and like dry Bowser and stuff. The implication is that when you have skin and like muscle and like flesh, you're, those are wet bones.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Wet.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  And I just, it's weird. That's strange.

• 35:32Griffin McElroy?

  They're unnecessary.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  I don't think of myself as wet currently.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm not wet. I'm dry.

• 35:37Griffin McElroy?

  Hmm.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  It's like Mitch, Mitch Hemmerich said, corn comes on the cob. I'm not Mitch altogether.

• 35:49Griffin McElroy?

  I'm not wet.

• 35:52Griffin McElroy?

  The, the arc of Bowser in this is such a miss because the Bowser villain to hero arc is about as good of a story that the Mario universe is capable of telling.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  It's not even that good, but it's as good of a story as it can do.

• 36:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I mean, I remember playing Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars. Uh, and the moment that Bowser joins the party and it turns out that he's like, you're pal now because you're working together again. That rules. That was like the first time in a story that I had seen that kind of like, the main bad guy is good now. And so like, there's, there's some, obviously it's been done a bunch of times in a bunch of Mario games. But like, there's something you can do with that. And the movie kinda does it. And then it, it doesn't really set it up.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Wants to do a fatherhood story, right? So it's like, it does halfway villain redemption. And then he meets his kid and his, his kid's like, you're evil, right? His dad's like, yeah, actually fuck being good. I'm actually, I've been turned evil by parenthood. That old classic movie trope. I've been turned evil by caring, wanting to connect with my son. Hey, that could be a cool movie. You do not have the chops, Super Mario Galaxy movie. You cannot swing that.

• 37:02Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, should we, should we talk a little bit about Ratcoin?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would actually love to.

• 37:06Griffin McElroy?

  I don't wanna, I don't wanna step up. If anybody has any more Mario Galaxy.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  No, I don't think I have other positive things to say about Mario Galaxy.

• 37:13Griffin McElroy?

  Ratcoin is great. It is a, a rogue-like that is modeled after a coin drop sort of, not arcade game. What, how would you classify the coin drop sort of game? Cause it's one that I think a lot of people have seen, of course, at arcades and bars around the country. But it's not one that I think people pay a lot of attention to. It's the one where you drop coins in to push coins down off a shelf and then knock other coins in a hole and get prizes. Or more coins sometimes. Um, I love a coin drop machine. Chris and I had a fun trip once with, with some buddies where we went to a bar that had a coin drop machine and we played that shit for hours.

• 37:53Griffin McElroy?

  It was great. It was a good time. Uh, this one is a rogue-like version of that where you play coin drop with different classes. And the different classes can buy different special coins that have different effects, usually to boost the value of, of those coins. Or to change them in some way. There's a coin that is a buzzsaw that will chop a coin up into four smaller coins. So you can get scored on those four times. There's one that, uh, makes all the coins super big. So that it makes it easier to push other coins down. Uh, but then each class has its own sort of mechanic, its own synergies. There's like a cooking class that has recipe, like ingredient coins that you can mix together to make shit. So there's like a ton of variety there. And then it also does the, you know, uh, sleigh of the spire style.

• 38:37Griffin McElroy?

  Like you're buying, not relics, I forget, chips, I think they're called, that have like a constant sort of effect. There's items that you're also finding and buying. Uh, it's really, really deep. But the main mechanic of, of the coin drop game feels like such an unsolvable property to me. Where it's like, it's, it, it all kind of funnels through the, the barrel of the coin drop mechanic. And that is a tough thing to kind of like, understand the physics of with any amount of certainty that you can sort of strategize around, around how you're dropping your coins. Uh, Matt, you played some of it too, right?

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was playing this and I, I do, cause I love.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  I love number go up. I love that.

• 39:25Griffin McElroy?

  Number go up is so good, yeah.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Number go up is so good.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Good genre, good genre.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Good genre, but this, this does feel like, if there was anything less than this, I would just be like in a cage at a zoo, kind of. Like, do you know what I mean?

• 39:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Like, I like, it is, it is like the sort of final wrinkle in my brain smoothing over completely. Like, it's like, there is things to think about in the game. Like, you do sort of have to sort of like figure out like, what you're doing and why and stuff, but like, I'm just trying to watch those coins fall. I'm not really, I actually don't care about what the special coins do or anything like that. I'm there, because I want to see those coins fucking fall in. That's all.

• 40:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  That's all I want. And if I don't have a good run, that's all right. I'm gonna start again. I'm gonna watch those coins keep falling. That's all. That's all it is. And I, I, I fear that if I don't uninstall it soon, I might never play another game again. It is, because it is just like, it's just candy. It's just like, it's, and I, I, and I'm really, really enjoying it. I had the same issue with, uh, what was the ball one? Ball pit, ball pit, same.

• 40:36Griffin McElroy?

  Ball pit, yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:37Griffin McElroy?

  That was rough, yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Same, same thing. It was just like, I can't keep doing this. Uh, but it is, I like, I like the raccoons.

• 40:47Griffin McElroy?

  The raccoons are great. There is like a ton of shit to unlock, right? So when you have a failed run, you are unlocking different special coins. And some of the special coins like really do synergize in interesting ways. There's one class that is about, uh, you have like, uh, lily pad coins that are like worth more money. And they also get water coins. And if you water the lily pads, uh, they will multiply into multiple lily pads. And then you can spawn in a frog coin and they'll jump over from lily pad to lily pad, knocking all the other coins. Like, there is definitely stuff to think about and you have to be smart about when you deploy those special coins and, uh, how, how you, you can exchange this like other currency for more coins that you can drop. Uh, like, there, there's some, there's some strategy to the like physical play of the thing.

• 41:32Griffin McElroy?

  I, it is not, I've beaten the game a bunch and played through all the classes. I haven't necessarily found it to be like, uh, there's a lot of different routes that you could take with the different classes. It feels very much like, okay, if you're playing as the chef class, you know. Like you need to get these recipe, you gotta get these ingredient coins, you're trying to shop around for these types of things. So like despite the fact that there is a ton of stuff to unlock and you are constantly getting new coins and stickers and clips and all that stuff. I don't know, it just kind of feels like I'm still sort of doing the same thing and hoping that I make whatever correct choices to like really crack the thing wide open. Which is very satisfying when it does come together.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  And I, I, I think that the, the runs might be a little too long.

• 42:20Griffin McElroy?

  A little bit, yeah.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Like, like, cause it'll be like, you're on, uh, you know, you're on like part one of 15 and I'm like 15?

• 42:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  What about 10?

• 42:32Griffin McElroy?

  That would be nice. I would prefer that. Um, so like I, I've enjoyed, I enjoyed my time with the game. I enjoyed like when I unlocked a new class saying like, oh, okay. The, oh, the special coins are doing something totally different after I tried it, but I'll also like, I think I'm done with it and that is, I'm okay with that. But it's also not a staple of the genre. Like if you are playing this expecting it to be CoinDrop Bellatro, like it doesn't, I don't think it approaches, approaches that necessarily. But also I've never played a CoinDrop video game before and they did a pretty damn good job of like simulating that sort of experience and what makes it so, so sticky.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  But to that point too, like I feel like none of these ones that have come out since Bellatro are as sticky as Bellatro. Cause like I still have Bellatro on all available platforms, including my phone, because it's just fun to pick up even just for like a run, a, a, a quick run, just to see what we can do. But like, I haven't, I haven't touched Ball Pit in forever.

• 43:31Griffin McElroy?

  Right. I think the only one that's come close to me is Merge Maestro, which, uh,

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 43:36Griffin McElroy?

  is sort of a different, a different, uh, style of game, absolutely. But there, I think the connective tissue is, is, is absolutely there. And that is a game that I really, really sunk my teeth into.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  I'll check this out.

• 43:49Griffin McElroy?

  This one is, oh yeah, it's on iOS. You'll, it'll, oh Matt, I'm sorry.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  That's okay.

• 43:54Griffin McElroy?

  No, I'm not gonna fuck you up, man.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  My life sucks. It's okay. It's over.

• 43:56Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Now your life's better.

• 44:00Griffin McElroy?

  It's gonna be good for the next three or four days.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, while I'm awake those whole days.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  In my experience, that's when, after that is when, that's when you take.

• 44:09Chris Plante?

  The crushing realization of.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  I just hate raccoons, so I can't do it. I hate raccoons.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  What's your beef?

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Well, I keep snacks outside my house for delivery folks come by and I have to remember to go out there and get them every night. Or else these fucking little guys, like clockwork, will just come out and assault my snacks. And they'll leave a huge mess. They'll get in the trash. I hate these guys. That's all.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  It's alright. I don't want them to push their coins on me. That's it.

• 44:37Chris Plante?

  Hey, should we do some honorable mentions?

• 44:40Griffin McElroy?

  I would love to do some honorable mentions.

• 44:43Chris Plante?

  That sounds great. Um, hey, uh, Matt, to start things off, you have been going through the Resident Evil universe.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, I, uh, I had previously only played Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 4 VR, Resident Evil 4 Remake. Um, and now I, since Requiem was coming out, I was like, I gotta get more involved here. I gotta see what this is. And, cause my boy Leon's back and I gotta see what he's up to. So I played 2 Remake, loved that. Uh, then jumped straight into Requiem, finished that, loved that. Uh, and now I'm playing Resident Evil 3 Remake, which I would say, as someone who's not played the original. I think I'm probably having more fun with it than somebody who has experienced the original, but I still don't like it as much.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Like it doesn't feel as good to me. Um, I don't, I think Nemesis is simultaneously too much heightening from something like Mr. X and also a de-heightening because he's only like in scripted areas, kind of.

• 45:51Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, whereas like Mr. X is more dynamic. And there is something scary. I was just unpacking this the other day. I think there's something scarier about Mr. X because he's wearing a little outfit.

• 46:03Griffin McElroy?

  Uh huh. It's his cute little hat. Like, yeah, it's tough to be like super. That's somebody with a plan.

• 46:08Chris Plante?

  Saying, oh, yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, why? So you're just wearing these clothes? You put this on? You had options?

• 46:16Chris Plante?

  It does look like he can solve mysteries too, you know, which makes more of a threat.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  So he's gonna figure out where I'm at and what I'm up to and why I'm, why I'm doing it. Um.

• 46:25Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, he has to get all his clothes at like Men's Wear out, like big and tall.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, Matt. That it's the best hat I can afford on my salary. I have limited options due to my size. And that he has a salary, he gets a W two addressed to Mr. X. This is tough.

• 46:45Griffin McElroy?

  From the Umbrella Corporation.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  First name Mister.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, his first name is Mister.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Mister X is my father. Call me Mister X.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  But I'm doing that and I'm, I will finish it because I want to, I want to play all the ones that are available for PS5. I just upgraded to the Pro recently and I want to check out Biohazard.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Got in there before they jacked the price up, I hope.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  I, I, I got in there before they jacked the price up and uh, let me tell you, did I need to do it? Probably not. Probably didn't have to do it at all, but they scared me and it worked. Um, so congrats to them. A shout out to them.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  That's a great marketing tactic. Like, hey, we know we're not doing games on these things anymore, but here in a week, they're going to cost two grand. So buy while you can.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Guess I better get it. And then, and then two weeks after that, PS6 comes out next year. You're like, no, oh, great.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Oh, man, you done done it again.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  I done did it again. I'm gonna have to get that one. And then the cycle, of course, will just forever continue. Uh, but I mean, I, yeah, I'm looking forward to uh, playing seven and eight. So I can see what those are like. But I, when I was in Japan, they had the, I had no interest in the Requiem Switch 2 controller. Here, because it, uh, they have a Switch 2, a Resident Evil Requiem, a Switch 2 controller with like a newspaper, like sort of like decal on it and it's all black and it just says Resident Evil, but it's covered by the Switch 2 logo. Uh, so it just says like Resident and like that, like that's it.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it says Bioha-.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Switch 2.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  But they had the Biohazard one when I was there and I was like, well, I have to buy this because I can't get this at home. I gotta get this and now I have it.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  This is the trouble of visiting Japan.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Is everything you can't get at home. So you therefore want.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm still awaiting my shipping container of all the things that I bought when I was, when I was there. Because I was just like, well, I have to have everything I lay my eyes upon. Uh, but yeah, Resident Evil is sort of like my new. Obsession, I've been contemplating watching the movies, because I've only seen the first one. And I know that they're not anything like the games, but I kind of feel like I have to go all in on all of it. I feel like.

• 49:05Chris Plante?

  Let me tell you this, they are better than this Mario movie. I can say that very confidently, but I am biased. I, I, I do tend to. Well, maybe not the animated ones.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  I'm in for any of it, so I'll, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll, I'll determine. I, I, I know that the, the bar is now. Galaxy is so much higher than Return to Silent Hill, so if it can even clear. Return to Silent Hill, Doom. I think I can, I think I can sit through something that's pretty bad, so we'll see.

• 49:38Chris Plante?

  I love it. Uh, Hoops, what, what are you up to?

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Still playing Eugenics, wow.

• 49:45Chris Plante?

  Eugenics is good. It's great. It's a good game.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  What I watch.

• 49:50Griffin McElroy?

  I've taken too long a break from Eugenics and I've tried to get back into it a couple of times and I don't remember what my priorities were vis a vis breeding and I had like a really intricate kind of system going. And now that I've tried to plug back into the game, it's like, oh man, that's it. Everybody is each other's grandpas. What the fuck was I doing?

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, surprisingly funny is, uh, is, uh, SNL UK, uh, you can watch it on Peacock. I'm somebody who is a, a, a big SNL fan, you know, I'm, I, I see the good and the bad, obviously. But, uh, yeah, it's, it's something that's been part of my life, my whole growing up. So I found it really interesting to watch a different iteration of it. I was really prepared for it to be pretty lousy, um, just because you're starting with an untested group of people and untested writers and there's a huge expectation. Um, I was really impressed. I've been really impressed by the first two episodes that I've watched. Um, they really, it is really interesting to see a show that structurally.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Apes, SNL, almost entirely, to an extent where when there's small differences, you feel it, like it's very noticeable, the things that are different. But tonally feels very different. Like, there are, there are sketches that feel more Monty Python or more a bit drier, maybe more specific to like British culture, things that wouldn't hit the same way here. But it's, it's also, it doesn't have the same restrictions on like language and stuff like that. So it feels really sharp. It feels really pointed. The Weekend Update bits, I think they've done hit a lot harder than anything that they've done in America recently.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  And I really think, I was shocked because I think it's good enough that there will be kind of a bit of like competition or back and forth between the two staffs because they're basically have the same dictate on different sides of an ocean about five hours separate from each other, which is kind of, kind of wild to think about. Like, how do you avoid doing the same gag? You know what I mean? Like, how do you avoid the same? I don't know. But I think that's really, the first episode, Tina Fey is the host, which feels, I mean, kind of the perfect choice. I think if you want to communicate a sort of passing of the torch with someone that still feels like cool and relevant, I think, but I was, I laughed the whole way through.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  I was really, really impressed. Yeah, it's, it's on Peacock uploading the day after the show, just like in America. But it's, it's, I thought it was really, really funny. Another bit that I, just to give you an idea of the kind of show, the first episode had the big like memetic thing was an impression of Princess Di that, that sort of like busted out because it was one of the guys performing the role was like extremely funny. Then in the second episode, there was a skit that referenced Prince Di.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  It was Prince Philip holding up a newspaper that had his picture from the week before as Princess Di printed on the newspaper that he himself was holding. It's really, it's cognizant of its own, uh, it's cognizant of itself in a way that, um, I don't think the SNL like it, it, that it feels too young to be doing, but it in a really smart and interesting way. It's like, it's really confident. Um, the opening sketch of the second episode was Prince Andrew being brought into MI5 the day after Princess Diana died and being told that, listen, what this means is that Charles

• 53:44Speaker 02

  will take over as king one day. And the best way for the people to fall in love with him is for them to hate his relatives and for you to look bad by comparison. So we have a special mission that we are, we are sending you. Because you would do, we know you would do, you've always been such an, and he, he's going through, he's going through the folder like, really? All of this? And they're like, we know, we know, but you know, you would do anything for the crowd, anything for your brother. It's, I mean, I was, it's hysterically funny. It's really, really good. By the way, it's Andrew's Wikipedia page has been updated 26 minutes ago. So still an active story.

• 54:29Griffin McElroy?

  Crime scene.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Investigation.

• 54:32Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I have been messing around with the AYN Thor, uh, that's the dual screen retro handheld. Uh, and because I got the itch to play the Chrono Trigger DS, uh, version. Uh, that's one, I go back and play those, like play Final Fantasy, those games, like a, a, a bunch, usually like at four times speed, just blazing, blazing through them. But Chrono Trigger is not one that I return to as often. Uh, and, uh, man, it's really just, it truly is one of the best games really ever made. Like there is so much about that game that is. So, uh, transportive and, uh, just a complete fucking knockout effort.

• 55:16Griffin McElroy?

  Free collaboration, uh, from some of the best who've ever done it. And just so cool. Music's so cool. The DS has a different translation. It also has like some pretty neat quality of life stuff where you can assign shortcuts to different menu. Selections like on the bottom touchscreen. So you don't have to like go through a bunch of different. Shit to like equip the new sword that you just found, uh, which is a pretty basic thing. But yeah, it's, it's really, it's really great. And it's still just a joy to play shit on the, uh, on the Thor. I've been, I've been hoping to get, uh, a new sort of horizontal retro handheld. Cause I've heard a lot of good stuff about the retro pocket six. I enjoyed the five a lot.

• 56:01Griffin McElroy?

  But again, all of those are just really, really fucking difficult to source right now. Like really, really hard to find. In stock anywhere because of the myriad issues sort of facing the computer entertainment industry at this point.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  I ordered a Thor toward the end of February. And it is still not shipped yet from directly from, from Aene. So I'm, I'm waiting to. Get some kind of update. Cause I, I want it, I want it so bad.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Maybe that's the new, maybe that's the new shell game, right? You make a great device, charge an affordable price, wait till the pre-orders come in, shut down the company.

• 56:46Chris Plante?

  It's good. I like this. Um, mine's a very quick one. Uh, a new book called partially devoured. Which is, uh, a breakdown of the film, uh, Night of the Living Dead. George J. Ramirez, original zombie movie. And if you've ever thought like. A movie like franchise breakdown? No. A movie breakdown? No. A scene by scene breakdown? No. I want a frame by frame breakdown where the chapters are uh zero minutes thirty two seconds four frames. Uh let me tell you, it's here. I am about uh six hours into it and I

• 57:25Chris Plante?

  think we're on minute seven of the film. It is the most sicko shit possible. Uh and I am very, very, very much enjoying it. I do not know if I recommend it to everybody though. Um but hey, if you have it at your local library, you can check it out without all that financial pressure. Um I do want to wrap up. Before we do that, though, um Matt, I want to give you a chance to plug your stuff. I know that you are working on that film with um Max Fableman and his brother uh Sammy, but other than that, are you working on anything else?

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Untitled Fableman Apodaca. Uh but so that'll be out TBD summer uh twenty twenty eight, I think. Uh so it's gonna be a big temple.

• 58:12Chris Plante?

  Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Classic Fableman.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I'm working on the I they're working on the movie. I'm sort of designing the popcorn bucket.

• 58:20Chris Plante?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  They sure brought me. I so I am working on the movie, right?

• 58:26Chris Plante?

  Now, Matt, is it true? Is it true that in tribute to the theme, the popcorn bucket is gonna be shaped like a popcorn bucket? Is that? Is that right?

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for well, okay.

• 58:37Chris Plante?

  This is something to love of the movies and the magic of the movies.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  This was a leak. You're supposed to actually know that, but the popcorn bucket is shaped like a popcorn bucket with popcorn in it.

• 58:46Chris Plante?

  Oh, my God, that's fun.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Like, there is like, plastic.

• 58:50Chris Plante?

  Plastic popcorn. Yeah, I love that.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  But then you have to sort of.

• 58:54Chris Plante?

  Where does the popcorn go?

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing that we're really trying to figure out because it doesn't have a hole.

• 59:02Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  But it is sort of like a Easter egg, like, you know, like it is.

• 59:08Chris Plante?

  You have an east.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  That's it's kind of like two bowls, kind of.

• 59:11Chris Plante?

  You could.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's an egg. There's an egg in the pop. So you open the popcorn. There's an egg in the popcorn and then inside the egg is real popcorn.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  You can put real popcorn in the egg. Yeah.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 59:23Chris Plante?

  Unpo- unpopped kernels.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Unpopped, just a couple kernels. So then you could take that home and then sort of like make sort of like six pieces of popcorn at home.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  Kids love.

• 59:34Chris Plante?

  That's great. I can see some like technical challenges between now and 2028, but it's good that you have, it's good that you have that.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  We're going for buzz, you know.

• 59:44Chris Plante?

  Is it true that Tony Kushner is actually writing the, uh, the, the kind of bio for this, for this popcorn bucket?

• 59:52Griffin McElroy?

  Matt, do you have any projects that are maybe real sooner than 2028 and extent?

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Um, yes, I have a, a, a, a video game podcast also called Get Played with Nick Weiger and Heather Ann Campbell. We were talking about video games. I don't know why that was so hard. We've been doing that for seven years. And it's, uh, it's a, it's an absolute blast. We do that on Mondays and then on Wednesdays we have a, our show, Get Played DLC, where that could be anything. That could be any kind of thing. We talk about the. We just did an episode about the game show Family Feud, you know, just like sort of, uh, unpacking what that's all about. That's on, that's on Wednesdays over at patreon.com slash get played. Uh, I was on an animated show this year called, uh, Strip Law on Netflix, and I think people should watch it because I think it's really funny.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  And, uh, you'll know who my character is, uh, because he sounds exactly like me. Like he just, I didn't, I'm not an actor. They asked me to do the show and I was like, okay, this is what I got. And they are like, that's great. Um, but I think that's extremely worth, uh, checking out if, uh, people haven't seen it because I think it's, I think it's really, really funny. But that, that's it for me. Thanks for having me, guys. I love it. I had, I, I listened, so I was, uh, very excited. Uh, I was very excited to join you guys, and it's a real honor.

• 1:01:13Griffin McElroy?

  I think you did a bang-up job, Matt.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you so much.

• 1:01:16Griffin McElroy?

  We usually wait until after we've finished recording to give mostly, when Russ is here, like, pretty harsh criticisms.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Okay, I was scared of Russ the most, so that's good.

• 1:01:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, he's not, yeah, he, um, I think he, if I'm following the story correctly, he sunburnt his own feet so bad that he couldn't record the podcast today. I think that's what's happening in chat. I think that's the story he gave me, uh, when he posted.

• 1:01:37Chris Plante?

  He did send us photos of those feet, and that, they will be on our Patreon for the hundred-dollar tier.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  They don't pay enough for that. They, we need a new tier for the, for Foot Shots.

• 1:01:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's patreon.com/thebesties, right? Where you can become a member and find, uh, an ad-free, ten-dollar tier, uh, a version of the show? Is that what you're talking about, Chris?

• 1:01:59Chris Plante?

  Yeah, or the five-dollar tier where you can get the bonus episodes, two besties episodes, and a monthly besties bracket every month? I mean, that's a monthly list.

• 1:02:09Griffin McElroy?

  And I guess pictures of Russ Freshdick's toasty puppies.

• 1:02:13Chris Plante?

  I think what I'll probably do is, like, draw it for people, so they can have an idea of what it looks like. Yeah. It's kind of one of those things that if you see it too much.

• 1:02:22Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 1:02:23Chris Plante?

  Let me just say, if you don't have a foot fetish yet, you will.

• 1:02:27Griffin McElroy?

  This won't do it either.

• 1:02:28Chris Plante?

  After looking at these.

• 1:02:29Griffin McElroy?

  That's unfair, it's remain the same. I don't know that we know what we're doing next week, uh, but I won't be here.

• 1:02:36Chris Plante?

  I, I don't think we can say what we're doing next week. I think it might be embargoed.

• 1:02:40Griffin McElroy?

  Oh.

• 1:02:41Chris Plante?

  I think, I'm not sure. So we should probably just say that it's gonna be something great. And if it's next week or the week after that, the thing I'm playing right now, I'm very excited to talk to people about, so you'll have to tune in when you want to hear that.

• 1:02:56Griffin McElroy?

  Take us home, Justin.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  That's gonna do it for us this week on The Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for The Besties, because should the world's best friends get the world's best games?