Terminator Time Travels to Save '90s Garbage Games

At first, we thought Terminator 2D: No Fate looked and felt like a flawless recreation of the movie tie-ins for the SNES. Then we watched gameplay of the actual Terminator 2 SNES game. Time does not favor the cash grabs. In hindsight, developers Bitmap Bureau performed a modest miracle, perfectly recreating how we remember trashy retro games — without actually becoming one of them. This is the game that Terminator fans should remember We talk about this side-scrolling confection, our fading memories of movie-to-game adaptations, and more!

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

• 0:00Griffin McElroy?

  Big confession time, guys. And it's embarrassing. We've been doing this for so long. I never talked about this with you guys, but I am a Terminator 1000 and I was sent from the future because if this podcast doesn't exist, it's gonna be bad for human. I shouldn't spoil too much, but it's gonna be bad for humanity if this podcast ever stops. So I am a liquid metal cyber guy and I'm from the future, sent back to make besties.

• 0:29Chris Plante?

  When you say bad, what do you possibly mean?

• 0:32Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Um, CorpO, like technology goes like crazy.

• 0:42Chris Plante?

  Oh, man, that sounds terrible.

• 0:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:46Russ Frushtick?

  Griffin, on the knife hands front, because I know you have knife hands and I figured it was just like a thing that you had.

• 0:53Griffin McElroy?

  I told you guys that was my, yeah, I told you guys that was my rheumatoid arthritis. That's actually from being a liquid metal sort of cyber guy.

• 1:00Russ Frushtick?

  Right. So is that everyone in the future has knife hands or is it just you?

• 1:04Griffin McElroy?

  No, just as like a metal cyber guys. I'm usually a bad dude. Like they usually use me for killing um, men who are in the, in the laser war against us. But I have, I learned how to love as a child. I mean, I like, I adopted it as my son.

• 1:24Chris Plante?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 1:26Griffin McElroy?

  I, so then he sent me back in time to make this kick ass video game podcast. Now, don't get me wrong. Do I know why this podcast existing prevents the laser war and the CorpO takeover and all that? I do not. I have no, I do not know why these two things are connected.

• 1:42Russ Frushtick?

  I have one follow up question. If liquid metal, why not abs?

• 1:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I mean, that's a good question, Russ. I could, I could have abs. I could make them up here right now. I could fold it all in, fold it in, fold my metal.

• 1:56Russ Frushtick?

  Can I hear, let's see if it changes your timbre. Can you give yourself abs? See if it changes your tone?

• 2:01Griffin McElroy?

  It will. It'll, it will definitely, I mean, my diaphragm.

• 2:05Russ Frushtick?

  If that's funny, it'll be the end of the thing.

• 2:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, yeah, let me try it.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Oh guys, what's up? You wanna talk about Donkey Kong?

• 2:18Chris Plante?

  Yeah, that's pretty funny. I think that can be the end of the thing.

• 2:21Russ Frushtick?

  Swolly molly.

• 2:23Griffin McElroy?

  Did you say swolly molly? You fucking stinker. Look at that face. Fucking stinker.

• 2:47Speaker 03

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

• 2:50Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Griffin McQuaid and I know the best game of the week. My name is Chris Bot and I know game.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 2:57Chris Plante?

  Wow.

• 2:58Russ Frushtick?

  Wow. My name is Ross Froschstick and I know the best game of the week.

• 3:01Speaker 04

  Welcome to the Besties. We're talking about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club. And just by listening, you've become a member. This week, we're gonna be talking about a new game that feels old. It's Terminator 2D: No Fate. Chris Plant, what's that? Chris Bot, excuse me.

• 3:22Chris Plante?

  Do you think it was maybe a hat on the hat to have another robot show up?

• 3:25Speaker 04

  You gave that up so fucking quick, dude. You bailed so fast.

• 3:28Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I kinda realized.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  You bailed so fast. I tried to serve it up to you. Fresh, you just bailed.

• 3:35Chris Plante?

  I'm sorry. Terminator 2D: No Fate is a new video game movie tie-in of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. One of these came out back in the day on the Super Nintendo, but this one looks and feels like how you would want it. It's pixel heaven and we'll be talking about it more after this break.

• 3:55Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Lisa. You know, we are starting to get into the cooler months of the year. And you know what I love in the cool months of the year? An incredibly cozy mattress that you can just cozy up into. You got the blankets and everything. And I will speak from experience, but maybe not my experience, because Lisa sent me one of their mattresses, but...

• 4:21Russ Frushtick?

  It was timed as such where actually my son, who was becoming a toddler and needed like an actual bed, needed a mattress. So we had him use the Lisa mattress. And every time that I get into that bed to read him a story at night, I am incredibly jealous of his mattress because holy cow, that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress by New York Times Wirecutter and is featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner. You can go to lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code BESTIES exclusive to our listeners. That's

• 5:01Russ Frushtick?

  L-E-E-S-A.com promo code BESTIES for 25% off select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code BESTIES. I don't remember playing the original Terminator game. Do you remember? Does anyone?

• 5:23Speaker 04

  It's like, I don't remember not playing it. It's one of those where like, it seems like such a fixed quantity. Terminator, but probably not Terminator 2 was the first R-rated movie I ever saw. So like, I'm sure I probably couldn't ask for the game because I didn't want to let on that I had seen the movie because I told my parents I was gonna go see the American president.

• 5:47Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. You went to the theater, walked towards the American president and then took a beeline over to Terminator?

• 5:54Speaker 04

  I told my parents, we're gonna, Tommy and I told his mom that we're gonna go see Terminator, but I told my parents we're gonna go see the American president starring Michael Douglas and Annette Bening. And then after we got our tickets and they, you know, we walked in, we just went over to Terminator.

• 6:09Chris Plante?

  You also are a good boy. So if you had asked for the video game, you would have been like, can I have Terminator 2? Based on the movie I already saw. Sorry.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  No, so no. I don't remember.

• 6:19Griffin McElroy?

  No, but I do remember, actually, we did have developed also by LJN, the, the American President SNES game.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:28Griffin McElroy?

  Was great.

• 6:29Speaker 04

  LJN's LBJ.

• 6:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I'm in Annette Bening Maine.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, she had that spreadsheet, which was fucking sick.

• 6:36Griffin McElroy?

  Douglas, but, uh, I'm Maine Bening, so, hey, this game, I, right before we started, uh, Chris did send us some footage of the original Terminator 2 game made by LJN, uh, and released probably, what, 30 years ago or so? It's so cool seeing that after having played Terminator 2D No Fate, because while I played Terminator 2D No Fate, I was like, this is just like a Super Nintendo game from 1993. And then I looked at the exact same video game made in 1993 by the LJN toy company. And I was like, never mind, this is a hundred million times better. This is a hundred trillion billion times better.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  Should've stuck to toys.

• 7:18Griffin McElroy?

  It's crazy how much this game captures a vibe and a genre that really went out of fashion, uh, with the kind of arrival of, uh, three dimensional graphics and polygons and what have you. The people who were still making 2D games at that point were like, that's cool, but we're not going to do any more of these kind of like, uh, run and gun licensed heavy shooters. Uh, obviously you have your, your mercenary kings and your metal slugs and all that jazz, but this is like a different thing. This is a different thing, uh, of the license.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  Best version of this is probably, or at least like, the gold standard for this kind of game, I think is Blackthorn on the Genesis. Like it's a deliberately paced side scrolling action game that is not, it's like defined by the fact that it's not a Metroidvania type thing. You know what I mean? Like you're not trying to, it looks like a game like that, but you're not trying to like find better keys to unlock secret doors. That is not the vibe.

• 8:21Chris Plante?

  If you went to like a three star Michelin restaurant and you got a tasty menu and you're like, I want it all based on my favorite. Food from my childhood, it would be this in video game form in that.

• 8:33Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 8:34Chris Plante?

  Each level is kind of a different style of a different game, but it's itty bitty. It's like maybe a third as long as it would have been in a previous game and has none of the annoying bits. The visuals are upgraded to heaven. The sound and the music is incredible. In the second you've had your fill, you got that taste in your gut, boom, you're moving on to the next section. There is, there is no wasted time in it because what they get is these games can be so tedious because they are very thin mechanically. So.

• 9:04Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 9:04Chris Plante?

  Once you've gotten the taste of that mechanic, you are, you are done.

• 9:07Griffin McElroy?

  I, I will say it works, uh, maybe that works to its detriment some of the time because it jumps between genres. As you move between sections of the movie, it is a very faithful retelling of Terminator two Judgment Day. With a little bit of the original Terminator kind of thrown in at the beginning, a scene setting, but it's moving between like, uh, Battletoads style kind of hell hallways and, uh, you know, uh, the, more metal slug, slow, heavy kind of, uh, platformy shooter. And also there's like a beat them up section.

• 9:40Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 9:40Griffin McElroy?

  But that never really comes back. It really is just that one sort of section where you're doing a beat them up as a nude Arnold. Uh, and I, I don't know. Some of this stuff worked really well, I thought, and I wanted there to be kind of more of it. But it's really sticks to the plot of the movie so hardcore that it, it's not just going to add more sections where Arnold is beating the shit out of people.

• 10:00Chris Plante?

  It really does leave you wanting more, which is rare. Yeah. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about it from the beginning and just go through a few of these sections to give people an idea of how it works. Your first thing is like you are Sarah Connor and I think it's like pre, before the birth of your son. It's like kind of a flashback if I remember, or like you have your son and you're trying to get to him. Oh, they've kidnapped him. Your son's been kidnapped by punks and you gotta fight your way, kill your way through a bunch of punks to get to him. But you're just Sarah Connor. So you don't have any like special magical abilities. You walk from left to right with a gun. Uh, and if you get close enough to an enemy, you can tap Y to do a, uh,

• 10:38Griffin McElroy?

  A sort of like close up maneuver, which even that is a small thing, but it's really smart. Actually, because in a lot of side scrolling shoot games like this, you get really close to someone and suddenly you feel ineffectual. So having like a close, not having to like shoot people at point blank range in a way that feels kind of immersion breaking is actually a really smart little thing. So you have that option of like running up on somebody and just meleeing them rather than shooting.

• 11:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Shortly after that, it jumps to the future where you're playing as an aged John Connor's Connor.

• 11:11Griffin McElroy?

  Connor.

• 11:12Russ Frushtick?

  And he's got like fucking futuristic laser guns and shit like that.

• 11:14Griffin McElroy?

  Contra, like it's full Contra.

• 11:15Russ Frushtick?

  Very Contra. Yeah, full on Contra. And then it jumps.

• 11:18Griffin McElroy?

  Just for that one level.

• 11:20Russ Frushtick?

  Well, we'll talk about that because there's, there is elements of that that come back later. And then it jumps back to Sarah Connor and you have like a stealth sequence where you're escaping from the mental hospital.

• 11:30Griffin McElroy?

  No, no, no. Before that is the con Terminator at the bar.

• 11:33Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah. Naked Terminator.

• 11:34Griffin McElroy?

  Which changes here because not only is it a beat them up, but there are

• 11:39Griffin McElroy?

  small but important changes. Like you can't be killed as the Terminator. So what they do instead is the clock just ticks down extra time when you take damage. It's all these little tweaks to make it feel just a little different.

• 11:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Arnold is on a schedule and that's really all that matters.

• 11:55Griffin McElroy?

  One of the maybe all time best needle drops in a video game, by the way.

• 11:59Russ Frushtick?

  So sick.

• 12:00Griffin McElroy?

  Section that I don't want to, I don't want to do too many more of these because like that is the, for me, true joy of this game. Mechanically, it's like pretty straightforward. It feels great, but like none of these sections are like really reinventing the wheel or doing anything like particularly surprising mechanically. The surprise is that like, and now it's this type of game for a little bit. And now it's this type of game for a little bit and now it's done. Now the game's over because we did the whole movie and there isn't any more to do. So I hope you enjoyed the game. It's, it's short and sweet and tight and really, really changes. It's, uh, it's whole vibe every like 20 minutes or so.

• 12:42Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. The thing that I keep coming back to is.

• 12:48Russ Frushtick?

  It's very confident in what it does, and I think it does it very well. I also wonder how it exists within this world of like the modern version of this.

• 13:00Chris Plante?

  Right.

• 13:00Russ Frushtick?

  Which is like, has more meta hooks, has more upgrades, which aren't necessarily like, I think for this game, for what it is, it's good. But I also, there is a limit to like, how much I think this game would keep my attention. I beat the game. I played on the easier difficulty and it took me about two hours ish to finish it. Like totally finish it. But when you beat it, you can then go back and like change the events of the movie. So instead of convincing what's his name at Cyberdyne to like,

• 13:33Chris Plante?

  Dicey.

• 13:34Russ Frushtick?

  Go and go into the lab and like help you out, you actually kill him right then. And then that in turn unlocks like, what if,

• 13:43Chris Plante?

  Yeah, sure.

• 13:43Russ Frushtick?

  Late game levels where you'll have more of the futuristic stuff going on. So that is like an interesting approach to it. I just didn't necessarily feel like, oh, this is a game I'm going to keep coming back to.

• 13:52Chris Plante?

  No.

• 13:52Russ Frushtick?

  Was the only thing.

• 13:53Chris Plante?

  Which I don't think it's trying to be that. I think it's trying to be similar to like a movie. You know, you're gonna come back to it every three years and do a playthrough and that's it. But you're right, it is of a different era in that way. I like that. I do. I don't know like what the hell Netflix is up to, but if there was a game that like I would want on a streaming service that I could just play with my family without having to set anything up, this would be it. Like this is the sort of game that would be great for that. And I do think it is largely about being able to see this game in 2D pixel form. That was a big chunk of the appeal back in the day, right?

• 14:37Chris Plante?

  Was like, oh, it's a thing I love, but in the medium that I love. And it relishes the, here is the iconic shots recreated in little pixel animations.

• 14:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's really rad. I want to go back to talking about like sort of modern takes on kind of classic stuff like this. Not that I think that there's like a ton of stuff like this, because I was thinking about the like the beat them up section doesn't feel particularly good. And we have so many examples from dot emu and what's the of like, here's a classic Konami style beat them up, right? Or the Scott Pilgrim sort of beat them up, which adds like leveling mechanics and sort of extra stuff like that loosely sort of River City Rampage inspired, but like definitely more changes incorporating sort of like modern advancements. This game

• 15:37Griffin McElroy?

  doesn't do that. Really, I don't think at all. And it kind of gets away with it by being a holistic Terminator 2 experience. Yeah. Which is so cool. Like, it's really, I don't even, I don't love the Terminator franchise. I don't have like a lot of fondness for the for Terminator 2. But just like seeing a developer say like, this is our perfect version of if they had made like a flawless video game adaptation in 1993 of of Terminator 2 Judgment Day. I don't know, it's like a very much an art project of like, wow, you guys really set a mission for yourselves there and absolutely crushed it.

• 16:20Russ Frushtick?

  I also like the fact that like, they don't hide from the fact like, yes, we're a video game. So we can break the realities of things where when Sarah Connor is breaking out of the hospital, she fucking kills like 50 guys, like shoots everyone dead, which there might be what a body count of like two people in the movie. So they're fine with that, which I think is fine. Like, we don't need to stress about Ludo narrative dissonance in the fucking Terminator game.

• 16:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, I would rather not.

• 16:49Russ Frushtick?

  There is an interesting quirk about this game that is more of a buyer beware thing. The normal digital release of the game is $30 like at base price. The physical copy of the Which is more or less the same thing is $60. What?

• 17:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I don't know about that.

• 17:07Russ Frushtick?

  Dollars is wild. So I think my guess is that there's probably a licensing requirement that any Terminator game that you release also needs to be a physical release. And they were like, okay, but no one's gonna buy it. So just a heads up if you're.

• 17:25Griffin McElroy?

  I wonder if that could have been like a long, maybe that was like got appended to a contract at some point that could just never shake it.

• 17:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what. Any video game cartridges featuring the likeness of the T 800 robot.

• 17:38Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 17:39Russ Frushtick?

  I also wonder, does like Robert Patrick get money for this? Probably, man. He's in it.

• 17:46Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I'm sure Arnold Schwarzenegger gets money for this.

• 17:49Russ Frushtick?

  There's one thing I know.

• 17:50Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think Arnold is in it.

• 17:52Russ Frushtick?

  No, that his likeness is not in this game. Whenever it would be Arnold, it would be like the pixelated version that could be like.

• 17:58Griffin McElroy?

  But it's definitely Robert Patrick.

• 18:00Russ Frushtick?

  It's fully Robert Patrick.

• 18:01Griffin McElroy?

  When he, when he in the fucking attract screen of this video game that I played on my gaming PC, which that alone kicks ass, when he just kind of morphs up and gives you the no, no finger. And he's like full blown Sega Genesis glory. God.

• 18:18Russ Frushtick?

  Did they teach them that in the future before they go back?

• 18:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yes. It's been a while since I've seen the flick, actually. I don't know.

• 18:25Chris Plante?

  It would be so good, man. Um, should we, should we take a break and then we can come back and talk about the entire world of these like IP tie in games?

• 18:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 18:37Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 18:40Chris Plante?

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• 19:24Chris Plante?

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• 20:08Chris Plante?

  That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 20:16Chris Plante?

  We are back. I want to talk about licensed games from the past and the present. I want to start with the 90s stuff because that's what this game is riffing on. And as Griffin mentioned earlier, you go back and you look at the original Terminator 2 video game. And like, in theory, it looks very similar to No Fate. In practice, it looks miserable to play. This was like a cash grab at the moment to be able to do these sorts of things. And you've played a lot of these games, right?

• 20:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, when we were children, this was, I feel like we were joking about LJN, but I feel like this was like the subgenre of-

• 20:54Chris Plante?

  Look at their logo, dude. It really sent me on a trip.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  This to me is like, this period of licensed games in the 90s is like the,

• 21:06Speaker 04

  I think it is a factor of rental.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  Which is no longer a thing to think about and wasn't really a thing before this. But there was like this period in like the eighties and nineties where a game didn't have to, there was like a definitely games cost a certain amount of money, but there were games where you could get like a solid day or two out of them. There were like perfect for the Cummings Rent A Center. You go there, you pay three ninety-nine, you take it home for a weekend, you do the entire thing. So the game didn't have to be, you know, it didn't have to rewrite your entire summer, you know, it could just be a weekend and then you take it back.

• 21:44Russ Frushtick?

  And I think there was also the element of gift giving where like, oh, mom knows what you like. You like that movie, so I'm just gonna buy the game without thinking about it.

• 21:53Griffin McElroy?

  You liked The Mask. Well, Black Pearl Software asked, what if you could do it on your Super Nintendo home console?

• 22:01Russ Frushtick?

  All those shitty Simpsons games especially.

• 22:03Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I mean, not so unlike toys, right? Like it's the same premise, it just now the toy happens to be the video game. I mean.

• 22:12Russ Frushtick?

  There were a few that like broke out though.

• 22:15Chris Plante?

  Anything that Capcom made, right? Like there's a huge difference between.

• 22:17Griffin McElroy?

  Gold standard.

• 22:18Chris Plante?

  Flying Edge and GAVC and Capcom. And yeah, Capcom made the Disney games, which I think are probably the most iconic. That's Lion King, Aladdin and.

• 22:30Griffin McElroy?

  Hmm, Lion King was.

• 22:33Chris Plante?

  Was Lion King?

• 22:33Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, a claim? Virgin Interactive Entertainment. They did, Aladdin was the big sort of like Capcom. And Capcom also did the Mickey Mouse platformers, Magical Quest and all those.

• 22:47Russ Frushtick?

  Who did the Super Star Wars, that series?

• 22:50Griffin McElroy?

  That was, I mean, Lucas, LucasArts, right?

• 22:52Russ Frushtick?

  Those were really good.

• 22:53Griffin McElroy?

  And JVC, I think.

• 22:55Russ Frushtick?

  So yeah, it does feel like, especially when there wasn't a direct movie tie-in, like they needed to hit a date for a movie release. It seemed like they had the potential to be a little bit better, although a lot of them were still shit. The second you were like trying to hit a fucking December 12th release for a movie, invariably those games would be dogshit. And those would evolve into like mobile games later on.

• 23:17Chris Plante?

  And I do think part of the appeal going back to these games is how little respect they have for their source material. Super Star Wars, I think we all remember more fondly now because it is nothing like Star Wars. Like in one of them, you fight like a robot spider Darth Vader or something.

• 23:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, and there's like, uh, when you're going to the sarlacc pit, there's like 12 sarlacks that are jumping out at you as you're shooting lasers and stuff like that. Uh, it definitely had a lot of range in terms of what you were doing, but I think again, that's why I think we like this Terminator game is because it also was like, fuck it. We also need to make this game fun. We don't need to make it authentic to the movie. Uh, the events need to be the same, but otherwise like, go ham.

• 24:01Griffin McElroy?

  I wanted to highlight, uh, one example of the game coming out at the same time of the movie, which was the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the movie game from 1995, which is a kick ass beat them up where you get to, uh, be whatever Ranger you want and get to live out your Power Rangers fantasy. It came out the same time as the flick, which also kicked ass. What a unique cultural zeitgeist that was.

• 24:23Speaker 04

  Um, I, there's also, there's a factor here that I, I want to touch on that this, this game is also, I, I think highlighting and I, it's a phenomenon that I know no longer exists today, but games that were in this era for the NES, SNES, Genesis, whatever, games that are definitely for kids, because at this time, every game is for kids. Like this is not like, I, if adults are playing a game, it's an adult playing a kid's game. Games are not for adults, but games based on R rated movies. So you had like, I'm looking at a list, Total Recall, this is just NES, Total Recall,

• 25:04Speaker 04

  Robocop one and two, Rambo, Predator, Terminator one and two, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street. There was all these games, Jaws is all, these games based on movies that you weren't supposed to see as a kid and probably weren't allowed to see for a lot of kids. So it's like, I'm going to have the Terminator experience and this is how I'm going to ingest this.

• 25:29Russ Frushtick?

  Like buying the novelization.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly, Russ. That's exactly it. Yeah.

• 25:33Griffin McElroy?

  You, you could get toys back then for R rated movies, which now, I don't know if you've been to a Target lately. They have a separate toy section for adults that is like concealed by the video games.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  Adult toys, you're just not finding out about this?

• 25:48Griffin McElroy?

  You want R rated toys? Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  Oh, oh, oh, R rated. Okay. I'm sorry. I was confused because I was going to say.

• 25:57Russ Frushtick?

  I want to do a quick midstream correction here and say that the original Jaws was rated PG.

• 26:03Chris Plante?

  That's what I thought.

• 26:03Russ Frushtick?

  That fact kicks ass. It was not an R rated film. Parental guidance, maybe if you.

• 26:09Chris Plante?

  Now I feel better about having turned it to Mosey. This is good.

• 26:13Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 26:13Chris Plante?

  I'm not a bad parent.

• 26:15Speaker 04

  But, but, but, but plant the principle is exact. I mean, ratings aside, like the principle of that is a hundred percent the same. Like I should not have had to try to conceptualize what Friday the 13th is, is about. Based on an ill advised Farmor rental from our mom. You know what I mean? Like, that should not be how the, the tale of Jason Voorhees unspools for me for the first time.

• 26:41Russ Frushtick?

  Those games are legit fucking like terrified me because I never watched the movies, but like those horror games or even the Jaws game. That's the other fuck out of me.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  That's the other thing about it that I think is actually really interesting is that this is a time period where the games, like a lot of these games. Weren't a natural fit or the movies weren't a natural fit for a game adaptation. Right? Terminator two is pretty clean. You're a dude with a gun, but like, how do you make a game out of Jaws? How do you make a game? Like, I think they, there's some interesting stuff that people had to come up with to like, uh, uh, if, you know, rationalize some of this. You see some like non-traditional game design that may not work great, but at least it's like, kind of interesting.

• 27:23Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, no, I think they did a really interesting job.

• 27:26Chris Plante?

  It's strange because I wanted to say like, oh, well, this kind of faded, like we had Goldeneye and then there was a bunch of bad, uh, tie in games on the Nintendo 64. And maybe this went away for a while, but really every era has its handful of great, or at least good movie tie in games. We have Spider-Man two, right? We have take it or leave it, the Matrix video games, which I personally think.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  Oh, take it.

• 27:52Chris Plante?

  Solid. Yeah, I like them.

• 27:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, the matrix rules.

• 27:55Chris Plante?

  Yeah, there, there is that Hulk video game. There's a Wolverine game. It's pretty good. Like we get these.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  Is there? I don't think there's a good Hulk movie game, is there?

• 28:05Chris Plante?

  I thought there was.

• 28:06Speaker 04

  Alter disruption for the PS2 and game.

• 28:08Russ Frushtick?

  Not tied to the movie, no.

• 28:10Chris Plante?

  Oh, there's that Lord of the Rings video game, you know, there's, there's stuff now and then that we get, but most of it is, is utter garbage. Fresh, you were, you were talking about before this, how we do seem to see less of it all around, good or bad.

• 28:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. I can't remember the last movie license thing.

• 28:28Russ Frushtick?

  So much of it is just the expense of game development is at a point where like it no longer makes financial sense to do this. Uh, if you're going to do like a full on 3D open world, whatever, to tie it with a movie release, the math does not work. That being said, they still do, you know, there's a Stranger Things game. They still do like these indie approaches to these releases as like another marketing leg, but you're not going to see like a full release for a movie.

• 28:53Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I think the exception is, and it's not literally this movie, the game, but is Disney's approach of RIP is worth so much. It has so much inherent value. We can shop around to all the different developers have no overhead and get them to take the risk on making video game versions of Star Wars or Avatar or whatever.

• 29:15Russ Frushtick?

  But not even that. You look at Fortnite or you look at Call of Duty, like Call of Duty just did a Fallout collab, which obviously it's the same company, uh, Microsoft owns both of them, but still, uh, they just, uh, and then Fortnite does collabs all the time, Adventure Time, and you name it. It's much cheaper and easier to release a skin of a character that acts as a marketing tool for the thing you're releasing than it is to make a whole fucking game. Uh, so.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  Isn't it interesting also that like you look at the, just this year, you've got a new Silent Hill, Mortal Kombat 2, Street Fighter, Resident Evil. Like the pipeline is moving the other, the other way. You know, it's going the opposite direction. The games are being developed into, into films.

• 30:01Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 04

  Sonic, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's, I was looking for, for examples of movies being adapted to the games. And I can't like, it's been years since I can find one that isn't like a, that's like a real actual like. AAA video game, whatever that means anymore, you know, released on a disc. I got.

• 30:20Griffin McElroy?

  My mind, we, I don't know if we've talked about this on the show, cannot, is incapable of conceiving what the Zach Cregger led Resident Evil film is going to look like. I like, love the work of Zach Cregger. Uh, just seems like such an odd pairing.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  We got Paul Walter Hauser and Zach Cherry, my boys, like I, I need the two of them to be the ones that save the world. Like my guys, my guys.

• 30:47Russ Frushtick?

  I'm very excited. I think it's, uh, people are starting to really dial it in. I think Fallout's a good example of this. The show is just like, you could, you can lean into the ridiculousness of the video game aspects while also like appreciating the source material and showing it respect such that fans and other people can get into it.

• 31:04Speaker 04

  Hey, I want, I want, I want your suggestions. What, what movie, what classic film would you like to see? Get this treatment. If you could have the, the same team, same people, they gotta do a follow-up, right?

• 31:19Russ Frushtick?

  Was there a Demolition Man game is what I want to know because that seems.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Several of them, I know Sega CD, uh, check me, but I'm pretty sure there was a, I know there was a Sega CD. I want to say it was a 32X Demolition Man.

• 31:34Russ Frushtick?

  Oh yeah, there was indeed.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. With clips from the film.

• 31:36Griffin McElroy?

  There's a correct answer to this and it is the fifth element. Um, would be very, very good.

• 31:42Chris Plante?

  Well, see the problem is Ubisoft has been trying to make that for a long time and Beyond Good and Evil 2 is never coming out.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  But like, I feel like the, the, uh, would that be the right fit for this kind of thing though? You know what I mean? Like, can you boil that down to the, cause I, I feel like fifth element has to be, uh, if you were to do a film and game, I think that has to be sprawling, uh, and.

• 32:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, we couldn't be very faithful and be this type of game, I guess.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  Like John Wick would be like.

• 32:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  That would be such a, I know that's not an older, but like, that would be so great. I would love to see this team try Predator. That has like a little bit more like organic elements. That would be really cool.

• 32:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. And there is a John Wick, uh, I think John Wick Hex came out for what it's worth, but not, it wasn't like.

• 32:27Chris Plante?

  Not to recreate the movie in the game sort of thing. Yeah.

• 32:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Chris Plante?

  That'd be tough.

• 32:32Speaker 04

  Was that good? There was a VR, uh, John Wick thing too, right?

• 32:37Russ Frushtick?

  Man, you could see a super hot VR collab for John Wick would be fucking sick.

• 32:42Chris Plante?

  And that would be good.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  They did something like it. There was a VR John Wick thing. It just wasn't.

• 32:47Chris Plante?

  I'm super hot. I do want to point out before we get to the question.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  Hey, hey, let your kids play super hot if they never have. I taught Cooper to play super hot. It's fucking sick. It's like I'm training. It looks like I'm training. I want to open the door to her room like the scene in Wayne's World where he opens the door, the ninja's training. Like I wanted to open the door to Cooper's bedroom. Like, yeah, she's been training in here since seven. She's gonna be ready for anything the universe has.

• 33:09Chris Plante?

  I gotta charge my Oculus Quest now because I do want to play super hot right now.

• 33:14Russ Frushtick?

  It's too good.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  It's really, it's really, really good.

• 33:16Russ Frushtick?

  Sadly, Meta just shuttered a bunch of VR studios because that's the way things are going, so.

• 33:23Speaker 04

  I'm literally watching him plug it in.

• 33:27Chris Plante?

  Why don't we talk about King Kong, the movie, the game? We made it all this time. We didn't talk about King Kong, the movie, the game.

• 33:32Russ Frushtick?

  Super good. And that was fun with the movie, right?

• 33:35Chris Plante?

  King Kong, the movie, the game. What a game.

• 33:38Speaker 04

  Movie. What a great game. If that, that is a game I wish more games had taken some learnings from. It's got a really fun way, like, uh, King Kong, the movie, the game. Sorry. Peter Jackson's King Kong, the movie, the game. You've never experienced it, is a first person action adventure, but like more heavy on the adventure where like the presence of like fire, whether or not you have a torch is a very big thing. You're like, you get your weapons, not like in a classic way, but like you just find guns that someone else has and you can like borrow their guns. It's very narrative heavy. It's like got big cinematic moments. It's a very cool. I think that's one that he was very.

• 34:18Russ Frushtick?

  Kong too. You fucked shit up as Kong, right?

• 34:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that's one he was very involved with. I feel like I remember Peter Jackson being, being very plugged into that, which is the same as Lord of the Rings things, right? He was, he was very instrumental in those games.

• 34:29Chris Plante?

  Just adding one other note here, uh, there is one big movie tie-in game that has been tremendously successful in, in the last five years, and that is the Jurassic World, uh, Frontier Games, the Jurassic World Evolution Games.

• 34:46Russ Frushtick?

  That's where you're building the park.

• 34:48Chris Plante?

  Because they're smart enough to be like, yeah, let's get, let's pull it back. Let's, let's just let you build a dinosaur theme park. But even that is like, you're not, you're not recreating the movie, which I think is what we're going for.

• 35:00Russ Frushtick?

  There is, I think, a new Jurassic Park game that is coming out in the future that will, I think, be a little bit closer to at least the vibes of the movies, if not the recreation of the events.

• 35:09Griffin McElroy?

  The Thing video game also beat so much ass. It beat so much ass that they remade it and released that, I think, a couple of years ago.

• 35:17Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think I ever played that.

• 35:19Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, man, it's so good. It's a, I mean, it's a third person shooter type game, but it is also a survival horror game, obviously, where you never know if like, the dude you're rolling with is about to turn into a big bloody octopus or whatever.

• 35:33Chris Plante?

  Night Dive Studios did a remaster of it, like, at the end of last year. It's pretty solid, yeah.

• 35:40Griffin McElroy?

  Cool.

• 35:41Chris Plante?

  Hey, we got any questions?

• 35:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 35:44Russ Frushtick?

  We do, as a matter of fact. First, more statements, but a funny note from Michael. He said, he thought Justin was, we were talking about most anticipated games. I thought Justin was saying the remake of the end of the greatest RPG of all time as the game description and not the name of the game. People were very upset that we weren't actually saying what game it was.

• 36:06Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah. Shh, it's a secret. I'm not gonna tell you what game I'm talking about.

• 36:10Russ Frushtick?

  Jay McConna also wrote in saying, I am unbelievably happy that Griffin is playing Satisfactory. It's one of my favorite games in 2019, remains a favorite of the genre. Griffin, are you still?

• 36:21Griffin McElroy?

  I've, I had to liberate myself.

• 36:23Russ Frushtick?

  Good for you.

• 36:24Griffin McElroy?

  Genuinely, it's so rare. The only other type thing I can remember is like, the times I've had where I've been playing WoW and not really enjoying it and being like, what the fuck am I do? Like, Satisfactory kicks ass, and also, I have like, 45 minutes of gaming time per day, and I cannot spend all of it playing Satisfactory. So I reached a nice sort of stopping point with it and had to peel myself off. That is a game that I think if I was playing it multiplayer and like a constant server, it would be the only video game I've ever, I ever play.

• 36:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Griffin McElroy?

  But it is, it is kick ass.

• 36:57Russ Frushtick?

  Does it get to a point where if you like, stand on a mountain looking down at your creation, it looks like Big Ball Factory, like it looks that? Fucking cool where everything is kind of like going.

• 37:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, man. People have done some shit with this game that is like pretty staggering.

• 37:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Griffin McElroy?

  And I attempted to do that and I didn't do a great job and I was like, instead of remaking this, I think I'm just gonna.

• 37:20Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Griffin McElroy?

  Stop. But yeah, it kicks ass. I think it's like, I think it's a really interesting genre that is doing a lot of stuff. Uh, from other genres I really like. Uh, so I, I, I do love satisfactory a lot and I'm sure I will come back to it someday, but I, I had to, had to quit because this Terminator 2D No Fate was the game that got me off of it and it was a perfect kind of.

• 37:43Russ Frushtick?

  That's like a Band-Aid.

• 37:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, a little bit of a palate, palate cleanser is maybe offensive because it makes.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  It's just really nice to play a game because it's fun. I mean, really genuinely like it's, it's, it shouldn't be as much of a commodity as it is, but it's just like, it's fun to play.

• 37:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. We have any honorable mentions?

• 37:59Speaker 04

  I am reading a book that you guys are really like called There Is No Anti-Memetics Division. It's a, but the author is just named Quantum, Q N T M. Is it? And it is a sci fi, don't go searching for it. I hear the clickety clap, clacking. Just let me tell you about it. Kills me. TCB. Um, it is, it's a sci fi novel about, okay, so. What the book assumes is obviously there's, there's, uh, there's monsters, right? And in this world, there are psychic monsters that the government has to kind of keep track of. So you can imagine your, your X-Files or whatever, cross government agency.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  Tasked with tracking them. Well nested within that group of monsters that are like psychic creatures are. Creatures that are, uh, by their very nature erase memory of their existence. So they are designed, these psychic enemies, these psychic creatures, they, their abilities, their powers. Are all sort of manifested around erasing. The knowledge of their existence and that's how they're operating within secrecy. So this agency is people who are trained to notice things outside of what others would notice and are trying to use different methodology to find these creatures that are trying to escape notice.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  And as the book continues on, what's fascinating is, and what, what I think makes really reading it such a cool experience is a lot of these entities have the ability to erase the knowledge of their existence from the characters, but you, the reader, do not have that knowledge erased. So you'll start to see characters operating using a different rule set or a different set of logic and you don't understand why, then you realize they've forgotten. They don't, they don't, they're kind of losing track of the book as you, the reader, are like keeping track of it. And all the different permutations of that, like all the different ways that those like psychic creatures manifest themselves and the different ways that like the agents have

• 40:08Speaker 04

  to have a protocol of like several different methods of recording. So it's like, some people use dictaphones with a notepad with a recorder because different entities have different ways of erasing knowledge of their, of their existence. It's a very cool book. It's called, There Is No Anti-Memetics Division. And it's, it's, it's really, what the book starts to uncover is that maybe this isn't the first division like this. And maybe that we've done this before on a, on a very grand scale. And it's, it's really, really cool.

• 40:43Russ Frushtick?

  This is great. I played through Act Razor on Super Nintendo. All right. That game rules. Uh, I had a device that I got ages ago, the MiU, MiU A30 and just booted it up, installed Spruce OS, which is a good custom flash, custom firmware and just ran that game. I wanted to finish it, uh, cause I'm trying to finish more games rather than just messing with my devices constantly. And so I finished it and I think what's so special about the game, it's a mix of like side scrolling action game and also like city. Building.

• 41:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Russ Frushtick?

  And that meta element makes the, they like work hand in hand where the action sequences play into the city building and vice versa in both narrative and gameplay ways. And it, I think it overcomes the hurdle that a lot of games of that era did where we're just like, oh, this is just a really fucking hard game. Like it's just super fucking hard. Whereas you can make that game pretty manageable if you just spend a lot of time like building up the cities and doing the little quests and things like that. So I think it's a perfect pairing. Sadly, the sequel is very bad.

• 41:50Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. It's a rare, a rare miss from Quintet. I think Quintet is maybe a developer that I have more nostalgia for than any other. They only developed, I think, like a half dozen games or so, but they are all really rad and a little bit like weirdly interconnected.

• 42:09Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. What's another one?

• 42:11Griffin McElroy?

  So Illusion of Gaia is the, is the big one. I think all the games were published by Enix. But then there were like really good, just sort of action RPGs like that. Soulblazer is one of them. Terranigma is a really, really cool one that came out pretty late in this kind of like 32 bit life cycle. But yeah, rad, rad stuff. You should play Illusion of Gaia if you haven't. It's a really, it's a really neat game about, it's like if the seven wonders of the world were like an RPG quest and

• 42:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that sounds very, very interesting. Yeah. I'm definitely gonna, I think I might do a run of their games.

• 42:52Griffin McElroy?

  I have been playing two things. One, I bought a board, which is a, a screen. It is a 24 inch sort of horizontal screen.

• 43:06Russ Frushtick?

  It's called board?

• 43:07Griffin McElroy?

  It's called board.

• 43:09Russ Frushtick?

  That wasn't taken?

• 43:10Griffin McElroy?

  No, I guess it wasn't taken. And when you buy it, you get this big, big ass, nice screen. And it comes with like 50 little figures, little, I don't know, totems, little objects that correspond to the 12 games that are on it at launch. And the games are, I mean, there's a lot of different kinds of ones. There's like a match three one. There's a sort of Othello's style, like territory claiming one. There's one that's basically lemmings, except like you're putting Pieces down to make the little paths for the lemmings. So you put a little staircase down and then they will run on top of that on the screen. There's, but then there's also

• 43:53Griffin McElroy?

  like really simple ones like snake. There's like a snake game that you control the snake with like a little piece that you move around the board or like a asteroid space shooter where you're moving your ship piece around the board to kind of do, do all the stuff in that game. There's a little virtual pet thing and you're like pouring a watering can on it to like wash it and do, do all of that stuff. It is, it is super neat. I've only had it for like four or five days or so. Um, but Gus, my four-year-old is, is quite taken with it and really enjoys, uh, just the kind of like tactile, I think, experience of, you know, moving a little actual physical thing around to manipulate a video game.

• 44:35Griffin McElroy?

  It is, it's 500 bucks and I don't know that right now it has quite enough going on to justify that, but there are, uh, more games sort of coming. There's no subscription thing. Uh, like I think next playground, which is another thing I adore and is always releasing sort of new stuff. You have to be, I think, buy a game pass in order to do that stuff. This doesn't have anything like that, at least not yet. But it's been, it's been really neat and it's been a fun sort of, their, their big pitch is like, you know, no more screens in front of your faces as you play games together. Now you just have the one big screen. Yeah, it's a whole screen. It's still a screen, but it's flattened on the, on the table. So you're not like

• 45:15Griffin McElroy?

  hiding, hiding your face. Um, I've also been playing a, uh, I hesitate to call it game, but an app that is on steam called Pixel Art Academy, uh, Pixel Art Academy Learn Mode. Henry has been very, very, very into pixel art, uh, messes around with it on his iPad basically every day and is, is really developing some skills that has been kind of cool to see. So I've been, uh, fiddling around with Godot again and trying to figure out if there's like any way I can. Help him figure, figure some of this stuff out, but there's a game called Pixel Art Academy that teaches you pixel art and it does so through like a dozen different kind of ways. Like you can recreate pixel art from other games.

• 45:58Griffin McElroy?

  It like has those as sort of tutorials, but then it also teaches you like, this is the fundamentals of like line work and this is, uh, you know, best, best practices for making a curved line in pixel art. And then it has like review technology that will like, look at the art that you make and be like, okay, so there's stuff here and here, this line is a little bit like, it's pretty sophisticated stuff. And then there's like interactive lessons where you make sprites for Pico art games. And I don't know, I have, I've put like 10 hours into it. I keep kind of just like, when I have nothing else going on, picking it up and messing around. And it's been, it's been very, very cool and a neat way to learn about this thing that

• 46:40Griffin McElroy?

  my son is extremely proficient at. So.

• 46:45Chris Plante?

  Nice.

• 46:47Griffin McElroy?

  I guess I'm just a good dad, guys. I guess my whole thing for both of my shits this week is I'm the father of the year and possibly the decade.

• 46:56Chris Plante?

  And so early in the year already.

• 46:58Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, I know, but I got the, I got the award. I got the award already.

• 47:03Chris Plante?

  Dude, that's great.

• 47:05Griffin McElroy?

  I got the DODI, yeah.

• 47:06Chris Plante?

  Wow. I mean, I, I just played Sonic Racing Crossworlds. My son loves Sonic. I didn't play it with him though, so that probably makes me. He kept it a secret. He was banging on the door, actually.

• 47:18Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Go away, go away.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  Papa, I love the blue mouse, Papa.

• 47:24Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I started calling you father and I don't know what to do with that. Oh no. Father. Hey, Sonic Racing Crossworlds, it's so good. It's just a great kart racing game and they keep adding stuff to it constantly. They just added Pac-Man? For some reason, there's an entire Pac-Man track where it feels like you're on a set of pixels. It's great, man. That game is good.

• 47:50Russ Frushtick?

  I heard Fortnite's doing a South Park thing. You guys check that out? They are actively at the moment doing a South Park event. There's Skins and an area, Cartman World, etc. It's pretty good. People seem pissed because the truth of, the stick of truth is in it. Did you tell them what it does? That's a really cool, it's a cool idea. Yeah, whoever gets it can basically decide where the final circle is going to close in on. So it kind of forces everyone directly to your position. So people have come up with like clever ideas of like doing it in like a bunker, some asshole like put it way out in the ocean. So suddenly there's like just a water battle. So it's, it's pretty smart. Yeah, that's cool. Good job. Okay, I think we did it. Did you, do we thank people?

• 48:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, let's, let's thank some people. We have some members over at the Patreon, Patreon.com slash the besties if you want to join us for content. We got Javier, we've got Matt, we've got Bennett, we've got Subzog, Subzoo G. One of those pronunciations is right. Thank you for being members. We have a new Resties episode. It's actually the big predictions episode, which is live right now. If you happen to be a member, you can also vote on who was right in the predictions episode. Wow. There's some contention. There's some disagreement. Very nasty. We've left it up to the listeners to vote. I love it. Very exciting. Next week, we're gonna do a doubleheader. Mio, Memories in Order, and Pathologic 3.

• 49:16Russ Frushtick?

  I didn't know the franchise existed and here I am staring down the barrel of the third one, but I hear it's got a doctor in it. So, sounds cool. You love those. We love it. I love a doctor. That's gonna do it for us, for this week on the besties. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?