Promise Mascot Agency is an Escape From Life’s Headaches

Promise Mascot Agency is like running errands on a cool summer day, the radio blasting killer tunes and a good friend riding shotgun. Justin and Plante talk about what makes this a great example of a “chore game.” Plus, the dastardly duo discuss emulation. Because nobody can stop them!

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I feel like it's weird when you have a two-person podcast because that's just talking, you know? It's just a conversation between two people, like because I pressed a button, now there's an artifice? I don't know.

• 0:15Chris Plante?

  But you know, kind of nice in that we can actually talk with each other rather than compete. Or it's kind of those deathly stares that we give one another so they don't talk over each other week to week. I mean, Frushtick gives a withering, withering glance at you if he dares think that you'll talk over his Metroidvania conversations.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Sorry, it's on my phone. I can be on my phone when there's three people because someone else will do it. And I'm realizing I can't even be on my phone with just you and me. You know what I mean? No one's going to pick up my Slack.

• 0:47Chris Plante?

  See, I'm playing Promise Mascot Agency for the first time right now. I just loaded it up.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  That's, that's cool. I'm actually, I'm just watching Twitch streams of it at 4X speed.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Just like all game journalists have done the whole time.

• 1:04Chris Plante?

  There is still competition. You can still one-up me. It's still here. We still got that juice. We still got that flow.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  We're back. I just wish we had recorded it.

• 1:31Speaker 00

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

• 1:34Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Josh Ruschik and I know the best game of the week. My name is New York Giraffe and I know the best game of the week.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  My name is President Donald J. Trump and I know the best game of the week. We can all do character work.

• 1:52Chris Plante?

  Yeah, that's good.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Okay, this is the best we still.

• 1:54Chris Plante?

  Wait, that was you?

• 1:56Speaker 00

  It's a video game club, and just by listening, you've become a member. Uh, I am so excited to be here to talk with you about Promise Mascot Agency, a game that we're probably only allowed to talk about because Griffin and Russ aren't here. So what's Promise Mascot Agency?

• 2:11Chris Plante?

  Promise Mascot Agency is the new game from Kaizen Game Works that made one of our favorite games of like two years ago, Paradise Killer. We really enjoyed it and had those sweet, sweet Sega Dreamcast style vibes. This time they are back and they are doing a Yakuza style, open world game. That is the most PS2 ass shit I have played since the PlayStation 2.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Uh, that is a great description. We're going to talk about that and so much more right after this. Plant, the, the, this felt to me when we first started talking about it, so much like a spiritual sequel. Like the, the DNA of it, it reminds me of, um, the specificity of vibe that we saw with like Ace Team for a while where it's just like, oh, this game isn't related technically, but it's like, you feel the studio, like you feel the sense of it in a, in a way like a, a, of studio voice. I feel like you can kind of start to feel in the second one, like a, reminds me of like a, a platinum in its, in its best eras and, and Suda, things like that, where you feel like that sort of auteur kind of vibe.

• 3:22Chris Plante?

  Yeah, you can tell their core interests are video games from the like PS2 Dreamcast era, specifically what it felt like kind of to import Japanese games at that time, where you're getting things that seemed kind of different and alien compared to like what you were playing in the US market that now kind of seems normal. Um, and

• 3:48Chris Plante?

  A little like, um, a little dirty, just

• 3:51Speaker 00

  A little dirty, but in a kind of a comforting grime. Yeah. You know, we're, here's a story with this one. You got, uh, the janitor. He's a, a Yakuza, former Yakuza messed up so bad, so bad. And he lost billions of yen. He messed up so bad that his bosses are like, I think that rather than kill you, we're going to exile you to the worst job possible. Give you a chance to start to build back, earn back the money, build back the reputation. Maybe get back in your, in our good graces. And the gig we got for you is running a mascot business.

• 4:28Chris Plante?

  In a town that has one curse on it. And that curse is Yakuza slowly get killed by simply being there.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Right. Normal.

• 4:40Chris Plante?

  Normal.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  So far you're like, okay, I've heard it before.

• 4:44Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Right?

• 4:46Chris Plante?

  But

• 4:47Speaker 00

  What's really interesting, I think with this one and the, the, the, the previous entry is this studio seems really interested in new mechanics, like experimental mechanics that may not, like, they don't even seem necessarily convinced that it is fun, but they're trying to make it fun. They're trying to find if there's fun in different, different places. I feel like some more non-traditional structures. So like in this one, for example, you are, the, the, the, the vast majority of your business is like just kind of overseeing the mascots. If you're wait, I kept waiting for a character action game to begin. That is not, that is not there.

• 5:27Chris Plante?

  I mean, we kind of buried the lead that in this world mascots are real.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:32Chris Plante?

  They are, they are not people inside of costumes. If you see a giant severed thumb mascot, that mascot is a giant severed thumb. If you see, you know, if, if you saw Piggly Wiggly walking around, that would be the Piggly Wiggly.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  If you saw gritty, you would cross the street.

• 5:52Chris Plante?

  Oh gosh, yeah. I mean, you, that's kind of everybody in here. This is a city full of gritties.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:58Chris Plante?

  Is the other part.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  It's gritty city. It's the gritty city committee.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  And you take over the gritty city committee. No, you, there are small business owners that need mascots for their events and they wanna, and your mascot agency, because of the psychopathic severed pinky that was running the business before, has a bad reputation. So you have to start earning it back with local business owners to convince them that you're worth their time. And the way you do that is you recruit mascots and you send them out on jobs. And there are jobs that want a certain kind of mascot, like a certain vibe. You can also send them with items that can make the job go better. And as you're driving around doing your, your business in your truck, because you don't get out, you're in a truck, as you're driving around your business in your truck, the mascot sometimes need help. And

• 6:45Speaker 00

  you can go play a, play a card game.

• 6:49Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Well, okay. So let's talk about what you do in the game. Cause you're right. On one hand, they are trying something really new ish with the managing the actual mascots. And the way that that works is that you go into a menu and you have to decide how you hire a mascot and how much money are you going to pay them? What percentage are they going to get? What, when, what's their bonus period structure? What's their time off? And you adjust that as the game continues. And depending on how you've adjusted that, you either accrue lots of money or a little money, you keep them happy or unhappy, you

• 7:28Chris Plante?

  send them out on jobs. And then when jobs go wrong, you have to like step in and play a card game. But to call this a card game is, I don't know even what I would describe this as, because there's not much game to it. The game is-

• 7:46Speaker 00

  No, yeah, it feels, it kind of reminds me of like cooperative board games where it's like you're, you're just sort of going through the motion. It's not like about uh, your skill. It's more like what you have available. It's a little bit pass fail. There's not a lot of depth to it. It's like either gonna work or it's not, or at least it seems like to me.

• 8:05Chris Plante?

  Yes. Like a mission would be that um, a cash register is broken and the mascot wants to fix it. So you're- Enemy for that round is the cash register and that manifests like a fighting game health bar. The cash register shows up, the mascot itself deals a little damage to it. And then you look down at your cards and you have a set of cards that have little icons that can be used to deal more damage to the cash register. And I think there is a game here that maybe is complicated because there's like all different types of cards. There's buffs, there's ways to get more cards or get fewer cards. There's all these things. But every time I've played it, the answer has been look for the card that has the highest number.

• 8:50Chris Plante?

  Play it, finish the health bar, move on. So.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  So this is what, this is what I think is interesting. Plant is I, in playing this game and, and that feeling of like waiting for the game to like the game to start. Where I kind of got, what I think may, they may be kind of going for here is something that looks like, like looks less cozy than it is, but is actually just kind of like a cozy game. Like it's, none of it's hard and most of it's nice. You know, like the characters you meet, like there's one guy, you mean early on that just wants to be in porn. And he wants to be in the porn industry and he cares about the fidelity of the adult entertainment.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  And he cares about AV a lot and it's great and so funny. And it's like, but it's, but you're, none of it is.

• 9:45Chris Plante?

  And the hard stuff too, you know, that's what's sweet about it is he doesn't want pixel anymore.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Yes, no pixel. Actually, I think he says almost no pixelation, which I is worse in a way. Cause if you want a little bit, that's troubling. No, but like when you get, for example, the way you get cards is you ask people if they will be a mascot support hero. And then they say, yeah. Yeah, almost. I mean, sometimes you gotta do something for them, but sometimes it's like, hey, yeah, that sounds cool. Yeah, you can call me to help. And that's it. And it's not really like a challenge. It's just sort of constantly sort of giving you things and like making it to be a fairly pleasant even experience in at least as far as I could tell.

• 10:33Chris Plante?

  It's a chore game. It's a game of chores. And I guess my question for you is like, what makes a chore game enjoyable for you? You know, good or bad is not the best words, but I, I, after about two hours, really clicked in with it. And just going around and doing chores.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  It's a tough beginning, man. I picked this guy up and set him down a lot because it's tough at the beginning.

• 10:59Chris Plante?

  It's slow, but then when you get into it, it becomes a series of basically fetch quests, the entire game. So the open world part of the game, you effectively play as a truck. You'd never get out of.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  An indestructible truck.

• 11:14Chris Plante?

  An indestructible truck.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  That's faster. That's better and faster than any truck.

• 11:19Chris Plante?

  Yes, has it has rocket boost. And you go.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  Can go in the water a bit.

• 11:22Chris Plante?

  Yes, you, you, you go from place to place, doing basically the same thing over and over again. You see little dots on the map, you pick up those items, those are your fetch quest items. You go to various characters across this pretty large, open world, you deliver the things, they tell you new things that they need. Some of them become cards in your, your game, like you said, over and over and over. There's not like, when you meet a new character, it's not going to surprise you what will happen. You'll say hello, they'll tell you a little bit of their backstory, they will offer to be a card, they will offer to sell you some new items, they will give you a new fetch quest series. This sounds so boring.

• 12:04Chris Plante?

  And yet, I, I, I definitely locked in after, after about two hours where I was like, great. I am just zipping around this world. The music is good. It looks cool.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  It looks good. They got some really funky filters on it that you can like choose to put on it. Like it just looks cool and their writing is good and funny. It's, I, I will say this. If you liked, um, infinite wealth, but it was a little too gaming for you.

• 12:32Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  This, this has like a similar vibe with less like mechanical. It's probably closer to wander stop. Honestly, than a lot of other stuff. It's, it's, it's a little bit more like it's management. It's not really that hard. It's more about, to answer your question about a chore game. For me, if you're, I was thinking a lot about what makes a good video game story. Because a lot of times you see stories adapted from other media into video games. But you, there seems to be something that makes a good video game story. And I think part of the ineffable quality that video games can, can do with storytelling.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  That other media can't is the story of a area and how that's area changes, right? So it, if you think of like the lead as like a region or like a, an area or this town. And it's really the story of that, then what video games can do really well is seeing those characters evolve. Seeing the locations start to change, seeing like the, the impact of what you're doing on the world. Uh, and that is like a, a way of telling a story that like video, that movies and TV and stuff can't do as well. Cause it has to be so character driven. And this can be a story about like, uh, a lot of people in concert.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Without a necessarily like a main character who's, who's story is driving it. And it's more like, it feels like the story of a community of a bunch of people and how they're changing, um, over, over time.

• 14:05Chris Plante?

  That is really helpful and also helps me see it as if you took any popular farming game. And said that what, everything that you just said about the farm, where you're doing the chores on the farm. And you're watching it grow and it went from having all these weeds to being like a nice place that you're proud of. You run all the fetch quests for the locals. Flush that out to be an entire city and that feels like this game.

• 14:33Chris Plante?

  The, in fact, that makes me like the game more because the chores are actually, while mundane, enjoyable versus watering plants, which is my least favorite thing to do in any video game ever.

• 14:46Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I, I, I, I really, really enjoyed it. I just, I don't know, I, I, I saw this, I'm gonna share this really quick, actually. I, I was flipping through the Steam page and the top review right now has 19 hours and it's from, I'm not sure the user's name out of privacy respect.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  No, Dox, Dox, Dox him dude, get him, get him.

• 15:12Chris Plante?

  But, but this review is like, kind of heartbreaking, but also gets it why I love these games. 19 hours in, "The perfect distraction in your most vulnerable emotional state. I had to put my dog down of 11 years yesterday and I got home with tears on my face and continued my play through a promised mascot agency. The gameplay is simple, but that's what I needed. I played for eight hours straight. There was no downtime to think. It was simply see symbol on map and go to symbol on map. That's it. It is not complicated. There's a theme of running your agency and sending your mascots out for tasks, but it's still a simple mechanic. It doesn't require you to think. It is a silly and weird place with moments that make you chuckle at the nonsense of it all, but that's what I needed in that moment."

• 15:55Chris Plante?

  And like, that gets it something that I think is happening when I play these sorts of games. Obviously, I am not having as intensive a day as that person was and I feel terrible for them, but every day is hard.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Sure, yeah.

• 16:13Chris Plante?

  And I, I, I think that's a more beautiful way, way of describing escapism than just like, "Oh, I did this and I got lost and the world ceased to exist." It's like, no, I, I gained purpose.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  There's something to, and I'm not, I'm not smart enough to, to voice this though, but there, there is something to, uh...

• 16:34Speaker 00

  Something that simply keeps your hands busy.

• 16:37Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  And your mind, the monkey mind busy to kind of let the rest of your brain take in something, to take in a story, to take in a world. I think there's a lot of games that keep the monkey mind very busy, but then when you look for something deeper beyond that experience, there's nothing there, right?

• 16:54Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  And what we're talking about here is a game that keeps that mind busy, that keeps that mind with little tasks, but is feeding you, that is like giving you characters, is giving you story, it's giving you a world that's pleasant to be in, it's giving you these other, and it's allowing you to be in this world with like just the faintest bit of mechanical justification, but it's enough to keep that part of your brain busy to kind of let you like relax into the rest of it. And I think that if like, if that's what it takes to get you to relax into a story, especially when you're going a mile a minute in your head, I think that that's, I think that that's really laudable.

• 17:30Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I dig it. I I'm definitely going to keep playing it. I think I'm probably about like halfway through. Again, it is almost, you have to turn off the critic part of your brain because all the things that we traditionally value in games are, I think, really refined mechanics, variety of new things to do, certain novelty in gameplay. And that's just not what I think this game is going after at all, intentionally, so.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  I will also say one other note, and this was not, I was debating whether or not to mention this, but I think it's worth. I think part of the reason that I was having trouble at first, and I think that this is probably a cultural difference, but I feel like you have seen a cultural shift in the US and some other Western cultures to a less sort of

• 18:27Speaker 00

  boss, employee, contractor, manager, and more like employee owned kind of a culture being more

• 18:39Speaker 00

  in vogue here. I guess what I'm saying is like,

• 18:43Speaker 00

  This is not a game about prostitution, but it is what like it feels in conversation with like sex work, right? Like it feels in or at least to me, it feels like the metaphor of a pimp and his like the people that work for him is a it is it. That was very hard for me to escape it here in the US because I feel like it is a management structure that we are that is very like tied to that for me. And I feel like it feels a little bit weird to be bossing around these other like sentient beings and it doesn't feel it helped.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  It didn't help me to feel like cozy at first because at first I felt kind of like uh like I'm profiting off of other people's work and it doesn't feel great.

• 19:32Chris Plante?

  Yes, I I'll break that kind of in two parts. I agree with both. The the management sim of it all is weird and how direct and crass it is.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:45Chris Plante?

  About what men like business is where you are literally saying, you know what you get 12% of whatever your return on investment is for what we put in or you get 15% and after you do this much, that's when you get your bonuses and these are the incentives that we're giving you. And when you see the numbers, it does not look fair for the mascots.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, it feels like you're paying them like 25% of what they're earning and it's like, ugh, gross.

• 20:14Chris Plante?

  And and and but but at the same time, the game is making it clear where all that other money is going because it's like, well, they're getting 25%, but then like there's bills over here and you owe this person money and yada, yada, yada. And and it just puts you in the the yuck of like.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  I think it's harder to get excited about building a business. In America, but I think that it is like we, there is more of a respect, I think in this culture for like the value of building a business and the value of like the, the, there is value in, in building that over time. And I feel like that's less of the culture stateside currently.

• 20:49Chris Plante?

  Yes. And then, then the, the sex work part of it, which kind of like coexist, that is, it feels like just the metaphor of the game, right?

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Right. I mean, it's

• 21:00Chris Plante?

  It's to, you, so you, your

• 21:03Speaker 00

  I'm not like, we haven't mentioned it and I don't want people to think like I'm, I'm like reading between the lines. Like I'm not looking for this guy. This is not

• 21:11Chris Plante?

  I'm glad you brought it up because it's somewhere between like, it's, it's also a murky space in its own where it's like, are these mascots hosts? Are they escorts?

• 21:22Speaker 00

  What's happening at the event?

• 21:23Chris Plante?

  Sex, like what, what, what is the kind of stand in here?

• 21:26Speaker 00

  I think we can pretty definitively say they're not having sex with the mascots. I feel like that, that, that, that is not even, while you're giving me the weirdest look.

• 21:35Chris Plante?

  Sorry. I mean, I mean, I mean, as a metaphor, though.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  No. Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. I get you.

• 21:41Chris Plante?

  Don't, don't put that past people. Like there, people are having sex with mascots in this universe. We know that for a fact.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  Yes. Right. That's a great point, Plant. I, yes.

• 21:52Chris Plante?

  So like

• 21:53Speaker 00

  Whether or not that is part of the package.

• 21:55Chris Plante?

  Yes. But the fact that you are a Yakuza who is going around like, kind of toughing situations where it's like, you only show up when a situation goes bad. And then you have to, you know, kind of like, and for, put in some reinforcements to make sure everything's okay and that your mascot's taken care of. It's, it's weird. It's not, none of this is bad. It's just, it, it, it's some weird flavors that I didn't expect when I started the game.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  There is a cultural thing that I'm just not, like, I don't know. You know what I mean? Like there's obviously like more cult, I, I don't know how things are supposed to hit. It's like that thing in like, in like a dragon games where you don't necessarily know if something's like, if, is it funny because it's a joke or is it funny because I'm not, I'm dumb? And I don't know about this part of the culture, right? Like, um, I do feel like the like a dragon, the fact that that series exists in the continuity it has and the direction it has. It does make me wish that they had gone like not done the Yakuza angle with this because I feel like it was really hard to avoid those comparisons in your head. If unless you feel like it's like.

• 23:02Chris Plante?

  No.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  More direct. You feel like it's more intentional that like it's.

• 23:06Chris Plante?

  Do you know who the lead voice actor is?

• 23:09Speaker 00

  No.

• 23:10Chris Plante?

  Kazuma Kiryu. It's the same voice actor.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 23:14Chris Plante?

  Who does it? Uh, the, the actor's name is, I have this, uh, Takaya, uh, Kuroda. And plays Kazuma Kiryu.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Okay. So is it a satire? Are we in conversation with it? What's, what's happening here?

• 23:27Chris Plante?

  I, well, and, and it goes like in other directions too, like Sweary, who is the developer who made a number of games that I think this one is kind of like riffing on, uh, Sweary made, uh, Deadly Premonition, which this game aesthetically is borrowing a lot from. Is a voice actor, Shuhei Yoshida, who is the, um, who oversaw Indies for PlayStation is a voice actor.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  I'm really glad you brought up Deadly Premonition because that is a game that I've always wanted to love.

• 24:01Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  But can't because the mechanics get in the way. This feels like, this is a, this is, for me, this is what I wish Deadly Premonition was because I want to experience everything in Deadly Premonition without playing Deadly Premonition. You know what I'm saying?

• 24:18Chris Plante?

  Yep.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Like, so that, that made me very happy, knowing that around every corner, there's just going to be the strangest, God, like Captain Sign. The guy who is a superhero who's just obsessed, obsessed with road signage and he's like, and it's like, are you going to help me or like fight? It's like, no, he runs a shop on top of a pier on a mountain.

• 24:41Chris Plante?

  Yep.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Always. He's always up there. There's no real reason. Also, it is hysterical to me. That I kept waiting for this guy to fight somebody. You talk about a beat the heavy and this guy shows up and it's like, oh, man. It's the janitor, but there is not like a, unless I visit, there's not a fighting mechanic in this game. This guy doesn't actually beat anybody up. He just happens to also be a guy who knows how to beat people.

• 25:08Chris Plante?

  I, I do like that you meet Captain Sign and Captain Sign's like, Captain Sign looks like Pepsi Man. And, and, and you're talking to Captain Sign and he's like, hey, so I gotta teach you how this hero system works. You're gonna meet heroes everywhere and they're gonna become cards in this little card game for you. Um, and they're gonna help protect your mascots. You're like, great, great, great. And he's like, yeah, um, one other thing. None of them are actually heroes. I'm the only one, even though I am the first one you're meeting.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:37Chris Plante?

  You will not meet anybody else who looks like me. You're like, sorry, what? And he's like, yeah, you're gonna meet like a cat, um, like a, a woman.

• 25:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, they don't look like superheroes. I'm the only one.

• 25:46Chris Plante?

  Fishery, maybe. Um, like, oh, oh, okay, sure.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  There's conversations, there's a shot, there's a guy, one of the first business centers you meet is a guy who's also on the phone with his wife every time he's talking to you. And you're like, hey, do you want to be a mascot support hero? And he's like, absolutely not. He's on the phone like, yeah, these guys want me to be a mascot superhero. And he's like, covers the phone. He's like, do you really think that I could be a mascot? They're like, yeah, we do. Actually, he's like, okay, don't tell my wife, but like, if you need me to like, come help. For example, one thing I had him help with was my tofu mascot got stuck in a door that was too small. And it had to free itself from, quote, the tyranny of normal sized door. Oh, this game's of, is a rot. You know, I think you know pretty well if you're gonna like this game or not.

• 26:33Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  You should, you should, you should probably check it out. It's, it's a good one. It's a good one.

• 26:37Chris Plante?

  Hey.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  There's, someone's heart is on display here.

• 26:40Chris Plante?

  Do you wanna, you wanna take a break and we can come back and we can talk about emulation because nobody's here to stop us?

• 26:46Speaker 00

  I would love that. Would love that. Let's go.

• 26:52Chris Plante?

  Okay, we're back and we don't have the police here. We don't have Russ Ruschick saying you can't talk about it.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Talk about it.

• 27:01Chris Plante?

  We're gonna talk about emulation. It's, you know, Noel Hold's barred. You know, but I was thinking like emulation's a big topic. What if we just talked about like LaserDiscs?

• 27:15Speaker 00

  LaserDisc emulation, perfect.

• 27:17Chris Plante?

  That still feels like pretty big.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:19Chris Plante?

  Would there be like a way to narrow it?

• 27:21Speaker 00

  Narrow it down so it's just like the LaserDisc games that I have on this tiny cabinet behind me?

• 27:25Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah, yeah, plan. That's what I've been doing this week is trying to make LaserDisc games work.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  Cause I want to have a LaserDisc game arcade, right?

• 27:35Chris Plante?

  Sure.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  I made a little, little, I'm using this piecade. It's right off of Raspberry Pi and I wanted it to run LaserDisc games. Cause I really like LaserDisc games.

• 27:43Chris Plante?

  People can't see it, so I will describe it. Can you hold it up for me?

• 27:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:47Chris Plante?

  It is, it's one of those desktop arcades. So about maybe like foot and a half by a foot and a half. Has a beautiful joystick on it and the arcade cabinet has been designed to look like a tiny recreation of the Dragon's Lair cabinet.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I printed this out. Uh, I printed the marquee art out. The rest of it is the stuff that it came with. Uh, what's great is when you boot a LaserDisc ROM up for the first time, the ROM, uh, the, the machine actually has to like watch the whole LaserDisc video. So the first time you boot something up, let me look at this. This is the game Interstellar is, is the name of this one. But the first time you boot it up, you watch the, the, the playthrough at like super speed because the DVD has to like watch the entire thing. And then what you see here in a lot of these LaserDisc games, Plant, is the video background with a emulated thing. Like, so this is the only computer part. The rest of it is just LaserDisc movie.

• 28:43Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 00

  Right in front of the background, right?

• 28:45Chris Plante?

  Sure.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  Sure. So, yeah, that's what I've been doing.

• 28:49Chris Plante?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. It's, I, I think I had in my head LaserDisc games being like Dragon's Lair where it was just like a DVD and you're hitting the skip chapter button.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  And that is, so that's the two different kinds of LaserDisc games you'll see is, is, is Dragon's Lair where it's an interactive movie.

• 29:03Chris Plante?

  Sure.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  And then, okay, I'll show you one more.

• 29:05Chris Plante?

  Okay, thank you.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  I want to show you, I know this is an audio podcast, but, but.

• 29:09Chris Plante?

  No, I'm happy to be the tour guide.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Well, we, you know. What else are we doing here?

• 29:13Chris Plante?

  Nobody's gonna stop us.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Nobody can stop us.

• 29:16Chris Plante?

  I am getting text messages. Frush it can feel this.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  He can sense it happening.

• 29:20Chris Plante?

  He's irate. He is saying cancel the show.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  He's furious with us right now.

• 29:25Chris Plante?

  Okay, so which one is this?

• 29:28Speaker 00

  So I'm gonna try to tilt. It's hard to see the screen, but...

• 29:31Chris Plante?

  I'm so glad that the thinnest amount of audio is coming through here. This is great.

• 29:37Chris Plante?

  Oh, thank you for turning the light off.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  There you go. Now, this should be easier for you to see.

• 29:40Chris Plante?

  Didn't help at all.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Uh, insert a coin and help it off.

• 29:43Chris Plante?

  Okay.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Here, here.

• 29:49Chris Plante?

  I can't believe...

• 29:51Chris Plante?

  What game is this?

• 29:53Speaker 00

  This is MotoGP, right?

• 29:55Chris Plante?

  Oh.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  So, you're... The road is the video. And the video doesn't play unless you're holding in the gas button. So by gassing, I'm advancing this LaserDisc of the road, right?

• 30:09Chris Plante?

  Wow.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the rest of the game is just kind of projected on top of the video.

• 30:16Chris Plante?

  How do you steer in a LaserDisc video game where the camera's locked in?

• 30:23Speaker 00

  The car is the only thing that moves, so you're on tracks, right? So you're just moving back and forth. And the only thing you're interacting with is the other cars, which are also digital, right?

• 30:31Chris Plante?

  Great.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  So it's basically just like a big background.

• 30:33Chris Plante?

  And those other cars are always in the same spot because I can't even pick up...

• 30:38Speaker 00

  The other cars are digital too. So the other cars are being generated.

• 30:41Chris Plante?

  Obviously. The second I said it, I knew I was wrong.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, you have to have other people to race around. The... I'll tell you what has changed about emulation lately, because I want to hear about where you're at. Because I've always... I've always gotten into it a little bit, and then I'll get something working. And then it's kind of like, eh, cool. What has changed lately is there is a much better front-end experience on a lot of these games.

• 31:07Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  That makes them so much more console-like. Like, a lot of this has been pulled together... Most of it uses front end like emulation that's based on emulation station or something like it. It's like pulling all these emulators and all of it into one big thing. That's just like, you can flip through all your games and flip through all your stuff and you have like some simulation, a recreation of like a home console arcade. Like that level of seamlessness is is a lot more attainable than it was even like a few, five, six, seven years ago.

• 31:40Chris Plante?

  How, how do you commit to playing anything when you have a trillion choices?

• 31:46Speaker 00

  Um, I don't.

• 31:47Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it's, it, you have that, that dilemma.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  I play the game that I have to play for besties and like, I used to, to me, uh, I used to do that calculation a lot for myself. It was like, you know, I'm going to put all the work into, um, getting this running and then I don't play anything on it. And then that would like sometimes stop me from doing it. But the thing is like, I learn a lot just getting it going, right? Like, I understand these games a lot better because I like went through the process of making them work in a different way.

• 32:19Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  And so that process, I think, gives me like a better appreciation for it. And like, I find it pleasurable to do. I do play the game sometimes and sometimes I like find something like Super Don Quixote I've never heard of before and I'll fire up Super Don Quixote and play through that. But like, uh, it's more about the, I, there is something also plant that is, when I watch a game where I feel like I'm the only person that has looked at it in like 10 years.

• 32:44Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  It's like, it feels so bizarre. It's this sense of like a direct connection to like this one person working too hard on a lasered this game and be like, yeah, I'm appreciating it. Thank you for your work, person 40 years in the past.

• 32:56Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I love that when you can find a collection of Japanese ROMs somewhere and it's like, here's just 40 Japanese ROMs from a console or handheld that you didn't even know existed before today.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:09Chris Plante?

  And you pop that in and you look at something and immediately, again, good or bad, it doesn't really matter. It's just unlike anything that you can even imagine until, until you're playing it. And it feels like, oh, there was an entire history that happened and I thought I was fully caught up and it turns out there's always more to learn. I do wish, like, I, I wish.

• 33:34Chris Plante?

  It's a library dilemma, right? Where you go into the library and you can, there's everything there. But what works about an actual physical library is once you pick what you want, you leave the library and you take it home, right? And then you have just that option. You have four books that you brought home. You don't have every book in the library. And I wish there was an option almost at a UI level in my Redroid pocket, where I said at the beginning of the month, these are the four month games that I want to play this month. Take away everything else from me.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  You want restriction. You want a game dad to say, this isn't worth your time, son.

• 34:15Chris Plante?

  Yeah, and just like, you picked it. Great choice.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Here, I'll tell you what has been scratching that itch for me lately. And this again, this isn't going to be for everybody. I understand that. But if you get yourself a tiny computer, like a Raspberry Pi, four, five, whatever, and you get yourself a mini SD card for, you know, whatever size. There was a lot of sites now that are, a lot of people in communities are like, curating images that are specific to a size, right? So like, if you have a 64 gigabyte SD card, here's like a themed collection I built around that. And here's what I'm kind of like, here's like the connective tissue. Or like, you'll get one who's like, this is my, it's like a Doom collection.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Like, it's like, everything Doom is on this one. And it's like a Doom themed thing. Or it's like Japanese arcade classics. Or like, you'll get a, sometimes there'll be an image that's like manufacturer centric. So it's like Capcom classics. If you have an 128 gigabyte memory card, you flash it to this, you pop it in, and that is a collection. What's cool about that is it's not, a lot of the times, it's not just like the games that this person has selected, but like, you see the way they have the UI set up. It's like a custom experience that they've set up, the menu art and all that stuff. So like, and the controllers are all set. It's all ready to go, all the ROMs work. They've done all that annoying stuff. And then you can experience it as like a collection. That someone has made is a really fun way of doing it.

• 35:46Chris Plante?

  I love that. I love the Criterion Channel, the streaming service. Their solution for this is each month to have little micro collections of things. So it's like 70s horror or movies that were inspired by Godzilla, but from across the world, right? And the thing I love about that is, one, it limits the options. But two, when you start to watch that, say you're watching Kaiju movies from across the world, they're all in conversation with each other. So once you've watched three or four of these things, you start, your brain starts filling in the gaps between them of like, oh, that's why they did it that way in the UK.

• 36:31Chris Plante?

  And oh, I can now see like how that inspired all these other things in Britain. And that, I don't know, for me, like, I like when the entertainment clicks for me, but then it also has my brain kind of revved up for the non-viewing time. And yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  It's also really cool. I've had already a few times since I got the full library. I've done like other sort of like projects like this, but I've, once I got a place where I could play most stuff pretty quickly. I've found a few opportunities where like I'll hear something mentioned and it's so easy. I mean, a matter of seconds before I'm like checking it out. And I think what's cool about video games is I think you really can get a sense of what a game is like in two minutes. You know, like you can't say that out of a book, really. And you can't say that, like maybe some songs, you're like, oh yeah, I've listened to one. But like you can get a vibe of like what the thing is pretty quickly. And I do think, once you've lowered those barriers so much that you'll get a whim of like,

• 37:35Speaker 00

  I wonder what that's about and that you could be kind of exploring that pretty quickly. I have found that to be a nice thing to have.

• 37:43Chris Plante?

  That is a great idea. It also makes me think I need to get my Mister refigured out. It got a little borked after falling off of my table. But that feeling of being able to just pop it on and play anything whenever I want was pretty, pretty special.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Next thing I'm gonna do, I'm gonna get a couple, I got, I found an arcade one-up cabinet on clearance. I'm gonna rip guts out and put a couple of light guns on the side. I'm gonna try to make a light gun cabinet.

• 38:08Chris Plante?

  Do you give these as gifts?

• 38:10Speaker 00

  Hmm?

• 38:11Chris Plante?

  Do you give like, do you like make handhelds and be like, this is just a good gift?

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I make like a little, uh, after you make the project, you know, I don't usually need it like I made, uh, like a little, uh, mini, uh, I found a Raspberry Pi case that's like, looked like a, a SNES that I printed. And so like, I made like a little tiny SNES with like a Raspberry Pi in it.

• 38:34Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  That has like the entire library and it's like this big and I gave it to my, uh, my cousin. So he could like, he plugs it into the TV, plugs into that, plugs in that USB joystick. It's like the entire library there. And so I do that as, as gifts. That's a fun way of like making, especially with like kids, like you can get them to, uh, mess around. A lot of these emulation programs also have like a kid mode now where you can play all the games, but you're not going to get in and like mess around with settings. It's just like, turns it into a dumb kiosk that only just plays games.

• 39:03Chris Plante?

  Oh, I need to figure that out. I would love to have that for Mosey. I, having that plus an all in one solution, like what you showed me with the arcade where it's like, hey, you don't need to get onto the TV. You can just play some games here and enjoy it. That seems really awesome.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  Our friends have a, uh, their son Dez comes over and he'll just search for like, he's a big sports guy, but he'll just search like NHL and then get onto like the Genesis and play like an old, like, he'll play an entire, like an entire game of NHL or like old Maddens and stuff. Like it, he'll, or he'll search Spider-Man and just see like all the Spider-Man games that have been, that have been.

• 39:45Chris Plante?

  There's a bunch of bad games.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, a bunch of bad games with some very, very, very good ones. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's a lot of fun.

• 39:54Chris Plante?

  One, one, one question for you before we wrap up. What do you think will happen to this industry with all the tariffs? Because so much of the hardware side of things is coming from China. I, I, I don't know, like.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  I think that, uh, so.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  Obviously, any manufacturer, anybody like you're buying stuff, you you are seeing messages about tariffs or how it has or hasn't affected pricing. So it's definitely something a lot of people are thinking about. I saw at least one company that makes a it's called Retro Tank. They make like an upscaling converter or whatever that they are going to stop taking US orders until this is like figured out. I guess they have some stock here or what have you. But so it is having an effect. I will say this, for me, it has actually been as a hobby, it has been much better for me finding stuff that I already have lying around and seeing if I can find something new to do with it. And I feel like if you can understand

• 40:59Speaker 00

  electronics in that way, we are disincentivized from understanding them at that level. In fact, we're we're told really by a lot of like the Microsofts and Apples of the world that it's like too complex for you and you can't figure it out. And I know what I'm sounding like, one of those Linux people right now.

• 41:12Chris Plante?

  And if you try, it will break all your contracts, etc.

• 41:15Speaker 00

  Yes. And you've broken it and you broke the seal and you got in here. And but like, I'm not a smart person. If I can figure it out, like, it's really not that hard, especially when you have a computer that's based in Linux where you can understand it a lot easier because it's not full of a bunch of crap that people want to sell you. So that is all a long way of saying, I feel like if you invest a little bit of time in understanding like basic computing and how how some of this stuff works, I feel like it's a way of breathing new life into stuff, you know, like your laptop may not be great as a, you know, to play the latest and greatest AAA video games, but maybe you flash it to make it like it just plays all these consoles or just plays this or it's just doing something

• 41:59Speaker 00

  else, you know, it's it's it's a it's just my Minecraft terminal, whatever. Like, if once you understand this stuff a little bit, you could get more use out of things, I think, and not have to buy so much stuff.

• 42:10Chris Plante?

  Do you think that you're kind of like reverse Superman and that you have your glasses on right now and it's all Linux, but when you take those things off?

• 42:17Speaker 00

  Chris, this isn't for them. Okay, my visual appearance is not up for discussion. And as you know, these are my gamers only blue blockers.

• 42:28Chris Plante?

  That was so rude of me.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Uh, we got any mail from people?

• 42:31Chris Plante?

  Um, we, we, we, we do. I'm gonna hop into that, but very quickly, just worth reminding everybody that, uh, every game we spoke about, we own, um, we own physical copies of them, and we love all of them.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  Also, if you really, like, the best, sanest voice in this entire space that I have found is, is, is Good Russ over at Retro Game Core. Like, if you, sorry, when he puts out a new video, I, I, if I'm not even planning on, like, getting the thing, I just still watch that soothing guy, uh, talk about whatever. I don't care.

• 43:05Chris Plante?

  He has a great voice.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  It's a great voice. Great voice.

• 43:08Chris Plante?

  Um, a few pieces of reader mail. Um, first up from LB. I love that Justin accidentally made a called shot with his Bloodborne 2 joke from a couple of episodes ago.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, it did occur to me. It did. It did occur to me.

• 43:25Chris Plante?

  Um, uh, from Taylor. Heard the question la- uh, well, this is now a couple of weeks ago, about great video game soundtracks and had to make an account on here just to recommend. Uh, I highly recommend Outer Wilds as one of the best modern soundtracks for doing work or just chilling out. It has a blend of huge orchestra sounds, some mysterious and spicy tracks, and relaxing folk vibes. That soundtrack is so damn good.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  So good.

• 43:50Chris Plante?

  And it's on vinyl now, which if you're like one of those people who likes that, I'm realizing I'm becoming more of a parody of myself every time I record the show.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  That's okay, though. You're just becoming more yourself.

• 44:02Chris Plante?

  It's so true. It's so true. Um, and this last one is from Caleb. Question. My kid loves video games with level creators and house, uh, building. She has built tons of houses for Link in Tears of the Kingdom. She spends hours crafting levels in Fall Guys, Mario Maker, and Minecraft. Any recommendations for games that have level creators or a free-form construction element? I'm especially interested in games that don't require resource gathering.

• 44:32Chris Plante?

  I have one that is a bit more like school, but I'm gonna recommend it anyway.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 44:39Chris Plante?

  CodeSpark Academy. Are you familiar with this?

• 44:42Speaker 00

  Um, no, I don't think so.

• 44:45Chris Plante?

  It is kind of like a level creator, but with coding and game design built into it. So it does not look nearly as nice as anything is what Nintendo is making. But it gives you a lot more tools on the actual like, design level of a game. Where you can make these elaborate levels and then you can kind of create the game systems within the levels too. And there are 2D levels, but there are also like 3D options. There's even storytelling options, which you probably remember this back in the Windows 95 day, where you could like make an episode of The Simpsons or a Nick tune using like the worst 3D imaginable.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:29Chris Plante?

  It would take hours to render, but you could kind of create, like record your audio. It does that sort of stuff too. So if you're more of a storyteller, it lets you create those sorts of things. If you're a game designer, it lets you do that. If you just want to make like Mario platform levels, you can do that. It has a whole bunch of user made stuff. And it is on iOS for sure, on browser, and I think it's on Android too. And it's CodeSpark Academy. Do you have anything?

• 45:56Speaker 00

  Nothing that springs to mind.

• 46:00Chris Plante?

  The resource management's the trick here. There's just so much of that. If you...

• 46:04Speaker 00

  I mean, like I'm assuming Little Big Planet and Mario Maker, stuff like that, doesn't scratch this particular itch?

• 46:09Chris Plante?

  Well, they said Mario Maker, so Little Big Planet would be a good option. If you are okay using Roblox, there is a Sonic Maker game in there that is...

• 46:22Chris Plante?

  Incredible. It is, I don't think in any way endorsed by Sega, but it lets you make Sonic levels in the exact same way that you can make Mario Maker levels. So that's another option, but then you are-

• 46:35Speaker 00

  They got a Sonic world in Minecraft I've been thinking about downloading. It's really, go peak.

• 46:41Chris Plante?

  It's the good stuff. Anything, anything else from you before we wrap up?

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Nah, see honorable mentions, I feel like I talked about my honorable mentions. Finished Severance. Everybody talked about Severance. If you haven't seen Severance, you should watch Severance. I went and saw a Minecraft movie in the theater. I cried at the end, so I'm probably not in a good place. So that's my review of Minecraft movie.

• 47:04Chris Plante?

  That's good. That's really good. Are you, are you reading anything?

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Uh, yes. I recommended The Lies of Lachlamora a few weeks back by Scott Lynch, and I am on the second book in that series, Red Seas Under Red Skies. It's called the Gentleman Bastards series, and there's three of them, I believe. It's a fantasy world that has 12 gods, except there's a hidden 13th god that is the god of thievery and thieves. And there is a group of thieves that serve this god, and the way they serve this god is by stealing and ripping people off. And it's very fun, lighthearted, sort of roguish fantasy, if you like that kind of thing.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  And it's a heisty, very like Ocean's Eleven, clockwork, seeing it, how it all, the big plans, how they all like, the machinations all come together. Really well-written, really funny, very much enjoying it. But yeah, that's it.

• 48:04Chris Plante?

  Nice. My recommendation is Scarecrow from 1973. Have you ever heard of this movie?

• 48:12Speaker 00

  Who's in it? Tell me who's in it.

• 48:14Chris Plante?

  Gene Hackman and Al Pacino.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:17Chris Plante?

  I had not heard of this movie at all, and then went and saw it this week, and there is just a killer road trip buddy movie starring Gene Hackman and Al Pacino that just feels lost to time.

• 48:35Chris Plante?

  And it's really good.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  It's I feel like movies like this that don't have iconic moments that get circulated in Oscar montages eventually like if you didn't have a big showstopping scene, I feel I worry we lose some of these.

• 48:48Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  And it like we've lost Dog Day Afternoon if it didn't have him screaming Attica at that one point, would people still be talking about, you know what I mean? Like it feels like without that, we lose some of these movies.

• 48:58Chris Plante?

  It's true. Um, yeah, I people should check it out. I think it's streaming. I saw it in a theater, but it was, it was really nice and, um, really cool to watch Al Pacino not doing Al Pacino. You know that period before an actor becomes themselves?

• 49:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:15Chris Plante?

  He's just like this lovable, silly dude here. He's very sprightly, which is not how I normally describe Al Pacino.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Do you know a good, you know, one movie I, I, I think he shakes that off is Insomnia.

• 49:28Chris Plante?

  Hmm.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. A little bit, right? Or he's like making it work for him enough that he's like wearing it like a suit that seems to be making him tired also like he's tired of being Al Pacino. You know what I mean? Anyway, um, what do we do next week?

• 49:42Chris Plante?

  What do is, is next week? Are we doing clear obscure?

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Is that one thing I'll say about Russ and I, listen, I hope he doesn't hear this, but he does write down the things that we're supposed to talk like he does do some of that stuff. So I do miss that.

• 49:55Chris Plante?

  Hey, I have, I have it all on a Google Doc. I just don't know what next week is.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  You didn't share it with me, so I don't know any of this. Russ always shares it with me.

• 50:04Chris Plante?

  Generous host that I knew that I can just walk you right through it. I had almost landed the plane. The wheels were down and then at the last minute, you just throttle this into the page.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  We usually change midweek anyway. So I don't even know why we do this part of the show anymore, but we'll maybe talk about clear obscure. I don't know what that is, so I hope it's good. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties because you're the world's best friends at the world's best games.