Creature Kitchen Is an Alternative to Expensive Gaming

This week, the Besties chat about two relatively low-priced games that have won over huge audiences: Creature Kitchen and Scritchy Scratchy. In the back half, we talk through the recent PlayStation price hikes and consider what alternatives gamers have as the hobby gets more and more expensive.

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

• 0:00Chris Plante?

  Can we bring back movie quoting?

• 0:03Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I don't know, Chris, let me ask my wife.

• 0:07Chris Plante?

  Oh, I, uh, I, I love my life, but you know, you know what I love even more than my wife?

• 0:14Griffin McElroy?

  Was, who, who?

• 0:16Chris Plante?

  That's crazy. I love lamp.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  You love lamp?

• 0:19Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, dude. Yeah, dude. Fucking yeah, dude.

• 0:22Russ Frushtick?

  I thought, Chris Plant, I thought you were gonna bring back like Unshin Andalou fucking quoting where it's like, let's cut that sheep eye.

• 0:29Chris Plante?

  Everybody thinks I'm like this big pretentious dude over here, but you know what?

• 0:33Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Shake and bake. Yeah, he likes the slop too. Like Chris will slop down with the hogs. A lot of people, he doesn't talk, maybe you don't air that side out here on Besties enough. But like, in, in a between, tuck between every Criterion Edition DVD Blu-ray that you have on your shelf. You'll sneak a fucking Encino Man in, like you'll put some real genuine stinkers in there too, man.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  I feel like Talladega Nights and Step Brothers fell into this weird, like, hole where kids are still into it. Like, I'll see, I'll see kids wearing a Step Brothers t-shirt. It's like, oh, really? It peaked there for you, huh? Step Brothers.

• 1:12Griffin McElroy?

  It got way better.

• 1:14Chris Plante?

  Oh, I think actually what you're supposed to say is wah-wah-wee-wah.

• 1:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. We, you are, you have to say that.

• 1:22Chris Plante?

  You know, I'm realizing the problem with movie quotes is, uh, they don't have a lot of substance and you kind of run out of material pretty fast.

• 1:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29Griffin McElroy?

  It's also, isn't a fucking movie podcast. I get so sick and tired of hearing about these goddamn un-interactive flicks taking up my time.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, baby. Yeah.

• 1:40Russ Frushtick?

  Good old boy.

• 1:59Speaker 02

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

• 2:02Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:06Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week.

• 2:10Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Russ Fraschik. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a

• 2:21Speaker 02

  video game club. And just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member of that club. This week, we're talking about Creature Kitchen. Chris Plant, what's that?

• 2:29Chris Plante?

  Creature Kitchen looks like a horror game where you're out in the woods, but what if I told you it's a cozy cooking game for a whole bunch of critters?

• 2:37Griffin McElroy?

  Are we also talking about Scrutchy Scratchy, or is that? We're also talking about Scrutchy Scratchy. Thank God, I got so scared that I played a game that wasn't for Job.

• 2:49Griffin McElroy?

  We're also talking about Scrutchy Scratchy. Griffin, what's that? Oh, it's an incremental game about scratch, scratch-off Lotto tickets.

• 2:56Chris Plante?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah. We'll talk about that and so much more right after this.

• 3:03Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of The Besties is sponsored by Alienware. Start your Alienware journey with the streamlined Alienware 15. They designed this machine to refine the essentials, creating a more focused gaming laptop for players who demand quality without the clutter. They engineered a brilliant 15.3-inch, 165 Hz display seamlessly into a portable 15-inch body. You get a larger immersive window into your game that still travels easily wherever your mission takes you. Step into the future of gaming with up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPUs. Designed to push boundaries, the RTX 50 series with Nvidia Max Q delivers jaw-dropping graphics while optimizing battery life.

• 3:45Russ Frushtick?

  This is the Alienware experience distilled into one iconic machine. Visit Alienware.com/15 today.

• 3:56Chris Plante?

  This is the kind of retro aesthetic I can get into from the moment that boot screen loads up. Now this, this is nostalgia.

• 4:05Russ Frushtick?

  You're talking about Creature Kitchen.

• 4:08Chris Plante?

  Yeah, man. It's got that Crow, Crow County. Was that that game? The Resident Evil like? Yeah, man. I love that shit. I love this vibe so much.

• 4:17Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, yeah, it is. It is a very early era 3D. I would say like, probably halfway through the PS1's life cycle era 3D, right?

• 4:27Chris Plante?

  Yeah, they're figuring out some tricks.

• 4:28Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they're figuring it out.

• 4:29Chris Plante?

  It doesn't have like a perpetual flicker. They, the animals actually look like the animals that they're intended to be.

• 4:35Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Outside of the just aesthetic of it, which has obviously been done quite a bit recently. It does feel like the in aesthetic in a lot of indie games, just from a structural standpoint.

• 4:46Chris Plante?

  Can I take a guess? Cause I didn't actually play it and I watched a lot of trailers for it and the trailers, I feel like tell you, is it sort of like Pocopia with creepy woodland creatures? Where you're trying to feed them and attract them and make a fun home for them? That's what, that's the vibe that the trailers give off. There also is maybe a hint of some sort of sinister, uh, twist waiting just around the riverbed.

• 5:09Russ Frushtick?

  It, the way I've been describing it to people that don't know the game is it is the mix of inscription and cooking mama?

• 5:20Chris Plante?

  Uh, okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna hop in and talk about how the game actually works. Yeah, please. The game is, is, is baby's first deduction game, and I say that as a compliment. And the way that this works is you go out and you walk into a house and like, what do I do in this house? It's all a mystery. There are some recipes. There's locks on almost every door. And you realize I need to make these adorable critters some food because I am in the creature kitchen.

• 5:47Chris Plante?

  And you get a camera, then you take photos of those animals and that will tell you what they want to eat. But it's like, when I say light deduction, it's like a taste of Italy. So you'll look through your recipe sheet and you will find various foods like a-

• 6:03Griffin McElroy?

  Is that an actual, what, what animal, I'm assuming this game doesn't take place in Italy, but what animal would have like a, a taste for Italy as part of their diet?

• 6:12Russ Frushtick?

  I think this was one of the cryptid-

• 6:13Chris Plante?

  It's a crypt-

• 6:14Russ Frushtick?

  -type animal.

• 6:15Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, okay.

• 6:15Russ Frushtick?

  So it's not just raccoon-

• 6:16Chris Plante?

  So it makes a lot more sense once you know that, right?

• 6:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 6:20Chris Plante?

  So you know they're meatball, yeah.

• 6:21Russ Frushtick?

  A pizza-loving-

• 6:22Chris Plante?

  Cryptids love meatball subs.

• 6:24Griffin McElroy?

  Meatball man, been to Italy.

• 6:25Chris Plante?

  Yes. So there's this loop of go out and find recipes that are hidden around the environment, go out and spot Pokemon, uh, uh, Snap-style critters, get a photo of them, learn what they want to eat, and then go out and find, uh, foods. And you might find like mushrooms out in the garden, or you might find some like bread and salt in the cupboard. And, uh, once you have all of that information, then you can be like, well, I know this, this critter, I know that it's hungry for a meatball sub, and I have, I think, the, the stuff that I need to make a meatball sub. I'm gonna toss those ingredients in a magical, uh, space-time oven, and it's going to spit out the meatball sub, and then I can go deliver that to the

• 7:08Chris Plante?

  critter. And the more you do that, the more, um, recipes you unlock, the more, uh, little areas of the house that you can get. It, it's, it's a very simple, clean, effective loop.

• 7:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, the, the animals, if you, for example, the raccoon is like one of the first guys you see, uh, if you feed him the three meals that he's requesting, he gives you a key, and that key might unlock a door in your house, it might unlock a cabinet, and in that cabinet might be cheese or flour or whatever, some new ingredient, and then-

• 7:43Russ Frushtick?

  You can use those ingredients to feed additional animals, et cetera, et cetera.

• 7:46Griffin McElroy?

  This sounds great. This sounds right up my alley.

• 7:48Russ Frushtick?

  It's dynamite.

• 7:48Griffin McElroy?

  I'm not hearing the inscription side of things, and I imagine maybe some of that is some vibe tonal shit.

• 7:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's tonal. It's not, it's not a card-based game. You're not doing that level of it. But tonally, there is a foreboding sense of dread. I'll give you an example. At one point, pretty early on, you've done like three or four animals. And you're like cooking, you're facing your oven, and you just hear a knock behind you. And you spin around and you open your front door and there, standing at your door, is Pants. Sentient Pants.

• 8:22Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 8:23Russ Frushtick?

  And the Pants run into your house, sit at your table, and seem to want some sort of food. And when you take a picture of the Pants, it adds it to your recipe book, and it says, "The Pants want something in particular," but you are not given any clue as to what you need to give the Pants. So I made the Pants ice cream, just shot in the dark. The Pants did not care for ice cream and ran away. That's part of the mystery.

• 8:49Griffin McElroy?

  That's it. Okay, fucking A. All right.

• 8:51Chris Plante?

  I would say there's, there's actually maybe a slightly closer inscription comparison here, in that it's also has mild escape room vibes. Because again, you're in this room and you're trying to figure out how to navigate the space, how to unlock these doors. And there are little puzzles that allow you to do that. So an early one is that you, under the, um, the little bureau that has the Polaroid camera that you need, you'll find a puzzle box. And there are three symbols on it, and, or four symbols on it, and you need to figure out where those symbols relate to elsewhere in the house. And that's going to help you get another recipe and maybe another food item. I am curious, Hoops, you, you, you've played this, right?

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:36Chris Plante?

  Um, it looks like a spooky game. It looks like a horror game, is what they're going for. What was your impression of like, the mood that it actually?

• 9:46Griffin McElroy?

  Did you get scared?

• 9:47Chris Plante?

  He's trying to ask if you got scared, like a little baby.

• 9:50Griffin McElroy?

  Scaredy cat.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  I was really, really scared. No, I think that it actually was a nice counterpoint to...

• 9:59Speaker 02

  There can be things that yeah, there's things that I like about the cozy, for lack of a better term. I like methodical things. I don't mind that. I like the sense of like slowly building your ingredient collection. I found that very satisfying. Um, and so like it not looking super cutesy and not feeling super cutesy. Uh, to me, I I found it a little more palatable because of that. Like I found it a little less. Uh, cause it can get a little grating. I think the like super

• 10:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Uh, soft aesthetic that a lot of these games tend to adopt. Um, I think this, this, this would blend into the noise, uh, a lot more. I think if it looked, uh, a lot cuter, a lot more cutesy.

• 10:43Russ Frushtick?

  They also do a very smart thing with ingredient stuff where as you're going through the house and you're finding new ingredients in, or even outside, if you find a mushroom, things like that, you will discover that ingredient. And anything you've discovered goes into your pantry and your pantry is an infinite, infinitely repeating hallway. Where like you never run out of stuff, but you could just like keep walking and walking and walking. And there are like little puzzles in that infinite hallway as well. But I like the fact that like, there wasn't this element of where the fuck did I leave the flower?

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:19Russ Frushtick?

  You always know where the flower is because you've already discovered it because it's in the pantry.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  I, I went into the pantry without clocking what it was. And I, so I just kept walking and I was like, this isn't like the first 30 seconds of playing the game. So I was like, I guess there's a really fucking long hallway. It's crazy. And then in another tab, I, I had previously accidentally opened emulation station. And it had gone into screensaver mode and started playing Mr. Biggs, the next to be with you. I did not realize this had happened.

• 11:56Griffin McElroy?

  Why does emulation station have that fucking functionality?

• 11:59Speaker 02

  It's like, I don't know. I don't know why that was like a part of it, but.

• 12:02Griffin McElroy?

  Were you emulating Mr. Biggs?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Now, it might've been a screensaver. From a game that had that in it, like one of those like mix up video things.

• 12:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  I know Mr. Big did the themes anyway. It doesn't matter. The point is, I'm walking down this hallway I don't know is endless. And I've been out for two minutes. I'm about to stop and then I hear, "I'm the one who wants to be with you." And I'm like, "Holy shit, what is going on in this game?" Another three minutes down the hallway, just, just waiting for the next to be with you to change or alter in some way, or the lyrics become more food centric.

• 12:41Griffin McElroy?

  It famously has the most powerful key change in song history.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  That would have been the moment, right? "I can make you start to smile."

• 12:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, dude, holy shit, man.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, so that took a little while to unco- to unspool that puzzle. That was a bit more of a puzzle than they meant it to be, I think.

• 12:59Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know if the developers of the games we talk about ever listen to our show. If you developed this game, that's a pretty primo Easter egg, I feel like.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:08Griffin McElroy?

  If you pick up the ingredients in the right order, it will just start blasting, "Hold on, little girl." Just like, "Oh shit." That's good. That would be a good achievement. Um, it sounds cool. It sounds, it sounds like, uh, the game you maybe shouldn't talk too much about, like what, what? Is it surprising, sort of, the shit that comes down the, down the pipe the more you play?

• 13:30Chris Plante?

  The one thing I want to hit is like, it is a good game to play with a kid, and also a good game to play if you're just old, and for two different reasons. One, playing this with a kid, it looks scary and is not. And it is like Mr. Rogers levels of, uh, grade A material for teaching a young kid. Like, I know this looks scary. I know it feels scary. It actually isn't scary. Like, this is, these creatures are actually just as hun- they're hungry for food. This is, you know, when it rains outside, it is not menacing inherently. In fact, it can itself be cozy.

• 14:10Chris Plante?

  And I think it's doing something that I find very nice of like, subverting the expectations of what this like scary environment should be. I found it really fun to play with my kid who can get very overwhelmed by thunderstorms because we just don't have them a lot in California. Um, it's also, I think, a good game with kids.

• 14:33Russ Frushtick?

  There is thunder. That wasn't an issue.

• 14:36Chris Plante?

  No, that's what I'm saying is because it's like creating it a safe, it feels very cozy and safe, right? It's taking this thing that normally would be scary and isn't. And then also for playing with a kid, the deduction is so simple that it's like a fun thing to just talk with your kid through. Of like, hey, what, what do you think that this crow wants? They really like cheese. They really like crackers. What are we gonna get? For the adult though, because I don't want to like limit this to like, oh, this is a kid's game. It hits a very specific type of nostalgia. And I think in gaming, we think of nostalgia as like indirect nostalgia where I'm nostalgic for Mario.

• 15:17Chris Plante?

  But really what I'm nostalgic for is being six and like having no problems. And this has that vibe of like, oh, I'm going over to grandma's house and I am making food there. It's like feels much more one to one with like the things that we're actually nostalgic for, which is very simple chores, spending time in a loved one's home, the like sound of the rain outside. I just found it very transportive and how it brought me back to, I don't know, I was probably like a little kid playing it.

• 15:51Russ Frushtick?

  I would also say it is, it gets harder. Like I wouldn't say hard, but more opaque in terms of the puzzles. Like the first few are like incredibly on the nose. And like it, it requires a little more deduction, but not stuff that like you wouldn't ease yourself into. Like I think it does a very good job of easing you into that level of deduction to the point where, you know, it might take a little bit before you figure out the next like step of the puzzle. And that's cool. Like that's what I wouldn't want to spoil for people because that's the magic of it.

• 16:21Chris Plante?

  I, I'm starting to get the scrunchy scratchies to want to hear about scrunchy scratchy, but I do want to hear Hoops's thoughts before we, before we do that.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  I, I was just noticing that what Griffin was sort of hinting around at. And I wonder if games like Animal Well and inscription and others have like.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  I feel like it's tough for a game like this that is a little bit mysterious because I feel like there's now kind of an expectation of like, maybe this entire thing changes. You know what I mean? And nobody wants to talk about it, but there's a lot of games that I think are playing in that space of like, you know, don't ask too many questions, don't talk about it too much, because there's like a lot more layers that you don't want to spoil for yourself. And I wonder if games like that have put out, that's a really tough expectation to fight back against,

• 17:14Griffin McElroy?

  right? Yeah. If you play the whole game thinking like, it's a game within a game. It's a dream.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Right. Is there something, is there another shoe, you know?

• 17:21Griffin McElroy?

  Right, yeah. This is what we're telling you it is. Set your expectations. This game is- That is very, that is very helpful. Exactly what we're telling you. I, I truly think it's the inscription comparison that immediately, like Juice said, like, sets my mind to like, oh damn. Is there another game? There's nine metaphysical layers that you've had.

• 17:38Russ Frushtick?

  It's just a tone thing entirely.

• 17:40Griffin McElroy?

  I like that too.

• 17:41Russ Frushtick?

  It's also worth noting that this game has like, been massively popular on Steam. It's found a real audience. It is at present, might not be the case when this actually publishes, but at present, the highest rated game on Steam for 2026.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 17:58Russ Frushtick?

  Higher than any other game.

• 18:01Griffin McElroy?

  Well, congrats.

• 18:02Russ Frushtick?

  I'm sure it helps, it has a lower price point, which I'm sure helps, but also it's a fun game. Like, they did a real good job. So, congrats to them.

• 18:08Griffin McElroy?

  Is it Scratchy Scratchy time?

• 18:11Russ Frushtick?

  I think it is Scratchy Scratchy time.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Scratchy time.

• 18:13Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I feel like Scratchy Scratchy is a really, really solid, really fun, uh, twist on the incremental idle game genre. It is a little, uh, I did feel a bit overstuffed since we did just also do Berry, Berry, Berry, which is very much a kind of like novel incremental style game. Uh, I, I feel like, I almost wish Itchy, or Scratchy Scratchy came out like a month later, so I had a little, uh, time for a palate cleanser. It is a, uh, a scratch-off Lotto ticket simulator. Uh, you start off and you have a day job cleaning plates, I guess at a restaurant. You click a button to make a plate appear and then you have to use your mouse to wipe off the plate. Um, or your touchscreen.

• 18:57Griffin McElroy?

  I didn't realize this until today, but it's also on iOS, um, which is probably- Kind of a better place to play it, maybe on a tablet or something like that. But then you unlock the ability to spend the money you are earning on this day job on a Lotto ticket. So you buy that one, it's a simple Lotto ticket and you start to win those, you start to make more money. Now you can afford some upgrades like increasing your luck or increasing the strength or width of your coin. Get those huge chunky JFK silver dollars. And now you're scratching with intent. You jackpot, you get points, prestige points for when you restart your run over again with like increased,

• 19:39Griffin McElroy?

  you know, earnings and there's a whole skill tree that you can get into. And so you start doing that, your coin gets way bigger. Now you're playing way bigger tickets, way more expensive, but you got your luck up to the point where those are turning a profit for you now too. And then you start to unlock automation systems. Uh oh. Now all of a sudden you can have a little robot that will scratch off the tickets for you. Now you got a little guy who's gonna claim your prizes for you. He can be upgraded, so he gets rid of bad tickets. So that's the thing that I think is very novel about Scrappy Scratchy. All that shit is so rock solid, fucking right over the plate incremental game stuff.

• 20:17Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, would you say, yeah, I was gonna say like, where's the novel part?

• 20:20Griffin McElroy?

  So the novel part, the novel part of this is one, the sort of whole scratch off ticket mechanic, right?

• 20:27Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 20:28Griffin McElroy?

  Which I will say upfront, I thought about you instantly Juice, because the first thing you do when you start playing the game is it's like, it warns you like, hey, this is going to be repetitive. A hand and wrist movement.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I played like the first 20 minutes of it.

• 20:41Griffin McElroy?

  I thought that was neat. I've never seen a game ever, ever do that where it's like, this game's going to be sort of physically strenuous. If you, if you're doing the scratching off. There's two other options, one where you can just kind of hold it over your cursor over the thing. I don't know how that would work on iOS, but on computer, just sort of move your mouse over. And then there's one where you can like click in to hold. So it's like changing the option, you either don't have to hold your finger down to click or you don't have to like move it. It'll sort of auto move it, but I actually ended up switching to that because I also found the repetitive motion of scratching. Very cool at first, but then less cool as, as time went on. What is cool is like you start to get into these loops, right?

• 21:21Griffin McElroy?

  And you're like earning more money and you're like increasing your speed with which you're like moving through the same shit every time you prestige. The new tickets you unlock as you like reach certain price tiers, they start to have sort of risky elements to them. Like this ticket is going to have like a huge prize. It costs more money than any other ticket you've gotten. So you have to be like smart about how you spend it. It has a huge jackpot, huge jackpot. But it also will sometimes have a symbol in there that will make you lose a lot of money. And if you start feeding those through like your automatic robot machine and clicking through them, you will go fucking bankrupt in 10 seconds. And so with those, it becomes a sort of like balancing act of like, okay, I got my easy money down here going into the machine.

• 22:05Griffin McElroy?

  I can't put these guys in the machine yet because they'll scratch off the bad stuff. Whereas when you're doing it manually, you can like start to see like, oh, there's that goddamn worm again. And if you don't finish scratching them off, it doesn't, it no longer counts. That, that element alone, like really, I found to be really interesting because the whole, whole sort of process through which you move through idle games is you are repeating an action, a click, a tap, a whatever, a manual action so that you can like increase your ability to like automate that manual action. And this one kind of gives you a reason to like, still think about that sort of half of the, of the experience. I know if you don't play incremental games, that sounds like an insane sort of like,

• 22:50Griffin McElroy?

  this one makes you interact with it still.

• 22:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, there was, Barry, Barry, Barry actually did something similar where you had to at one point make shakes. And you needed like specific berries for the shakes. So it does actually slow you.

• 23:02Griffin McElroy?

  Excellent job of this idea. I, I never felt like that. I almost hesitate to call that an incremental game just because like it is, to me, it feels so manual. And it feels so like you have to be, you're very active. You're always moving around sucking up berry. It's not an idle incremental game is fair for that. It is not an idle game sort of at all. Whereas this, like you can set up a pretty rock solid automated system and you know, kind of just have it on.

• 23:28Russ Frushtick?

  Does this do the like go away for three hours, come back and you have money?

• 23:32Griffin McElroy?

  No, so this doesn't do, yeah. So, so maybe that is like the modifier, the, the technical thing that makes it an idle game. This is still like more. than that like you are until you get far enough in the game to get the machine that subscribes to a certain Lotto ticket for you and buys them for you like then you are gonna be like clicking in there from time to time to to do it um I oh sorry no please go ahead

• 23:57Speaker 02

  I really struggled metaphorically with this one man like it does hit that it does rough it's like it really there's not a layer of abstraction you can get to where it's like I'm running a factory you're not you're a monkey you're a fucking monkey it is like so far removed griff from the feeder it's like so close it's like one carrot's breath away from like I worried I'd play this one for a million hours and at the end I'd have a script for Hamlet you know what I mean

• 24:24Griffin McElroy?

  yeah for sure uh yeah no I will say that it does not overstay its welcome I finished it in like a few hours of playing it uh and so it is not this is not a uh there's one I think on iOS called idol revolution that does kind of like do that where it puts you through this gauntlet of like incremental progress and then you get to the end of it and it's like you're wasting your fucking time you have wasted your goddamn life we're gonna give you one upgrade point if you want to do this whole fucking thing again you can but you are absolutely blowing it dude um

• 24:56Speaker 02

  well I look at clover pit as a really interesting counterpoint right that's slots are gross in a very similar way but in clover pit you're in sorry go ahead yes please just

• 25:07Russ Frushtick?

  for people that aren't aware clover pit was a slot machine based rogue like yeah where you could like modify the odds as well

• 25:14Griffin McElroy?

  for sale on in a bundle with scratchy scratchy

• 25:16Speaker 02

  it looked more like our last game but played more like this one but the difference with with that with clover pit is you were in hell you know like it made it clear it's like this is hell yeah but it's like I don't know I don't feel like scratchy scratchy doesn't sound quite as self-aware

• 25:32Griffin McElroy?

  clover pit is is way I I think clover pit is it is a much deeper game I'm still playing clover bit from time to time guys it's on iOS now and I'll just like get in there and I'll be like yeah there's a lot of these memory card runs I have not finished I would love to fuck around with clover pit this doesn't have that you're not buying you're not drafting like relics like it's not it is not quite that uh rogue rogue lighty um but yes like Justin said I think I'm also gonna talk a little bit about rack coin I think this week and so playing a Lotto scratch off ticket game and a quarter drop

• 26:03Chris Plante?

  Game at an arcade together. It really told me a story about myself that I wasn't. I don't mind to admit that sometimes I'm a nasty piss boy. I just need the game to recognize that I am a nasty piss boy and I'm wallowing in my own filth. Yeah. Like, that's what I need to be treated like. I need a Dom Sub Situation. To show how much it knows that you are the nasty piss boy. The actual Steam page, the first screenshot is Dirty Dishes and the words tired of your day job. The second screenshot is a photo of a yet to be scratched scratch off ticket. The third screenshot is jackpot. The fourth screenshot is robot and the final screenshot is super jackpot. It is literally telling you like. Yeah. Are you sad?

• 26:48Griffin McElroy?

  But here's the thing, okay, as, as, uh, obviously I think that that is off putting, generally speaking. I also think it is like, if you look at, fuck, open up the iOS App Store, click the Games tab, go to, uh, top unpaid games. And then take your finger and go like this. And you're gonna see goddamn 49 of the 50 games that pop up are exactly this, right? But this one is also like five bucks and it doesn't ruin your life.

• 27:16Chris Plante?

  I, I, I, I agree with hoops of like the, the fact that it is literally gambling as the aesthetic is, is a choice. But I am. But like, so is Velatro, arguably.

• 27:26Griffin McElroy?

  Well, very, very different thing, but just to finish, to finish that thought.

• 27:30Chris Plante?

  Just as the aesthetic, I don't think it's actually gambling, sorry. To finish, to finish the thought, I agree with Griffin. I, I much prefer this where it is a, you pay one price. It is not here to bleed you of money and it is not really here to like mega bleed you of time. We, I feel like the games that we used to like play of these that we got really into were like, you could lose 30 or 40 hours. And this sounds, this.

• 27:53Griffin McElroy?

  No, I appreciate, I really truly, uh, I don't know that I've played a ton of games. Last one I can think of is like, uh, I think it was called Mage Tower or Wizard Tower was, and that, oh God, the.

• 28:03Chris Plante?

  Wizard Tower.

• 28:04Griffin McElroy?

  Wizard Tower.

• 28:05Chris Plante?

  Justin is flashbacking at the moment. That one kicked ass.

• 28:08Griffin McElroy?

  What was the corp, uh?

• 28:10Chris Plante?

  That one kicked ass because you had an incredible wizard's tower.

• 28:13Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  You know what I mean?

• 28:14Griffin McElroy?

  The Norp, Norp, Norp, it was Norp.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Oh, the Norp analog, that kicked ass. You were creating life. That was awesome.

• 28:21Griffin McElroy?

  There is this like, I don't know, I feel like pretty burgeoning genre right now of idle incremental games that are short, like they are, they are well contained. They are three, four hour things that are just like tight. And this game also has like some narrative happening in the background that seems like arcane and sinister as well that, that you know, also kind of has a payoff sort of at the like, there's other stuff happening other than the get, get rich monkey, scratch off ticket, sort of, I don't know, lizard brain stuff, but it's, I really enjoyed it for its like

• 28:56Griffin McElroy?

  brevity and its density a little bit where it just gets in, you get the good feeling.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Do you, have you seen, you guys see the commercials on TV, usually midday? And it's like, hey, I'm Barry Williams from TV's Brady Bunch. And when I'm not up on stage singing to my fans, I love royal slots. And then there's all like a huge pile of gold coins. It's like every single pull, there's a million coins. And then you're watching, it's like, you know, it's not gambling. So what are people doing? And it's like, you're just pretending to play the slot machines. I feel like we need to be, you can only be so chin strokey when you abstract out the dopamine extraction mechanism. You can only be so like, hmm, it really makes you think before you're

• 29:43Speaker 02

  like, no, you're just doing the thing. Like, you know what I mean? It's just that.

• 29:48Chris Plante?

  The problem is, I now want that video game in which a, I am watching TV and then a former Brady Bunch member is my narrative guide through Scratchy Scratchy. You see, you, you, you, you're trying to make a great point. And what you did is you pitched me on a game I want.

• 30:07Griffin McElroy?

  You sold them even fucking harder. Now we see who the real piss boys are.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  I'm a prisoner of my own fucking diseased mind. The Norp analog ruined me, cooked me so bad. That's the only way I can think anymore is incrementally. I don't even know what I'm gonna say next, guys. It's word by word.

• 30:21Russ Frushtick?

  How do we feel about using things that are like largely predatory, scratch off tickets, or slot machines, or whatever it is, to convey something else?

• 30:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, that's fair, like, is-

• 30:36Russ Frushtick?

  I don't, I'm not saying it's, I don't know.

• 30:38Griffin McElroy?

  It's a good question. I'm not entirely sure I would say sort of authoritatively one way or another. I don't think that Scrutchie Scratchy is necessarily telling that exact story. Like, the story stuff is like, quite, quite light. You don't sort of run into it a lot. So it's not like, you know, the game wraps up with you kind of like, you know, throwing all your tickets through a big steel fan and then leaving your house and stepping out in the sunlight and saying, "I beat, I beat gambling. Fuck it off. Call she," or whatever it's called. It is, it's not exactly doing that, but there is like something to that loop that is also kind of present, but way more cloaked in almost every video game that

• 31:18Griffin McElroy?

  comes out now. The like, you know, feedback loop, hooky, how can we make our game like, uh, like, that's so inherent to the thing now that like, I don't know, I don't, I'm not worried about Scrutchie Scratchy contributing to the larger problem. I think it is more kind of seeing what it can explore in those mechanics without, you know, bleeding you dry or making you save 10,000 hours into it.

• 31:45Chris Plante?

  I, I, I don't, I don't love it personally, but I like, if I have to be like, very real with myself here, I, we, we play first person shooters and we don't go out and shoot people. Like, I, I, I'm always very hesitant-

• 32:00Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think that's the, yeah, yeah.

• 32:02Chris Plante?

  To draw a connection between that. And I, and I know what, like, the, the logic here could be like, oh, we have just so fully normalized gambling culture that it, this is not, it's not a game like this gets everybody to go get on Call She, like Griffin mentioned, but it's like yet another thing.

• 32:22Griffin McElroy?

  That's two, by the way, guys, just, that's our two mentions of Call She.

• 32:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, we can't mention-

• 32:25Griffin McElroy?

  We have to get up to five, or else they are not going to give us our trillion dollars.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  I just feel, I, you could also, it doesn't have to be necessarily like a negative, or like a, this is hurting you, or making you like more inclined to gamble. It's just like- There's a wide range of different things you can engage with. And I think that if a game is gonna use, I'll use this term, weaponize this sort of like dopamine mechanic. I think it's gotta reckon with that, first of all, in the story of the game. Like, it's gotta recognize, like, this is what it's doing. And it's also got to, I think, deliver on something more meaningful or more useful or something with a little more toothsome than just like, boy, it's easy to get addicted to stuff.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Because I feel like there have been a lot of these types of games that have made that point really elegantly. And if you're gonna start talking about, like, especially like scratchers and what they mean in areas of, like, really obvious income equality and like the, the sort of like, what they represent and how sort of like, I don't know, loaded they are for a lot of people. I don't know, it's just like, if you're gonna get into that, you're gonna make, do the scratching thing. Like, I feel like you can, if you're using these mechanics that are very clicky and addictive and, you know, stick with you, then I think that you owe it to the audience or the player to like, give them something

• 33:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  more enriching.

• 33:50Griffin McElroy?

  I, I think it's a missed opportunity, for, for sure. And I, I think that there were probably elegant ways for the story to be a little bit beefier and like, touch, touch on some of this stuff. I think that is a, a perfectly fair criticism.

• 34:01Russ Frushtick?

  There is also an interesting read on it, which is, if you were to play this game a lot and basically unlock a bunch of upgrades, whatever it is, and then go and play a real scratch-off ticket with its real odds.

• 34:14Griffin McElroy?

  You can't upgrade luck I R L.

• 34:17Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you might be a little discouraged, like, it might be like, fuck this shit.

• 34:21Griffin McElroy?

  It could be a smoke a pack of cigarettes situation. I will say this, my desire to scratch off a lottery ticket has maybe decreased since playing this game.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  I'll say also, y'all, it's not about gambling for me, because every other single fucking video game on the planet is gambling. I mean, every single, every loot box, that's like, that ship, that ship done sailed.

• 34:39Griffin McElroy?

  Right. Let's take a break and then talk about other other monetary things in the world. Yeah, I tried to think of a good way to bridge that gap, but that's it.

• 34:56Russ Frushtick?

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

• 35:44Russ 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 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,

• 36:28Russ Frushtick?

  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 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.

• 37:08Russ Frushtick?

  Point you want to take it in?

• 37:09Chris Plante?

  Uh, yes, I just want to pull up the PS5 price increase so I get the prices right really quick. One second. The price is right.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  The price is wrong, Bob.

• 37:21Chris Plante?

  The price is wrong, Bob. Wah wah wee wah. Welcome back, everybody, to the besties.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  That was a move. That's what you wanted. I gave you what you wanted, you dirty dog. The price is wrong, Bob.

• 37:34Chris Plante?

  Oh, you got me, but let me tell you, it's merely a flesh wound anyway.

• 37:41Chris Plante?

  We are here to talk about-

• 37:42Speaker 02

  I was wrong. This actually kicks ass because it's so much easier. I work so hard to come up with new things to say. It's exhausting.

• 37:49Chris Plante?

  Yeah, for sure. No, this is much better. It really flattens the playing field. It allows me, the unfunny one, to really step up. The PlayStation 5 has gotten a price increase.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Wah wah wee wah.

• 38:06Chris Plante?

  We wah.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  That rules. They should have made other movies besides Borat, in our defense.

• 38:12Chris Plante?

  Yeah. On April 2nd, which is like after you are listening to this, the PlayStation 5 will cost $649.99.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Fucking crazy.

• 38:22Chris Plante?

  Digital Edition cost $599.99.

• 38:25Russ Frushtick?

  Do you think, do you think it was originally April 1st and then they were like, oh fuck, we need the movie?

• 38:29Chris Plante?

  Oh, I, I, I 100% think that is correct.

• 38:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 38:34Chris Plante?

  And the PS5 Pro will be $899.96.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  What, what? Okay, so can you, I don't follow this shit nearly as closely as I used to. What was, what were those prices before?

• 38:47Chris Plante?

  This, everything went up $100, I believe. Is that right?

• 38:52Russ Frushtick?

  That is my understanding as well, yes.

• 38:54Chris Plante?

  So it is now considerably more expensive to buy a PlayStation 5.

• 39:00Chris Plante?

  All these years later than it was to buy one at launch. This is from what I can tell the first time in history where the major consoles prices are going up as they get older rather than down.

• 39:12Griffin McElroy?

  What did they say about, I mean, I assume the obvious like tariffs and RAM and flash becoming like impossible to source.

• 39:20Chris Plante?

  So the, they, they, they obvious are very cautious. So the statement says, with continued pressure in the global economic landscape, we have made the decision to increase the prices of the PS5, PS5 Pro and the PlayStation Portable globally. Cause these prices, they, they've went up everywhere.

• 39:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 39:38Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Do we, do any of you want to do a quick explainer of why this is happening or should I?

• 39:46Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, my understanding is RAM prices are through the roof right now, mostly driven by AI demand.

• 39:53Russ Frushtick?

  And so you're running into a situation where all these manufacturers just have to pay more for the components. So the only way that they can make up the difference is by increasing the price. You've seen companies like Valve, for example, Valve is not at this very moment selling Steam Decks. You can't buy a Steam Deck. Valve delayed the release of the Steam Machine.

• 40:14Griffin McElroy?

  All that new shit, well, I think was supposed to be out like first half of this year.

• 40:17Russ Frushtick?

  Yes, correct. And they announced that it's, it was delayed. They might make it in 2026, but who knows? And it's all because of this RAM shortage, uh, which is directly impacting basically everything.

• 40:29Griffin McElroy?

  And anecdotally, this, this is, uh, I, I think probably most of us are kind of familiar with this, but it, the extent to which it has impacted the like retro handheld market is, is genuinely across the board. Everyone super duper, duper significant. I think it's IONIO that has had like insane fulfillment issues, like not able to ship out the consoles that people pre-ordered.

• 40:50Russ Frushtick?

  And that's in addition to the, the minimum tariff increase that, uh, basically hit all those companies as well. So.

• 40:57Griffin McElroy?

  Production is also down, like you can't, you can't pre-order, like the, the, uh, production of those has gone so far down that like stock is like impossible to find. And there's like a whole ecosystem of like eBay scalping that happened. It's.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  It's it's really, uh, it's affected just pretty much everything, man.

• 41:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah, so it it this, uh, exactly what girlfriend said, this is much bigger than games. I mean, basically, everything has RAM in it now because comically before this period was the rise of the smart home and the smart car and the smart everything. So everything's going to be affected. We can't help you with that, but we can't help you with the video game side of things. So what I want to talk about with the rest of the show, just a little bit, is what y'all think this means for what people should be playing, or maybe where their interest should go, or what are some cheaper options that they can pick up? Or how can they dig into like their old hardware? What are options as kind of the the top of the line just gets more and more and more expensive?

• 41:56Speaker 02

  I have enjoyed video games the most in the past 12 years, sorry, 12 months, I would say, in like a

• 42:10Speaker 02

  non-monetary fashion. I, there is so many, there are so many ways to engage with the hobby and like engage with games from gaming's history and like so many different ways to engage in it that are like free, I mean, free. So to me, I feel like this presents a really great opportunity to eschew the latest and greatest. Let it, let it pass you by. Let it do its thing. You don't need to scratch off a lot of tickets. Just wait, wait here. Let, let history do its thing and you go back and play the many, many, many, many classic games that you could just download and play right now.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Play decades worth of video games on, on, uh, many of the devices you already own, uh, right now. Uh, and don't give your money to anybody.

• 43:02Russ Frushtick?

  I would also say like, I think more and more games and Creature Kitchen is a good example of this are not nearly aiming for that top tier, like these are new releases.

• 43:11Chris Plante?

  For sure.

• 43:12Russ Frushtick?

  That allow you to play games on devices that are not nearly as powerful as you would see on a high-end machine or even a medium-tier machine. So I'm encouraged by that because I think if the goal is to reach a mass market and do some, in addition to like making something cool, make some money in the process. They're gonna start making games for devices that can actually run those games.

• 43:33Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, my, my number one tip is if you are not into PC gaming yet, you should be. And when I say PC gaming, I don't mean go out and buy a $2,000 machine. I mean, if you, if you truly do not have a PC in your house, just buy a machine with Windows. Try to find a used one, whether that is at like a garage sale or an estate sale, or companies offload these things constantly. Or there is the new cheaper Mac, the MacBook Neo, which I think is gonna be very interesting. What's going on with that? I keep seeing like, uh, like emulation people talking about it. And it looks insane to me, this, this device. Yes.

• 44:18Chris Plante?

  It looks like an iPad with a tablet on it, which I mean, it's a laptop. Exactly what it is. What it is. And power wise, it's like a high end iPhone. With a keyboard on it. And it plays emulation games very well. But the thing about modern MacBooks is you can dual boot Windows on it pretty easily. You can even emulate Windows games on it pretty easily through a thing called whiskey, or wine, or other tools. Yeah. Um, but being able to access these, these games, games that are either free, like there's a, a great stuff on HIO every week, or being able to play these games that cost five or six bucks and are some of the like highest rated games of the year.

• 45:01Chris Plante?

  Both of the games that we mentioned this week are extremely beloved by their audience. I, they're also just tend to be more exciting than a lot of the stuff that we talk about. Like, I don't think it's an accident that most of what we talk about on the besties these days falls in this category versus like the large scale AAA category. It's just where the most interesting stuff is happening. Yeah, I would agree with that.

• 45:25Russ Frushtick?

  I'm also gonna say, uh, maybe this is too far down the rabbit hole, especially for newcomers, but like, the more I mess with Linux, the happier I am.

• 45:34Chris Plante?

  Here you go.

• 45:34Russ Frushtick?

  It's just so much nicer than playing games on Windows.

• 45:37Chris Plante?

  What destroy you running, baby? Jesus Christ. What destroy you on your arch?

• 45:40Russ Frushtick?

  I'm using Bazite for my handheld, but it's

• 45:44Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 45:44Griffin McElroy?

  We got that on your rock.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  I wish people could see Hoob's face right now.

• 45:48Russ Frushtick?

  Do you want the actual number of the distro?

• 45:51Speaker 02

  No, man, I thought we were gonna talk about Linux, not Linux based architecture. I'm talking Linux. I wanna get in. I thought you were gonna run an Arch. I thought you were ripping down to the Chrome. I thought we were gonna talk about Linux.

• 46:07Russ Frushtick?

  No, no, no, I'm not trying to make a garage door opener.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  As line is intended.

• 46:11Russ Frushtick?

  I just like the fact that it goes to sleep and wakes up when I want it to. That's really the only thing that I want.

• 46:16Griffin McElroy?

  That's really it, guys. If it can't do that, why did you make it?

• 46:19Russ Frushtick?

  Genuinely, I have a PC in my, I have a PC in my room because I live in a New York City apartment and space is a luxury. The PC for like a week straight was turning on at 4 a.m. and I could not figure out why. I would spend hours debugging it just to figure out why it was doing that and couldn't figure it out to the point where I just fully shut it off every night. That's fucking terrible. Like, guys.

• 46:42Griffin McElroy?

  That's vile.

• 46:43Russ Frushtick?

  And I know they're working on it. I know they want to get Windows in a better place. They are making concessions, especially with the Mac Neo. Because the Mac Neo is doing everything that all those Windows netbooks were doing in a much smoother way. But it's gonna be a couple of years before Windows maybe gets its shit together.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Hey, listen, don't get a MacBook Neo for God's sake. Learn, just learn one Linux distro. Get a very cheap laptop, put Linux on it, learn Linux. Linux is open and you can use it and you're not gonna get hemmed into these fucking crazy architectures. You, you could put, you can put Windows on there and you could put a, a macOS on there. You know what they're gonna start doing? Trying to jam AI down your throat instantly. And both of those, as time goes on, are gonna become more bloated and more bogged down with trying to get you to sign up with shit. Just, just swallow the pill.

• 47:34Griffin McElroy?

  What color is that pill?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Take 15 minutes.

• 47:36Griffin McElroy?

  Just real quick, what color is the pill? What color is the pill? What color is the pill?

• 47:41Speaker 02

  You're really trying to remember which one's the good one, right?

• 47:43Griffin McElroy?

  What color is, what color is the?

• 47:44Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no, that's fair. Which one's a good one? It's a bit, it's a bit, no, no, no. I know what Griffin is saying. Griffin is saying that I'm dawdling on the edge of manosphere nonsense.

• 47:53Griffin McElroy?

  Dude, you're fucking, you're surfing it, bud.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, if you, if you took the time to, if you take the time to engage with, why not? You're not gonna spend money on video games for a little while. Why not engage with something a little different? Free yourself from, uh, from some of these, uh, operating systems.

• 48:10Chris Plante?

  I, I, I, I'm, I'm the game level two for Linux. You can look on YouTube of ways to make your own Steam machine, basically, since they're not selling them right now. And there are people who will help you do that. If you hear Linux and you're scared, but you hear a Steam machine and you're excited, it's okay. Just chase, chase the words that help you get to where you need to be. That's what I did, basically. It's been great.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  It's all, it's, well, um, I, I also, uh,

• 48:38Griffin McElroy?

  All Linux distros are the same.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  It's really impressive. Go for it, Griff. Uh, I, I, uh, go off, go off.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  That I've had a really, it's really impressive to me, the, the Game Hub and Game Hub Lite, uh, situation on Android devices right now. Uh, I feel like that has really freed a lot of those games to like, Mugenix, I can play on the, the Fold 7.

• 49:07Griffin McElroy?

  I wanna hear about that.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Square, right?

• 49:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I've been shopping around specifically for a lighter weight, I wanna play Mugenix for a long time device. Cause the Rock LIX, I, I have trouble sort of, it's a big beefy boy.

• 49:18Chris Plante?

  It's a big boy.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I don't think this is like a good, I, this is not a thing to get for gaming, obviously, because it's a folding phone, but like if, as an aspect of that, it's great because what, the way I have it, it's set up basically is you, the Fold 7 is a square, once you unfold it, and then I have Game Hub on there. And Game Hub, if you don't know, is an Android app that is basically, A gateway between you and your Steam collection and also a gateway to like run those games on the device. It's basically creating a, a little envelope around the game that allows it to run on that device. And lighter weight games, non 3D games are obviously a lot easier on that setup.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  What's cool about games like Mugenics and like mouse first games like that is uh, it renders in the square, the top like three fourths are the screen or the, and the bottom is just black. And it's space to use as a, as a trackpad. So you're basically like, you can use your thumb to like guide the mouse and interact with everything on the screen, one finger. And it like, you can create a shortcut on the home screen of your phone. So it's like very, it's a very short bridge between that and your Steam collection. And it is a little bit like, janky. It's a little bit, you know, uh, because it is not, you know, it's a fit.

• 50:41Griffin McElroy?

  I've had issues.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  Officially supported. A lot of it's community run and stuff like that. And there's a lot of concern. Game Hub is run by a company called uh, Game Sir and because you have to provide your uh, login details.

• 50:53Griffin McElroy?

  Oh yeah, there's huge asterisk.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Privacy concerns with that. So a Game Hub Lite is a community run version of that, which is just a little bit behind usually.

• 51:04Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I have had, I think the shit you can do with the, with Game Hub and uh, Game Native is another one that I've uh, messed around with a little bit. It's like really impressive. They do have issues with uh, sleep restore mode. I feel like uh, if you have it off for a certain, not particularly long amount of time, like it will lose connection to your Steam account. And then the game is.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Whatever weird thing it was doing, it just forgets.

• 51:29Griffin McElroy?

  It forgets that it was doing. And so like, it's not like picking up a Steam Deck or a Rock Word. You pick it up, you press the power button and it's like happening instantly. Um, which is, I don't know. I don't, I, I hope they can get that. I mean, I hope fucking SteamOS just.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:43Griffin McElroy?

  Comes out.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  There's also a. Occasional weirdness, just to be fair on the, on that front with like the saves and cloud saving sometimes. Where it doesn't like necessarily like the, the container of the game doesn't exit properly. And so, for example, with Mugenics, if you leave, if you're playing on the, the, on a game, uh, game hub. If you quit out of a match, you don't get the Steven penalty. It doesn't realize that you've done it. Like you just go back into the game as, as normal, which is, you know, a non ideal, but you're playing on your phone.

• 52:18Chris Plante?

  It's cool.

• 52:18Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 52:20Chris Plante?

  Cool.

• 52:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's interesting. Things are pretty dire, but you can play cheap games pretty easily.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Hey, uh, one other recommendation, by the way, if you're looking for a big suite of games that you may never have checked out. Uh, there's really great stuff for like, uh, Amiga, like Amiga Vision and Amiga Gold. And, uh, the Exodus program where they have like a large amount of gaming history that you can download and kind of dig through. And like, I understand the legal issues surrounding this, but like, I mean, I, I personally just, this is where I'm coming from. As a person, I think that it's not right to, if you can't buy something, I think it's wild to say that you can't obtain it.

• 53:07Chris Plante?

  That's wild to me.

• 53:08Griffin McElroy?

  You're saying you can't walk down to the Amiga store at the corner to grab all these hits on cards like God intended.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think if I made a game back in 83 with me and my buddies. I think that I, if I, if someone said to me, hey, Justin Romero, would you prefer people not play your game? And not give you any royalty or play your game and not give you any royalty? I think the people would say, Justin Romero would say, yeah, I don't get any fucking money from that regardless, the thing I made. Nobody does. I don't know what happened to it. Steal it, please. I'd much prefer people play it. Thank you.

• 53:50Chris Plante?

  The, uh, uh, also you can, you can go to the library to play modern stuff. Ironically, the issue that Justin's talking about is.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  Fucking turbo wedgie by everybody else in the library.

• 53:59Russ Frushtick?

  Get there.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  You're already, who's the biggest dork in the library? It's the guy playing video games.

• 54:09Russ Frushtick?

  I love the library. Should we dive into our mentions? Uh, I had one thing to call out, but before I do, I do want to call out this more important piece of data. The Colors of Modern Rock came out in 1993, was on the Sega CD, and it features the song "To Be With You" by Mr. Big.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Yes, that had to be what it was.

• 54:28Griffin McElroy?

  Thank you, Derek. That's from our researcher, Derek, who's in the studio with us. Uh, and this is the first time we've used Derek's services. He's been on the payroll.

• 54:36Russ Frushtick?

  He's been here for five years and finally it paid off. So, thank you, Derek.

• 54:40Griffin McElroy?

  Huge.

• 54:40Russ Frushtick?

  You're welcome. I also wanted to call out, uh, Tom Scott, who is a YouTube luminary, uh, made many videos for like many years about random engineering and city design things, uh, has returned to YouTube, uh, with a new video about, uh, how he broke a 142-year-old bell. Uh, if you like, uh, weird, interesting design engineering videos.

• 55:05Griffin McElroy?

  I know this guy.

• 55:06Russ Frushtick?

  Tom Scott's dynamite, he makes good shit, uh, and I think he has a new series on Nebula, but, uh, the videos are also on YouTube. So, if you want to watch that, uh, we'll have a link in the newsletter.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Y'all, TV is so good. Um, television is, uh, great right now. I have three quick television recommendations that I can provide more context on as necessary. The Last One Laughing UK is back for a second season.

• 55:33Russ Frushtick?

  Did I bring that up yet?

• 55:34Griffin McElroy?

  You mentioned it last week. Jesus Christ.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Excellent. Really, really.

• 55:38Chris Plante?

  Justin, you did a, a, a solid Sam Campbell run, uh, earlier in the episode. You had like, uh, his intonation perfectly and it made me want to go watch this right away.

• 55:47Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, it is. We've been watching a lot of it. Uh, the, and also I'm much older than him and he more likely has listened to me for years.

• 55:54Chris Plante?

  Oh, no, I'm, to be clear, he ripped you off.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  It's much more likely that he has patterned himself after me.

• 55:59Chris Plante?

  It was an echo of an echo.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  I'm 45 now, so I've been a professional broadcaster for two decades. That one's really good. Neighbors is a show on HBO Max. It's one of the best things I've seen. If it weren't for my third recommendation this year, absolutely. It's little vignettes, little mini documentaries. Each one is about two warring neighbors. And they're almost all to a person maniacs. And it's a show about what happens when two people are, who are both big, strong personalities are forced to live next to each other.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  And a lot of the episodes devolve from like love to hate. We watch the relationships between the neighbors. But it is a show about what it means to be a neighbor in America. In a way, it reminds me a lot of like Errol Morris stuff. It's still very humane. It's not like as nasty as it seems it might seem on the outset. It like, it definitely is searching out really bizarre stories, but it is a.

• 57:07Griffin McElroy?

  It's a doc, you should mention.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  What?

• 57:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  It's a documentary. Yeah, yeah. Yes, it's a documentary about where each story follows like one pair of neighbors. Or each episode will have like two sets or one set neighbors. But one is about, just for example, a man who has a problem with a woman who has built a eight foot high privacy wall around her entire property. Because all of the neighbors say it makes them look like a drug compound has been built. So all the neighbors rally against this woman who is also in her own way, a maniac. And we watched all of them fight with each other. It's fantastic.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  Third thing is Jury Duty was one of the best things to come out a long time ago. And it's back for company retreat or Jury Duty Presents.

• 58:01Griffin McElroy?

  What are your thoughts on that?

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Have you watched it?

• 58:03Griffin McElroy?

  I've watched a couple of, we've watched three episodes now. And it is, there are moments of delight in there, but I don't know, maybe I am comparing it too much to the first season. But the first season I could not put down and this one, I don't know, hasn't, hasn't necessarily hooked me quite as, quite as much. But that, again, like I worried that this show, because the first season was based so much around this like surprise twist. Uh, maybe it's fighting against that in my head.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Let me back, let me very quick backstory. Jury Duty was a show on Amazon Prime. It was also a documentary and the, the premise was a guy is on a, on a jury. Um, and everyone on the jury is an actor and everyone in the proceedings is an actor. In fact, everyone there is an actor except for this one guy. So they're Truman Show, the show. Uh, and Jury Duty made sense because it's very procedural, right? Like you, you are sort of corralled. It's very guided as an experience, right? If you're on a jury, someone's telling you where to go. So it's easier to like stage. This second season is completely separate. It is called Company Retreat and it is a, a man is hired as a assistant

• 59:17Speaker 02

  to an HR director of this family-owned hot sauce company and they're headed on their company retreat. Uh, and on the first day of the company retreat, this HR director does something so humiliating. He has to leave the retreat. And he leaves it in the hands of his assistant and he says, I'll tell you what to do. I'll run the whole thing by you. I'll tell you what's happening, but I can't be here physically. So

• 59:43Speaker 02

  the company is currently in a time of transition where the son, the owner, his son is taking over and his son's a real uh, it seems to be a kind of a lovable adult, but he is at risk of running the company to the ground. Maybe they're going to sell the company. But it is all staged around this one guy who is the most affable, sweet, kind-hearted, on board with every single thing that happens and supporting everyone around him to a point where it's like, you want this guy to get some sort of huge payday at the end or something because he's like so game. And what's amazing about the show that I think is really fascinating is they keep giving him opportunities to bail.

• 1:00:28Griffin McElroy?

  Incredible, incredible.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  There are scenes where people, the HR director looks him in the eye and says, if you don't want to do this, you leave with me right now.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  And the guy says, no, no, no, I can handle it. It's like he, he chooses, he chooses it. And that's his like one, his, uh, if he has this like, uh, this, this hubris that is bringing you about this fate. It is that this man does not have the sense to say, I cannot deal, I cannot handle the situation.

• 1:00:56Russ Frushtick?

  Do you think they had a plan if he bailed? Like, that's a big expense.

• 1:00:59Griffin McElroy?

  I will say this season feels so much more improvisational than the first, because like you said, like, the first season of jury duty was very gag, gag, gag, gag, gag, like, uh, in a good way. Like, they all hit. James Marsden is one of the jurors and it's, it's fucking hysterical. Like, he's not playing anyone, he's just playing himself. It is just the douchiest celebrity.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  That's their justification for the cameras.

• 1:01:20Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  Is that James Mars- so that's why it's like all being documented is because he's on the jury, which is also really smart.

• 1:01:26Griffin McElroy?

  This guy on season two is so down that there are things that he has, like, suggested that they do to solve some problem, that then they go and they actually do that and they film like a whole scene around it. Which is like, feels, so it's not as, it's, it doesn't feel as like tightly packed. You know, each episode is gonna have like a series of wild things that this guy's gonna run into.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. The fir- the second episode, a huge crate, the second episode, a big crate of Doritos goes missing. Like a huge crate of Snacks, us Doritos, and they all launch into an investigation as a team building exercise.

• 1:02:03Griffin McElroy?

  Because he suggests, he suggests.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  That he suggests.

• 1:02:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. We should go through everyone's rooms.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  You hear him say it on camera, you know, maybe as a team building exercise, we should all look around for Doritos. And so they are having to, I have no idea how they did this, but they're having to follow this man's insane hunt for the Doritos. And they're like individual scenes, like, it's.

• 1:02:26Griffin McElroy?

  It's really.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  Did you get to the hypnosis?

• 1:02:29Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, no, I don't think so.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  Hypnosis, there's a group, they have a hypnotist come as a team building thing. And everyone in the company is hypnotized almost, except for this guy. And he starts getting them to reveal things about themselves and about the company that everyone else has been hypnotized for and has not heard or processed. And he is the one like living with the weight of all the things that people are. It's, it's, it's incredible. It's really incredible. Uh, that's on Prime as well. Um, Jeffrey Bezos sucks ass. Uh, but you know.

• 1:03:06Griffin McElroy?

  But he makes a, but he makes a killer show.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  What can you do?

• 1:03:09Griffin McElroy?

  I think Last One Laughing is also, uh, is also a.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's all Bezos. Sorry.

• 1:03:14Griffin McElroy?

  I've, I didn't mean to make, I have been enjoying this new season of Jury Duty. It's, I will say the competition is kind of fierce with, uh, with Last One Laughing. And I don't know, there's, there's a lot of really funny shit happening out there.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Fascinating about Last One Laughing, just as like a, an aside about that on The Rest Is Entertainment. That show did so well in the UK. The first season that Bob Mortimer won. Did so well in the UK and they invented this idea, which has not been a ver, in the, in the many, many other international versions of that. They have not, uh, had a returning champion, but Bob Mortimer returns as the like defending champ. And the show has become so popular and takes six hours to shoot and is so lucrative. That they were saying the stakes are actually quite high because if you can win, you are guaranteed another big payday.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  On one of the biggest shows. So it is like, it is now, the competition has even bigger stakes. Cause you are playing for your role to stay on this incredibly lucrative TV show.

• 1:04:16Griffin McElroy?

  That's incredible. I never even thought about that.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  So that's like, if the, if the play is escalating, that's, that's.

• 1:04:21Griffin McElroy?

  What?

• 1:04:22Chris Plante?

  Have you seen how many versions of the show there are? Like if you go on Amazon and you search Last One Laughing, there are like 30 Last One Laughings from across the world. Because like you said, it's so easy to shoot.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  Called Documentary and came from.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Uh, Korea.

• 1:04:39Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know if that's like a branch off or, or it is.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Documentary was the first.

• 1:04:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  I hope we got paid for it because there are a trillion of these now. I am almost positive that, and we'll have Derek check this, but I'm almost positive that Last One Laughing does credit and, and those different versions, credit.

• 1:04:59Griffin McElroy?

  Credit documentary.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  Documentary is like original concept, but.

• 1:05:02Griffin McElroy?

  I, I just.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Cause they're there. I mean, it is, it is not, it is very, it is identical. I mean, it's the same show.

• 1:05:07Griffin McElroy?

  I do want to say, I do think that the Chris Gethard shows Night of Zero Laughs, uh, event was even predated documentary. If we're just sort of like.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  I mean, if we're gonna confront it, I think that it's worth confronting, Griffin. Thank you.

• 1:05:19Russ Frushtick?

  Derek just tried to sell me his stable coins, so I don't think he's a good free source.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, get out of here, Derek. This was the last straw.

• 1:05:26Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:05:29Chris Plante?

  He finally shows up and we have to let him.

• 1:05:32Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 1:05:33Chris Plante?

  Hey, very, very quick on mine. Sonic Racing Crossworlds, y'all gotta go play it. Everybody, you, you didn't get into that Mario Kart world. Sonic Racing Crossworlds, it's waiting for you right there. They, they added Mega Man to it. They added Pac-Man to it. They added SpongeBob Man to it. Everybody's in this game and it's so damn fun.

• 1:05:54Russ Frushtick?

  Finally, Steve gets a moment to shine from Minecraft.

• 1:05:55Chris Plante?

  Minecraft Steve does have his time.

• 1:05:58Russ Frushtick?

  Thank you, Chris Plant. Thank you to everyone else. Uh, we have some members of the Patreon I wanted to call out. Uh, we have scant, we have Nathan H, we have Tom, and we have Incliment Heather, which is a funny name. I like that one.

• 1:06:13Chris Plante?

  Good name.

• 1:06:13Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, thank you everyone, uh, over at the Patreon for supporting the show. Uh, we have new bracket battles every month. We have, uh, rest these episodes, uh, two a month and, uh, we greatly, greatly appreciate it that, uh, Patreon allows this show to exist. Literally it would not without it. So thank you so much, uh, for all your support there and to people that have joined. Uh, we, we greatly appreciate you. I think that's it. Plant, you want to recap?

• 1:06:38Chris Plante?

  Yeah, very quick though, um, with Fresh out next week, how are y'all feeling about maybe bringing back movie quotes? Think we can just keep that going?

• 1:06:47Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I mean- Derek says no. Derek says no, and he does still have voting power today, even though it's his last day. I mean, I think next week, we're gonna be talking about the Super Mario Galaxy movie, and I'm sure it's gonna have a lot of great quotes, like, "Here we go." Oh, yeah, you can quote the shit out of that.

• 1:07:02Chris Plante?

  Oh, you're telling me there's a chance?

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:07:08Chris Plante?

  Okay.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  Shouldn't go see it next week for the Besties.

• 1:07:10Chris Plante?

  We talked about Creature Kitchen, Scrunchy Scratchy, Last One Laughing, UK Neighbors on HBO Max, Jury Duty Company, Retreat, Sonic Racing, Crossworlds, Game Hub Lite, Mr. Big Song, To Be With You, and that video, I helped break 142-year-old bell, and that's okay.

• 1:07:28Griffin McElroy?

  He broke the bell to be-

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  He didn't make it. Thank you so much for joining us. 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?