Tomodatchi Life and the Magic and Wonder of Super Nintendo World

This week we're diving into Nintendo's bizarre life sim, Tomodatchi Life: Living the Dream, which allows a bunch of Miis to eat cigarettes for breakfast. Griffin also regales us on his experience visiting Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios, and we explore the total nonsense going on with handhelds these days.

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

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  Guys, I don't do well in the sun. Did you know that? Can you imagine me in the sun?

• 0:05Griffin McElroy?

  No, I can only imagine you dancing in the moonlight. And that's my own sort of stuff that I'm.

• 0:11Speaker 02

  Frolicking.

• 0:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:12Russ Frushtick?

  I took, I took my family to Puerto Rico over spring break when I was out from the besties. And I had a lovely time. It was fantastic.

• 0:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:21Russ Frushtick?

  But I think they might've called me the chupacabra when I was there because it did. My skin did not look like a human being's skin after about a day.

• 0:30Griffin McElroy?

  What did it? I mean, what happened to it? Because I usually it just turns red for me if I get too much on it. But does yours do sort of something different?

• 0:37Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, there's redness. It starts with red.

• 0:40Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Did you take proper precautions? That's my first question.

• 0:43Russ Frushtick?

  So it turns out 30 SPF was not enough.

• 0:46Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, my God, for your alabaster porcelain skin? No way, dude.

• 0:51Russ Frushtick?

  30 lying around.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  I don't even know how you convert SPF to RPF. First of all, there's like, there's another chart that you gotta do. The numbers don't even work the same way. It's like Celsius.

• 1:01Russ Frushtick?

  I will say on the third day, it looked more like a plaid than anything.

• 1:05Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 1:06Russ Frushtick?

  Which is not good. And now I'm just shedding into my new evolution. Who knows what I'm gonna be next? It's like species.

• 1:13Griffin McElroy?

  Dude, what if a different Rush shows up next week, Juice? And it's like, and his name will be like Rustar. And they'll be like bigger and stronger and cooler.

• 1:25Russ Frushtick?

  Mm hmm. Sunglasses?

• 1:27Griffin McElroy?

  Sunglasses, stronger, hotter, cooler.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  30 SPF. You thought 30?

• 1:35Russ Frushtick?

  I thought 30, dude. It was folly on a level that I cannot even.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  You've met you.

• 1:40Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. The problem is I don't go outside, so I was like, eh, I'll be fine. I've been saving it up.

• 1:46Griffin McElroy?

  Been a while. Yeah.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, from now, I bet that's a mistake you won't make again, right?

• 1:52Russ Frushtick?

  Never, ever.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Taking care of that skin from now on?

• 1:54Griffin McElroy?

  Good.

• 1:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Great. I'm glad to hear it, Russ.

• 1:57Griffin McElroy?

  Got to. It's your biggest organ.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Biggest organ.

• 2:01Griffin McElroy?

  Second biggest, second biggest for me.

• 2:25Speaker 02

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

• 2:28Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:32Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Ross Fraschek. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club, I guess you'd say. And just by listening, you've become a member. We're so happy to have you here to talk about Tomodatchi Life: Live in the Dream.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Maybe?

• 2:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, you got it. You crushed it.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  You got no shit?

• 2:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, dude, you got it in one. You did amazing. Yeah.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, Tomodachi Life: Live in the Dream. Griffin, what is that?

• 3:04Griffin McElroy?

  Tomodachi Life: Live in the Dream is a sequel to a 13-year-old Nintendo 3DS game, simply called Tomodachi Life. And it's a, it's a game where you create me's that can look like people or characters or really whatever the fuck you want. And they live on an island and you can watch them and lightly interact with them as they get into all kinds of crazy hijinks.

• 3:25Russ Frushtick?

  And Tomodachi means friend.

• 3:27Griffin McElroy?

  That's good. Thank you. Friend life. Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  You're already learning something. We'll be, we'll, uh, we'll be back right after this break with a lot more informative content.

• 3:37Russ 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.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Want to clarify something, Griffin, because you said the U's are in the game.

• 4:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  You could make a U.

• 4:32Griffin McElroy?

  You can make me's, yeah.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  But me's are not, I feel like me's haven't been kind of part of the vocabulary for a little while. Is that, is that fair to say?

• 4:40Griffin McElroy?

  So you can make me's on the Nintendo Switch, and I assume the Switch too, but it's.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Please, what's a me? Can you give the old man context?

• 4:48Griffin McElroy?

  A me is a little avatar that I believe originated on the 3DS or perhaps the Wii?

• 4:55Russ Frushtick?

  I think the Wii.

• 4:56Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I think the Wii came first, eh? And you created a little avatar and it was a simple little cartoony guy back, you know, original Wii days that your options were super duper limited, some hairstyles, some face stuff. You could move around. And then as sort of new, new hardware came out and more games sort of featuring me's came out, they added sort of more vectors of customization so that here in Tomodatchi Life: Living the Dream, you could really make them look like whatever the fuck you want to. It's not just sort of like hair and face options. You can just fully paint over their face with like a paintbrush and, you know, using that you can make, make these guys look like whatever you want them to.

• 5:34Russ Frushtick?

  It is interesting though, because yeah, technically you can make me's on the system, but like there was no utility for that.

• 5:39Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 5:40Russ Frushtick?

  You just like, it was for YOLO, like.

• 5:41Griffin McElroy?

  It's not like the 3DS where there's like a button that you press to go to Street Pass.

• 5:46Russ Frushtick?

  Right.

• 5:46Griffin McElroy?

  There's, there's not a special light that flashes on the Switch 2 when you get a Street Pass from, you know, Reggie Fizemay or whatever. So yeah, it's, it is a weird holdover of, of systems gone by, but Tomodatchi Life is, I don't know, such a celebration of those guys. And the last one that I can really think of, I mean, Smash Brothers lets you play with, with the me characters. And then there was the re-release of Metopia, which is an interesting kind of comparison point because it handles like that user-generated content in a completely different way from Tomodatchi Life: Living the Dream. Do you want me to set up sort of more of what you are actually doing in this game? Because it's, it is quite unique from a, I don't know, life sim perspective.

• 6:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's, it is not, don't think of it as The Sims, although I think that's the way in for a lot of people.

• 6:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 6:36Russ Frushtick?

  It's it's much more focused on the just talking, like having relationships, right? The me's having relationships with another and like having conversations and that resulting in like funny scenes playing.

• 6:49Griffin McElroy?

  The most interesting stuff this game does, it does without your input, really. Like, it takes a while, but you, you know, make a whole cast of me's. I think you can have up to like 70 living on the same island, which is fucking bonkers.

• 7:02Russ Frushtick?

  Nuts.

• 7:03Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, and-

• 7:03Russ Frushtick?

  And people, for what it's worth, the community, I looked on the Reddit, were like, only 70.

• 7:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 7:09Russ Frushtick?

  Like, what the fuck are you, are you building America, like, real America in Metopia?

• 7:14Griffin McElroy?

  I forget, I forget. I forget what the limit was on the, uh, on the 3DS original, but 70 just seems like a lot to me.

• 7:22Russ Frushtick?

  It seems like a lot.

• 7:22Griffin McElroy?

  Um, and then it's not just like the me's you can customize, you can also like, uh, create, well, catchphrases for them, or you can straight up design using a sort of like, uh, Animal Crossing pattern designer style UI, uh, like, I don't know, man, fucking anything, food. I made, I thought it would be very funny if everyone on my island, their favorite food was Jarm Blacks, just like the, the clove cigarettes. And I made a, like a photorealistic one-to-one box of Jarm Blacks. And people are just wild about these things. They're always talking about it.

• 7:57Russ Frushtick?

  And they eat them, right?

• 7:58Griffin McElroy?

  They eat them, they eat them up good. And to me, that's very, very, very fucking funny. And so like, you'll make something, you'll make a joke and then you'll forget about it. And then like, you know, a few days later, fucking Chewbacca mom will be talking to, uh, me and will be like, hey, have you heard about these Jarm Blacks? And it's like, oh shit, I forgot I made those. That, that's sort of the main crux.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Is it, does it hit different though? Like, the idea of seeing your personal stuff remixed through like a, an algorithmic lens and then regurgitated back to you? I feel like that was really novel back when this first happened.

• 8:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  And I feel like these days, that's a lot more commonplace. Does it hit different at all to see like, the, the AI like coming to you with your quotes? Like, hey, is this, do you like this?

• 8:47Griffin McElroy?

  Is this anything?

• 8:48Russ Frushtick?

  I was into it, um, I think a lot of it has to do with hitting a critical mass of that stuff. So, once you've entered, like- 30 prompts or whatever of things they like, or things they eat, or designs, or whatever it is, and you sort of start forgetting some of that stuff, and then they start like interacting with one another, mentioning one versus the other. I think that's when it starts getting pretty fun. I agree with you. It's not like a magic trick. Like, I know how they're doing it.

• 9:13Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 9:14Russ Frushtick?

  In the way that it was incredibly novel before. But there's no real one-to-one for this game.

• 9:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Russ Frushtick?

  Anywhere.

• 9:22Griffin McElroy?

  That is, that's what I was going to say. I don't think there's really much of an analog, because, I don't know, the original Tomodatchi Life was even more limited than what this game can do. But even then, like, there wasn't so much of a sort of ant farm style life sim that was so comedy-focused out there. I cannot think of a single one. And this one just kind of like escalates things dramatically by, to me, like, the big talking point, the big sort of like, I don't know, thing that is interesting about this game from Nintendo, is that there is no filter.

• 9:57Russ Frushtick?

  Right.

• 9:58Griffin McElroy?

  There are no profanity filters. There is no filter for if you want to draw a magazine and have it be, you know, smut featuring Star Fox characters. Like, you can fully, fully, fully draw it. You can draw that, and you can call it Star Fox smut, and people will be all about it. You can even make that a dessert, and people eat the book. And it's like, you can do whatever. You can make them say literally whatever. There is no filter on it whatsoever.

• 10:25Russ Frushtick?

  And there is a voice translation for the text, so you will actually hear them say, "Star Fox smut."

• 10:32Griffin McElroy?

  Do you want to talk about Star Fox smut? Like, and it's, so like, that's insane. That's crazy coming from Nintendo. There is a trade-off that has happened that is, I think, a pretty unsophisticated solution for, well, how do you make sure that, like, kids aren't finding the Star Fox smut, and, you know, that that not being stored on Nintendo's servers for the, you know, Federal Bureau of Investigation to find? Like, that is a great question. The answer that they came up with is, there is no online sharing of any of this stuff at all. To a degree where, I don't know if you guys noticed this,

• 11:12Griffin McElroy?

  You can't sort of send screenshots and videos that you capture through the Switch to like capture thing to your phone. It is locked, like this game is locked so that you can not do that. There's ways of doing it. Obviously, you can like pull them off the SD card or whatever, but like they have built such a wall around this thing, which compared to a MeTopia, which is a turn-based RPG featuring me characters, where it will say like, okay, here's this, you found a new party member, go ahead and design him, or here's a big list of some of the most popular characters that other people have made. If you do not want to spend 15, 20 minutes like making a guy, all of a sudden you scroll through this list and you're like, yeah, I'll take, you know, I'll take Jackson Galaxy, the Cat Whisperer,

• 11:57Griffin McElroy?

  on a journey with me, and I won't have to like draw that stuff. There's none of that here. There's none of that. And that sucks so bad, because there's so many different things you can customize. There's so many different things you can draw and you can get so detailed with it. And I see other people sort of like super hyper detailed drawings of, you know, characters using the me face paint or, you know, different items that then they will sell in the store or whatever. And there's just kind of no way to get at them, except for doing local multiplayer. When you do local multiplayer, you can share sort of locally, but-

• 12:34Russ Frushtick?

  Or the alternative, which I tried to do was like, there's websites, like there's something called Tomodachi Share, where like people post their creations and you just sort of like eyeball it. And it might have some like slider settings to try to get it close. But obviously, anything that involves like actual drawing or painting, probably not gonna happen.

• 12:50Griffin McElroy?

  Out the window, right?

• 12:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Griffin McElroy?

  Tomodachi Life, I don't remember if it, I think it did have more of a filter on it. And yes, the original Tomodachi Life, it had a sharing system that was pretty, also a little bit clumsy, where you would generate a QR code for your me's and then people could use the 3DS camera to scan that QR code and then bing bang boom, you got, you know, the guy imported into your thing, right? I don't, I don't understand why that wasn't an option here, right? Like, obviously, the Switch doesn't have a camera, but like, if you can make a- A platform where these things can be hosted and curated. I thought about like Super Mario Maker. There's like a whole system for moderating that, like you can.

• 13:33Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, Animal Crossing too, has QR codes for creations and.

• 13:36Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. I'm more speaking about like Nintendo having an active hand and like, oh, your Mario Maker level has, you know, you drew a wiener with question mark blocks. Like that one's, that one's obviously blocked out. I think it would be a full time. It would be many, many, many, many, many full time jobs to like do that here. But like, why can't I do online sharing of this stuff with people on my friends list? That's, that to me seems like pretty ironclad and it's just kind of not, not an option.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  I think maybe in other countries, you have to let everybody be on your friends list. Maybe it would be rude to let other people join your. Like, this is what I'm saying. Maybe in Japan where the corporate structure is different than it is here in America. Maybe your boss, it's like known that you have to give your boss your friend code, like you have to.

• 14:26Griffin McElroy?

  Right. It's on the business cards.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  It's on the business card. It's like, it's like a professional thing. So like, the idea that you would want all of your friends to see everything you do online is like, would be very hard to understand because it's like, well, no, my, my aunt, my great aunt, my, my business partner, everybody and my, my insurance agent, we are all friends, you know, through our switches.

• 14:50Griffin McElroy?

  I, I understand the trade off here is that this game's unhinged. This game is absolute, you can do anything you want in this game.

• 14:57Russ Frushtick?

  Did you play with your kids?

• 14:58Griffin McElroy?

  I did. So Henry actually got way into it. So much so that this is, this is the first game in a while where like, I, we were kind of wrestling for the Switch 2, like, because he got really, really into it. Because he is young enough that he never played like The Sims, right? So to him, the novelty of, I have this island where me and my aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins live and also like some characters from the amazing digital circus and also Steve Harvey.

• 15:29Griffin McElroy?

  Like. That is, that is so novel to him.

• 15:32Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 15:33Griffin McElroy?

  It doesn't matter so much that like, unlike The Sims, these guys don't have like, a bunch of stats, or a bunch of like, huge points of interactivity.

• 15:41Russ Frushtick?

  Taking them to pee, or whatever.

• 15:42Griffin McElroy?

  Right, exactly. It's basically like, you make them, you pick their stats, and then like, from time to time, they'll have a little speech bubble over their head, which means like, hey, they either need something, like food, or, uh, you know, new decorations, or, uh, you know, they have a question about like, your personal sort of stuff, that will then kind of turn into a topic of conversation around the island. Sometimes it's like a little mini-game that they have, uh, that, that you get to play for like, little prizes and stuff like that, but like, you're really not, you're not having so firm a hand on, on the rudder. It is very, it is very ant-farmy. And that is very much how the original Tomodatchi Life was. And I know there's a lot of people who are like, well, why isn't it more like Animal Crossing? Or more like, this is totally a different thing, and...

• 16:26Russ Frushtick?

  I think this skews younger, uh, than a lot of those titles. Insofar as like, I, when I played it, I played with my four-year-old, who was homesick. And I was like, well, this is a good use of our time. So, I created him, he was the first me that we created, and then proceeded to make just any human character in the Pokemon anime, which he's watched quite a bit of.

• 16:46Griffin McElroy?

  Great.

• 16:47Russ Frushtick?

  And that was so easy to Grok for him. The idea that like, oh, Brock is there, and Misty's there, and Ash, and Professor Oak, and fucking Gary, and like, they all have their kind of baked-in personalities that you can set when you make those characters. So it starts just kind of playing out like an episode of the anime to some extent, where Brock's a fucking horn dog and trying to get with Nurse Joy and whatever.

• 17:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 17:09Russ Frushtick?

  And, uh, Ash is like a little sassy asshole.

• 17:12Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 17:12Russ Frushtick?

  And he was like, super into it. I don't know that he wanted to go back to it after we had that session of whatever it was, two hours. But it does seem like... Just as like a cool activity to do with a kid that involves a lot of back and forth of like, "Oh, what personality should we give Misty?" Or, "Oh, what, you know, character traits?" Or, "Do those eyes look right?" Things like that. It was like a really fun activity with him.

• 17:38Griffin McElroy?

  It's also as a sort of like visual arts kind of exercise. Like, Henry loves doing like pixel art stuff. He's got like a couple of apps on his iPad that he uses to make stuff. He's been doing that for a while. And so like having this, he did, he got really, when he got into Animal Crossing, he did the same thing where he was like using the pattern editor to like make lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of designs. And this is, this game lets you do that more than any game. I've like, from a UGC perspective, like it's insane how much is available to you just in the game without you having to like download some third-party app that you like make the stuff on your computer and import. Like, the game lets you make anything.

• 18:21Russ Frushtick?

  Just the Me Creator alone, the idea that I could make Misty's hair and they had the ponytail and you could decide which side of her head the ponytail was on is like a representative of just how fucking in-depth you can get with this if you really want to.

• 18:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 18:38Russ Frushtick?

  Which is great.

• 18:38Griffin McElroy?

  It's great. If you like doing that, if you like making characters in The Sims, if you like making, if you like having sort of that creative exercise of like, "How can I take this real-world person or this character from a movie or a game or whatever?" And using these, this toolset, like realize them in the game. Cause I have yet to have an idea that I haven't been able to at least like roughly get in there. I got Skimble Shank's the Railway Cat and he looks like really, really good. He looks amazing. He's got a tiger onesie that he wears. He looks perfect. He looks so good.

• 19:14Griffin McElroy?

  So like, that challenge to me is really compelling. It's really great. And you are also, there's like progression hooks in the game of like, as you help people out, you get this like energy that you use to charge up this fountain at the center of your town. And as that fountain levels up, it gives you more options of like, "Okay, now you can do that sort of painting and you can make..." Your own clothes now, or okay, now you've unlocked this suite of like weird perks that you can give your, your me's like different walking styles or, you know, stuff, stuff like that.

• 19:46Russ Frushtick?

  They get new catchphrases, things like that.

• 19:47Griffin McElroy?

  And so like the progression hooks in the game are all kind of tied back into like, it's pretty fun to make these guys. And then on top of that, the, the cutscenes and like random shit that they will get into is, is, is just, it's really hysterical. It's really, really, truly funny. The only thing that's been missing is the 3DS version sort of like highlight was a concert hall where you could go and you could write the lyrics to a song. And then the me's would sing the song to like a pre-made melody. And like, I feel like 99 out of 100 sort of clips that ever came out from that game where people sort of sharing their songs. I haven't found that yet. Maybe it's in the game. I don't know.

• 20:25Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 20:26Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know. You see a lot of repeated scenes. I kind of skip now whenever like two me's meet each other and they have like a conversation topic that they come out and discuss, like those kind of always play out the same. Or like, oh, one of these bees fell down and I'm gonna drag, you know, uh, scamble shanks over there to help him out. And I can pretty safely skip that cutscene because it's always the same. But sometimes it'll be like a little sitcom cutscene of them sitting at a diner and, uh, you know, talking, talking about just random bullshit. And I don't know, it's, it's really, really funny. This game is truly.

• 20:56Russ Frushtick?

  Or just having like weird fucking dreams.

• 20:58Griffin McElroy?

  Or having weird dreams that you have to go in and kind of like witness, and then you get a prize from their dream, like.

• 21:03Russ Frushtick?

  Such a fucking weird game.

• 21:04Griffin McElroy?

  It's such a weird, unique, amazing sort of thing. And I, I, I truly think if it had more kind of community connection, you know, not even just baked in, like even if there was a website that a little big planet had like a, a website that you could go to, to like save levels on the website and then they would be like in your game. Next time you put like something, man, something. So I can share like the crazy stuff I've made and find like infinite pools. I feel like this game would be monstrous. This game would be enormous.

• 21:39Russ Frushtick?

  If it wasn't Nintendo, I think you'd be seeing clips fucking non-stop. The fact that Nintendo put all these barriers up, uh, for, I kind of guess obvious reasons because it is Nintendo. But if it was literally any other company, you'd be seeing just like fucking buck wild, uh, clips of people doing crazy ass shit. I don't think it's the game that in the way that Animal Crossing people play for 200 hours.

• 22:02Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 22:02Russ Frushtick?

  Which I think is fine.

• 22:03Griffin McElroy?

  I think there are some people who will play. There are people who are still playing the original 3DS Tomodatchi. Like, there are people, this game has a huge dedicated fanbase, and I get that. But I do think it's not going to have the sort of broader appeal that Animal Crossing had.

• 22:17Russ Frushtick?

  I like having an alternative. Like, it's nice to have something that's very, very different.

• 22:21Griffin McElroy?

  It also, it did not come out during the global pandemic. So it does have that kind of like, working against it.

• 22:27Russ Frushtick?

  Well, you know, the globe's not doing great now either.

• 22:29Griffin McElroy?

  That's a good point, Russ. Thank you so much for the week.

• 22:32Russ Frushtick?

  Happy to bring it up.

• 22:33Griffin McElroy?

  On global affairs.

• 22:34Russ Frushtick?

  Happy to bring it up.

• 22:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, weird fucking game, but I am delighted by it. And it has been a smash hit in this house.

• 22:42Russ Frushtick?

  Yep.

• 22:43Griffin McElroy?

  So, surprisingly, surprisingly great kids game, if you have a sort of like, I don't know, artistically inclined gamer kiddo in your house.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Cool. Well, that sounds like a lot of fun, guys. Give it a whirl. I'm happy to see a little bit more of a steady flow of releases on the Switch, too.

• 22:59Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, weird ones, but like.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, hey, good.

• 23:02Griffin McElroy?

  Something, something to play.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  They should be doing something weird. It's Nintendo, right? If they're not doing weird stuff, who is?

• 23:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, true.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Nice. They got the internet.

• 23:12Griffin McElroy?

  We'll be cool.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  We'll be cool. Got on to it. There's a world of information and connection out there just waiting for you, Nintendo. Connect with the World Wide Web today. Let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back and talk about the amazing adventures of Griffin McElroy.

• 23:30Russ Frushtick?

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• 24:14Russ Frushtick?

  into one iconic machine. Visit Alienware.com/15 today.

• 24:22Russ 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,

• 25:06Russ Frushtick?

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• 25:44Russ Frushtick?

  Griffin, you went to my Shangri-La. I have not been there yet.

• 25:48Griffin McElroy?

  You have not? Wow, okay. Yeah, I think I'm the only one of the three of us who has been to Super Nintendo World in Orlando, Florida, part of the Epic Universe.

• 25:57Russ Frushtick?

  I don't like that.

• 25:58Griffin McElroy?

  You don't like it's part of-

• 25:59Russ Frushtick?

  Just the branding. I don't know.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  They have, this is a, I feel like this is a problem that Universal has always struggled with. They have three different parks there, but they don't have the guts to theme any of them. So it's all epic, wonderful universe of adventure of islands of yada, yada.

• 26:15Russ Frushtick?

  Might as well be nothing.

• 26:16Griffin McElroy?

  Pick a lane. It's also strange that when you go to Universal Studios or you go to Islands of Adventure, those have basically the same entrance right off the like city walk, right? And it splits off and it's like, well, today I'm doing this one or I'm doing this one. And there's like the Hogwarts train connects like the two different, like Harry Potter parts of those two parts. Like those two parks are very much a set. And there are like bundled tickets of like, okay, I'm going to do both of these today. And then Epic Universe is like- Way far away.

• 26:47Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, okay.

• 26:47Griffin McElroy?

  It's like way, it's, I think, four, four miles away, like, longer than a, you know, a train could, could sort of run, I think, between them. It's like a, a pretty big gap. So it's not like you have that bundled sort of prospect when you, when you go to Epic Universe. It's, it's, it's sort of on its own.

• 27:05Russ Frushtick?

  Epic Universe includes, in addition to the Nintendo thing, what else?

• 27:09Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, so it has a few main, uh, I think, five islands. The, the middle one that kind of is the hub world is celestial something, uh, and it's like, I forget the name of it. It's not great branding, but it's sort of like a, a sort of spacey, uh, lightly spacey kind of vibe that they're going for. Lot of big Bellagio fountains and a huge hotel that you can stay on, uh, like, right on the park, like, right on the premises. Uh, and so off of that, you have a sort of like spoken hub system where that's the main, uh, the main part of the park. And it has a few rides. Crazy fucking coaster in that one, the Stardust Racers, uh, which there was like no line for and absolutely rocked my shit.

• 27:53Griffin McElroy?

  Absolutely crazy. So a revival of the Dueling Dragons from Islands of Adventure that they shut down. They had the two trains that would go at the same time. So you're like going through a tunnel and like you'll be lagging behind the other train and then you'll fucking boost forward to like shoot. It's tight. It's good as hell, that ride.

• 28:09Russ Frushtick?

  Cool.

• 28:09Griffin McElroy?

  Um, so then there's a Super Nintendo World, which I'll, I'll break down more of. Uh, there is a, a Dark Universe, which is like classic monster movie.

• 28:19Russ Frushtick?

  Frankenstein and Mummy and stuff.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Uh, I got enough, sorry, I got enough of the Dark Universe over here, thanks.

• 28:25Griffin McElroy?

  What do you mean? Oh, another global up? Okay, cool. Yeah, for sure. Um, so that, there's like a coaster there and there's like a immersive cinematic ride there. There is a Harry Potter, uh, Battle of the Ministry, like a Ministry of Magic and it's set in like old France.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Three different parks. These are three different parks that just all happen to have a Harry Potter area that makes sense thematically because they're all distinct lands that, you know, that are very distinct parks.

• 28:55Griffin McElroy?

  Right. Exactly. And then there is a, uh, how to train your dragon land. Uh, we did not, we spent almost our whole time in Super Nintendo World. We didn't do a ton of other stuff in the other parts of the park. Um, and that is because Super Nintendo World beats ass. It's so cool. It's pretty tight, pretty small. They have done a really good job of kind of walling it off. You go up in a big green warp pipe escalator and then you let out and you're inside Peach's castle. And then you step out and it's just like, everything you can see is Nintendo shit. Everything you can see is, is mostly Mario stuff. Uh, and then there's like a, a path that you follow. And now you're in Donkey Kong country. Those are the two kind of main parts of the Super Nintendo world.

• 29:35Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, and it's amazing. It's incredibly, uh, it's incredibly immersive. It's so, so cool. Uh, I talked about this a little bit, I think on Wonderful of like, I've been going to parks for a while. We go to Disney, uh, you know, fairly routinely for like the kids' spring break. They love it. And I enjoy Disney World a lot. Like I think it is from a infrastructural, like design perspective, like just cool to be in a place that is so immersed. So like intentional, where so many different things have been kind of decided and optimized and all that. But I don't like have a ton of affection for a lot of the stuff there.

• 30:10Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 30:10Griffin McElroy?

  Super Nintendo World, like I have a ton of affection for everything there and so does Henry. Uh, even Rachel, uh, just the three of us went because there wasn't a ton of like little kids rides at Epic Universe. Um, so Gus stayed behind with some friends to do like an extra Epcot day. Uh, but like, there's so much stuff there that-

• 30:27Russ Frushtick?

  A man of taste and distinction. Yeah.

• 30:29Griffin McElroy?

  Congratulations Gus. Uh, there's so much stuff there that is like really exciting because like I've been playing these games my whole life and I have a, a ton of affection for them. And that is like, I don't know, it adds a certain something. It makes me jealous of people who are like wicked into Disney movies and-

• 30:46Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Griffin McElroy?

  Characters and, and all that. Cause I imagine that brings a whole other heat to the equation. Cause I was definitely sort of feeling it.

• 30:51Russ Frushtick?

  That's sort of how I've always felt about Disney is like- Yeah, good job. Like, they did a good job, but like, I don't give a fuck about Mickey.

• 30:58Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's a cool part.

• 30:59Russ Frushtick?

  He can live or die. I really don't care.

• 31:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, right. I don't, I don't. We're changing this ride, and now it's not this character anymore. It's this character. Okay, does it still go up and down? Like?

• 31:07Russ Frushtick?

  It does make it harder for me to make fun of Disney adults, because I sense that I would have that same.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  They're the worst.

• 31:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Russ Frushtick?

  Over.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Listen, we can all make fun of Disney adults.

• 31:19Griffin McElroy?

  So, Super Nintendo World, like, you walk in, and it's, you're like, in the Mushroom Kingdom, and it, just everywhere you look, there's fucking thwamps and yochis and pipes and just like, it's, it's, it's really, really, really immersive. That's really cool. It's a bunch of shops that are all kinda selling sort of the same stuff.

• 31:36Russ Frushtick?

  How much of it is like, you can only get this here stuff versus like, stuff you could just buy online?

• 31:41Griffin McElroy?

  Uh.

• 31:42Russ Frushtick?

  In the shops?

• 31:42Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know. I haven't really done a ton of, uh, shop, shopping around for, for this stuff, so, so I'm not sure where else it is available. Obviously, like-

• 31:48Russ Frushtick?

  They don't have the equivalent of like, the Star Wars make-your-own-light saber thing?

• 31:53Griffin McElroy?

  No, no, not, nothing, nothing like that that I saw. There is a, uh, I mean, the, the food, I think, is where you kinda get a lot of that. Um, there was, the big thing is in Donkey Kong Country World, you can get this insane, like, banana ice cream float with like, a huge waffle bowl kind of like, emerging from it. It looks insane. And, um, I all thought about getting it. You can get it with like, a special barrel mug that is like, commemorative, but it was also like, seventeen dollars. It was like, I'm not gonna, it's, I don't want ice cream. It's ten in the morning.

• 32:25Griffin McElroy?

  So like, I don't know. The immersion is great, the, the food, I didn't really dip into, um, but the rides. So there's three rides in the Super Nintendo World. And again, it's like, compact. It's tiny. This is one part of Epic Universe, and it is layered. There's like, a lot of stairs. There's like, a lot of, there's elevators for, you know, uh, a- accessibility purposes, but like, it's really dense. And we got there basically right at opening, and it wasn't too crazy, but I imagine, like, it gets really, really wild.

• 32:53Russ Frushtick?

  When you were leaving, was it like, a fucking zoo?

• 32:55Griffin McElroy?

  It was getting worse, yeah. As we were, we left after a few hours in there, and it was, it was becoming a bit uncomfortable.

• 33:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Griffin McElroy?

  They have a system that is basically like, magic band- There's like eight or nine different designs and they have sort of Mario iconography on them.

• 33:10Russ Frushtick?

  Tell people what a magic band is.

• 33:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, so it's a bracelet that you wear that has like a NFC chip, I'm assuming in it that you can use to interact with things. In Disney World, you use it to like get on rides or open up your hotel room. Here it is like, oh, there's a bunch of music blocks. One of them's lit up, I'm gonna punch it and then the band will like detect that and set it off. And then, oh, the next music block is lit up and then, oh, it's doing like a little pattern. And then you finish it and it was like, oh, that pattern was the Mario theme song and it plays and you get on the app. There's like an app and it'll be like, you solved the, you know, piano block puzzle and here you got 50 coins for that. Like there's some pretty cool.

• 33:47Russ Frushtick?

  And then you go to the store to try to trade in the coins and they're like, go fuck yourself.

• 33:51Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know that there's any sort of real life implications for the coins, but like, again, Henry wanted to do all that stuff.

• 33:57Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, no, that's dope.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  That's great. That's also the kind of stuff that I do feel like Disney has not done as much of lately is having like areas that are interactive. Like you look at Pandora is a good example of there's like stuff to do there that isn't just getting on a ride and going to do things. More and more, I think they've tried to funnel people into activities that make profits versus like just kind of experiences.

• 34:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, or in-app sort of focused things or some integration of that. Like Disney came out with a new magic band that has like Bluetooth functionality. So it can connect with these different kind of like app mini games and stuff and then hasn't done a ton with it like since then.

• 34:38Griffin McElroy?

  So this was, this was cool. It only works in the Mario park. These things are not in any of the other things and.

• 34:43Russ Frushtick?

  I have heard that if you have multiple kids, it's not a good idea to only get one band.

• 34:48Griffin McElroy?

  Well, yeah, of course not. That's insane.

• 34:52Griffin McElroy?

  So like that stuff, that stuff is very neat. And then there's like a little mini game on the phone that, that Henry got into. There's three rides. Okay. So it's because it's small. It's not a huge, it's not a huge footprint this place has three rides. One Yoshi's Adventure is a little baby Yoshis. They go real, real slow through a little thing and it's, you have to climb up a tree to get up to these guys. And it's, you're hearing the Yoshis that.

• 35:16Griffin McElroy?

  The whole like it's great. It's for the little kids. It's for the little guys.

• 35:18Russ Frushtick?

  And me.

• 35:19Griffin McElroy?

  There's a and Russ. There's a little interactivity where like as you go through the course or whatever, there's tiny, uh, multi-colored eggs and you have buttons on the inside of your Yoshi cart that you can press when you see one of them. And then at the end, like Captain Toad comes out and he's like, you got the golden egg because you've found all the little it's for it's a little. It's an easy game for babies, but like

• 35:37Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 35:37Griffin McElroy?

  It's cool. It's great. Uh, the other two rides are Mario Kart, which was sort of one of the like the flagship ride when it first, when the park opened. Um, and this is a, uh, what's the word for like a, you're in a car that's like being controlled by a computer through a course à la Mickey Minnie's Runaway Railway or whatever like

• 36:00Russ Frushtick?

  Justin, this is why we keep you here.

• 36:01Griffin McElroy?

  Ratatouille is one of these. It's like a, it's like a car with a brain and it follows the same. What's it?

• 36:08Russ Frushtick?

  An Omni mover?

• 36:08Griffin McElroy?

  Omni mover. Thank you. Uh, you're in an Omni mover and you're going through like all these sort of like iconic Mario Kart tracks, but you are also wearing a, uh, when you walk in, you get a Mario Kart sort of visor that has a magnetic strip on it. And then when you get in your cart, there's like a lens that pops in and covers like your whole face that like attaches to that magnet. And now it's an AR ride, right?

• 36:30Russ Frushtick?

  Crazy.

• 36:31Griffin McElroy?

  So, uh, on the steering wheel, you'll see like, as you're going through the track, flashes of like arrows pointing left or right. And it's sort of a quick time event of like, if you steer in that direction, quick enough, you get some coins, uh, for, for your score for that ride. Uh, but the other thing is you'll see other racers through the lens. Uh, and if you look at a bad guy racer, you don't want to shoot the good guy racers, but if you hit, you know, uh, Iggy or whatever, uh, you look at them, you press the triggers on the wheel and a shell shoots out, uh, in the direction that you're looking. If you hit them, you get coins. And so also like elements of the ride are constantly like appearing on the visor in the AR space with some sort of like integration in the real

• 37:15Griffin McElroy?

  world sort of track that you're on. For instance, at one point Bowser shows up and he uses the squid ink, uh, you know, power up.

• 37:23Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 37:23Griffin McElroy?

  Which in the game, you know, covers Your screen in black ink and you can't see for a second on the ride that happens and your screen starts to get covered with black ink as all the lights in the track around you go completely pitch black. So like it's stuff like that that is constant. When you do Rainbow Road, they turn on a huge fan that's like blowing against you. And you see the Rainbow Road track in AR space going by really, really, really fast. And like, yeah, it feels pretty fucking cool. I thought it was the coolest shit ever. I thought it was the coolest sort of like interactive game ride, which is sort of a burgeoning genre that I'd ever been on.

• 37:56Russ Frushtick?

  I think I've only done the Toy Story one.

• 37:59Griffin McElroy?

  They updated that, by the way. It just opened a couple of weeks ago and it's way better. You can take the guns out of the thing and it's

• 38:04Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, fuck, yeah.

• 38:06Griffin McElroy?

  Way, way better. But this is still way cooler than that because it's like blending all this different really bleeding edge tech. And I thought it worked really, really well.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  It's also Mario who is better than Buzz Lightyear.

• 38:17Griffin McElroy?

  Right, exactly. It's Mario.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  It's like, and they're both better than Paw Patrol. Like, I don't even need to.

• 38:23Griffin McElroy?

  Hearing the Mario Kart music also like while you're doing this shit, like it's, it works really well. For what it is worth, Rachel did not care for that ride because it was extremely overwhelmed. Like you're having to

• 38:34Russ Frushtick?

  That's what it sounded like to me. I was like, my son would be in a horror. It's like the fucking ride in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

• 38:40Griffin McElroy?

  It would be really, really tough. I, I, I got super competitive about it. I was like paying attention to like the tutorial, like, yes, yes. And I, I thought it was the coolest shit ever.

• 38:50Russ Frushtick?

  Are you sitting next to your companions?

• 38:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. So a cart has four sort of people in it because again, when you turn a wheel, you're not controlling how the car moves. You have no control. It's like, are you matching which way it's going, you know, hitting these cars?

• 39:01Russ Frushtick?

  And everyone has a wheel.

• 39:02Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yes, but you're scored individually. It's not like a per cart score. That ride rules. The other one is a coaster and it's DK's Minecart Madness, which is modeled after a minecart level in Donkey Kong Country.

• 39:14Russ Frushtick?

  One of the go fuck yourself levels.

• 39:16Griffin McElroy?

  One of the go, one of the many go fuck yourself levels. And it is set in this sort of like, I don't know, Aztec ruin type place with a minecart running through it. The big thing with this ride, it's not too crazy. It's not doing inversions or loops or anything like that. It does go fairly fast. But the big thing with the ride is that there's, you know, a thick rail that the the cart that you are in is attached to. But that is descended. It is lower than a minecart track that looks like what your minecart is on because it's higher up. They have hidden the actual rail that the ride takes you on and put this minecart track on top of that.

• 39:57Griffin McElroy?

  So the effect of which is that they can make the minecart track look like it's broken and arcing upward. And then when you hit that, it takes you upward and then lands you with like a rattle so that it's very, very, very cool. It broke down a couple of times while we were waiting in line.

• 40:15Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, not narratively or?

• 40:17Griffin McElroy?

  No, not narratively. Like, no, it just but maybe they there is if you're on it, they're like, oh, you died. You pressed the brown button and you hit a B and you died. But waiting in line, it was like those lousy apes have stolen the golden banana or some bullshit.

• 40:31Russ Frushtick?

  Do you just leave in that scenario?

• 40:33Griffin McElroy?

  No, you stick around and wait. From what I understand, it breaks frequently because this like dual track sort of

• 40:39Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 40:40Griffin McElroy?

  thing is a bit temperamental because the cart is on a long arm connecting it to that bottom track. But we stuck around for it and I'm glad we did because it was like a highlight of the of the day. And it's also like it's that sweet spot for for, you know, my kids where like it's not too scary. It's not too crazy. It's not Stardust Racers. It's not separating your soul from your body.

• 41:01Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Griffin McElroy?

  It's just like a fun fast coaster with like a gimmick that is like really, really neat. I would go to a whole park that is just this. I would go to a whole park that is just this and it's wild to me that there is. I don't know, not that like.

• 41:13Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, they just started, right? Like, what is it? Four years in at this point? Something like?

• 41:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, that's true. But also the Mario movies are going to make a trillion, billion, zillion dollars. So like it. It it seems to me like the it is always the busiest part of the park from what I understand, generally speaking. The other big attractions can, you know, rack up some monster lines, but.

• 41:33Russ Frushtick?

  Is that the Dark Universe?

• 41:34Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I think like, yeah, the the How to Train Your Dragon stuff has a has a couple like coasters that that get pretty popular throughout the day. But if there was like a place that had like a Star Fox Space Island and like an Animal Crossing Island and like it just seems like. It would be such a huge smash hit. So like I, I, it feels pretty certain they're going to keep doing stuff like this. I don't know how Epic Universe is doing in general. And to be fair, some of the other stuff we did at Epic Universe was like, eh, kinda so-so. And, and so like, I spent most of the day wishing like, I just wish the Nintendo part was bigger because they've really, really done something very cool here.

• 42:11Russ Frushtick?

  What's the waiting like for the line, for their rides?

• 42:14Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, it was not too bad.

• 42:17Russ Frushtick?

  Are you doing the like scheduled waiting thing?

• 42:19Griffin McElroy?

  We got there, we got there right at open. So like, we did the Donkey Kong ride and it was, uh, that was probably the longest way.

• 42:26Russ Frushtick?

  Rope drop? Is that what they call it?

• 42:27Griffin McElroy?

  Rope drop. Yeah, but except they, they let people who stay in that hotel in like an hour earlier. Uh, so like already there was, there was quite a wait for the, the, uh, Donkey Kong ride, but.

• 42:38Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 42:38Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, it, the walk-ups are like next level cool, like really, really, really cool. Um, so it didn't, didn't seem to, you know, bother us too much.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Sounds like a wasted day overall, Griff. I'm sorry you didn't head over to the Magic Kingdom, Epcot.

• 42:53Griffin McElroy?

  We did all that shit too. We did all that shit too, but, um, it's, I don't know, it's.

• 42:57Russ Frushtick?

  What was, what was the best merch you bought at the Nintendo World?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, they have.

• 43:01Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I got a, I got a heat activated Donkey Kong country tank top that when you get it in direct sunlight, bananas appear on it and it makes my guns look fucking huge.

• 43:10Russ Frushtick?

  Nice.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 43:12Griffin McElroy?

  So that's cool. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it's great. I don't know that Epic Universe is worth the price of admission the whole way, but I think they're going to keep adding to Nintendo World stuff.

• 43:21Russ Frushtick?

  Do, do we know if the California one is just like the exact same thing?

• 43:24Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know. I don't know. Um.

• 43:26Russ Frushtick?

  I'm sure Plant is our expert that he is. Cool. That's exciting. I, it is extremely on my list. I'm going to have to wait until my son's a bit older.

• 43:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Russ Frushtick?

  Most of that sounds like it would be really bad for him, but it would be great for me. So I'll just stick him on a pipe or something and then.

• 43:41Griffin McElroy?

  Henry's nine and it really split the uprights. It was like, that was perfect.

• 43:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Cool. Any honorable mentions you guys wanted to talk about? I mean, I've been watching Survivor 50. I don't know about you guys.

• 43:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  It's good if he.

• 43:54Russ Frushtick?

  Fiery.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Survivor fifty is like the most sort of like recursive recommendation you could make because if you know Survivor fifty is on, you probably are watching Survivor fifty. You know what I mean?

• 44:04Russ Frushtick?

  Like, yeah, to some extent, I mean, I don't know. I don't part. Some of this is like they're referencing shit that happened twenty five years ago, and I have no. I mean, I might have watched those seasons, but I have no recollection.

• 44:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Russ Frushtick?

  So even like five seasons ago, I don't recognize these people. They go out of my brain the second the season ends. So the fact that I don't necessarily know their relationships, it hasn't been a huge problem.

• 44:26Griffin McElroy?

  Because I've watched every season. I've watched every season save for like a handful in like the thirties era.

• 44:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 44:34Griffin McElroy?

  And even I am like, I don't remember. I don't. They were not in one of the seasons we skipped, and I do not remember who that is.

• 44:40Russ Frushtick?

  It's just a lot of people that are like very plugged into strategy. And that's kind of why I think it's very entertaining is because normally there's always like three or four assholes that have no fucking idea what they're doing.

• 44:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 44:52Russ Frushtick?

  And they're just sort of like bumbling along until the end.

• 44:55Griffin McElroy?

  I bristle at the hands of the fans concede of the entire season where they did these votes like, should there be idols? Should there be X, Y, or Z? And now you'll be watching an episode and be like, guess what, motherfuckers, we're voting three people off this time because the fans wanted a twist. And it's like, did the fans want that? Did the fans want you to?

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Fans voted on?

• 45:15Griffin McElroy?

  Did the fans want you to rap, Jeff?

• 45:17Speaker 02

  I was not consulted on these. Like, I don't know when the fans were asked about some of this.

• 45:21Russ Frushtick?

  That, yeah, it needs to be a bigger twist than more people getting voted off. Like Jeff needs to be in the game. Like, that's what I was waiting for. But it's been fun to watch, certainly.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  My other, um, first of all, one quick note. Last episode, Sydney did use the phrase, cultural appropriation, which is extremely, really powerful. Secondly, I love and celebrate the idea of the Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol. It's fun to say and fun to hear.

• 45:50Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  They had to have some other celebrities making idols. It's crazy.

• 45:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  I bet Billie Eilish is furious. Like, she probably thought there was like twenty celebrities who are all doing their unique spit. Instead, it's just a whole season of people saying Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol, and they have to say all four words constantly.

• 46:09Griffin McElroy?

  I was wondering if the other players, when Zac Brown came into Spearfish for 30 uninterrupted minutes.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Crazy. I've never fast forwarded Survivor in my life. I did for that. I'm not gonna watch Zac Brown fucking Spearfish.

• 46:21Griffin McElroy?

  You're out of your goddamn mind. I'm not gonna watch him perform two entire songs to an ambivalent Mike White. Are you out of your mind? No fucking way. But you know, they were, they were scouring that beach, you know, after Zac Brown left, like, you know, he hid the Zac Brown, you know, Zoom necklace.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  It's the Zac Brown community idol. It's called it. It, everybody works together.

• 46:45Griffin McElroy?

  It's beautiful. It's so, so beautiful. It's, it's outrageous TV.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I wanted to give a very quick update on the handheld retro gaming market because it is truly buck wild. I'm not following it as closely as I did when I had, had two functioning hands. Uh, but it, it is, uh, just a quick update.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Because of the shifting prices of the supply chain and RAM and what have you, it's very much a moving target right now for these devices. To wit, there are a lot of devices that, the, the way these were set up for a while is that they're moving so fast is you would preorder them. Like before they were even manufactured and then soon as they were made, they would ship them to you. We are now in this window where a lot of these devices were pre-orders at a certain price. RAM absolutely shit the bed and now nobody knows quite what to do because it's like, well, we don't, we're definitely not gonna eat. You know, we're not gonna pay this expensive price for RAM, but you still want this thing. You already gave us your preorder money. So we're gonna need some more money. Uh, it was happening.

• 47:55Griffin McElroy?

  So it'll be like $200. You come in, you preorder for $200. Oh, it'll be out in six months or whatever it is. And then they have to email you again and be like, actually it's $300.

• 48:05Russ Frushtick?

  And if you say you don't want that, what happens?

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Um, here is a, uh, here's a, a quick example of, of how things are going over here from, from last month. So I N E O is one of the big players in the space. They, they made this thing called the Pocket S Mini. It's a, uh, another small handheld, had a qual, uh, Snapdragon Gen two in it, whatever. And the important thing here is it was advertised with a 600, 6,000 milliamp battery. And then it shipped with a 4,700 milliamp battery that they said was an error in the manufacturing process. They meant, they meant to put a different battery in and they put this battery in. Hey, as somebody who's, first of all, let me just say this.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  As somebody who's seen a lot of videos of batteries exploding in devices, let's all be real careful about batteries. That would be my first request.

• 48:59Russ Frushtick?

  Good tip.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  If you are affected by this, they are going to, to send you a, another handheld, the, the Pocket Air Mini, which is a $90 Android handheld that's less powerful. And to say they're sorry, they're going to send you another hand.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Another quick example for you is the Pocket Vert that is a handheld that has no thumbstick, except the thumbstick is an imaginary. Uh, thumbs, it's like a tactile thumbstick hidden within the face of the device.

• 49:32Russ Frushtick?

  Got it.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  So you have four face buttons, a D-pad and like a analog.

• 49:36Russ Frushtick?

  Touchpad, basically.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Touch, touchpad basically on the front. It was revealed in July 2025. And then, uh, pre-orders started in December of 2025. Okay. I pre-ordered one, it showed up. And, uh, within a week of it showing up, it has now been discontinued. And so the vert is no longer available for sale. They're selling the rest of it and it's gone. There was another one. The Pocket S Mini, that device from, uh, uh, another in that same line of, from I N E O. Also similarly discontinued before it started shipping.

• 50:11Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, my God.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, because of how.

• 50:13Russ Frushtick?

  Cause all these companies just can't. afford to make these things anymore. It's like

• 50:17Speaker 02

  They can't afford it. They can't

• 50:18Russ Frushtick?

  Whatever money we got so far.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  They not only can they not afford to make these things. I think the bigger problem is they can't plan.

• 50:25Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Because they don't know. So it's the whole thing is kind of in a weird standstill right now.

• 50:32Griffin McElroy?

  Everyone's having problems with fulfillment. Like I MEO has a pretty bad reputation for just not shipping their pre order. Like taking forever to actually fulfill these things. But even like I had pre ordered a retroid pocket six, which is usually pretty ironclad. Like you get those out pretty quick. I was part of the second batch of pre orders, which were supposed to start beginning of March and I have not gotten a single goddamn email. That's like, we're working on like nothing, complete radio silence. So it's, it's, it's really, really widespread and it's, it's really just kind of crashed the, the market. It feels like a lot of the people who are most enthusiastic about this stuff are starting to be like, well, if we can't fucking get it,

• 51:14Griffin McElroy?

  like we can't guarantee we'll get the thing. What are we doing here?

• 51:18Russ Frushtick?

  You're also seeing like the big handhelds, like the Logitech, whatever it is, the like big, basically Windows machine handhelds, dramatically increasing prices by like $500.

• 51:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 51:30Russ Frushtick?

  Like I think one of them went up to $2,200 for a PC handle. Like just tell people you don't want, you don't want to sell this thing anymore. You, that's all you need to do. You just tell people.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  This is my, this is my last little anecdote about this space and why I'm a lot more skittish about it. And I wanted, I wanted to bring this up mainly because I was such a big cheerleader for, for this stuff and I'm trying to pledge a little caution here. There's a guy on YouTube. I watch his videos about this space and his name is Zee Reviews. And I, he had one about how he got a pocket fit in the mail and he, for the life of him, could not remember pre ordering a pocket fit and it just kind of showed up. And I watched that video and thought, dude, that is really, really embarrassing. And I go upstairs.

• 52:16Russ Frushtick?

  Oh no.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  I get an email that says the shipping status of my pocket fit has changed. This was on April 20th. Guys, I apparently pre-ordered this thing on October 29th of 2025.

• 52:35Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, my God.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Like, when I was very much deep into this space and it was at a very, very low price.

• 52:41Griffin McElroy?

  This is the conquer, conquer, right?

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a conquer pocket fit.

• 52:44Griffin McElroy?

  Price conscious, like.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  The whole thing is, yeah, that was the whole bit. It's like, wow, I can't believe they can afford to do this so cheaply. And then they didn't for a lot of months. They were like, yeah, us neither. I don't know, man. So it is, I would be nervous about buying stuff that isn't physically extant.

• 53:04Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  And like, you know, maybe within your hemisphere.

• 53:08Griffin McElroy?

  You gotta think this is gonna slow down the, the space, like in, in terms of announcements, right?

• 53:13Russ Frushtick?

  It is, right? It's gotta be slower. Like, there's no, they're not announcing nearly as much as they used to.

• 53:18Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know what this means for good rust. I'm not as plugged in as I once was. Maybe it feels like the RG sort of series of, you know, handhelds has been slowing its roll. And they're not announcing a new one every four days.

• 53:28Russ Frushtick?

  Ambernic did just announce some like goofy ass one by one flip up screen nonsense. So they are still doing it.

• 53:35Griffin McElroy?

  They're still out there doing the dance.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Everybody, yeah, yeah. But there was the Ambernic, the Vita was funny. There was the Ambernic RG Vita that looks exactly like a Vita and it can't play Vita games. So they, they then literally the same month, they released the Ambernic RG Vita Pro. That still doesn't play Vita games very well. Well, part of that is video emulation sucks. It's really hard and complicated and bad. I mean, I, not, I mean.

• 54:08Griffin McElroy?

  People have figured it out mainly. But it's all integrated. Bygavida is usually like the best solution is Bygavida. It's integrated into the live area sort of shit. That was the core UI of the, of the, so like there's all these insane licenses that you have to do and emulations of the. It's kind of like each game's its own pocket application. It's like its own instance. It's bizarre. It's not just like an image. I don't know. I don't understand.

• 54:31Russ Frushtick?

  I, I am, here's my, well, here's where I'm at in that space right now is I am fucking thrilled that I have devices and you can buy these devices right now. They're available.

• 54:39Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 54:40Russ Frushtick?

  I have devices that can very, very easily handle anything PS1 and earlier without even batting an eyelash.

• 54:47Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 54:48Russ Frushtick?

  And they're tiny and they go in my pocket. And when I want to play something, I can play something. The, I think the, the age of like, yeah, getting these devices and they can run GameCube and PS2 and blah, blah, blah. And it's a reasonable price. I don't know if it's permanently come to an end, but certainly for the foreseeable future, it's come to an end. And I'm fine with that, but I realize a lot of people want to do a lot more with these devices than I do. So I don't know.

• 55:12Griffin McElroy?

  Oh yeah. It's a, it's a bummer. It's a huge bummer. Um.

• 55:16Russ Frushtick?

  Yep.

• 55:17Griffin McElroy?

  I will tell you what's not a huge bummer though, and that's the new season of Taskmaster.

• 55:21Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yes.

• 55:22Griffin McElroy?

  Last week?

• 55:23Russ Frushtick?

  We didn't actually.

• 55:24Griffin McElroy?

  Okay. Uh, new season of Taskmaster. Got some really, really funny folks, uh, on it. A couple of folks who were on Last One Laughing UK, um, the past couple of seasons of that. Uh, and Kumail Nanjiani is on it.

• 55:38Russ Frushtick?

  And the other known person is Armando Iannucci, who did, uh, Veep and, uh,

• 55:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 55:42Russ Frushtick?

  and, and, uh, all sorts of stuff. So.

• 55:45Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, really, it's a really, really funny cast and, uh, I don't know. I, I sort of am spotty in, in watching that show, but if I get like into a season, I will, I will stick with it to the end. And the first episode of this one is, is, is really, really hysterically funny. Uh, there's only two out. They release new ones, I think every Thursday. Um, but it's a, if you've, if you've been lapsed, uh, like me for, you know, a little bit, it's a good time to hop back on because this season fucking rules so far.

• 56:17Russ Frushtick?

  I like the. The moment where the other two comedians first meet Kumail.

• 56:23Griffin McElroy?

  And they're like.

• 56:23Russ Frushtick?

  He leaves the room and they're like, oh my God, he's so fucking famous.

• 56:26Griffin McElroy?

  It's really hysterical. It's really, really funny.

• 56:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 56:29Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I think this is only, they, they have not had a ton of, you know, American comedians on the show. Last, I don't know if it was last season or the season before last, they had Jason Mantzoukas.

• 56:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 56:41Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, and, and now they got Kumail and.

• 56:43Russ Frushtick?

  It does seem like it's going to continue as the show gets bigger and bigger, which it has been.

• 56:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 56:48Russ Frushtick?

  You're going to see more, at least one pretty known name outside of the England.

• 56:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Uh, you can watch it on YouTube. Just go to the Taskmaster YouTube channel. It's great.

• 56:56Russ Frushtick?

  Nice.

• 56:58Russ Frushtick?

  Okay. I think we did it. Uh, I'm going to recap the stuff we talked about because Chris Plan is not here. We talked about Tomodatchi Life, Living the Dream, which is on Nintendo Switch. Actually, it's, uh, works on Switch one as well as Switch two.

• 57:13Russ Frushtick?

  We also talked about Nintendo World, Super Nintendo World, uh, down in Florida. Griffin experienced that himself. We talked about Survivor season 50. We talked about Taskmaster, the new season, which you can watch on YouTube. Uh, we talked about handheld craziness going on in Justin's neck of the world. And, um, I think that's what we talked about.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  I miss Chris.

• 57:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 57:37Russ Frushtick?

  Me too. He'll be back.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Wasn't very good. I mean, it was okay. You tried, but it was like.

• 57:40Russ Frushtick?

  I tried the reading.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  It was like you felt it though, right?

• 57:43Griffin McElroy?

  It's a lot of reading.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Miss Chris.

• 57:47Russ Frushtick?

  By the way, uh, we have a new app, new, new content, new episode of Rusty's Up. Uh, we have a new bracket battles up for the month. We have another one coming, uh, first week of May, so keep an eye out for that, uh, over at patreon.com slash best, the besties. If you haven't joined yet, please join. You make the show possible, literally. This show wouldn't exist without you. So thank you so much for supporting us. Here's some new members that have recently joined. Uh, we have Brandon F. We have Brooks. We have Nick W. And we have Star Folk. Thank you so much for being Patreon members. Also, if you're just curious about it, you want to just make a free account, you can also do that and be a member. So that's a possibility as well. You won't get the bonus content, but that's okay. It's a way to dip a toe in.

• 58:29Russ Frushtick?

  Next week Vampire Crawlers, which I believe Justin was on your most anticipated list of 2026.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  I believe it was.

• 58:36Russ Frushtick?

  It was the card-based game using the franchise.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I'm feeling pretty good about One-Handed Operation.

• 58:43Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean, at the very least, it definitely works with a mouse. So there's that, but we'll see. So, big week, big stuff. It's all happening and I'm very excited about it.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  That's gonna do it for us for this week on The Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for The Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?