Herdling is Beautiful, But is it Fun?

This week, The Besties wrangle fantastical beasts in the new herding game, Herdling. It’s a beautiful throwback to the atmospheric games of the PS2 era. But your enjoyment will depend on your gaming preferences. In the back half, we open the listener mailbag, and Justin shares his thoughts on an alternate, more modifiable video game industry.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Before the recording began, before the pod, in the cold, cold, colder open, we were discussing Metal Gear Solid, for whatever reason. And we're talking about Hideyokojima and he and some words of wisdom and stuff. And I want to tell you guys the one thing he ever said to me. And it was, I hold, I really keep in my heart. Uh, we were at E3 and I saw Hideyokojima with a colleague of mine who knew him pretty well. They were like pals. So we go over and uh, he said he was going to see a movie. He was there as his translator and his translator said he was going to go see, they were gonna go see a movie. And, and I said, oh, cool. What are you seeing? And Hideyokojima looked at me and said, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. It was like, oh, cool. Terminator. Nice. Have fun.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  That's the only thing Hideyokojima ever said to me.

• 0:46Griffin McElroy?

  Awesome.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  So it's freaking, he broke the language barrier with the, the stay from Terminator. It kicked ass.

• 0:52Griffin McElroy?

  That's awesome. That's the universal language.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 0:55Griffin McElroy?

  The dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. It was awesome.

• 0:59Griffin McElroy?

  I feel like he probably gleaned a lot from what I assume was the most recent Terminator movie, which wasn't.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  Like honestly, dude, there's secretly been 80 of them. I don't know. Like I can't keep up, but it was one of, one of them was around.

• 1:13Griffin McElroy?

  I'm just saying, if you look at some of the stuff that guy has to say about machines and computers and machines or the future of computers and machines. It could all have started right there. You may have been there the most important day of his life.

• 1:26Russ Frushtick?

  Now he's all about tar. What does that say?

• 1:28Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, he saw tar.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  He's sticky. He saw tar. He saw tar. He saw tar.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  A little more of a language barrier there, but still, I think he basically got it.

• 1:39Griffin McElroy?

  Cate Blanchett turned in a great performance, but I'm all about that sticky, oily, nasty stuff.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  He walked down halfway through. He's like, this is not what I signed up for.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  This movie did not deliver.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Sorry. I need a second. I do want to start the show, but the.

• 2:03Griffin McElroy?

  The idea of him coming out of tar bummed out, yeah.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  And I know this is not a comedy forward podcast, but you guys have to understand it. The idea of Hideyokojima going in to see the film tar and then leaving halfway through, because no tar was contained therein is, is really powerful.

• 2:37Speaker 00

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

• 2:40Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:43Chris Plante?

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

• 2:46Russ Frushtick?

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

• 2:50Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club. Just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member. Now, as everyone knows, Griffin and I are members of the Marshall Thundering Herd, proud alumni. But today, we're thinking a little smaller.

• 3:08Griffin McElroy?

  From the ash, from the ashes we rise.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Rise, find glory. We are?

• 3:13Griffin McElroy?

  Marshall funerals in today. Thank you so much, Justin. I agree.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  But today, we're talking, thinking a little smaller with herdlings? What's a herdling?

• 3:22Chris Plante?

  Herdling is a video game about herding these mythical, fantastical creatures that kind of look like giant, I don't know, ox, but with way too much hair.

• 3:32Griffin McElroy?

  They look like cursed yaks, sort of. If a yak had a curse put on it.

• 3:37Chris Plante?

  Yeah, like if the Muppet Organization was responsible for Neverending Story 8, maybe this would be a creature that would show up in it. And you herd them through a pseudo dystopic, but also beautiful setting. And that's the whole, that's the game.

• 3:55Griffin McElroy?

  That's the game.

• 3:56Speaker 00

  All right, well, let's talk about that right after this.

• 4:01Chris Plante?

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• 4:45Chris Plante?

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• 5:27Chris Plante?

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• 5:36Griffin McElroy?

  Have you guys played any of, I believe it's Okomotiv's other games, FAR and the other?

• 5:43Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, so I know them from the FAR series. I believe there are two of them and I played through the first one. I don't think I played the second one, but I really, really liked the first one. And there's actually a lot of connections from the first, not lore connections, just like from a game design standpoint, connections from the first one to this game, which is FAR, I think it was called Loan Sales.

• 6:03Griffin McElroy?

  Sales. That was the one I played on, I think like iOS or something? Does that sound right?

• 6:07Russ Frushtick?

  It's on like everything, but the premise was basically you were just this like little teeny little guy and you had a giant like boat effectively, like an airboat or whatever. It actually went on land. So it was a landboat, a car, and you tried to move it from one position in the world to another. And to do that, you had to go through a lot of trials where like, oh no, there's a giant pit, or oh no, how are you going to get this thing from here to there? Using, you have to like bring parts back to the ship. There's like a lot of like ferrying this giant mechanical beast through this world. And obviously in Herdling, which is their newest game, you are ferrying this herd of creatures.

• 6:49Griffin McElroy?

  Many, many big beasts.

• 6:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 6:52Griffin McElroy?

  An increasing number of big beasts. You'll reach times where you're like, certainly they, I'm not going to have any more big beasts than I currently have.

• 6:58Russ Frushtick?

  They keep them coming.

• 6:59Griffin McElroy?

  No, you're going to get more.

• 7:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 7:02Russ Frushtick?

  What, Griffin, you had played that, those games?

• 7:04Griffin McElroy?

  I played Lone Sales, I didn't play the, the other one. I, I, I'll be honest, I, it was wild for me playing this game the week after we did Sort of the Sea.

• 7:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Griffin McElroy?

  Because I think you could make the argument that herdling kind of slots into this like atmospheric, dialogue-free, very interpretive, very lovely, kind of curated, you know, story experience. And Sort of the Sea does that, that same thing as well. It's just that the, let's say, the tempo of those two games could not be any more fundamentally different.

• 7:42Russ Frushtick?

  If Sort of the Sea is a roller coaster, this is like a dark ride, to use the Disney parlance.

• 7:49Chris Plante?

  Very, very generous, in terms of pacing, as you're describing that. I would say if Sort of the Sea is like a roller coaster, this is like having to walk across a balance beam. It is very, the, the progression is the total opposite. So let's get into actually what you're doing in this game.

• 8:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 8:07Chris Plante?

  The whole mechanic of the game is you collect your herd of herdlings or whatever.

• 8:12Griffin McElroy?

  Callicorns, they're called, and they're amazing. I love these guys.

• 8:15Chris Plante?

  And at first, it's about the pleasure of just take them through a space. Take them through a city, take them through a field, take them through a forest.

• 8:22Russ Frushtick?

  There's even like a DMV style, like, there's cones up and you're trying to just like bury them with cones.

• 8:29Griffin McElroy?

  Like you're trying to get your callicorn license.

• 8:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Chris Plante?

  And then as the game proceeds, it gets a little, a little tougher because you have more creatures. And suddenly it's like, oh, you have to take sharp turns. So you have to know how to stop your herd and then adjust and then move them. And uh-oh, now there are spiky objects and they can actually hurt your herd. And you need to avoid those, or you need to make sure that they're not falling off of things. And it becomes a slower game as you, as you go through it. Where like, Sort of the Sea is, take pleasure in movement, take pleasure in speed, take pleasure in moving through this beautiful space. This is, I don't know, it, it is...

• 9:11Griffin McElroy?

  It's rigid in a way that I, it's very much the opposite of swordinessy.

• 9:16Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I think it, I mean, there are moments in this game when you've gone through like a particularly tight, narrow passageway or obstacles or what have you, where it opens up and you get like five to 10 minutes of like, we're gonna sprint through this field as fast as we can. And the music kicks up and you get a nice vista and it's like kind of a breath of fresh air thing. But the actual core gameplay predominantly is like, how am I gonna get, how am I gonna get these like nine fucking oxen through this very dangerous scenario without having any of them beef it?

• 9:52Griffin McElroy?

  You do that mostly through staying behind them and using your staff to kind of shepherd them. So when you are behind them and, you know, using your shepherding power, they go, you know, away from you. And you can tell them to slow down and stop and sometimes charge to go faster. But it's, it is very much a shepherding simulator in that like, you're not in there with them moving sort of single mindedly. You're not like calling them to you where you, it's, it's very much like, I mean, it is, it's hurting, it's hurting a pack of creatures.

• 10:24Russ Frushtick?

  I said it was like Babe last week and people probably thought I was being fucking crazy, but that's what I meant is it feels like you're, you know, controlling the sheep in Babe.

• 10:33Griffin McElroy?

  It's very forgiving in that. It's not, I was genuinely worried it was gonna be like that horrible mini game from Twilight Princess. That you like start out and you have to just like go around a big field and like, oh, fuck, that one wandered off to the left. I'm gonna, oh no, I went to get him, four other ones wandered, it's not, it is not that annoying. The only time where it gets precarious is when it's like, okay, you gotta go through this like patch of brambles and if you touch one, the world's worst owl is going to come and kill you. That, that is where the, the wheels kind of fell off a bit for me. And I get that it's going for a different tone, one that gets a little bit, you know, stressful or not scary necessarily, but more, more intense than a lot of games in this genre typically go for.

• 11:18Griffin McElroy?

  But it, uh, I don't know, man, I just wanna chill with my, with my road hogs and trot them out, you know? How do you feel about it, Juice?

• 11:27Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 11:28Russ Frushtick?

  Um, yeah, man, um.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's it's pretty boring. Like, it's really boring. Like, to play it is incredibly boring. I didn't have any fun the whole time. No pleasure was found here. It's incredibly boring. Playing it, experiencing it is really boring. It's very pretty to look at. Having to live through it, I found excruciating. When I started it, I felt like we were in a sort of tutorial sequence where maybe I was learning about how to interact with this world.

• 12:04Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  And then the the game would begin where not, it's not, it's not, the thing that I'm saying is dull is that there is almost no concession made for me as a player. I am an encumbrance to this, this, this whole thing. And it's really, it suffers in contrast, I think, to Sword of the Sea, which is so much about empowering you and the freedom of movement and the joys. So that's not this game's fault, but like, uh, it was just so unpleasant to experience. And I, and I thought it was a tutorial, like a training thing, and then the mechanics would get out of the way and we'd be like, I I'd be able to connect with it more because I wouldn't be so in my head about all the different like, but it it never does that. It's just,

• 12:49Speaker 00

  you do exactly what it wants you to and then, and if you get off that path, God help you, because sometimes a lot of the woods look alike a lot of the other woods. You realize you've been going the wrong way for 10 minutes and that is a real kick in the ass.

• 13:03Russ Frushtick?

  I think, yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, I just found the whole thing so boring.

• 13:06Russ Frushtick?

  I think when I was

• 13:07Speaker 00

  That is how I felt.

• 13:09Russ Frushtick?

  I think when I was playing it, and I felt honestly not far off from how Justin felt. When I was playing it and I was going through the tutorial, I was like, and and this is a genuine reaction. Like, this is a really neat interaction. Like, I've never seen this in a game before where it's like you're standing behind and it feels like that. I guess in Twilight Princess, there was a fucking mini game. Good work, Griffin. But for me,

• 13:30Speaker 00

  A bad one. One of the worst Zelda mini games of all time.

• 13:33Russ Frushtick?

  But I don't remember having this like sort of interaction where the camera pulls back and you really do feel like you have very direct control over these creatures. And I was like, this is a really neat idea. I'm very interested to see where they take this idea and like add gameplay levers to it. To spice it up in interesting ways in the way that like games like Hollow Knight start with a very basic core input mechanic and then they evolve that mechanic in interesting ways. And it doesn't feel, and I'm several hours into it at this point, it does not feel that they knew where to go after coming up with the idea, like they white box the idea of, I want to control these creatures and here's how it's going to work when I'm controlling

• 14:14Russ Frushtick?

  them. And then beyond the art design of the world, which does look beautiful and the music is very good music. I like the music.

• 14:22Griffin McElroy?

  It's lovely.

• 14:23Russ Frushtick?

  But the actual interactions in the game, they didn't know what else to do beyond, this is what you're doing with these creatures.

• 14:29Griffin McElroy?

  It's a shame too, because they do nail another thing, which is that as you add more of these callicorns to your pack, they all have kind of different personalities, which is like genuinely a very neat idea for a Shepardian game is like, I had one named Giuseppe and Giuseppe was just always, he always needed validation.

• 14:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 14:51Griffin McElroy?

  From me. The others would be trotting along and he'd turn back around and be like, hey, I'm dirty. And does that mean you don't love me anymore? And it's like, Giuseppe, fucking chill, dude. We're gonna, like, that's hard. That's hard to nail, especially for a, you know, a tough guy like me who doesn't really care about.

• 15:08Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 15:09Griffin McElroy?

  Virtual or most real life animals. But yeah, I felt the exact same way. I would find a new thing, a new mechanic, a new type of puzzle, a new callicorn to join my herd. And I'd be like, this is where it, this is where it gets going. And it, I don't know, I don't really think it does.

• 15:27Chris Plante?

  There's a certain type of listener who is going to really enjoy this game and is the person who loves that, that feeling you used to get playing Eco or Shadow of the Colossus or those PS2 games where you are a silent protagonist and the story comes from the environment and it's somewhat of like this dystopic apocalyptic setting. And then you go on your journey and at the end you have a big emotional swell of music. And I want to say that like, maybe that will be you, listener who is hearing this. The problem for me, and to go to everything y'all said, is I think we try to meet a game on what did it set out to do? And did it do that well?

• 16:12Chris Plante?

  And for me, it fails to do a lot of the things that I think it's clearly setting out to do. Griffin mentioned that, you know, you get the hurdling and maybe one or two you connect with. They have you name these characters. You're supposed to clearly care about all these. The problem is, you're getting a new one every like 15 minutes. And they all look kind of the same, kind of different. Maybe they're different sizes. And I had forgotten their names, I mean, basically, right away. You know, by the two or three hour mark, I have, you know, eight or nine or 10 of these or whatever.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had like a loose family structure in my head at first. I, you know, at first it was like, oh, I got like a parent one and like a kid, a couple kid ones. And it was like, by the end of it, it's like fucking full house. Like, I don't know. I got a, I got a Jesse's weird grandma that comes over for three episodes that I've forgotten her name.

• 17:03Chris Plante?

  Yeah. And then as an environmental storytelling game, there's just not that much story. Especially for the first two or three hours. I mean, and again, if I am being generous and I'm trying to like read into it, the story is especially overly familiar, which is like, you start in a city and then you get out into nature. And nature is beautiful, but nature is also dangerous. It's like, yeah, I've seen children's movies of the 1980s. It's fun enough. The hurdling mechanic is better than it has any right to be. It is truly one of my least enjoyable mechanics in video games, shepherding around AI characters, let alone many of them. And it makes it fun-ish, though it does feel more like shepherding AI

• 17:46Chris Plante?

  than it does shepherding creatures that you care about. But yeah, it.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  It's really weird. The stampede mechanic is like, is one that I feel like for me is really emblematic of a lot of this stuff. Like an hour or so in, you get this ability to like, you run through colorful flowers or feed your, your callicorns and they will have the ability to like, run quickly. They call it stampeding, right? And there's a bar at the bottom that is represented by each of your callicorns. And it seems like you can maybe dash or stampede more times in sequence as you collect more of them. And it's so strange because first of all, when you get the stampede ability and you feel like things are about to open up, to me, the fact that you cannot do it all the time and mechanically,

• 18:35Speaker 00

  you would not want to do it most of the time because it's about avoiding danger. But it does feel like this concession that it doesn't feel good normally. Like it usually does not feel good to play. You do need to speed it up to have, to make it pleasant. Like you would want to experience it at this speed, right?

• 18:53Chris Plante?

  That is so helpful.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  That's not a mechanical thing. That's a getting around the world thing. I want to like that to be part of the game because the game part is at a snail's pace and it is dull.

• 19:03Chris Plante?

  That, that is so helpful for making that comparison with Sword of the Sea. And where I wonder almost like, is this just really brutal timing for us, especially for this game? Because this is a game about it being uncomfortable, about it being frustrating to herd these things around that don't want to go wherever you want them. And then, yes, every once in a while you come across that big open space and suddenly it's a breath of fresh air and the tension gets to be released. And, but then you go back to the game, which is frustrating managing a whole bunch of like ox children. Versus Sword of the Sea, which is the opposite, which is

• 19:46Chris Plante?

  it's always fresh air. There's always, you know, some thing to zip around. The music is always swelling and then maybe you have a few seconds here and there where you're squeezing through a crevice to get through the next level. The ratios are the complete opposite.

• 20:01Russ Frushtick?

  And I will say like, even Sword of the Sea actually mimics some of this pacing, but the baseline is so much more exciting than the baseline of this game. But there are moments in Sword of the Sea where like you jump on the fucking dolphin and have this like dolphin moment. And that's what they're trying to do, at least my interpretation of it. That's what they're trying to do with those stampede moments where again, it's like a breath of fresh air. It just doesn't have that impact. I also think. Part of the challenge is, we talked previously about the, how many Callicorns you get. And you really do, like, I think if you're collecting all of them, over a dozen at one point. Like, it is an astonishing number of fucking Callicorns that are following around.

• 20:42Russ Frushtick?

  And I think the reason for that is they want intention, because they want you to name the Callicorns and care about them, because some of them can die. Some of them can fall off cliffs, or get eaten by an owl, or whatever the fuck. Bad things can happen, so you should be sad. So they couldn't only have two or three, which is when, when there's companions and it means a lot to you, like the horse in Shadow of the Colossus, it's because there's one horse. Or even like, if there were three companions, it's like, you remember those three companions. When you're talking about a dozen, it's so many that even if one died, look, I was bummed when one died. I wasn't thrilled about it.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:21Russ Frushtick?

  But I wasn't, it wasn't a memorable experience to me because there's so many other fucking ones running around here. And honestly, that one kinda deserved it a little bit. He was a bit of an asshole. So.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  I just, I just, man. Okay. If it's not about the story, and it's not, because there's very little, like, story being communicated here. Aesthetically taking it in is like, is really nice. It's, it looks nice and it's, it sounds nice. But you're experiencing it at a speed where those charms wear off before that. And what you're really left with is the experience, right? It's the experience of doing it. And I think that that's what's powerful about video games, is that they can use experience to communicate. Like we were talking about last week with, sort of see, like, using experience to communicate narrative without words. And I feel like, if you look at the experience that they set out to create here.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  I don't need to experience this. Like, I don't need to feel the feeling that is being, that this game is trying to get across to me. I feel this all the time, man. You know, like, I genuinely, it feels like I have the, that game, like Sword of the Sea, especially like right now where I'm at. The idea of like, having this experience that is like escapist and taking you somewhere fun and letting you do something fun. That is something that I was like hungry for and needed and found like so bracing. I don't know who is not getting enough of this sensation in their day to day life that they need to virtually double down on it.

• 22:58Chris Plante?

  And I'll, I'll put just a light tweak on that for me is I don't mind a game or a movie or a book that is challenging and doesn't make me feel good.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  He loves it, guy. This guy loves it. That's his whole shit.

• 23:12Chris Plante?

  But it need, it needs to serve something. And like, it, it can't just be that. Like, it, it's for what, right? Like, for what? And this, the, the juice wasn't quite worth the squeeze. Um, also, the game's like four hours. Um, so that's the other thing that is like.

• 23:32Russ Frushtick?

  No, that's a good, that's a good thing, quite honestly. I'd rather short games that leave an impact, like Sword of the Sea is a short game.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  Man, these guys are gonna hate Sword of the Sea so fucking much. People are gonna bring up Sword of the Sea in 10 years and be like, no, actually, fuck that game for real.

• 23:50Griffin McElroy?

  It's wild. I have, I have not played a game like this in such a long time. And then I played two, two in a row for, uh, for Debestie, so it's, this is, this truly is.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Clarifying, though. I'm really kind of happy, right? Because for me, I think experiential games got a bad rap when it was all indie developers wanted to make like 10 years ago. And I feel like this is, these two are a really good example of how you can make a bad one of these and you can make a good one of these.

• 24:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I mean, that's true of, of, of any genre, but it is wild. It's, it is wild that it all kind of, uh, came, came together so quickly here. Can we do, can we talk about something else?

• 24:31Russ Frushtick?

  You bet.

• 24:34Russ Frushtick?

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• 25:18Russ Frushtick?

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• 25:55Speaker 00

  Hey, I wanted to tell you guys about experience that I just finished, that I thought was really interesting as a jumping off point for discussion. Because I feel like this is a place where gaming could expand and is on the verge of expanding. And we're close. But anyway, you know, I've been messing around with like some of these retro handhelds and stuff and building some of these to serve as like museum pieces or collections or stuff. And I think that that's fascinating to do. But there is this like problem with iteration in this space. And there's a problem with iteration in the mainstream consoles too, right? Where we're getting a console and then they're wanting an upgrade to that console. Well, let me tell you what I just did with my Prusa Mark IV.

• 26:39Russ Frushtick?

  What is that?

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Prusa Mark IV. It's a 3D printer. It's one of the 3D printers that Prusa, it's a company, a very well-regarded 3D printing company sells. They'll sell you a Prusa Mark IV, and that's a kind of an older model. And recently, Prusa started selling the, not recently, it's actually been like a year or so ago, but anyway, Prusa started selling the Mark IV S, right? And I don't need to tell you guys, you've been in the game long enough to know.

• 27:04Griffin McElroy?

  That's good. That's better than Mark IV. Mark IV makes one of the best. This one's amazing.

• 27:07Russ Frushtick?

  With the Xbox Series S, that's the worst one, so.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  So, yes, that is, that part is confusing, but think about more like S rank.

• 27:15Russ Frushtick?

  Got it.

• 27:16Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  So, what is really cool is, if you have a Mark IV, like I did, the Mark IV S comes out, Prusa will sell you a $100 kit to upgrade your Mark IV to a Mark IV S. What's cool is-

• 27:34Russ Frushtick?

  It's just like a sticker that says S on it?

• 27:36Speaker 00

  It comes with a sticker that says, it comes with a new cereal. No, no, no, Russ, you joke. It comes with, a lot of the Prusa Mark IV and a lot of the Prusa printers in general are 3D printed. So, a lot of it is-

• 27:49Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The printers are 3D printed?

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, Russ, the printers are 3D printed.

• 27:54Griffin McElroy?

  It's the future, man.

• 27:54Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, my God.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  It's the free-

• 27:55Russ Frushtick?

  But what was the first one?

• 27:56Speaker 00

  Think about it this way. Think about it this way. If something breaks, you can make another one, right?

• 28:01Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's amazing, right? So, they sent me these parts. I take the parts from the old machine and I throw them in the garbage. And then they send a new, no, throw them in my filament recycling bin, actually. So, we, this new kit comes with a new fan and a new hot end and a new, basically a lot of, a new belt, a new belt for the printer. It doesn't matter the parts. The thing is, I had to take apart the Wi-Fi, I had to take apart the networking, I had to take apart the belt, I had to take apart the hot end and take off the fan, put on a new fan. In the process of doing this, when I bought this printer, you could buy it assembled or as a kit. And I bought it assembled because I didn't know what I was doing.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  In the process of doing this upgrade, now I have the upgraded Mark IV S. It even has like my serial number has been taken off. I've updated the firmware. It is no different from Mark IV S at this point. I've upgraded my own thing. I've learned so much about this, like understand this thing so much better than I did when I started. It took six hours. It was a gigantic pain in the ass. I mean, unfathomable, but it was a joy to do because the instructions that this company gives you are fantastic. They have videos. They have individual like blown up sections to show you exactly color coded. What is going where that my favorite?

• 29:25Speaker 00

  It comes with a pack of gummy bears and they tell you exactly there. They tell you how many it's a hair bow pack, right? They tell you how many gummy bears are in there. And then as you're going through the instruction manual, they tell you how many gummy bears you can eat. At the end of each section as your reward and they're like, don't fool around with this.

• 29:44Russ Frushtick?

  Fun.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Don't kid around like you have to do it perfect. And y'all, I gotta tell you, the best fucking gummy bear I ever ate is when I finally got that fucking LCD in place. And I finally got it screwed in. I was like, feeling like such an idiot. And then I got that beautiful gummy bear and started chewing it. I felt like a, an absolute superhero. I want to do this in video games and I feel like what is hard is this hobby, video games writ large. Should have been a cool space for like makers and hackers and it has been, but it's never been like an encouraged thing.

• 30:19Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, arguably PC gaming is really the only space.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. Right? Yeah, absolutely. And that is different, like obviously like PC gaming is its own, is its own thing, right? But this idea of we still have a lot of consoles that are still the best way of playing these old consoles. Like we need people, I think. In order to like, keep gaming history preserved, I think we need more people that are fluent in at least the basics of this stuff, you know what I mean? Like how to the replace a battery, things like that.

• 30:50Russ Frushtick?

  The ejector on an NES cartridge thing broke.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  The uh, a battery in like, old cartridges is one that we're like, they just stopped working. Like it's, it's a, it's a kind of like basic skillset that we, I feel like gaming makes it really hard to start getting into those mods without it. There's like, not an easy fun way to like hobbyist into it with, until you're like whipping solder around in, in the guts of your console, you know?

• 31:18Chris Plante?

  I, I, yeah, I agree. I think we're like somewhere weirdly in the middle, which is you can go and find so many different versions of Dreamcast uprisers and various connectors and tweakers and ways to put a SD mini into your, your Dreamcast mini SD. Uh, but you're right, there's, there isn't the, there's no pleasure in it. It's mostly people being like, well Sega's not going to do it and we need to get by.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  This is the difference. This is the difference, Chris, that I want to highlight here. This is Prusa doing it.

• 31:54Chris Plante?

  Yeah, that's what I mean is that's we, that's why I mean by the stuck in the middle. It's not full soldering anymore. There are people who are creating slightly easier ways of doing it, but they're still having to step in and fill in on Sega's behalf. And that means that you don't get the like pleasure, you don't get that level of detail, you don't get the ease that the actual company could do. In your case, Prusa, you know, is, is taken out upon itself.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think that there could be a space like, and, and I will say this also, I've, I've mentioned the retro handheld thing. There is not, I do not know of, with the notable exception of Retroid has just released their like dual screen add-on for the Retroid. Uh, pocket five and several other, you know, handhelds that have a similar form factor, but that's more of like a, an add-on, like not exactly an upgrade in the way that I'm thinking, like it doesn't take one to the next. But I think the speed at which you're starting to see some of these like independent consoles get released and iterated on, I think you could start to see a sort of like a company that fills in that middle ground between hobbyist and Microsoft Nintendo, you know, Sony.

• 33:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 00

  And has like that upgrade path.

• 33:09Russ Frushtick?

  You're also seeing it, and again, this is fan base, but I think, uh, companies are kind of picking up on it, like whether it's changing the guts or even just like, hey, I'm going to design a CAD file for a grip for these specific handhelds. I think not only shows that like, hey, there's a demand for that, but also shows the companies like, hey, maybe you should be offering these sorts of like aftermarket add-ons for people that actually want them. So yeah, I, I agree with Plan. I think it is kind of in this middle ground. It's hard for me to imagine like an Xbox, like selling you the parts to turn your Xbox into an Xbox two, whatever the fuck they're going to do next.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:52Chris Plante?

  You say that, but they talked about doing that for a long time of doing modular systems where you could upgrade.

• 33:58Russ Frushtick?

  That's true, but it never really took off, right? They would sell those hard drives for like way more than market value and it just wouldn't necessarily, uh, work. I, I think it's really compelling, but again, the second you make it like very modular to the point where it only works on this device ever, I think that's where it gets very expensive and kind of seals off the market a little bit.

• 34:19Chris Plante?

  Do you feel like Analog is doing a version of this?

• 34:22Griffin McElroy?

  Well, no, cause their shit's way more boutique and, um, I, I, I don't know how to describe it, but I mean, they're, they're pretty intense about like. You know, this is not a emulator first thing. It's all F, whatever it is, FGLP.

• 34:40Chris Plante?

  FGLP.

• 34:40Russ Frushtick?

  FGPGA, FPGA.

• 34:42Griffin McElroy?

  F, yeah, I thought there was an L in there, but I guess not.

• 34:47Griffin McElroy?

  And there's a place for that, too. Obviously, like, I think those devices rule, but it's like almost the opposite sort of thing.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  There's an ethos, I think, that I would love to see that is at play here. And part of it is definitely the 3D printing is open source in a way that I find kind of like moving a little bit. It's like genuinely like a really open thing. And I find that like, you find people iterating on stuff so quickly that having like that is an open platform and an open way of iterating on that stuff. And Prusa has really like embraced that, like that sort of like open source idea. Uh, and I think that that, and there's a ton of care there for customers, too, like the idea that like you would care about people enough that you would want to give them an upgrade pass. They didn't have to buy the newest thing, you know, they could spend a hundred bucks, uh, and just upgrade it.

• 35:41Russ Frushtick?

  I'm gonna guess this is not a publicly traded company.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  I am gonna assume you're probably right. I'll tell you this, two weeks before I got this thing, and part of what made me want to get it, I had a problem that was my fault with a nozzle and I was contacting them about it. And they said, you know, you've never asked us for a, any sorts of replacements or anything. So let's, let's send you a whole hot end replacement rather than just the nozzle. And that'll be a lot easier for you to replace. And, you know, those wear down eventually. Like they sent more than I asked them to for my warranty replacement.

• 36:09Griffin McElroy?

  That's awesome.

• 36:10Russ Frushtick?

  Very interesting.

• 36:11Chris Plante?

  Do we have a reader?

• 36:13Russ Frushtick?

  We have, yeah, we have a few, uh, letters from the readers. Um, this one comes from Bethany. "The sunshine disrespect," this is in reference to my drag, dragging Super Mario Sunshine. "The sunshine disrespect from my favorite video game podcasters hurts my soul. I know it's not the most popular Mario, but still to this day, it's my favorite Mario game. Flaws and all, and I'm still hoping out for a sequel one day." I do want to comment on this.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  You can like, you, you, you, you can, you can like a Super Mario game, but I can't make it your favorite. Your sunshine can't be your favorite.

• 36:45Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, come on.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  Have you played the other ones, though? Come to the Odyssey. Like, listen to that, you know? Do, do, do, do, do, do. Even nostalgia, I'd give you nostalgia. But not, sir, flood?

• 37:00Russ Frushtick?

  Look, look, look. Spin Doctors, when I was a 12-year-old, was all happening. And, and even today, I still listen to the Spin Doctors. I like their live album. I like that Pocketful of Kryptonite album. I'm sure they've done other music that I've never listened to.

• 37:16Chris Plante?

  And they gave, they gave us some good advice for when people love something that maybe we don't love. Can't be wrong. Little Miss can't be wrong.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Would you say, would you say that your favorite band is the Spin Doctors?

• 37:28Russ Frushtick?

  Not publicly.

• 37:31Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I do want to say this about Mario Sunshine. It kills me that I don't care for this game because I love the theming, the like paradise theming. I think it looks visually great. It introduces one of my favorite Mario characters of all time, Baby Bowser, sorry, Bowser Jr. And so it genuinely kills me. And it has a lot of the same problems that Mario 64 does, which is it's, a lot of it is just you fighting the camera. The problem is it's way more fighting the camera when you're fucking launching yourself in the air with a jetpack.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:03Russ Frushtick?

  So that, those are my issues. I'm glad people love it. I think there are people that were raised with this as their first 3D Mario game, so I kind of get it. But yeah, it's, it's really super duper not for me, unfortunately.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  Um, kidding aside, if you're the sort of person that likes to do this sort of thing, there is a, uh, a mod called Super Mario Sunburn that, uh, make, so this is, I'm reading this list because there's a lot.

• 38:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 38:28Speaker 00

  Uh, essentially, it makes Super Mario Sunshine play more like, uh, 64. There's a toggleable options menu. It's open world, so you can free travel stages, stage. You can do multiple missions at once and collect shines out of order. Uh, shines don't always kick you out of levels. There's an auto save, 100 coin missions possible in every mission. It's a sense of collection engine and bug fixes and actual reward for getting all 120 shines. It's like an overall, it, many, many years in development. If, if you're the sort of person that is inclined to do this sort of thing, I, I think Sunburn is, well, we're checking out as extremely cool. Sunshine's cool too, I was given a hard time, but, uh, Sunburn is really neat.

• 39:05Russ Frushtick?

  That sounds awesome.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, we'll get up. It's and it is frequently updated. The the 2.0 update came out two months ago. So Sunburn is still very active.

• 39:14Russ Frushtick?

  OK, we have another complaint, and this was not the only person mentioning it, but Caleb mentioned it specifically. People, people didn't care for the disrespect on the Lego games specifically.

• 39:28Speaker 00

  I I found I've completely justified myself to the last person, and I'm happy to do it here.

• 39:33Russ Frushtick?

  I do have a question, though, Justin. Have you played like a recent ish one?

• 39:37Speaker 00

  How would I know?

• 39:38Russ Frushtick?

  I came out in the last, I don't know, five years.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  How could I know? I mean, how would I know?

• 39:43Chris Plante?

  How would he know?

• 39:44Speaker 00

  Change. My point is. If I put Lego, if I put Lego into any console or storefront, the thing just fucking explodes.

• 39:51Russ Frushtick?

  That's true.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  The whole thing just melts down.

• 39:53Russ Frushtick?

  That's true.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  How do I know what if I played a new one?

• 39:56Russ Frushtick?

  What I would say is I think they are games in the way they were in games.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  I agree. They are games. On this, we are united.

• 40:03Chris Plante?

  My, my favorite thing with the Lego games right now is the ones that are trying to do something different. And I think that there are more and more of those happening. I think Horizon Adventures, you know, that sort of stuff. And I will say, uh, the Skywalker saga, I enjoyed that one. It was nice.

• 40:20Russ Frushtick?

  That was really good. I really liked that one.

• 40:23Griffin McElroy?

  I've just been burned so many ti- I've tried to play so many of these games with with Henry, and absolutely none of them have really stuck. So for for me, it's a kind of personal vendetta. I don't have anything against the games, but.

• 40:38Russ Frushtick?

  Justin does, but that's OK.

• 40:39Chris Plante?

  Listen, Justin had to play through all of Lego Ninjago movie video games. And he has never recovered.

• 40:47Russ Frushtick?

  Anyone would have that reaction.

• 40:49Speaker 00

  Better, that's all.

• 40:50Russ Frushtick?

  That was his Bane origin story.

• 40:54Russ Frushtick?

  OK, we have one more letter. Uh, this comes from.

• 40:56Griffin McElroy?

  Does this person want to fucking get their nose bloodied about?

• 41:01Russ Frushtick?

  Beetle Bat, it says, "Hey y'all, you should check out Chibi Robo. It recently got added to the GameCube Classics collection."

• 41:08Chris Plante?

  Oh, fuck yeah.

• 41:09Russ Frushtick?

  My favorite game of all time.

• 41:10Chris Plante?

  Hell, yeah.

• 41:11Russ Frushtick?

  And I'm glad people have finally can play it. For those who turned off by it looking too much like a cozy game, let me assure you, it's much more like an adventure game. I have never played Chibi Robo, and I basically know nothing about it.

• 41:21Chris Plante?

  I played the 3DS one quite a bit.

• 41:26Russ Frushtick?

  I can feel, it's not the one with the mouse and the cats and they run in a line.

• 41:31Chris Plante?

  No, it's the little metal guy, and he has a power cable attached to him that he carries around and he can plug in this stuff.

• 41:36Russ Frushtick?

  I was thinking of Choo Choo Rocket.

• 41:36Chris Plante?

  You were thinking of Choo Choo Rocket. This is Chibi Robo Plug It To Adventure. It's a great game. I have not played it since, you know, it came out first on GameCube. I would love to return to it.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  He is, he helps a family, and he's a cute little robot guy.

• 41:53Chris Plante?

  He's great.

• 41:54Russ Frushtick?

  I would like one of those games where it's set in a big house, and each level is like a different room.

• 41:58Speaker 00

  Everything is big around you, and you are a tiny little guy pie.

• 42:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. I love those games.

• 42:03Chris Plante?

  I have a recommendation for our listener. There is another Chibi Robo game that you have probably never played. There are a number of them. There is a photo one. There is a DS one. There is a second DS one that never came out in the US. Okari Chibi Robo Happy Richi Osoji.

• 42:23Russ Frushtick?

  Not gonna spell that.

• 42:24Chris Plante?

  And it's more Chibi Robo. So if you have ever been just saying, "I gotta get more Chibi Robo," you should check it out. Weirdly, got pretty good reviews. I got, I'm looking at the Fumitsu score, 34 out of 40. Solid.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  Why is that weird? Why is that weird, Chris? What do you think?

• 42:42Chris Plante?

  It's weird. Well, it's weird because its sales did not reflect that. It sold like 130,000 units, which is not enough to get more games made. But yeah, it's such a good series, and just one of the cutest character designs that there is.

• 43:02Russ Frushtick?

  That's great. I'm glad Chibi Robo is getting some respect. Please spell the name of whatever that was. Is there, is there an English translation? Because I don't speak Japanese.

• 43:10Chris Plante?

  Is there an English translation? There's always an English translation on the internet. There appears to be one. I'm not sure if it is actually successful or not, but the translation looks like it came out in 2016. And I will include all of this on.

• 43:30Griffin McElroy?

  The newsletter.

• 43:31Russ Frushtick?

  Thank you. Uh, honorable mentions time. I have an honorable mention I wanted to call out.

• 43:38Griffin McElroy?

  Please.

• 43:38Russ Frushtick?

  It is very well timed because when this episode goes up, we will be, it'll be like four-ish, five-ish days before the launch of Hollow Knight: Silk Song, a video game that in theory is happening on September 4th. Uh, if you have played Hollow Knight before, chances are you beat the game and didn't know what the fuck the story was about, but you still had a great time like me. Uh, and if that's the case, um, I'm gonna throw in a link or Plant's gonna drop this link into the newsletter to a video that explains the plot of Hollow Knight to normal human beings. Uh, it's a fun, it's a little, a little meme-y from like mid 2018

• 44:21Russ Frushtick?

  era. So just be aware, there might be some references that feel a little dated, but broadly speaking, it's a very good explanation for what the hell is going on in that game from a plot standpoint. And given the fact that there are continuing characters, specifically Hornet is in both games.

• 44:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Russ Frushtick?

  You might want to know what the fuck the deal is with Hornet.

• 44:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 44:39Russ Frushtick?

  So it's a great video. It's about an hour and 15 minutes long. Buckle up.

• 44:43Griffin McElroy?

  Can we talk about Silk Song? Cause when we recorded last time, we were very transparent. The Gamescom show had just happened. Keeley had gotten on stage and said, here's some news about Silk Song. It's coming out this year.

• 44:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 44:55Griffin McElroy?

  And then two days later, Team Cherry did their own announcement where they said, it's coming out September. It's coming out in two weeks.

• 45:02Russ Frushtick?

  No one has wedgie Jeff Keeley more than Team Cherry.

• 45:06Griffin McElroy?

  What could have possibly happened behind the scenes there where he, he could be, he could be so thoroughly, I don't want to say cuckolded by like announcement, announcement cuckolded.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  It's distasteful. It's distasteful to say that, but it feels accurate.

• 45:19Griffin McElroy?

  Like I'm trying to find a better way of saying it.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Accurate, yet distasteful.

• 45:22Griffin McElroy?

  It's just wild to me for, for him to get this announcement and show off this gameplay footage. And then two days later, Team Cherry's like, yeah, it, two weeks, y'all. See you, see you there. It's real. It's happening. Uh, it's just, it's just wild. I'm so excited. Couldn't be more excited.

• 45:39Russ Frushtick?

  I'm so excited. I've been on total black. I didn't watch the announcement trailer. I haven't watched any gameplay. Every time it pops up in my YouTube, I close my eyes and run away. Uh, I'm going in as we know.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  So you have, so you have not seen Miss Hollow Knight?

• 45:54Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, in a way, not wrong, because Hornet, I know, is the protagonist, but yeah. Uh, I'm pretty, I'm pretty.

• 46:00Griffin McElroy?

  God, dude. It's a shame you can only get married once, you know? What a loss.

• 46:08Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, yeah, fuck, I, yeah, I, I, I am worried, and I've spoken to a few people about this, that the discourse is gonna turn on this game in a, like, a bad way when the game comes out.

• 46:19Griffin McElroy?

  Oh.

• 46:20Russ Frushtick?

  As is all things that people are really excited about, uh, but maybe I'll be wrong and people would just be.

• 46:25Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, it'll, it'll, it'll go quick, I think. I think it'll be like, oh, this is the best. Oh, this is actually the worst. Actually, it's nothing. And then.

• 46:33Russ Frushtick?

  I did hear that it does have weapon durability in this game. I hope that's not an issue for people.

• 46:38Griffin McElroy?

  Has weapon durability?

• 46:39Russ Frushtick?

  That was a joke.

• 46:40Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, no, Jesus. You can't do that to me.

• 46:45Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yai, yai. Uh, what else is going on?

• 46:49Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I've been reading a book. It's called A Drop of Corruption. It is the second, uh, in the, uh, the, I forget the name of the trilogy. It is a fantasy murder mystery.

• 47:04Russ Frushtick?

  I'm finally gonna read that book.

• 47:05Griffin McElroy?

  You keep saying that, man.

• 47:06Russ Frushtick?

  No, I'm, I'm like, like, I say that, I mean it, here's how you know I mean it. I'm gonna do it while we're just doing the show.

• 47:12Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, okay, good.

• 47:13Russ Frushtick?

  That's how you know I'm serious.

• 47:14Griffin McElroy?

  It is, it's the sequel to The Tainted Cup, which I brought, uh, a couple of months back, which I.

• 47:19Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, wait, I remember why I never get it, because I hear the name and I think it doesn't sound very good.

• 47:23Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, no, it's fucking rad. Uh, and this, this one is also really great. I'm nearly, uh, done with it, and it's just another great, great mystery in a world of magic plants and kaiju and, uh, it, it's, it's just really great. Some of the best.

• 47:38Russ Frushtick?

  Same, uh, is that the same author as City of Stairs?

• 47:41Griffin McElroy?

  It is, Robert Jackson Bennett.

• 47:42Russ Frushtick?

  But a different, is that a different?

• 47:44Griffin McElroy?

  Different saga, different, different, yeah, he's got, he's whipped up quite a few of these.

• 47:49Speaker 00

  Is it a connected, does he do a connected thing?

• 47:51Griffin McElroy?

  Not in a

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Cosmier or whatever?

• 47:53Griffin McElroy?

  Not in the cosmier way, no, not in any way that, at least I have, I've, I've read a few of his sort of uh, trilogies and I haven't noticed much connective tissue. That's not to say that it's not there.

• 48:03Russ Frushtick?

  Are the kaiju fucking? Is it one of those books?

• 48:06Griffin McElroy?

  No, they're being harvested for their, their blood, which gives people superpowers basically.

• 48:10Russ Frushtick?

  That sounds like a kink.

• 48:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I guess. I guess if you want it to be. Also, uh, this season of American Ninja Warrior just wrapped up and I just wanna give them their flowers. Fucking great. Great season. They adopted a tournament style, all racing structure that was just absolutely thrilling, watching some of my favorite old dogs up against the young guns.

• 48:31Russ Frushtick?

  What does that mean, all racing structure?

• 48:34Griffin McElroy?

  So historically in the past, it's been a like, you qualify, you go to city finals and then there's stage one and stage two. But it's like, get through this course in this amount of time, or get through this course without failing or whatever. And now, once you qualify, it's just races non-stop and if you lose, you're knocked out. Um, and then they take that to the, to the final victor. Uh, and I don't know, that show's still corny as hell most of the time, but it's pretty exciting watching people be extraordinarily good at, uh, going through obstacles. Rachel and I, we don't talk about it a lot because I think there's an understandable amount of shame for being into this uh, particular television program. Justin's nodding in agreement.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  I was looking at something on the ground.

• 49:17Griffin McElroy?

  Oh.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Repeatedly. I was looking at something on the ground repeatedly.

• 49:21Griffin McElroy?

  Over and over and over again. Uh, but yeah, it's, it's, it's a show about people who are extraordinarily enthusiastic about this one thing that will not be applicable in any other part of their lives. And so there's always a lot on the line.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  But it has gone on long enough that it does seem like a more applicable skill, right? It feels like if you're, if a show's on long enough that it is like, I don't know, he's good at Survivor. That's the one thing you can say about him is that he's good at this.

• 49:45Griffin McElroy?

  They have also in recent years reduced the like, age requirement to go on the show. So there's a lot of just like, you know, 14 year olds who's uh, you know, uh,

• 49:57Griffin McElroy?

  Muscle to weight ratio is so fucked up and insane and they are, they smashed the course and they're going up against these 40 year old veterans who are just like trying to, trying to stay for one more round just so they don't have to go and parent, parent their kids tonight. Uh, it's, it's really genuinely, uh, it was a thrilling season and, uh, I still don't, I wouldn't talk about it publicly, but I felt like this is a safe space.

• 50:26Russ Frushtick?

  It is.

• 50:28Griffin McElroy?

  Justin's not making it feel very safe, but Justin knows, Justin, Justin knows how nasty I get with this shit. He knows I'm a dirty, dirty dog.

• 50:35Russ Frushtick?

  Justin, you got anything?

• 50:39Speaker 00

  Been riding a bike.

• 50:40Russ Frushtick?

  Like a, like a bike that moves around?

• 50:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, riding a bike around.

• 50:44Russ Frushtick?

  That's fun.

• 50:45Chris Plante?

  Sounds pretty nice.

• 50:47Griffin McElroy?

  I've seen a bike.

• 50:47Chris Plante?

  A road hog over here.

• 50:48Griffin McElroy?

  It's a cool bike.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Cool bike. Yeah, it's like cool. I'm riding around. It's not a big deal. Um, is there anything else? No.

• 50:54Russ Frushtick?

  Jumps?

• 50:56Speaker 00

  No.

• 50:56Russ Frushtick?

  No jumps?

• 50:57Speaker 00

  Just move, I mainly, I don't play video games so much. It's like I move them around, you know? I move them from one device onto another device. That's what I do.

• 51:05Griffin McElroy?

  You don't ask a librarian if they read books, you know what I mean?

• 51:08Speaker 00

  I don't read a book. I mean, I don't read books.

• 51:11Russ Frushtick?

  Remember when we asked Good Russ whether he enjoys playing video games?

• 51:15Speaker 00

  Oh no. No, you asked if he enjoyed, not enjoyed playing video games. He likes playing video games. It was enjoyed what he does.

• 51:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it was even more weirdly, uh, personal than, than that.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  That is a really, that, that time we have a good, that was a trigger moment for me, that episode where it was like, after that episode, I went like absolutely mad.

• 51:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 51:37Russ Frushtick?

  That was the retro game for.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  I've, I've, I've heard that man talk more than I've heard my own father speak to me in the last few years. Like he is so important to me. I'm terrified if we get Good Russ back on the show. I, I'll be, I will pepper him with so many like miniscule questions like, so what is CD TV emulation and why can't it ever catch up, dude?

• 51:56Griffin McElroy?

  Man, I'm so unplugged from social media. I do not know what the response is to how much we talk about this stuff. It's just a really fucking interesting time for this space genuinely with the.

• 52:06Russ Frushtick?

  The speed that things are evolving and new shit is coming out and new, you know, forms of emulation and new hardware are just like dropping every single week. And it truly is like, I don't know, a really exciting time to be kind of like part of that, part of that hobby.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  And it's really, as these devices, what is really neat is like as these devices are released and like improved, and the technology gets better, it's like better ways of experiencing certain libraries. So there's certain games, certain form factors that are like a better experience overall because it's like emulating the closer to the size of the screen. So you're not destroying the pixels so much or like the controls are or more closely emulated. And as I have more of these like libraries set up on devices that are really a fit for them, these libraries feel alive to me in a way that they do not normally feel like I,

• 53:01Speaker 00

  the library, I've done so much of this, like the library of Sega CD in my head, the library of the TurboGraffic 16. I can kind of imagine the shape and the scope of it. Like if I saw 10 games on that list, I could tell you probably what libraries they are. I know that Three Ninjas Kickback is the first video game in the SNES library alphabetically. I've probably played that game more than any other SNES game because I, it is like just the one my thumb hits.

• 53:26Russ Frushtick?

  That one and Ah, Real Monsters.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  And of course, in the arcade world, you can't beat the 1941 franchise because there's like eight of those. There's no way you're going to click through all those.

• 53:37Russ Frushtick?

  I will say, not to tackle on, but I will say Justin's newest approach, which I think is a very interesting approach. When you get one of these handhelds, I think the default setting and certainly my setting is I'm going to throw in as many games as I can on this individual device and make it all work, just so I have it with me. Justin has been taking individual devices and kind of dedicating them to a given platform or creator or maker. So like you have like a Sega specific handheld that just has Sega titles on it.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Rocket Classic that is a six button model. So it looks very much like the second Genesis controller or the Saturn controller. And it feels great. It's got like shoulder buttons on the back and it's more buttons than you need for these like old systems. So you can map stuff like Quick Load, Quick Save, shaders and things like that to like really emulate the experience. But it's really cool, like historically to see. And all of these like laid end to end, kind of see the progression throughout and like see what the history would have looked like from that perspective. And it's also like when I'm able to emulate a console and have an experience is like pretty close to what you might have had

• 54:47Speaker 00

  back then, like we didn't have a mega Sega mega, sorry, Master System. We didn't have like we missed a generation of Atari, didn't have a Saturn. So it's like some of these libraries, like I'm checking out for the first time and in a way where it doesn't feel like I've sort of like completely botched the experience, something like where I can kind of get the, get the idea.

• 55:10Russ Frushtick?

  That's been really cool. I think we did it. Point, you want to recap the games we talked about?

• 55:15Chris Plante?

  Oh my gosh, we talked about so much stuff this week. We talked about hurdling and then we talked about Okari, Chibi Robo, Happy Ritchio Soji. We talked about Hollow Knight. Oh, Kyri is like returning home, Chibi Robo. I think Happy Ritchio Soji is probably a character's name. It's like, like, welcome home, Chibi Robo, Happy Ritchio Soji.

• 55:38Russ Frushtick?

  So glad for you.

• 55:39Chris Plante?

  Uh, well, Hollow Knight, Silk Song. Uh, we talked about the book, A Drop of Corruption. We talked so much about all sorts of different emulator handhelds. Uh, next week, we'll be talking about Metal Gear Solid 3, Delta, and new Kirby, new Kirby DLC, not Kirby, right? Don't worry, that's going to be later this year, but there is a new update and expansion to our beloved Kirby game for the Nintendo Switch, uh, just in time for the Nintendo Switch 2. So we'll be chatting about both those stuffs.

• 56:17Speaker 00

  Not just in time, a couple of months late, pretty, pretty, notably late.

• 56:20Russ Frushtick?

  Launch window.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  Some of us may have made certain promises to our children on the Switch 2 launch date, not realizing that the Kirby deal. We should also point out that they are not, uh, Team Cherry is not distributing code for Silk Song early, um, which is why we're not doing that next week.

• 56:39Russ Frushtick?

  I'm a little bit thrilled, quite honestly.

• 56:40Griffin McElroy?

  Week after.

• 56:41Russ Frushtick?

  I'm fine with it. It's fine. We're gonna play it alongside you guys, which is to say, yeah, we will not be talking about it at all on next week's episode. It will be, I think, out for a day when that comes out.

• 56:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. So, join us for a week after.

• 56:54Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, one real last quick thing. Thank you to our Patreon members over at Patreon.com/thebesties. We have Brittany, we have Gabe G, we have Johnny Dean, and we have Expo Stalpha. Thank you for being members of Patreon. Uh, it's great new content coming up, uh, coming at you frequently. I think we have over 50 episodes of bonus content on there. Holy cow, including a new bracket episode, which is dropping the first Tuesday of September. We also have our new Resties out. So, tons of stuff going on there at Patreon.com. So, that's the besties.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  All right. And that's gonna do it for us this week on the besties. Be sure to join us again next time on the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

• 58:01Speaker 00

  Besties.