One Game to Consume All of Your Time

Ball x Pit makes an incredible first impression. But whether it’s a great break from the frustrations of life or an overly powerful time suck will depend on your taste in games. The Besties explain why.

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

• 0:00Chris Plante?

  Y'all, do you use Waze or do you use Google Maps? Which ones are you?

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Why, I've lived in the exact same place for 40 years. The idea that I would use either is wild.

• 0:09Russ Frushtick?

  You don't, you don't use GPS to get around? Just like in case you, I just wanna, don't think about anything, Justin?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  I already do that. It's called driving, baby. I set it to autopilot. I just tell myself, "Go to where the old Ward's Donuts was," and then I'm there. I got Waze up here. I got Waze and Means up here.

• 0:26Griffin McElroy?

  If people get lost in Huntington, there's actually an app on your phone called JMo, and when you press it, Justin shows up and he can tell you exactly what's like where to go, what, and like cool stuff you'll see on the way.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  The important thing is, I don't always end up where I thought I was gonna go. So this is a very open-ended system that I got.

• 0:43Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I don't use Waze, Chris, because one time I used it and it told me to smash through a shopping mall like a Blues Brothers did it, and I said-

• 0:50Chris Plante?

  That's also what happened to my house, uh, when somebody-

• 0:52Griffin McElroy?

  That's true. It could've been somebody got out of the car and was like, "Damn, the Waze said I'd be able to smash right through," but it seems like this first outer wall was a little bit heavier than-

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Did you guys know one of those Nazis was my acting teacher?

• 1:04Griffin McElroy?

  That's true.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Go! Chris, what did you wanna say, dude?

• 1:08Griffin McElroy?

  The "I've always loved you" guy, that's-

• 1:09Speaker 01

  The "I've always loved you" guy, the Nazi that says that to the other guy, he taught me everything I know about acting. Him and Jack, but like, what did you wanna talk about?

• 1:19Chris Plante?

  I just wanted, I wanted to talk about this-

• 1:20Speaker 01

  We gotta start the podcast, dude.

• 1:21Chris Plante?

  I'm a Google, I'm a Google Maps man, but I think I am ready to switch to Waze because Waze lets you pick different voices to guide you through the world, right? And they clearly had a long, deep think on like, what is an appropriate voice to get you from point A to point B safely? And that's why today, they sent me this, uh, notification. Sonic Voice Navigation. Fans can now activate Voice Navigation by Sonic the Hedgehog in English and French. Now, let me tell you, I-

• 1:58Speaker 01

  You're gonna see Bo Zoom.

• 2:00Chris Plante?

  I love my voice, Sonic. I don't know if he is who I want to take driving instructions from.

• 2:08Russ Frushtick?

  Have you listened to it?

• 2:08Chris Plante?

  His entire thing is to go fast.

• 2:10Russ Frushtick?

  Which iteration is it?

• 2:11Griffin McElroy?

  What's, are we talking Jaleel or are we talking, uh, which, which Sonic do we got?

• 2:15Chris Plante?

  You know, it doesn't say, so I'm going to guess it's not, I can guess they couldn't get Jaleel for it.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  You're talking, you're talking to two guys that have a lot of experience with Sonic and his relationship to cars.

• 2:28Griffin McElroy?

  That's true. We, we wrote, we wrote the book on that.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  And I mean literally, we tried to do a story about Sonic driving and this team Sonic had some ideas about how Sonic should relate to cars.

• 2:58Speaker 01

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

• 3:01Chris Plante?

  My name is Griffin McElroy and yeah, I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week.

• 3:07Russ Frushtick?

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

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club and quick style guide note here, guys, we got to settle on something just besties wide. Do we say the X? Do we say and do we make it silent? Where are we going?

• 3:28Russ Frushtick?

  Good question. So the game we're talking about is Ball X Pit and I think we need to.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  So what's so fascinating is what you did there is exactly what I was trying to fucking avoid. Like I'm a professional dude. I know what I'm doing.

• 3:38Griffin McElroy?

  Unilaterally.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. We have a conversation about it.

• 3:42Russ Frushtick?

  But how do I convey what the game is called?

• 3:45Griffin McElroy?

  Spy family.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  That's why we're going to have a broad conversation that.

• 3:49Griffin McElroy?

  Check this out. Check this out. Bulk spit.

• 3:51Russ Frushtick?

  Oh.

• 3:52Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking read it. It looks like, hey, guess what? Game developers, if you make your shit look like all one word, I'm gonna read it like one word.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Hey Griffin, I'm good with that. If you guys are.

• 4:01Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Bulk spit.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  We always just pronounce the X?

• 4:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, got to.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  So it would be like Godzilla X Kong.

• 4:08Griffin McElroy?

  Godzilla X Kong. If you want to make it one word, that's fine, guys. We're going to say it.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Spikes family.

• 4:13Griffin McElroy?

  Spikes family.

• 4:14Chris Plante?

  X Kong.

• 4:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that one works too, man. Good. Yeah, absolutely. So.

• 4:21Griffin McElroy?

  Chris, what's Bulk Spit?

• 4:22Speaker 01

  What's Bulk Spit?

• 4:22Chris Plante?

  Bulk Spit is, uh, what if you took Vampire Survivors and you took Breakout and you added an X in the middle and you would get this? Oh, also, you can, you can build towns.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yes, you can.

• 4:35Chris Plante?

  Besties is about to take a break. We will catch you right after this.

• 4:40Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I love it.

• 4:43Russ 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

• 5:26Russ Frushtick?

  his mattress because holy cow, that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress by New York Times Wirecutter and is featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner. You can go to lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code BESTIES exclusive to our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code BESTIES for 25% off select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code BESTIES.

• 6:05Griffin McElroy?

  Can I set up Bulk Spit? I've been thinking about how to do it to someone who isn't familiar.

• 6:09Russ Frushtick?

  Deva- I can't tell if Devolver is gonna be either pissed or thrilled at our new branding.

• 6:13Griffin McElroy?

  They had their fucking chance.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 6:15Chris Plante?

  No, this is, sorry, this is universe wide until the universe bends to my whim. If you're gonna keep putting a stupid ass X in there, I'm gonna keep saying the X out loud.

• 6:23Griffin McElroy?

  Saying it.

• 6:23Chris Plante?

  I didn't make it numb. You did.

• 6:26Griffin McElroy?

  Breakout is a good place to start. Breakout, you move your paddle along the bottom of the board and you bounce the balls back up at the bricks to break them. In Balk's pit, take those bricks away. Now they spawn in in rows and they keep moving down towards the bottom of the screen. If they get too close to you, the character you're playing, or the bottom of the screen, they do damage to you. Take too much damage and you die. Your paddle is actually a character, one of like over a dozen characters. Each one starts with a different special ball and has like different mechanics that change the way the game is played. They are not bound to the bottom of the screen. You can move around freely wherever you want and you angle the launch of your many, many balls towards the enemies that spawn in towards the top of the screen. Now throwing in some vampire survivors on that, as enemies die, they drop experience points.

• 7:09Griffin McElroy?

  When you level up, you draft either a special ball, which has like different things you can do, like a poison ball that does damage over time, or a laser ball that damages all enemies in a line. Or you can get like a special upgrade that is like a passive sort of bonus thing. You can get like four of those. And that's it. You play through waves of enemies, waves of bricks coming down the screen. You fight a few bosses, you beat a level, you get resources, you take those back to town. And you have a little town that you're building where you also kind of play breakout to harvest materials and build new buildings. And then you go right back down into the Balk's pit and the cycle continues.

• 7:47Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, the vampire survivors like meta game is very much alive here. Like you're going to see a lot of analogs there, but obviously the actual interaction, the minute to minute is breakout.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's not even real. I mean, it's like sort of breakout, but even that belies. It's like a hybrid of breakout and Space Invaders, because there's this idea of motion coming towards you, right? And that's that being important and also this threat. Coming at you and like continuing to push down towards you. So like it's adding that layer of sort of like progressing through the other thing. And also the important, the other important thing is like catching it, which is such a big part of breakout is not really, I mean, it's like an element, but it's not really important.

• 8:34Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that was the big surprise that I had because when I heard the initial pitch, I was like, okay, I get this vampire survivors breakout. You're going to have to, to deal damage, you're going to have to constantly be swatting the ball back. And you do do more damage in certain circumstances. When you do that, when you catch the ball or many balls, but it is not like, oh, game over, or you lose a life, or even you lose health. Like there's no real punishment apart from you losing time.

• 8:57Griffin McElroy?

  The breakout analogy I think is useful because there is a lot of strategy that goes into drafting, right? You want to get stuff that is synergistic. We haven't even talked about the, you know, evolution and combination sort of mechanic, which is really fucking rad. But the breakout comparison, I think is good because breakout style games require a certain amount of strategy where maybe you want to keep a long back row so you can shoot some balls up in there and now they're bouncing back and forth off the top of the screen. Every time a ball hits a bad guy in this game, it deals damage. So you're not only trying to build these synergistic builds and leveling up the balls that you, you know, find useful. It's like, okay, I have these balls that shoot lasers or have area of effect

• 9:40Griffin McElroy?

  damage. If I can get this behind the back row of enemies, they're going to deal more damage, bounce faster. Like there is a, there's a shocking amount of sort of.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it feels good when you work one of those out. It feels like you've gotten, pulled over a fast one when you can get a ball to like really ricochet through some enemies and really tear them up.

• 9:57Russ Frushtick?

  And I would say, I would say like the first play through, first hour of this game, I think is like, holy shit, I cannot put this down. And, and obviously whether that continues is to be discussed, but, but the like second you pick it up, there is that same satisfaction that you felt with vampire survivors were like, holy shit, there's so much stuff going on on the screen. And it's very satisfying to see numbers go up and guys get destroyed.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  I think I would, I did enjoy this game a lot, but just to put a pin here, I think I would enjoy this more and be more willing to stick with it if that idea of like catching the ball and being very aware of the ball was a bit more a part of this because I found that especially as you like layered more powerful balls on and like had a lot of different ones going at once. It really just kind of felt like a shooter. It felt more like a just a shooter with a little bit less fidelity of control. And I feel like the having that element of like danger or risk reward or something where you need to be aware of the what is happening, I think would make it a little bit hookier on that.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Just the moment to moment gameplay. There's a lot of other reasons that it's compelling, but I think that I would enjoy the I would be less likely to kind of zone out sometimes.

• 11:13Chris Plante?

  I found a way that they, the game can make catching the ball important because the, yes, when you, when a ball gets past you, it goes all the way to the bottom of the screen. And if you're up high, it's going to take a moment for it to come back up to you. And that's where like the catching is key.

• 11:29Griffin McElroy?

  It's a DPS lost. Yeah.

• 11:31Chris Plante?

  Yeah, you're not, you're not losing, you don't bounce the ball so much as you shoot it. So when it gets back to you, you collect it and then you can fire it off in any direction that you want. There is a a buff, I guess, that turns you into a magnet and not only sucks up more of the XP tokens, but sucks up the balls. It, it brings them closer to you. So it increases, yeah, it spikes your DPS. And then you can tie that into another benefit where, hey, when you catch a ball, you fire off three mini balls. So.

• 12:03Griffin McElroy?

  No, they're called baby balls. They're probably my biggest gripe with, gripe with the game. Yeah, like there's certain characters that don't shoot the baby balls out. They only use special, they're special balls, which means they're firing less stuff. And in that case, you gotta catch, you gotta catch your balls.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Gotta catch them balls.

• 12:20Griffin McElroy?

  Otherwise you're dealing no damage.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Gotta catch them balls.

• 12:23Griffin McElroy?

  The evolution mechanic of the game, I think, is the raddest sort of idea. And it's not entirely new because Vampire Survivor had a sort of version of this. So you get two different special balls and you reach max level with them.

• 12:36Chris Plante?

  They love each other very much.

• 12:38Griffin McElroy?

  We, we, we have to just get through this. You have two special balls and

• 12:43Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  You didn't even get through that. You understand?

• 12:46Griffin McElroy?

  Two special balls, you level them up to max level. And that means you will find these little power ups called, I think, fusion cores or something. And enemies will drop sometimes that let you combine them. Sometimes they combine to make a new, exciting ball altogether. Like if you combine fire, the fire special ball with the iron special ball, it makes a bomb special ball. Like it creates a new type. You can also combine two balls together that don't have like a combination like that. So that you are making like a hybridized ball. So you can take the lightning one and the brood mother one that spawns baby balls and you combine them. It doesn't make like a new altogether ball, but it makes a lightning X brood mother.

• 13:30Griffin McElroy?

  So you can combine your evolved balls. What did I?

• 13:33Russ Frushtick?

  You need to say lightning, lightning X brood mother.

• 13:38Griffin McElroy?

  Well, you knew what I meant. Uh, thanks for putting me on blast. Sorry for misspeaking, guys.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 13:44Griffin McElroy?

  It's rad. It's, it's really rad and it really gives you a lot of, I don't know, ability to really fuck up the board and really break a run wide open.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Can we talk about the meta, the harvest meta? I think it's very interesting and I don't know what you guys think.

• 13:58Griffin McElroy?

  Can you explain sort of what that element of the game is like?

• 14:00Speaker 01

  You have, you have a, while the, the, the main time that you're spending on the game, you're playing in like this very dynamic setting where the, the action is coming at you. You're also tending to a town and your town is sort of like, if you imagine your town like a pinball table, which you can increase the size of and you can place the bumpers and the bumpers are buildings that have both a direct impact on your gameplay, but also have an impact on how many resources you're about to harvest. You get one shot to harvest resources and that is basically practice the same way you do

• 14:38Speaker 01

  in the main game, except you're shooting people or workers in a line and you're trying to get them to ping pong off of your different buildings and resources. So you collect as many resources as you can and you're upgrading those things that they're like ping ponging against to try to maximize that. The, the amount they collect, but also like you need them to hit specific buildings to upgrade those buildings. So you're trying to like, and you get one shot at this. So after it's done, it's like.

• 15:05Griffin McElroy?

  Gotta play the game again.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Gotta play the game again. So that's kind of the back and forth.

• 15:09Griffin McElroy?

  It's really great. I've played a lot of this game. I don't know how far you're good.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Wait, I want to know the, I'd like to see what you guys thought about that.

• 15:16Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, I think it's, I think that-

• 15:17Speaker 01

  I just described it.

• 15:18Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah, sure. I was, I was going to talk about that. I was going to say like-

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought you were talking about the whole thing's-

• 15:22Griffin McElroy?

  No, no, no, no. I've, I've played so much and my town is fucking gargantuan and I think it's like fully expanded and I've built all the shit. It does reach a point where, of diminishing returns, I think, where the buildings that you build that give you an upgrade in the like combat part of the game. At first, they do feel pretty substantial and some of them do like crazy shit, like give you an extra slot for another special ball that you can take in like really huge, pretty impactful ways. Uh, but then there's a lot of that that felt kind of, uh, underwhelming to me. I like building a town and increasing my gains and what have you, but it felt like

• 15:58Griffin McElroy?

  the payoff for that was, uh, only sometimes felt like significant and satisfying, uh, which kind of like was a bit of a buzzkill.

• 16:09Chris Plante?

  It's also a bit of a pace breaker in that being in the machine of the breakout can be so enjoyable. And then to go back to the, I don't know, like the town design area where it's like, okay, now I'm going to move around like 20 little bits of ore. So I can put this building here and then I can get this perfect.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  It feels like, I don't know. I mean, you can move this stuff around and you can kind of get an idea, but like it's not very fun to move around. And then for me, the harvest sections always ended with this feeling of like, it was just like this slight disappointment, like I could have done it better. Like every time I did, I feel like if, man, if I had moved that over here or like, I won't notice that there's an area that's closed off and like everything I wanted to do over there doesn't get done. And it's, it's just like- I have had so few interactions with that system where at the end of it, I feel both accomplished and like participatory.

• 17:08Chris Plante?

  Yeah, sure.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  I set this up and it worked the way I wanted it to.

• 17:12Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 17:12Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I, I thought it was interesting and a good contrast to like effectively the same system exists in games like Vampire Survivors or Halls of Torment, but all it is is really just you go back to the main hub and you walk around and spend the gold that you earned in the previous run.

• 17:27Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 17:27Russ Frushtick?

  And that is to some extent what's happening here, but obviously again, you're using the buildings to like ricochet. Yeah, I like the strategy of it, but you're right. There was an element that was missing that just like took some of the satisfaction out of it. But I did get excited when like I built the building that unlocked the character and then I had a new character to do in the next run. So there's like a good logic to it, but there's just an element that's not quite there.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  I needed to feel more celebratory. I don't know. What did you think, Plant?

• 17:54Chris Plante?

  Yeah, well, I mean, beyond that, I, I want to just talk about the high level game. I, the first four hours of this game are some of the most fun I've had in a video game this year.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:07Chris Plante?

  The next two hours convinced me I needed to delete this game immediately. And then I did delete this game. Out of a fear of addiction sort of standpoint? A, a, a mix of addiction and extreme frustration. And I'm curious, maybe I'm just, it's very possible. I'm just bad at the game and I don't know how to play it. But the way that these sorts of games work is they, they make it difficult when they're working well to tell the difference between your skill increasing and the game's progression loop making you more powerful. So as you play this game, you have, you get multiple characters and then each of those characters has upgrades where they're become more powerful, the more you play them.

• 18:50Chris Plante?

  And your town is making everything more powerful and you're unlocking new synergies. So you're. It's not your skill that is improving. A lot of the time, it's all these different things.

• 19:01Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 19:01Chris Plante?

  But what was at least happening for me after that four hour mark was my, what it felt like my skill was moving or wanting to progress much faster than the progression loop. So I was bashing my head against the wall over and over again, feeling like I was doing everything I possibly could to beat a level. Like, I was making great decisions. I had good shots. I had, I felt like I had a strategy. And then I would get towards the end of the level and it was like, nope, this is actually just a grind run. You know, this is your mistake.

• 19:39Griffin McElroy?

  There's a scaling that happens that is a bit unpredictable in your shovel where you'll feel like, hey, this is a fucking good. There's one character where they shoot two balls at half damage.

• 19:49Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:49Griffin McElroy?

  And I feel like that's one where like, I would tear shit up at the beginning and be like, oh, I'll go for a baby ball run. I'll get all these upgrades for those. And then I would hit the like, second boss or third wave and it'd be like, oh, fuck, actually, wow, I wasn't even close to ready for this.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I know, planet, it's, it almost feels like those different systems that are supposed to like reward you and make you feel good about playing, don't necessarily like, interact with each other in a way where it's all clicking. Like, and I feel like maybe the, the thing I was saying about difficulty, maybe would help because maybe that would slow down your facility with like playing the game where, I, I think the, the thing with the harvesting and where it all feels kind of unsatisfying is that my independent runs did seem very much more dependent on the drops that I would get in that run as opposed to whatever upgrades I had gotten in the middle of the thing. So it's all kind of disconnected in that way.

• 20:43Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I also think there's a huge gap between the bulk of the game, which is all these tiny enemies and whatever the boss fight is. So you can have a build that is very intensive direct damage, but that doesn't do you well when you're going up against, you know, hundreds of enemies. Or you can have the opposite, like area of effect builds and then you go up against a boss. And it created this situation where if I built my build for the boss, I would lose early on. And if I built my build to get to the boss, I would lose at the boss. And I get like, I get that. That's a strategy. The thing is to like, create balance.

• 21:20Chris Plante?

  But what that results in is a lot of 10 minute runs where you get to the end and it's like, well, I thought this build was awesome. And now I'm, I'm here. I do want to be super clear though of I, the reason I deleted this game is because I want to download it again. Once it is tweaked because now we just know that these sorts of games especially get tweaked. Endlessly to get balanced based off of players feedback. And this really feels like a game that's going to get tweaked so much over the next year, but yes.

• 21:57Russ Frushtick?

  I did want to call out, there's a feature in this game that I has maybe appeared in other Vampire Survivors likes, but I have not seen it before. That I absolutely fucking love and needs to be in everything now. You can directly control the speed of the gameplay at any given time. So you can go in super fast motion. You can go in normal speed or you can go in slower speed. Akin to like, if you were playing like The Sims and you wanted to like, just like get through a grindy part. And what that allows you to do is depending on what you're doing. So if you're doing like a brand new level, you have never done before. With an unlevelled character, maybe you're going to want to go slower because like every moment really counts. But if you've got a super leveled up character and you're playing an early level, fucking go at hyperspeed and get through it as quickly as possible.

• 22:41Russ Frushtick?

  Like that sort of control I thought was a genius addition.

• 22:45Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it's very accessible too. It's just like, it's just shoulder buttons. It's great. It makes a lot of sense. I mean, it really does. Like you can do that in Vampire Survivors has tools for that, but it's not at that accessible or that level of. And I, it's weird to keep bringing up Vampire Survivors. I know that that's like, not that, not that helpful because that game also is. It's kind of constantly evolving. So those references aren't as helpful. I was going to say plan. I, I feel like.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  I think that the amount of run based games that I have been playing lately or do play generally has inured me to this, the frustration that you're talking about, I see it very, I feel it very much more on a continuum. Like if I get to a boss and I don't finish the boss that time, I, it doesn't really move the needle for me one way or the other, because the next time, because I'm still layering on some sort of progression, you know what I mean? And I feel like, uh, I don't know, that didn't get to me as much because it just did feel like I was gonna, I got something useful out of it. And I was gonna have a different, you know, experience the next time.

• 23:44Chris Plante?

  This is so helpful because it builds off of what you were saying about the city, which is if I felt like I had more control of growing my build in the city management area, I'm, I probably wouldn't feel so bad about the end of a run. But when I end the run, and often I like, don't even want to go back to the city management area, I'm not actually growing. And maybe that's it is like, I don't know if it's maybe I need to spend more time in the city management area, or again, it just needs to make a little more sense.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  The city management, I think is too much tool for what it is. I feel like they need like, big, you should have that level of fidelity if you want it. But I would also like to just like, have an optimal path that you're just kind of laying out for me. And I'm upgrading like, how many people I get and how many bounces around I get. So it feels more like celebratory rather than like, ah, fuck myself.

• 24:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I, you do, the later upgrades for the city do have more impact on the city building side of things. Like you can unlock more, uh, more attempts, more harvested. Or I like there's a building where when you hit it first, that speeds up your harvest. Yeah. So you start building around those, those things. And like the strategy for that stuff really does feel good. It's just by that point in the game, I feel like I had unlocked most of the meaningful kind of like, yeah, character combat upgrades. And so it, there's parts of this that are really rough. I do think there is something kind of undeniable about this. Fusion, I think it is, I think it is very, very strong and like, you know, you go back to

• 25:21Griffin McElroy?

  that feeling you had the first time you played Puzzle Quest where you're like, oh shit, of course RPGs and match three, that makes sense. Like, I feel like this is a, this, this game I think really establishes the breakout as, uh, you know, as a subgenre, pretty, pretty authoritatively. Um, it's a, it's a bit rough in how it's balanced, but I don't know, I also spent like 30 hours playing it. I'd just like a bit more paddle play next time. A little more paddle play is all I'm just asking for.

• 25:49Chris Plante?

  I also just wanna say that, uh, schmups, just infiltrating every corner of video games, I love it. I live for it. Schmupx ball.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  You can throw, I, you know, plant, that's funny. I feel like, uh, schmup is the new, uh, light MMORPG elements. Like, you could just put a schmup in it, you know what I mean? Like, they threw it in on top of the breakout thing. You're also shooting a thousand bullets.

• 26:17Griffin McElroy?

  Just throw it in, throw a schmup on there. Why not?

• 26:20Chris Plante?

  Hey, should we take a quick break and then come back and talk about cool stuff? Or not cool stuff? I don't know.

• 26:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that would be prudent.

• 26:30Chris Plante?

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• 27:09Chris Plante?

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• 27:49Chris Plante?

  That is P R O T O N V P N dot com slash besties for 70% off your two-year plan. That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 28:06Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk a little bit about Xbox broadly and Xbox more specifically. It's been kind of a tough generation for a number of different reasons that I'm not gonna specifically go into right now. For Xbox, not the least of which, they are like pretty handily losing the console war to PS5. I think there's been 2X, the number of PS5s that have been sold versus Xbox Series X's, which is not-

• 28:32Chris Plante?

  Not great.

• 28:34Russ Frushtick?

  Sorry?

• 28:36Chris Plante?

  I said not great.

• 28:37Russ Frushtick?

  Not great, correct. So they're having a tough time than that. We've seen layoffs, we've seen game cancellations, we've seen all sorts of stuff that has been like pretty dire. I think the most recent big news was the, a dramatic price increase of Game Pass where they increased the price by 50%. You know, through and Fortnite Crew as part of it, but obviously that was like a huge sticker shock moment where I think a lot of people probably were like, this is not worth it anymore. And I think they probably saw a lot of subs. I think they are at a period right now where they are trying a lot of different things to keep the gaming division of Xbox alive and admitting

• 29:19Russ Frushtick?

  that their previous strategies were not right. And the latest strategy is the entry into handheld gaming, which outside of Nintendo, it's been quite a while since a major publisher of video games-

• 29:36Russ Frushtick?

  Has jumped into it and it's always been PlayStation like Xbox has really never done the handheld gaming space. And now they are, they partnered with Asus and put out a device which is out this week called the ROG Xbox Ally X.

• 29:50Griffin McElroy?

  Right off the, right off the

• 29:51Russ Frushtick?

  Just rolls right off the tongue. Obviously people are familiar. There is already an Asus ROG Ally and an Ally X, but not an Xbox Ally X. Holy shit. If you thought the branding was bad for the Xbox Series X and S, welcome to the new age.

• 30:08Griffin McElroy?

  They can both be bad. They're both pretty, they're both pretty rotten.

• 30:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. So, so it's worth knowing just off the top here, a few things. One, I'm, I've been using one for the last five days, a review unit that they sent. For the last five days. This, despite the naming convention, is a more powerful device than the ROG Ally X. You go to fucking Digital Foundry if you want like a spec rundown or whatever it is, but the general consensus is it's like 20 to 25% more powerful, whatever. For my purposes, not being like a huge spec head, what that means is I can run a game like, for example, I ran Battlefield 6. Brand new 3D full-on game at 60 frames a second on like medium settings in a handheld setting, which is like,

• 30:57Russ Frushtick?

  I've been using a Steam Deck for the last four years, a pretty dramatic increase. But having been using a Steam Deck for the last four years, there's something that I haven't personally experienced that I know you guys have, which is Windows handheld gaming.

• 31:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it fucking sucks dude.

• 31:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Griffin McElroy?

  It's really bad. I genuinely would have returned my ROG Ally X.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  I hate, I hate Windows gaming so much that metaphorically, I have spent hundreds of dollars on a thing and then gotten a screwdriver, just banged it into its brain until it died. And I brought it back with paddles, like, and made it forget everything it had ever known. And I risked its life to do it. That's how much I hate Windows.

• 31:35Griffin McElroy?

  It's not great to do with. Tools on your desk designed to help you navigate interfaces to do it on a handheld with a touchscreen and face buttons and sticks and triggers and shit like it simply sucks. It simply is so, so bad and Bazite fixes that by just making it SteamOS, which is what I did.

• 31:54Russ Frushtick?

  So Xbox agrees and has admitted to that and the solve is, I say solve in quotes because we're going to get to it. The solve is on the rog Xbox Ally X because it launches with a,

• 32:07Griffin McElroy?

  it's called Xbox full screen experience.

• 32:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's called Xbox OX, but essentially it's, think of big picture mode, but for Xbox in the way that Steam has big picture mode. And so they created a system where when you launch the device, it launches straight into like a front end that will allow you to launch into your various storefronts, whether that's Xbox itself, or if it's Steam, or if it's Epic Game Store, or whatever it is. So theoretically, and I say this with a heavy underline, theoretically, you should never have to see the Xbox desk, the Windows desktop ever when you're using this thing. In practice, that has not been the case because I had to update it about

• 32:52Russ Frushtick?

  16 times. It's hard for me to say whether that's going to be the case when it gets unboxed by normal people because I had an earlier version of it. But it, the Steam OS experience is so smooth and so pretty fucking flawless.

• 33:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 33:08Russ Frushtick?

  And when you make an experience that kind of feels in the ballpark of that, you kind of need to hit that mark. And unfortunately, they're not there yet. There's a lot of like, hit the button, nothing happens. Hit the button, try to go back, you're not going back. Open up another app, that app is not opening for some reason. There's still a lot of that. Once you're actually in a game, it's fine. I've been, it's been fine, but.

• 33:30Griffin McElroy?

  You get in there and like erase it and start up.

• 33:34Russ Frushtick?

  Erase what?

• 33:36Griffin McElroy?

  The, this rog Ally Xbox. It's not like protected or anything, right?

• 33:41Russ Frushtick?

  Where are you at?

• 33:41Griffin McElroy?

  Get in there and erase its brains and do all the nasty stuff you want.

• 33:44Russ Frushtick?

  Testing this device.

• 33:45Griffin McElroy?

  Get better brains.

• 33:46Russ Frushtick?

  Or as I'm testing this device, all I can think.

• 33:48Griffin McElroy?

  No dirtier brains. Not better, dirtier.

• 33:51Russ Frushtick?

  As I'm testing this device, all I can think of is I should not, I'm probably just gonna fucking wipe this thing and just install SteamOS or Bazite. Like, that seems like the likely scenario.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. If I was that team, man, I would just put my social security number in the boot up screen because nobody's ever gonna, that's how quick they're gonna try to get rid of it.

• 34:12Russ Frushtick?

  You could tell that they're trying, but it is.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  But can you, sorry, I just want to clarify. Well, would you feel comfortable at this point if it was yours? Is there enough, is the knowledge base out there yet for how to, if you wanted to wipe this thing clean?

• 34:28Russ Frushtick?

  Definitely not. Probably, I imagine it'll be relatively quick because Bazite obviously works on a rogue ally. And I don't think the architecture is that dramatically different. So I'm sure within a month or two, there's probably going to be a solution to get Linux on this thing very quickly. Not pre-release, certainly.

• 34:46Chris Plante?

  I want to talk about the trying really quick. Because I, no denying that the people who are actually on the ground making this saying are trying and doing their best. I, no doubt. The people who are deciding to ship this right now, I have real questions for. Because the whole pitch of this thing was the best of Xbox and the best of PC. And this does not play Xbox games. That is. Explain that to me. I don't understand. It's to me in, in, just bonkers. You cannot play Xbox console video games on this. You can play PC games that have been ported, but when, let's say Grand Theft Auto comes

• 35:31Chris Plante?

  out next year and it's not going to be available on PC and it's available on Xbox, you will not be able to play it on this device.

• 35:39Russ Frushtick?

  Correct. It's a PC gaming.

• 35:40Chris Plante?

  All of your other old Xbox games, all of this Xbox anywhere, the whole this is an Xbox brand is simply not true of their big new hardware. And that's just so.

• 35:55Chris Plante?

  Stupid to me.

• 35:56Russ Frushtick?

  And I would also add, if you're gonna portray this as Xbox OS, it needs to be as relatively painless as the Xbox's OS on the console, which is relatively painless. Like, you're not dealing with a lot. Like, it just kinda runs.

• 36:13Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's a console gaming operating system.

• 36:15Russ Frushtick?

  That needed to be the rubric, the mark there. So when I talk about things like putting this console, the handheld, to sleep, the new Xbox ally, whatever, it does sleep as poorly as any Windows handheld.

• 36:31Griffin McElroy?

  As the Rog ally X also.

• 36:32Russ Frushtick?

  Which is to say, it essentially doesn't have a sleep mode, which is a huge fucking problem for a handheld.

• 36:36Griffin McElroy?

  And people will say, like, oh, it has hibernation, and it has, like, this deep sleep mode if you do, like... I don't wanna fuck with that stuff. Like, I simply don't wanna fuck with that stuff. I wanna press the button and have it immediately switch off, and then when I press the button, immediately switch back on into the game that I am.

• 36:52Russ Frushtick?

  And you don't wanna worry about it turning on randomly for an update while it's in your bag somewhere, and blowing through the battery in 30 minutes. Like, that's...

• 37:00Chris Plante?

  I think this gets at the huge problem of this whole "this is an Xbox" idea, and how this, I feel like, is just gonna continue to backfire on them, is the promise of a video game console is the ease. If you want anything else, you should be playing it on PC. You want cheaper stuff, you want, you know, stuff that runs better. But if you want ease, that's why you buy a video game console. So now what they've said is, this is an Xbox. Everything is an Xbox, and every experience that you have with Xbox is the opposite of video game console. It either is more of a headache, like this, it's just a PC, or it is the digital streaming, like your phone, which also has its own headaches, that is, you know, not giving you the guaranteed experience that you're getting from a console. So,

• 37:44Chris Plante?

  weirdly, "this is an Xbox" means that nothing is an Xbox.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  It screams of, like, a biz dev product that wasn't really, like, conceptualized with a market in mind, so much as just, like, "Think about it, baby. It's the best of Xbox with the Rog ally. It's perfect. Let's do it." It's like, why? Why? Why? Why are you doing it? Why?

• 38:02Russ Frushtick?

  I actually disagree. I think there is a market here, and I think the market is Xbox trying to reclaim ownership over PC gaming from Steam.

• 38:12Russ Frushtick?

  The problem with that goal is you actually need to produce a product that is as good as the competitor you're reaching in the same way that like when you try to launch the Epic Game Store on your computer, it's a pretty miserable experience.

• 38:24Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Russ Frushtick?

  You needed to match what Steam has done. And when Chris was talking about like painless experiences in PC gaming, the Steam Deck is a pretty fucking painless experience in PC gaming and they figured it out. So that's the rubric to hit. Now, to be fair, I'm going to try to be as fair as I can. When the Steam Deck launched very early on, it was not, there were issues. Like, we all remember, there was a lot of updates in that first year that like brought it to a better state. But it's, trust me when I say this device is in a much worse state on the software side. On the hardware-

• 38:57Chris Plante?

  It's also, it's also a rogue ally. Like, they've, this has been out, this has been out there for a, for a while.

• 39:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  But it's not the same device, right?

• 39:05Russ Frushtick?

  It's not the same device.

• 39:06Chris Plante?

  Not quite.

• 39:06Russ Frushtick?

  Again, internals, but I also, I haven't mentioned the hardware. The hardware, for what it's worth, it is more comfortable for me to hold than a Steam Deck. It's heavier, pretty dramatically heavier, but it feels like you're holding an Xbox controller. Like, it feels really nice. But again, you're dealing with software. I'm like swiping down to enter a PIN code every time I turn the thing on. Like, it's very bizarre. And I really hope that they get to a place where Steam is, I mean, it's just like, Steam being the only option in the world for like painless PC gaming seems crazy to me.

• 39:42Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Well, one, I just think Steam needs to be easier to install on all sorts of other devices. That was the promise early on, and I want to see that.

• 39:49Russ Frushtick?

  SteamOS.

• 39:50Chris Plante?

  SteamOS, yeah. And that it's just available on more and more. But to get, to Justin's point, I think you're both, it's, both things are true. This is a huge market opportunity.

• 40:04Chris Plante?

  But more importantly for players, like, this is like a thing that like people, like, I would like, right? I would like a, for Sony and Microsoft to be making handheld devices. It's deranged that they didn't after the Switch's success. I think what is so frustrating about

• 40:22Chris Plante?

  Is it just feels like Microsoft is grabbing at anything they can and it needs to happen now. So it's like, hey, it will take us six years to develop a new hardware, but we can get a handheld out in the market if we partner with Rog and we do this. And it's like, we gotta get it out the door by the holidays. So even though it's not a great experience, we gotta get it out. Oh, the tariffs are happening, doesn't matter. We just need to balance that price up. They resisted putting a price on this thing forever. It's just all, it all just feels so desperate. And then to actually get the product and for it to be this disappointing. I'm sorry, I have not played this.

• 41:02Chris Plante?

  I'm going off of your opinion, but for it to, for it to, on a very high level, not literally do the main thing, which is be an Xbox and be a PC. I just find, I just find it so frustrating and so disappointing.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  I, I think Microsoft is in a weird, I mean, they've been in a weird spot, but for me, this device kind of clarifies it and you all are smart people in games. So tell me if this resonates with you, but I feel like Microsoft right now wants to be in the position where they can have Xbox as a completely generic, amorphous label that just means video games.

• 41:45Chris Plante?

  Correct.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  And it can be a storefront to them that where they are selling video games. They would love for that to be a consistent online thing across all your devices, but

• 41:54Chris Plante?

  It's called Steam.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:57Russ Frushtick?

  This is their version of Steam.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Right, but they sign, that would not be a problem, except that they are simultaneously trying to keep a large portion of their fan base convinced that they are not doing that. Like they have, it seems like there's a group of people, they need to keep reassuring. And this is true in a sense, right? That they will continue to sell those people a box that says Xbox on it for as long as they will continue to give them the money to do that, right? It's not like, Microsoft is not saying we're getting out of the console game unless people don't buy them and then they just won't. But I don't think they want to communicate their strategy. And they and that's keeping one foot in both of these worlds, right?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  If they would just say we're the Xbox boxes, don't worry about that anymore. All your Xbox games you can play everywhere. I don't think they've done the deals to support that. So I don't think that's been their strategy. So I don't know where they go from here, but it just feels like they won't. They don't want to tell their audience what they are doing. Meanwhile, like quietly retailers are just not selling Xboxes anymore like.

• 43:05Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Yeah. Costco pulled them from the.

• 43:07Griffin McElroy?

  It's it is on. They have been in such a weird spot for so long.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  I've heard of retailers too.

• 43:12Griffin McElroy?

  It continues to be strange to me that that no major. It feels like there's a move here, right? And I, I don't know what it is off the top of my head. If I did, I would be in a completely different sector of this business, but it feels like the stable is is big and the experience and everything like it feels like there should be a move here. It's just that.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  The move, I, I think if I was Microsoft and this isn't the like, this isn't where they need to be. But like both of their online offerings, Sony and Microsoft need to be have impressive enough online offerings that a compelling device would be a go anywhere experience that you can just play all your library whenever you want to, right? But like, I don't know why Microsoft also wants to be subsidizing the like PC hardware to be playing it in your hands. I don't know. I feel like that is always, that is just a stopgap that we are going to have to move past in our, in our cloud future.

• 44:06Russ Frushtick?

  What do you mean by subsidizing?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Like they're paying for the, okay, they're paying, this is maybe our Y for infrastructure isn't at a point, but where this is like realistic for everyone, but like they're subsidizing the hardware that is physically in your hands, but that hardware could be somewhere else, right? And not, you're not paying for that hardware, right? So, so you are buying the hardware that you have in front of you and carrying it physically, like the weight of that, right? And you've bought those chips, you bought all that hardware, when like you don't need to own that hardware. You just need to be able to play the games in it, especially in like a handheld format. I'm getting to a point where these, these things, I can't even hold them easily anymore. It like I, I struggle with like carpal tunnel and stuff like that.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Like this, this form factor is starting to get unpleasant and I, I just feel like streaming is a much more realistic like path forward than trying to like subs, like put PCs into people's hands.

• 45:02Russ Frushtick?

  Interesting.

• 45:03Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I think, I think either way, it just needs to be a good experience.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Like, they're also crazy expensive, and it's like wild.

• 45:09Chris Plante?

  They can do streaming, but it needs to be better. They can do this with the traditional OS, but it needs to be better. Whatever it is, the experience needs to be way more comfortable.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  I'm having really, really good streaming experiences on Android devices these days. Like, they're getting really, like, especially with, like, Android, like, Game Hub on Android has gotten to a point where, like, if your Steam credentials are there, you tap the game that you own, and it will download the files and convert them for you, and then you're playing them, and it's streaming beautifully. Not streaming, it's, it's on your device. It's like, you're playing it, but it's, it's a much more pleasant experience. Do we want to talk about other stuff we've been playing?

• 45:50Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 45:51Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Or do we have reader mail?

• 45:53Russ Frushtick?

  We have a couple quick reader mails. First one comes from Jakey. Some people reposting a comment I left a few weeks ago of non-horror Halloween games that you might want to try if you are looking for something this season. Most of them are quite old, but a few of them are playable on some form of modern consoles. Arkham Knight, Knight in the Woods, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Oogie's Revenge, Simpsons Hit and Run, and Costume Quest 1 and 2 are all games of varying quality that actually take place, at least in part, on Halloween. Other typical horror games, I always think of Luigi's Mansion games and medieval. And then some mentions to Grab by the Ghoulies, Stubbs the Zombie.

• 46:36Russ Frushtick?

  Some, some classic ones first. I want to mention Luigi's Mansion specifically, personally, because I've been playing it with my son, and that is a great fucking co-op game. I would really, really recommend if you've, if it's been sitting on your Switch for five years, because he played through it when it first came out, and you want to try it in co-op, you can do almost the entire game in co-op with the other player controlling Luigi, and it's been a fucking delight.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  I wanna, hey, can I piggyback off that with a similar recommendation for a Halloween sort of thing that I've also been playing this week, my kids, 99 Nights in the Forest is a Roblox experience. And the way it's structured is that it's a day and night cycle, where you have a camp, where you're trying to chop wood in the forest, bring it back to your camp, and chuck enough wood into the fire, that it will stay lit throughout the night, and protect you from the deer and cultists that are trying to attack you. But, there are four missing children in the forests, that you have to venture out to find. So the game is about going out to find these children, and harvesting resources, then bringing back to camp, and then trying to stay alive through the night, and get back in time, so you can survive, and then at the daytime, trying to find these missing

• 47:44Speaker 01

  kids. It's a goofy Roblox thing, but as a like, slightly semi scary thing, to just kinda like chill out and play with your kids. I don't know if you do that with your children, but if you do, and they're probably already playing 99 Nights in the Forest, but if not, think about flexing on your kids with a Roblox game they haven't played.

• 47:59Griffin McElroy?

  Can you imagine if one of us was on the ground floor of a Roblox experience? How much our relevance and sort of just, you know, cachet would just completely fucking explode overnight?

• 48:11Griffin McElroy?

  I have been playing quite a bit more Absalom with Henry now, we got it on the Switch 2, and so I basically started over, because I'd played it on the wrong ally. And it has really lived up to my expectations, as being like a really tight as hell, like, couch, couch co-op, beat'em up, that is accessible enough for an eight-year-old who doesn't have like, a ton of experience with the genre. We played through all of Scott Pilgrim, a couple times, actually, and so like, he really, really likes that model of game, and he has gotten so fucking deep into this, and it's been cool watching him like, say like, "Oh, I'm a cider main!", like, and seeing him kind of have that experience with the

• 48:53Griffin McElroy?

  game has been very cool, and yeah, it's just, that game's just fun as hell. I've also been playing on Apple Arcade, the Japanese Rural Life Adventure.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Oh, sick!

• 49:06Griffin McElroy?

  This game came out a while ago, but it has been, I believe it's been updated, there's quite a few things going on in it.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Oh, I can't go back to Japanese Rural Life Adventure, Griff, I don't know, Buzz.

• 49:16Griffin McElroy?

  If you've never played it, it is sort of a life sim game about living out in the Japanese countryside, and sort of like helping to rebuild a town, but it doesn't really have necessarily a lot of the... Mechanical or economic hooks of a Stardew Valley or an Animal Crossing, it is mostly just a chill vibe game going around and like, you know, I've sold enough fish to buy a, you know, a millstone so I can make, I can pound mochi now. Like it really is very sort of slow and vibey and I'm, I really like it and it's been fun to come.

• 49:53Chris Plante?

  Nice, fresh?

• 49:55Russ Frushtick?

  You go first.

• 49:56Chris Plante?

  Uh, you know, it's that time of the year when you just gotta make a nice glass of warm cider and play some Puzzle Bobble 2 Arcade Edition, you know? Sometimes you just gotta pop those bubbles. You know what I'm realizing? After playing Bollocks Pit, I needed another game that let me fire bubbles up into the air while they come down at me and crush me. And I found the perfect one. It's Puzzle Bobble 2. A great thing about that game is you load it and if you played it on Dreamcast, you actually are transported back to 1999 when you play it.

• 50:31Griffin McElroy?

  Wow, I didn't know that games could do that.

• 50:33Chris Plante?

  Yeah, this one can.

• 50:35Russ Frushtick?

  Very cool. I've been busy playing games that we can't talk about yet because they're under embargo, but I do have a request for the people at home. Steam Next Fest is going on right now. There's a shitload of new demos that are out and about and playable. Please, in the comments for this newsletter, share the games you played for Steam Next Fest and really liked, because we're always looking out for new, cool games to check out. And I always get buried during Steam Next Fest. It always makes me a little depressed how many fucking good games there are and knowing that I won't be able to play them all. So please call out the good games and why they are good in the comments.

• 51:15Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, Juice?

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Oh, can I take us about one other thing that was neat?

• 51:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Retroassembly.com is a website where you can either use the website or you can download a self-hosted tool that you can have on your own network addressable server. So like if you have, you know, you can set this up. You basically can upload ROMs from... Super Nintendo, Genesis, Fancom, SG-1000, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Band, a bunch of, a bunch of, bunch of, bunch of platforms and they're playable like either in a cloud format, anywhere that you have a browser access, or if you put them on a home server, you can play them anywhere you connect to the server and you can do them through this tool and have it like set up. So it's kind of like having your own like

• 52:01Speaker 01

  little streaming arcade and like your, your cloud at home. It's a really neat tool and it's, I always think it's cool when people make this stuff for no reason other than it's neat.

• 52:13Russ Frushtick?

  So, so they're not hosting the ROMs. Like you, you said you upload the ROMs. Are they?

• 52:19Speaker 01

  They can't, they will. They can upload the, the-

• 52:22Russ Frushtick?

  Is that not like a issue? Like a legal issue?

• 52:27Griffin McElroy?

  Are you gonna get in trouble, Justin?

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Are you asking me?

• 52:29Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I'm not asking you, Justin. I'm asking Retro Assembly if they're hosting a bunch of ROMs they don't own.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Oh my God. No, it's tied to my Google Drive. So that's what it's, it's pulling from, right? So this is like a translation layer between the two-

• 52:41Griffin McElroy?

  Are you saying you have ROMs on your Google Drive?

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, for games that I legally own. Remember that day when I told you I had bought all the games? And then threw them away? Well, uh, okay. That's gonna do it for us for this week on the Besties.

• 52:55Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, wait, wait. I want to thank some Patreon people real quick.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Not this time, buster.

• 52:59Russ Frushtick?

  Patreon.com slash thebesties. Thank you to some, uh, new or existing members that have, uh, maybe they upgraded, maybe they were just newly joined. Abigail S., Parker T., Ashley A. and Chocoboba T., which is a very funny. Uh, thank you for being members of Patreon. Uh, we've got, uh, new bracket battles coming out. Every single month, we've got Rest These episodes twice a month. Uh, it's all sorts of fun going on in there. So please join us if you haven't yet.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Do we know what we're talking about next week?

• 53:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  And now, next week, we're gonna be talking about Outer Worlds 2. So, uh, that'll be very exciting. And then after that, well, you'll just have to see, won't you?

• 53:41Russ Frushtick?

  Sorry.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  That's gonna do it for this week.

• 53:44Griffin McElroy?

  That was really cute, dude.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Thanks, dude. That's gonna do it for this week on the Besties. Be sure to watch it next week for the Besties because should the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Besties!