0:30

そし して て、特 特別 別な な、 全て

0:33

て特 特別 別な なも もの ので です すが が、 特別 別な なも もの のの の、 8Fou

0:35

urPla ay Pod dca ast、 日本 本の のゲ ゲー ーム ムや や日 日本 本の のゲ ゲー ーム

0:37

ムに につ つい いて て話 話す すた ため めの の 最も も最 最高 高の のホ ホー ーム ムペ ペー ージ ジで です

0:39

す。 そし して て、 今回 回の の Fortnite Tokyo Game Sh

0:42

howは、 スペ

0:44

ペク クタ タカ カル ルで です す! おー ー! イエ

0:47

エー ーイ イ! なの ので で、 通常

0:49

常の のデ ディ ィス スク クレ レイ イマ マー ーで です す。 新し

0:51

しい い方 方は は、 お手 手伝 伝い いし して てく

0:53

くだ ださ さい い。 この の番 番組 組は

0:55

は、 通常 常よ より りも も、 少し しカ カオ オテ テッ

0:57

ック クで です す。 ドア アベ ベル ルが が鳴 鳴る ると と、 お風

0:59

風呂 呂が が開 開く くと と、 お風

1:02

風呂 呂が が開 開く くと と、 トイ イレ レが

1:05

が流 流れ れる ると と、 誰が が何 何を をす

1:07

する るか か分 分か から らな ない いで です すが が、 でも

1:10

も、 今日 日は は、 この

1:12

の、

1:15

大き きな なイ イベ ベン ント トを を、 大き きな なイ イベ

1:17

ベン ント トと とし して て、 表現 現す する るた ため めに に、 東京

1:19

京ゲ ゲー ーム ムシ ショ ョー ーと と呼 呼ば ばれ れる る、

1:21

東京 京ゲ ゲー ーム ムシ ショ ョー ーが が、 やっ っと と、今 今年 年に に、 TGSが、 やっ

1:24

っと と、 TGSが、 やっ っと

1:26

と、 TGSが、 やっ っと と、 TGSが、

1:30

やっ っと と、 GDCは は、 やっ

1:32

っと と、 GDCは は、 やっ

1:35

っと と、 やっ っと と、 来年 年に にも もや やっ った たん

1:37

んで です すが が、 やっ っと と、 CA ABE ECA ADE Eに参 参加 加す する るこ こと

1:39

とに にな なり りま ます す。 まだ

1:41

だ、 声が が聞 聞こ こえ えな ない い方 方は

1:43

は、 どれ れが が来 来て てい いる るか か、

1:45

どれ れが が、 本社 社の の方 方が が来 来て てい いる

1:48

るか かを を、 皆さ さん んか から らお お知 知ら らせ せし しま ます す。 ティ ィー ーナ ナが が来 来て

1:50

てい いま ます す。 ティ ィー ーナ ナが が来 来て てい いま ます す。 ジョ

1:52

ョン ンも も来 来て てい いま ます す。 ジョ ョン ンも も来 来て てい いま ます す。 ゲイ イブ ブも

1:54

も、 スピ ピリ リッ ット トも も、 マイ イク

1:56

クも も、 もち ちろ ろん ん、 僕は はマ

1:59

マー ーク ク・ ・ジ ジェ ェン ン・ ・マ マク クド ドナ ナル ルド ドで です す。 to my left first

2:01

special guest please. Hello my name

2:03

is Brandon Sheffield. Yeah.

2:06

And I am the creative director of Necrosoft

2:08

Games and I'm also on the insert credit

2:11

podcast which we just did in an exchange. It

2:14

was very fun. That was a very fun experience. Like

2:17

you said kind of a polar opposite

2:19

from this podcast. In that you had prepared

2:22

things, you had thought about the podcast

2:24

ahead of time. It was answers

2:26

were limited to six minutes and

2:29

it was not limited to me screaming the

2:32

next news item. There was

2:34

not a single gong to be heard.

2:36

Yeah.

2:36

There were no gongs but

2:38

it was very enjoyable. When does that episode

2:41

going to come out? That's a excellent question and I do not

2:43

know. Okay. Well, please do look forward

2:47

to that. It'll be pretty soon. Okay. In October.

2:50

In October. Got it. Okay. Look forward to it.

2:52

Please look forward to it. Or sooner.

2:54

Or sooner. So if it comes out in November

2:57

you really messed up is what you're saying. That's right. And

2:59

our other

3:00

special podcast guest, Rick,

3:03

coming back. The grand return.

3:05

The grand return, yes. You guys

3:07

are far too kind to me indeed but yes, my name is

3:09

Kevin Gifford. I am a 8'4 veteran.

3:12

I've known you guys

3:15

since almost the

3:17

20th century indeed. So you're in diapers. Yes. And

3:20

I've been involved with a great deal of translation

3:22

work in video games over the years. Also

3:25

a great deal of work in, for example, light

3:27

novels, manga, and also a lot

3:29

of much more boring but also

3:32

occasionally much more better paying stuff like medical translation

3:34

and all that sort of thing. But as I'm here,

3:36

I'm here. Wait, you're not here to talk

3:38

about medical translation? Oh yeah. Alright.

3:41

Hey, if you want me to. Scrub the agenda, Gabe. Kevin.

3:45

Yes. K-Giff. 96 FM.

3:48

You're burying the lead here. Yes.

3:50

Which is where people from this podcast

3:53

would know you and love you. I have

3:56

some podcasting experience in my past.

3:59

When did I do? that even though it was 2012

4:01

I think I produced a six episode

4:03

series which is still available if you look it

4:05

up that called fun I was gonna

4:08

have you redo it if

4:11

you can pretend pals do it which

4:13

is a video game music podcast resource which um

4:15

I apologize have

4:17

not come back to it since then 11 years

4:19

on there it's still perfect frozen

4:22

in amber for people to enjoy on their

4:24

favorite podcast I I feel

4:27

like you know in the meantime

4:29

you know you can bring up a number of

4:31

YouTube channels which do roughly the same thing

4:34

within also has the advantage of not having

4:36

a weird dude who skits

4:38

to himself interspersed in between

4:40

the music is that an advantage yeah

4:43

that's part of what made it made that

4:45

and also you had a strange vent

4:47

for a retro video game music

4:50

podcast I feel like from from

4:52

American perspective at least anyway in that

4:55

you folks about on Europe a lot more

4:57

on European stuff than I feel

4:59

like those I like to really gaming all this sort

5:01

of thing plus which you know I

5:04

get to into the Merc

5:06

on this but I have a great respect for things like

5:08

the Amiga the Atari ST things yeah of course

5:10

that were popular in Europe during the whole chip era

5:13

so you just happen to be you're not here for TGS

5:15

you just happen to be here I

5:17

am I these days I'm a resident

5:19

of the far back end of Vermont closer to Quebec

5:22

yeah and I came here right now just

5:24

because I have three friends local who are you

5:27

know have never been to Japan before had waited a long

5:29

time looks like all the tourists which everyone

5:31

sees all across Tokyo right now sure so many

5:33

French people indeed and so they're

5:35

all doing their own thing right now my

5:38

friends are they France your friends yes

5:40

yeah you knew although

5:42

I thought there are French friends French

5:47

friends well but

5:50

you were gonna be asking are they are they French

5:52

or they kibikwa because that's the real question

5:54

right well I do have both

5:56

Quebec law and killed friends in Quebec

5:58

so Brendan let's

6:00

talk about why you're here. Oh, I'm here to show

6:03

my video game demon school at a booth

6:05

and Oh, yeah,

6:07

I feel like we need yeah Team

6:11

thanks and And

6:14

it's been okay. It's kind of interesting.

6:16

We're next to Square Enix, which is cool. We

6:19

can see How many trailers

6:21

they've spent a lot of money on that giant

6:24

a giant Lego Final Fantasy 14? Yeah

6:27

thing that's within Yasuhara

6:31

the the Yasuhara Hirokatsu

6:34

the level designer

6:36

of Sonic came by and we and talk

6:38

for a Korean

6:41

video game historian came by and we talked for

6:43

a while. No. Yeah. Yeah, there

6:45

aren't enough of those You have an amazing

6:48

trailer going on now for for

6:50

demon. Do you want to give people like the quick elevator

6:52

pitch for Even if they had it. Yeah,

6:54

it's a it's a an RPG with tactical

6:57

battles With some

6:59

Shin Megami tensei influence and a lot

7:01

of Italian horror film influence as well

7:05

Pixel like great. I don't know. What would

7:07

you call the art style? I mean, it's not it's

7:10

it's pixel art It's kind of you point five.

7:12

What we did was we we took

7:15

We have 3d backgrounds,

7:17

but we designed them to look like they were 2d

7:20

backgrounds that were trying to look 3d Yeah,

7:23

and then the characters are 2d but then as

7:26

the perspective moves Yeah, they

7:28

shift kind of like kind of shift around and we did that to

7:30

have that the

7:32

idea is that 3d represents

7:34

the demon world and 2d represents the

7:36

human world and so

7:39

all the humans are 2d and and Demons

7:42

when we fight them in battles are also 2d

7:44

because we meet in liminal space. So their powers

7:47

are diminished But bosses

7:49

are all full. That's why the boss is it for the

7:51

other night and then but the

7:53

reason that the Backgrounds look

7:56

2d but our 3d is to indicate

7:58

how much the demon world is already already seeping through

8:00

to the human world without them. Very

8:03

cool. So tactics, Shin

8:05

Megami Tensei fans

8:09

taking place in Japanese schools, demons and

8:11

all of that good stuff is in there. All that

8:13

stuff is there. Yeah, and

8:16

we got all the Italian

8:18

horror film style music, so a lot of fretless

8:21

bass and choral

8:24

synthesizers and things. We

8:26

have an amazing trailer,

8:28

well an amazing promotional

8:30

video, PD or whatever, the puppet. Where

8:33

can people find that? Because I really want people to see that.

8:36

You can just look up the Demon School Haunted

8:38

VHS trailer. There you go. Okay,

8:40

yeah, definitely check that out. I'll do it. Yeah,

8:42

there's a puppet. That was very cool. It

8:44

was the first day and we made you

8:46

leave early to come and record this. So it's

8:48

very premature to be asking this question, but

8:51

how is your TGS? Give

8:53

us your quick impression, your quick first day,

8:55

half day impression of TGS this

8:58

year. It felt a little lighter

9:00

than last year actually to me, but

9:03

I'm not 100% confident that that's

9:05

a fact. It just kind

9:07

of gave me that feeling. It might

9:10

be more spread out. The show floor

9:13

is bigger. I think what happened is last

9:15

year they made it smaller to make it

9:17

seem more populous and also

9:19

like last year they had the Indy corner

9:22

in the main hall and now in the other

9:24

building. Back in. Show the box to another

9:26

building. Yeah, which is kind of disappointing, I feel like. It is

9:28

disappointing for them especially. Because it's

9:30

out. Yeah, it's out. It's like it's not, I

9:32

mean, I was going to find my way there anyway

9:35

because that's also where all the merch is and that's like the main

9:37

reason I'm going to TGS. That's the one thing I will say, it's with the merch

9:39

booth for the public that is going to be

9:41

a really pretty driver and you have to go

9:43

through some of these stuff to get to the

9:46

merch. In that way it leaves

9:48

to the merch. But it's not immediately apparent where it is because

9:51

it's 9 and 10 and you see up to 8 in

9:53

the main hall and you're like, okay, if I just keep going

9:56

that way, but no, you got to leave and then walk down

9:58

the road and so on. Yeah, that is true. So exactly

10:00

accessible. I've also exhibited in that building

10:04

as an as an indie and I will say that When

10:07

it rained it was dead and

10:10

that's what's gonna happen tomorrow. So we'll see Even

10:13

today when it rained. Yeah last year was it

10:15

just the two buildings as opposed to the three

10:17

that was or is this year The three

10:19

halls. I think it was two of the three.

10:22

Yeah, it was only two of the three halls and

10:24

not the separate building hall gotcha,

10:26

gotcha Yeah, and and

10:28

it was it felt very

10:31

lively and so it felt like we're back But

10:33

this year I guess is the real we're back for some reason

10:35

It's definitely gonna be the expected attendance

10:38

is like 200,000 is what they're aiming for 260 I

10:42

think they're looking to maybe break the record.

10:44

And yeah, it is definitely way too many people

10:46

on the public days

10:47

Kevin Gifford your

10:49

teacher. How many TGS is have you once the last time you

10:51

were at a TGS? It would be a good long time

10:53

ago this right because I'm you know, I

10:56

wasn't I Media day.

10:58

Yeah, I have not been in game media

11:00

for a good long time at this point So my last one was

11:02

likely oh eight. I think okay

11:05

Yeah, I attended every one pretty much

11:07

during the ps2 original my spouse

11:09

GameCube arrow Yeah, and a little bit after that as

11:11

well early 2000. Yeah So in the way that

11:14

I spent a few hours here today, it was very much

11:16

in the sound of trip Reintroducing myself to the

11:18

michael. How they mess say I remember back when I was

11:20

working at game Pro We rented a really cheap

11:23

gross hotel that was right nearby a

11:25

love hotel, which was shaped like a UFO I

11:28

don't think it's around a longer unfortunately, but It's

11:31

always sad when you stay have to stay in Makahari

11:34

because very true. It is way outside

11:36

of Tokyo It's a good

11:38

hour and a half away from where you would actually

11:40

want to be in Tokyo Yeah, there's not a lot

11:43

out there besides the convention center super

11:45

bizarre. That's true. Okay

11:47

There's some good stuff in there It's actually like

11:50

a pretty good book off and and

11:52

last year I went to the to the book

11:54

off super desire So people don't know about this because

11:56

you can't

11:57

you have to walk like 20 minutes to get

11:59

there

11:59

It's not close. But

12:02

when I got there, I got like a bunch of video

12:04

game deals and stuff and it's like all these nerds

12:07

are here. And they don't know, 20 minutes

12:09

away from. They didn't come buy all these things before

12:12

me. Yeah. What you've just

12:14

done is you have ruined that location. That's

12:16

fine. Oh shit. It's just gonna be takeover. And

12:19

take that part out. As long as I can go this

12:21

year. I'm

12:23

kicking the ladder down behind me, is what I'm doing. Let's

12:26

do this. Speaking of that, let's talk about any

12:28

merch that anybody bought or wanted to buy. The

12:31

EDF people, by the way, speaking of EDF

12:33

again, as we did on the last podcast,

12:35

there was merch. There was still not a person

12:38

in their booth. So I heard. At like 2 p.m.

12:41

all day. I publicly apologized to a friend of

12:43

the show, Nick Sutner, who tasked me with picking up

12:45

some EDF merch for him. To say that's the level of quality

12:47

that I associate with. Went to the booth,

12:50

saw all the stuff he wanted right there front and center.

12:53

Nobody working there. Like just literally no.

12:55

I even went to the guy next door and I'm like, hey, would you

12:57

happen to be running booth for the

12:59

guys next door? They're like, no. I'm like, no one

13:01

was there. He was like, you couldn't believe me. What do you mean there's no

13:03

one there? No, the register was there. It was like

13:06

the thing was pulled down. Yeah, I was like, nobody.

13:08

Maybe they're only selling stuff on public days. But

13:11

they're off depending there. Exactly.

13:14

What are we talking about? The Minecraft, the

13:16

giant ugly, the cave Minecraft and the giant

13:18

rant are coming in. I saw them coming

13:21

on that D3 stage. And missed,

13:23

oh man, did you play, so you like

13:25

EDF? I do

13:27

not like EDF. I kind of love to hate EDF.

13:30

Let's put it that way. I forget

13:32

if it was five. The one where they

13:34

had the humanoid aliens that

13:40

were basically robots or whatever. And

13:42

then they had the frog ones. And

13:45

they mixed, they messed up when

13:47

they talked about which ones. And

13:50

so. In the voice acting you mean? In the voice

13:52

acting. So it was like

13:56

the first one was like, oh

13:58

God, these terrible creatures. What are

14:00

they and that those were the ones that just looked

14:02

regular and then and then and then later The

14:06

the frog ones come down and they're like, I can't

14:08

believe it. They look just like us You

14:12

expect me to believe that Earth Defense Force

14:14

had some kind of bug or not polished

14:17

See that's what do it so perfect. It's

14:19

such it like the day realization

14:22

I was just like this they couldn't

14:24

have planned this like It's

14:26

so it's so perfect into like high

14:29

sci-fi Like immediately

14:32

like he's wearing us. My guys wearing

14:34

a helmet. Maybe it does look like Frog

14:37

the frog all alone John. What did you buy you

14:39

buy? I feel like stuff I did Disappointed

14:43

this year. I have to say like I went and I went

14:45

I did the rounds and I Didn't

14:48

see a whole lot that I was interested in.

14:50

There's that one shop What is it the one shop where I did

14:52

actually buy stuff? Cosplay, yeah

14:54

cosplay is the one that always has like tons of stuff I bought

14:57

a couple of old Sega shirts, which is seems to be a thing

14:59

that happens every year I got like a Mega Drive shirt a Sega

15:01

Master System shirt. That was new. I got

15:04

some near stay They have any of the mayor stuff they

15:06

did they got like Saturn shirts and and

15:08

some other and like hoodies and things and

15:11

then I bought something for my wife they had like

15:13

a siren and Dokodemo isho

15:16

crossover shirt without soap looks

15:18

like the cat but like with blood coming out of its eye

15:20

and like super cute Yeah, Dokodemo ishoka But

15:23

that was kind of it actually didn't like last year. I feel like I bought

15:26

a whole bunch more stuff Can you

15:28

add some stuff? I did I bought a

15:31

from torch torch. I bought a Mikolash

15:35

host of the nightmare t-shirt from

15:37

bloodborne which you still haven't played I thought

15:39

they had those all the rings like all of the

15:41

from game rings there for sale

15:44

yeah, torch torch has some really incredible

15:46

merch they've got a lot of the

15:49

the Necklaces are

15:51

bloodborne designs. So, you know the mark

15:53

of the different

15:54

Types of hunters you

15:56

can buy those they've

15:58

got t-shirts with different

16:00

bosses on them all kinds of stuff one

16:02

that's really fun is they have what looks like a tour

16:05

shirt for the Redan festival

16:07

oh no shit

16:08

all the people that you can summon it's got like

16:10

them on the back of the shirt as if they

16:12

are not by that that sounds like the bubonic plague world tour

16:14

shirt it sounds like they're

16:18

they're going for that I haven't seen

16:21

it but I can imagine all the cities on

16:23

the back you

16:26

know patches as one of the acts

16:29

which is great you know he doesn't really deserve a shout out but it's

16:31

alright

16:31

and I got a little rubber

16:34

wristband that looks like an entry

16:37

permit to the Redan festival it's like a gift

16:40

but what I bought was a metallic foil

16:43

t-shirt with mikalash on it cuz

16:45

he's

16:45

the best and I love them and it was

16:48

it's so exclusive okay cool yeah a lot

16:52

of that sort of thing where like people are selling stuff in

16:54

the merch booth like an advance of when they

16:56

will go on sale like on their website or in their store

16:58

okay Koji Pro had a big section there so

17:00

I am sure they do people who are

17:02

into koji bro stuff would be very excited selling

17:05

a lot of they do a lot of merch a lot

17:07

of stuff they're hitting the fan gamer the fan gamer Japan

17:09

fan gamer booth was amazing

17:12

yeah the katamari damaishi bag they have

17:14

there is so cool was that new because I saw

17:16

that I took a picture of it I think I want to buy that I think

17:18

it's you and apparently kita takahashi like

17:20

drew art on the inside or something like that

17:22

and so yeah like it's like it's very

17:24

very nice and it looks like actually usable and

17:27

stuff they had a bunch of great stuff yeah their their

17:29

booth gets bigger every year and this is the biggest one

17:31

they've had yet right on so

17:33

Kevin uh what

17:35

are you up to these days that listener

17:37

so you ran a website

17:40

back when

17:41

well back retro yeah back in the 90s every

17:44

nintendo collecting was not

17:46

I I opened up one

17:48

of the first websites to vote to collecting

17:50

for the Nintendo entertainment system this

17:53

was back in 1996 when I

17:55

was found one could go to for example

17:57

a blog post or video speaking of dead things and

18:00

go purchase the- Anyone left? Oh,

18:02

there's one left of Ben Norrish. Ben Norrish. Yes,

18:04

that's right. Kevin, not coincidentally, used to live. Oh, yeah.

18:07

I mean, they made

18:09

it into your Airbnb actually too, if you

18:12

can actually stay there if you want to. Anyway,

18:14

I collected any aspect when everyone

18:16

was offloading their supply. Right. And

18:19

it was very easy to get to a massive, pretty big collection. Now,

18:21

of course, it

18:23

takes a lot of big bucks if you want to get into it at

18:25

this point, but that was how I became

18:27

known to people in the game industry. And that's

18:29

how I kind of parlay that into a job in game

18:31

media. Known as the one and only

18:33

TSR. TSR, yeah, we should mention. Yeah, internet legend. I'm

18:36

curious, do you have an opinion

18:38

on the whole game grading? I

18:40

don't know what to call it, controversy,

18:43

but just that whole trend

18:45

towards that, that's just inevitable that that's going

18:48

to be happening to games. I

18:50

mean, it happens to have anything that gets collected of

18:53

any sort at all. Right. I mean,

18:55

I think I'm going to have to leave my grandma's porcelain all the way down to Don't

18:57

talk about my grandma's porcelain. I

18:59

wasn't just leave my grandma's porcelain out of this.

19:02

I think I had baseball cards and comic

19:04

books. It's inevitable.

19:07

It very much is inevitable. I

19:09

remember reading an article a few

19:11

months back about, for example, like the

19:13

first releases of classic RPGs

19:15

like Ultima, like historical releases like that,

19:18

Richard Gerrit's stuff and all that. Some

19:20

guy was basically running a rack

19:22

of reviews. Counterfeiting. Produced these

19:24

very good counterfeits of these like game boxes

19:27

from the early 80s. Right. Good

19:30

enough that it fooled a fair number of people. I think he made

19:32

a fair bit of money off it because we're talking things

19:35

that he was selling for in the four

19:37

to five figures, I think. So

19:39

along those lines, I mean, how to put it, unlike

19:42

a lot of those people, ultimately,

19:44

I was pretty happy enough with Emmy layers. And so

19:46

I wound up selling the majority of my NES game

19:48

collection, probably like the mid to

19:50

late all these. Do you ever look

19:54

about or think about what look up what

19:56

that would be worth? Some

20:00

of the things I bought back in the day, I bought

20:03

for very cheap because they were warehouse finds.

20:05

It was new old sock, if you will.

20:07

Cheetahman 2 is one of the most famous examples

20:09

of that. Cheetahman 2, we only know

20:12

about because in 1997, I think,

20:14

some dude in Florida posted on Usenet,

20:17

on Red Games Video Classic, that he had

20:19

this warehouse full of Cheetahman 2 cartridges. I

20:21

think it was like $2,000 or so. And

20:23

he sold them for about $25 each. And now, there's

20:27

still a ton of still copies of that. But people

20:30

on eBay won like four figures for it. How come

20:32

we never talk about Cheetahman 1? There

20:34

was presumably... It's part of Action 52, right?

20:37

Cheetahman 1 was game number 52 on

20:39

Action 52, featuring all these characters from

20:41

the other amazing 51 games on Action 52.

20:44

Got it. Can we just talk about this for like three more hours? I'm

20:46

like in heaven over there. I love this talk. Unfortunately,

20:50

I cannot do that. I know you're trying to do a TGS episode here. That's

20:53

right. I'll come back soon enough. You kind of got out. I

20:55

mean, you like got out of the

20:57

game in like every different way. Do you

21:00

still dabble? Do you still random

21:03

Google searches every once in a while? I'm

21:05

currently spending a two-week vacation

21:07

here in Tokyo and Japan in general.

21:10

But before then, I spent a lovely two-week vacation

21:12

in Hyrule, inside

21:14

my room. But

21:17

it was inside my room, but in my mind. Oh,

21:20

what a wonderful world it was. Which version

21:22

of Hyrule was it? This was a game. And

21:27

I'm not really that much of a Pokemon fan, but I

21:30

went to the Pokemon store in Shubia,

21:32

Pokemon slash Nintendo store, and I was like, Oh, what the

21:34

hell? I'll purchase Violet whilst I was there.

21:37

I'm going in knowing very little to nothing

21:39

about it, which might be the best way. I only

21:42

know that there's that little motorcycle monster, but... It's

21:44

got the best bugs of any Pokemon

21:46

so far. I don't know if it still does, though.

21:48

That's the sad thing. No, they got squashed, most of them.

21:51

My buddy just said that his husband

21:53

fell through the floor. Like

21:57

two days ago.

21:59

Yeah,

22:01

how was the did you it was your

22:03

first time going to the Nintendo store?

22:05

Well the one in Chibiya Yes, I had a new

22:07

one of Rockefeller a few times. But yeah No,

22:10

it was pretty chaotic. Really do you buy Nintendo? Or

22:14

do they not sell that they don't tell me Do

22:17

they even sell like a switch which

22:19

is they do they do they have a whole game? Yeah, they

22:21

sell the hardware. I meant the company but yeah,

22:23

I Did I do not

22:26

have? What no,

22:28

what the hell what that how much windy? I'll be I'll

22:30

have 39 million billion dollars on me. Unfortunately

22:33

Well, it was crowded. Did you have to

22:35

get a ticket and come back? No, it was

22:37

not that bad It was not that bad. But uh, you

22:39

know the it was very well run to be

22:41

certain then but it was not mega crowded Quite

22:44

quite a long line for the register. So did

22:46

you see the pixel Mario outside?

22:49

Did you get a picture with them? Well, yeah,

22:51

you gotta look at it at just the right angle for

22:54

it to make sense but yes, I was very

22:56

impressed by because yeah, I went up to the rooftop of a parko

22:58

the Mall building that to

23:00

these stores are random. Yeah, it's a real beautiful view of Shibuya

23:03

how to attack but it was definitely worth it So

23:06

special guests we're gonna rotate a

23:08

bunch of other people in and out But I do want to make sure

23:10

that we talk about any stuff that

23:13

Other otherwise stuff that gave you guys strong

23:15

impression by whether it's about TGS or this trip

23:17

to Tokyo Brandon You've been here a bunch.

23:20

Yeah, you speak Japanese. Yeah,

23:23

I don't know any any other thoughts Yeah,

23:28

so I was I took

23:30

like a big long trip out to

23:32

a faraway Game

23:35

store that I will not This

23:38

time But

23:40

you had to walk a mile and a half from the station to

23:42

get to it That's where you get the good stuff

23:45

You get the good stuff and then I had

23:47

to walk I wanted to go to a book off

23:49

that was on the other Side of the station so I had to walk

23:51

three miles to get to that one And

23:54

at the end of that journey So

23:58

I were your pickups like I was like going through I

24:00

was going through the fields and then there was like this

24:02

big electrical tower

24:04

thing with like thousand

24:07

birds on it and they were all squabbling and making these

24:09

bizarre sounds. This was like a fever dream or this happened?

24:12

This was real life and then I walked away from that

24:14

and as that sound subsided I heard singing

24:18

and I was still at

24:20

this point a mile from the next closest station

24:23

and on this strip

24:25

mall they were having an idle performance.

24:28

Oh, underground idols. They

24:31

weren't underground. They were like paid

24:34

for by the strip mall and

24:38

they were performing on a truck that had been like

24:40

opened and converted into a stage

24:43

and so I listened to a ladies sing

24:46

part of your world in Japanese. Was

24:49

there an audience of like maybe about 15 sweaty

24:51

dudes kind of like going along with it

24:53

like, oh, you know, there were only five

24:56

dudes going along with it like, hey, hey, but

24:59

there was an audience of smattering

25:02

of 75 year old men that

25:05

were all checking their phones and it

25:07

was like so surreal

25:09

to just come up to this knowing how far away

25:11

I was from everything and the idols

25:14

just looked like, why am I here? How did I

25:16

get here? And there was this one guy who was, they said he was

25:18

from Australia and

25:20

he's like,

25:21

oh, yeah, yeah,

25:27

I'm living in Australia and

25:30

so the host was like, are you,

25:33

and you're pretty famous there. I

25:35

hear you're pretty famous in Australia and he's like, well, some of my

25:37

friends know who I am. And

25:40

she was so taken aback that

25:42

she like had to kind of drop her act and

25:44

laugh and she's like, well, he's internationally

25:47

known. Anyway, he was dressed

25:49

as Doraemon and he was singing this. Oh, I

25:51

can barely believe they're. He

25:54

really just looked like he had, he was like,

25:56

why am I here? I need to leave. What am I doing?

25:59

I have to ask. Before you go though, what

26:01

so what did you get? What were the big pickups at

26:03

all these different obscure? Okay, so

26:05

I got I got I got cotton boomerang

26:08

finally for a Saturn. Oh Cotton

26:10

boomerang is very expensive right now It

26:12

used to be that cotton boomerang and cotton too

26:15

were at the same price, but cotton boomerang's

26:17

gone way up and so in

26:20

Akihabara right now all the prices have been inflated

26:23

to match the Or

26:26

or exceed the the dollar and

26:28

the euro that's who's buying the games there so

26:31

the so like a game that was 500 bucks

26:35

last year is like a thousand

26:38

1200 this year And

26:41

also the amount of tourists that are now back

26:43

is so many people specifically its off

26:46

the track my friend And

26:52

So a cotton boomerang on

26:54

eBay is like 300 bucks, but I got

26:56

it for 29,000 yen,

26:59

which is about 196 nice

27:02

and so that was the kind of pickup

27:04

situation But I got jump double dragon 2 on the

27:06

PC Engine which has one of the most bizarre

27:08

soundtracks you can ever hear Oh, yeah,

27:11

you should listen to that one. It's really familiar with that one. Actually.

27:13

Yeah a lot of lot of scream sound effects

27:16

Integrated into the music very on brand. I was

27:18

waiting for when the PC at the first Yeah,

27:23

love that PC engine, but I'm almost It's

27:26

weird to say but I'm almost done Not

27:30

that much more to get like I picked

27:32

up a Derby game that

27:34

you actually can where you actually control the horse

27:36

like that's how hard down Kevin

27:43

you're wearing a cowboy hat That

27:46

reminds you like horse. Yes. Well, this

27:48

is an apropos to go to you We'll ask last thoughts

27:50

before we cycle you guys and up

27:53

for some well This reminds me of something that I did

27:55

see in TGS in a little boots. It's

27:57

a little something called meta horse and You

28:00

can see I picked up a pony card. I can't say

28:02

pants for that booth. What was that about? Well,

28:05

I went up to the booth and the dude

28:07

presented this. You're like, Metal Horse, tell me more.

28:10

And you were wearing that cowboy hat when you did it, right? He's

28:12

literally wearing a cowboy hat by the way. That's true, yes.

28:15

I went up to their small booth and they were showing

28:17

this game called Metal Horse and the gentleman produced

28:19

this postcard that he put in my hand. They said

28:21

to me in the most centaurian

28:24

of fashion, Metal Horse. And

28:27

Metal Horse is, spoiler alert, it's

28:29

just a dumb NFT game. Not to put my

28:31

own opinion on it. I was going to say, I only saw

28:33

three mentions of Web 3

28:35

or NFT

28:35

at the whole show, which I was

28:37

very happy about. It's a crypto nonsense straight

28:40

across from our booth, unfortunately. However,

28:42

it still starts my fancy for two reasons. One

28:45

is that the horses are virtual

28:47

and they're wearing visors in the logo of it.

28:50

And it just gets a little bit horsey from there. They

28:53

have elements and all that. Wait, is it horses that

28:55

are living in the metaverse? Horse

28:57

racing in the metaverse. Let

28:59

me read the intro for you. This

29:02

is all one sentence. AD 2089,

29:07

mystery virus kills two thirds of humanity

29:09

as of pastime. The remaining human race has developed

29:11

a virtual jockey system, VJS,

29:14

that can control race horses without jockeys.

29:17

They are starting to enjoy new horse racing.

29:19

A live race horse is equipped with gear and race

29:22

to control behavior and improve athletic

29:24

performance. I

29:26

can't believe the virus didn't kill all the horses. I

29:29

thought I could find out. It's

29:31

really burying the lead, you know, because

29:35

who's going to care for all these horses now that the four

29:37

Billy people are dead? They're going to care for

29:39

each other and do their own races. Wait,

29:43

can small horses ride the big horses? That

29:46

is a meta horse. Mystery guess where can people

29:48

find you? Me,

29:53

Brandon Chesley, you can find me and

29:55

my podcast on insertcredit.com

29:58

or on Apple Podcasts. or whatever

30:00

kind of podcast thing you listen to. And you

30:02

can find my video game work at

30:04

necrosoftgames.com or

30:07

specifically demonschool.com. Which

30:09

list is on Steam? Make the

30:11

difference folks. H4Bump. Awesome,

30:14

thank you. And, Kevin? Well,

30:16

you can find me on Twitter at KevinGifford.

30:19

You can also find my work in most

30:22

bookstores in the US these days. Do you post on Twitter

30:24

still? Do you post? Very good manga sections.

30:27

Not really, but I'll. I also

30:29

forgot my password. I do, but I feel bad

30:31

about it. But you can definitely find

30:33

my translation work in nearly every bookstore in the US

30:35

these days because I do a lot of work for Yen Press, for

30:38

Cold Onshore USA, and for a lot of other places along

30:40

those lines too. I'll investigate four joints

30:43

as well. That's right. One of the manga

30:45

that I'm working on, Samuel in Samutaneous,

30:48

is called Shangri-La Frontier, which

30:50

has this anime debuting on Sunday, October

30:52

the 2nd. Do you get a

30:54

piece of this? Why are you like, I brought

30:57

that up just because there's a huge advertising for

30:59

it on the Shubia Scramble Crossing right

31:01

now. And it really, I make no

31:03

royalties, but I felt very moved by it. What

31:06

about any medical translations that you wanna

31:08

plug? Yeah, what's the best medical translation

31:10

you've ever worked on? Well, I've

31:14

been paid for all of the ones I've done so far. So along

31:17

those lines, they're all great. And on that

31:19

note, thank you. Thank

31:21

you both. Welcome to see you both.

31:23

Hopefully we'll be seeing you. Bye forever. Out

31:26

around town. Please tag in our

31:28

next mystery guest, which

31:31

I guess we have a minute. Waiting on deck. I

31:34

apologize ahead of time. We're gonna have to start rotating

31:37

people out a little. I'm just looking at the clock.

31:40

Probably gonna have to be on like 10 minute increment,

31:43

but the clock has started. Mystery guests,

31:45

please introduce yourselves.

31:48

Hi, I am Ron Khan. And

31:50

in Japan, I am the world's sweatiest person I've discovered

31:52

this evening. You're actually, yes,

31:54

no, that's part of the initiation of being

31:57

here. Welcome. Thank you. Yes.

32:00

But what are you doing now these days? People who might know

32:02

you from such past works

32:05

as... Yeah, so I used to be

32:08

game informer, kind of funny, fan-bite.

32:10

Actually it's a year to the day where

32:13

I was at TGS and laid off. That's

32:15

right. You got to be on your show. That's

32:17

right, you were here when that happened. Yeah, so

32:20

the website fan-bite died that day. And

32:23

then I, at the same day, came

32:25

to TGS for like a separate thing

32:27

and I got another job that day. Which

32:30

is pretty amazing that you

32:32

just crossed over. It turns out being

32:34

a shitposter is really useful for

32:37

a small subset of getting

32:39

jobs. So my now boss

32:42

just saw me on Twitter being like, hey, do you want to just

32:45

come talk? And then I didn't realize that was a job

32:47

interview. And then I got a job. They

32:50

interviewed me there and then I came

32:52

back from Japan, I was sleepy and tired. And

32:55

they were like, do you want the job? And I'm like, I'm

32:57

getting engaged this week. Let me think

32:59

about it. There's a lot going on. Yeah, that was a big week.

33:02

But yeah, now

33:04

I do PR for a VR company called

33:07

My Dearest. We just announced a new game called

33:09

Brazen Blaze. I'm sure they'd be very happy

33:11

if I could talk about it here. But like,

33:14

it does not have horses. Also, MetaHorse

33:16

was there last year. Oh, shit. They

33:19

paid for two TGS boosts now. Some

33:22

people are playing MetaHorse. I met your boss

33:25

at a social event or

33:27

whatever. Super cool guy, very interesting

33:29

company, very much invested in

33:31

VR. Like full going

33:33

on VR, the game that was announced. So

33:36

plug it. So tell us, for Quest? It

33:39

is for Quest and SteamVR

33:41

at the moment. Maybe there's going to be more things

33:43

in the future, but those are the two things right now. It

33:46

is a... So previously we've been doing...

33:48

We don't want to call them visual novels, but they're visual novels.

33:51

Visual novel VR games. You can start. Nobody

33:54

listens to this part. So just say whatever. Yeah,

33:57

visual novel VR games like enemies.

33:59

related stories that kind of like we've

34:01

had like a sort of online people

34:03

who like wrote the stories and stuff like that. This

34:06

time it is a multiplayer FPS.

34:09

I'm,

34:10

I'm trying to stay away from design doc

34:12

phrasing, not only because it doesn't make

34:14

for good podcasting, but also I don't want to directly

34:17

say like, it's like this game as

34:19

you would in games media. Sure. But

34:21

it is a multiplayer VR FPS that involves

34:24

punching and shooting

34:26

things. And a really cool

34:29

slide mechanic or

34:30

Mega Man X dash mechanic, where

34:33

you point the controller in any direction

34:35

and you dash in that direction. So the very first

34:37

thing I did, obviously, let's try and put

34:39

them opposite ways and dash and did

34:42

not work. I put a note immediately in Slack is that should

34:44

be a game. Yeah, yeah. But like

34:46

that, that's the game right now. It is written

34:49

by Warren Ellis. We

34:52

have people really, yes, that's kind of wild

34:54

with that you're doing or my boss in the

34:56

works big fan. Okay. When else's

34:58

stuff. So we should go for what else?

35:00

I'm like, that sounds like a great idea. Let's see if we can do

35:02

it. And

35:04

of all the sometimes we just say things on

35:06

Slack and like, we'll see if it's worth it. I'm

35:09

like, listen, I don't work. But like, then we

35:11

do it. And I'm like, oh, we

35:13

have recent this is a game. We have media, we have speaking

35:18

of big fans of Warren Ellis, mystery

35:21

guests. Number two, who was Warren

35:23

Ellis? Please

35:27

write a recent lane as I just explained. Who

35:31

are you? What are you doing? What are

35:33

you doing here? What am I doing here? Yeah, I

35:35

crashed the party. I'm John,

35:37

John Davis. And I organized

35:40

this show returning. Yeah, returning

35:42

guest, organized events. And then

35:45

I show it such as bit summit. We can

35:47

get specific. You can get specific here. I'm

35:50

not very good.

35:52

I organize things. Yeah, you know, whatever.

35:55

I'll let you do that for me. It's something where you

35:57

worry. Where's your day job these days? She

35:59

wishes. She always has

36:01

a new publishing. So

36:04

big giant Japanese

36:06

like publisher, publisher, not game publisher,

36:08

that's now getting into game publishing? I

36:11

promise myself I would never work for another Japanese

36:14

company after. After

36:16

that. And they pull you back in, and

36:18

they pull you back in. Yeah, well they were. I

36:20

mean, I get consulting form for like six

36:23

months and everybody was really cool and flexible and

36:26

you know, the silver lining from the pandemic is that

36:28

even big Japanese companies don't really care about

36:30

remote work as much anymore. Right. So

36:33

they were really flexible and you guys

36:35

have a bunch of money. Yeah, yeah. No

36:38

more consulting. And you guys

36:40

obviously you have all the indie connections from

36:44

helping run BitSummit since the beginning

36:46

of BitSummit. What was just

36:48

your 12th year? This was the 11th event,

36:50

but the 12th year. OK,

36:54

so you obviously have all those connections in the Shueisha

36:57

publishing is basically doing

37:00

a lot of indie work. A lot of the

37:02

first like crop of games

37:04

was all sourced from their

37:07

incubator, right, which is called

37:09

Shueisha Creators Count. I like to call

37:11

it Indie Cubator. Indie Cubator.

37:14

That never took off with the sobu and it sounds

37:16

close to a lot of other things. So

37:18

it's never really caught on, I think, for a lot

37:20

of different reasons. I think they're making cubes out of indie

37:22

game. That's not

37:25

the reason why. That's

37:27

not the thing that people have been confusing it with. But

37:29

that's another that's another bad thing. But

37:32

so how is that going? Did you guys

37:34

have a booth? No,

37:36

we did. We had a big booth. Yeah.

37:38

Yeah. They wanted to come out and make a big splash.

37:41

This year we do not have a booth because

37:44

we're not really showing anything this. So are you

37:46

doing a lot of? We did. We actually had our booth

37:48

like for Japan this year with that BitSummit. Right.

37:50

Right. We announced a new open world crafting

37:53

game and the

37:57

name has been announced. Our working title is called

37:59

Project Survival. Okay. Okay. The

38:01

name will be announced. You're

38:04

too close. Yeah. Got to be careful what

38:06

you say on this podcast. I know. My

38:09

coworkers are listening. I'm sure. Yeah.

38:12

So are you at the show a bunch? Were you at the show

38:14

today? Yeah. Just doing meetings and stuff.

38:17

Meetings in the old tiny and in

38:19

the, in the occasional walk through that molasses.

38:24

Can you go start? Can I first? Wait,

38:27

what? I

38:30

thought you were saying more ass, uh,

38:33

whatever. It was

38:35

so humid in there.

38:37

Wait until Saturday. You don't have to do, you don't have

38:39

to be at the show on Saturday. There's a, and

38:41

Ram are you going to be there? I will not be there. I'll say, all right.

38:43

I do the two business days and I'm like, all right, I'm

38:45

good. It's going to be a fucking, it's going to be

38:48

a nightmare. There was a heat stroke like sign,

38:50

like extreme heat stroke warning. I'm like, this

38:52

is not conducive. Well they should turn the AC

38:55

on. Yeah. There's a heat stroke problem. Yeah.

38:57

Yeah. That would be a nice, that'd be a nice start. But otherwise

39:00

it was, it was good to see TGS being

39:02

bigger again. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

39:04

The, the, the, the size now taking up all four

39:06

halls. What else did you guys see

39:09

or notice any, any gain? Did you get a chance to play

39:11

anything or just mostly walking around? I

39:13

played dragon's dogma too. You did.

39:17

Oh, all right. Wait, Gabe also played dragon's

39:19

dogma too. Why don't we give him a mic and we can talk about

39:21

this. I will say like from the outside

39:23

I'm looking, I'm a huge, I worked on the

39:25

first dragon's dogma. Huge, huge

39:28

fan of dragon's dogma too. Sweet

39:31

against ice and fire. I think that was me. I'm just

39:33

gonna, I'm just gonna call that one. No,

39:35

but they, the, the new one, I'm struggling

39:38

to see what is new

39:40

and different from, and

39:42

there's not like a knock against it because I will

39:44

definitely take more of the first game, but

39:47

walking by and watching somebody play it, I couldn't tell

39:49

immediately like, Oh, this is what's,

39:51

this is a radical

39:54

new thing. You know, just like the, what

39:56

is, what's the new, is there

39:58

like a bullet point that is like, Oh, it's. too and

40:00

this is what's the new and improved thing about

40:02

it. I would say, and this is based

40:04

on my demo impressions, that the new

40:07

thing is there's a through

40:09

line between the original Dragon's Dogma and the Pawn

40:11

system to that guest cameo

40:14

system they had in Devil May Cry 5 where

40:16

people fought alongside you to what's

40:18

going on in Dragon's Dogma 2 because the Pawns are

40:21

so much more interactive and more hands-on

40:23

than they used to be. So

40:26

another thing is, let's say

40:29

here's the kingdom as an example. When

40:31

you go through that game you say, oh there must be

40:33

something there because that place looks unique. What

40:36

Dragon's Dogma 2 does is when you go

40:38

somewhere things

40:39

just come at you. Like this

40:41

is not, oh this is a path, this must be just a path, oh

40:43

no there's a cyclops here. Like there's

40:45

that kind of thing and what I was

40:47

doing earlier is I was fighting a bandit ambush

40:51

that happened to turn into a cyclops fight that

40:54

I

40:55

was watching my Pawns, they weren't

40:57

taking over the fight but they were doing things

40:59

to support me in that fight that they never did in the original

41:01

game. I would just like, because it

41:04

feels like a D&D game gone wild kind of way,

41:06

I was fighting a

41:09

cyclops like slashing at his legs and then suddenly

41:11

the mage member of my party lights my sword

41:13

on fire and then the cyclops was like

41:15

grabbing his life because apparently sword

41:17

fine, burning sword not so much. I

41:21

think like there was another

41:23

rogue too who was like doing flips and stuff, I

41:25

wasn't quite sure what he was doing but he was

41:28

stupidly getting some stuff done so like whatever. But

41:30

it's something like that that I was like

41:33

okay this is clearly what they learned

41:35

from Devil May Cry 5 and they're clearly

41:37

like going into a different like

41:40

with more focus on

41:42

that and more like

41:44

an open nature around it because if

41:47

they don't, in Devil May Cry 5 they had to essentially

41:49

design around those scenarios. Here

41:51

you don't, they don't really know where you're gonna go,

41:53

what's gonna happen. And

41:56

I think it works so much better.

41:58

And someone who really loved Dragon's Dawn, we love it. I think like

42:01

I actually care about my pawns now and I'm not just

42:03

like throwing them off a cliff because I find them in life And

42:06

pawns for people yet so pawns being the

42:08

the NPCs that you kind of raise

42:11

in a way and They have their

42:13

own different stats and then you loan them out to other people

42:16

and it's a real fucked-up system If you something

42:18

about it for more than a second like oh, yeah They're

42:21

just they're exactly like humans every way, but they have

42:23

no brains or souls, right? So like are they

42:25

can they can join you and you

42:27

could not feel bad about them dying Why

42:30

I'm sure this has been answered

42:31

in the press, but like I I'm surprised

42:33

why not just make the game multiplayer

42:36

Now why make it think that's partly just because

42:38

they don't want to like step over the line

42:41

where Monster Hunter has its kind of turf I

42:43

mean I would imagine Monster Hunter being such

42:45

an important game for that company plus the like

42:47

the owner of the company being like, you know Different

42:50

though. It's still different enough that I don't feel

42:53

like that there would be like I feel

42:56

like you have Pawns if you don't have when

42:58

you don't have people to play or if you're one of those Weirdos,

43:01

I'm looking at you Tina that doesn't want to play

43:03

with other people But

43:09

seriously for people who want to play a single-player game and have a multi-player

43:11

experience great That's what the pawns are there for if you

43:14

want to play with your friends It's obviously designed

43:16

around having this kind of multiplayer ish experience.

43:19

Why not just they had that it's 2023 in

43:23

Frontier yeah, you could raise your

43:25

raise the NPC and you can loan them out to

43:27

other people Yeah, that's not like super uncommon

43:30

in games of that sword or MMO style.

43:32

I mean you can technically do that I mean if you could do that in other

43:35

games too, but I feel like yeah with dragon

43:37

song But yeah, I I don't have an

43:39

answer I don't know why they don't do it But I can only imagine

43:41

it has to be something to do with the fact that they don't want to like

43:43

have two games Too similar to each other I'm

43:45

pretty sure that the answers out there because I do think

43:47

the press that that was when they got announced is one of

43:49

the big Questions that people are like oh is it gonna be multiplayer

43:52

is gonna be why not make it multiplayer? And yeah,

43:54

I do think that they they have

43:56

this I said there people who don't play bonus

43:58

gate 3 because

43:59

they think, oh, I don't have anyone to play with. And so I feel

44:02

like I'm losing out on that. So maybe

44:04

they do want to just have,

44:05

play a single player, that's it. That's the

44:07

one way we want to do it. Not confuse people into thinking

44:09

that they have to play it as a multiplayer

44:12

game. Well, so how did the graphically,

44:15

any other impressions of? I think

44:17

it looks great. So this is going

44:19

to be like a deep cut. Do you remember like, God,

44:22

it was like 18 years ago, the White Knight

44:24

Chronicles trailer at

44:27

TGS like 2005. I worked on

44:29

that game. I worked on that. It was one of my first. I

44:31

don't remember the trailer. I localized that entire game.

44:34

It was a little different from the one. It was like complete

44:36

bullshit. Yeah. It was like a

44:39

pretty close to it in some

44:41

ways. Gameplay

44:43

was not like, well, the PS4. That

44:46

was the PS3 game. PS3 had not been

44:49

like out yet. And they were kind of guessing

44:52

at what the spec was going to be. To be fair. But

44:54

like also like animation wise and gameplay,

44:56

it was like so natural seeming that

44:58

like I was like, OK, even looking at the top

45:00

of the thing, if this comes in close, then great. Yeah. But

45:03

like I think this is where

45:05

we're at now with Dragon's Dogma 2. If I'm playing

45:07

that game, like, oh, we're Do they want that quote on the box?

45:10

Dragon's Dogma 2 is the White Knight Chronicles

45:12

trailer. Remember my first

45:14

trailer I write in the Chronicles? It's kind

45:16

of like that. Honestly, I

45:18

feel like we're hitting like the bullshit

45:21

trailer like reality now. Right.

45:23

And I think Dragon's Dogma 2 is as I was

45:25

playing that demo, Oh, that sounds

45:27

like quite a compliment. Like remember that original

45:29

game, not quite like Chronicles,

45:31

original Dragon's Dogma, there

45:34

was a big open area, but you're mostly being funneled

45:36

down valleys. And like this

45:38

is just it feels just more open. It's not an open

45:40

world, but it feels like, oh, I can look over

45:43

here. I can check over here.

45:44

Oh, oh, no, bandits. There were several times

45:46

I went, oh, no, bandits. Because like there

45:49

were things to find, but also most of them were the

45:51

pawns saying that to you like over and over and over again.

45:54

The pawns. Oh, no. So I don't know. There was

45:56

an option. I don't know. I

45:58

don't know. I mostly found. These ones

46:00

and like I don't know what to say it on the story I'm just

46:02

gonna keep going one of the things that kept

46:04

happening when I was doing the demos one of the pawns kept

46:06

saying Oh follow me for a quest and I would just

46:09

like try and follow her for like

46:11

a minute I'm like, I got 15 minutes in this demo Yeah

46:19

She actually killed me because I was like, can I swim because

46:21

she led me to a bridge No,

46:25

you die all those ones that you fucked over

46:27

in Dragon's Dog Maroon they're finally like

46:30

It

46:31

sounds like you were playing a Pikmin simulator where

46:33

you were the Pikmin

46:33

Yeah, I mean what you're describing

46:36

is like a gala cryptid honestly like

46:38

hey follow me to the lake Let's see what happens.

46:41

So performance wise seemed like Not

46:44

quite there, but it seemed like it will get there

46:46

by judging on past gate little

46:49

little framey Yeah, I was

46:51

pretty good for Especially

46:53

near the end. I see what an opportunity for a segue.

46:55

I know I'm like I'm looking over

46:57

here. I'm like, oh my god There's gotta be like

46:59

chomp chomping at the bit but any

47:02

other big highlights I

47:04

also played FM 7 and I think that game's been very

47:07

very cool. Okay. Yeah, there's

47:09

previews out today from like all Western media Anyway,

47:11

yeah, so like I'm not gonna rehash it. I

47:13

did notice during battle But a lot of people

47:16

only listen to this podcast. Okay, if you're only getting

47:18

used to this one, you have prisons Too don't have access

47:20

to a lot of other But

47:23

there's so like when you're in battle the entire

47:26

party is with you but you have an active party

47:28

of three people but like I think I was

47:30

I had Eryth and red 13 in my team and

47:32

spoilers Just

47:35

kidding. Yeah, and Barrett was just like at

47:37

the outside of the battle just shooting things and

47:39

like Tivo and I can easily come in And punch a thing. Oh,

47:41

I just know like super annoying Pretty

47:44

cool. Yeah, like people who are not at party or active party

47:46

are still contributing to the battles now are

47:48

actually contributing to the battles They don't do much

47:51

damage. Yeah, that's

47:53

just be mostly for sure Yeah, it's mostly for show

47:55

would just be like why aren't Ethan Barrett

47:57

helping in this battle that they can clearly see cuz

47:59

they're on maps like the entire party

48:01

goes with you as you walk around yeah it

48:03

would be weird if it just like no that makes sense where

48:06

are all the other party members when they're not sitting there fight

48:08

they're just yeah were they off at the store like yeah

48:11

it's latrine it does feel like they worked

48:13

on the traversal

48:17

that I played the other demo where your Sephiroth because of course

48:19

you have to be separate yeah and it does feel like

48:21

the movement is a lot smoother they have like weird you

48:23

don't have to find that triangle to scale

48:25

the cliff anymore you can just run up to the cliff

48:28

and press circle and then cloud will just jump

48:30

yeah

48:31

I also played this and I played the same

48:33

one the Gabe did and I got real pissed

48:35

off having to run up to every cliff and just

48:38

mash that circle button being like which one of these

48:40

am I supposed to climb

48:41

I don't know what are you doing

48:43

as several years climbing you're

48:47

walking around together and then you can immediately

48:50

change your party lead to Sephiroth because

48:52

obviously why wouldn't you yeah and stab

48:54

stuff with your comically large sword

48:57

and it's

48:59

great

49:02

I also had a fun moment where there was just a

49:05

very minor puzzle but the demo

49:07

was in 100% Japanese and I can only

49:09

read so much and everything was like I was too

49:11

overwhelmed I'm like what do I have to do so like

49:13

there was this part where you had to take effectively a vacuum

49:16

cleaner and move it to a certain area

49:18

and I just could not figure it out and it was like

49:20

three minutes and I just I called an attendant

49:23

I was like listen in japan bad

49:25

Japanese listen my Japanese shit I know

49:27

I have to do something I don't have much time what do I do

49:29

and they were like uh the

49:31

green perfume take the L2

49:34

to the green perfume and I was like thank you we

49:36

know I was able to but

49:39

which part of the game was was this so

49:41

the two demos one was the

49:44

I can only assume is a flash boiler

49:46

is the nebelheim

49:48

story of Sephiroth and cloud going to the Mako reactor

49:52

and the other demo was June in the random you're not

49:54

June on in the surrounding area all right

49:57

thank you I will say like one thing I was getting

49:59

more playing that demo

49:59

was we never get iterative

50:02

Final Fantasy games.

50:03

We always get like they throw out the baby with the bathwater

50:06

every single time and then there's like a new thing and

50:08

this is their chance to be like, and they're clearly going,

50:11

okay, people didn't like the open chapters of

50:13

F07 Remake. Let's make

50:16

it so there's stuff to do. Like also just

50:18

taking side quests until the next story

50:20

beat goes. So I think like,

50:23

I don't know how this game is going to come out entirely,

50:25

but it is cool that they're going, let's

50:27

react a little bit to what people didn't like. I'm

50:30

surprised that they're able to do that because you'd think that most

50:32

of that game would have been planned in some

50:35

form if not had

50:37

been started by the time that they finished. There's

50:39

like, there's aspects they could do a bit like, you

50:42

go out into the open world around June on and you're like, oh,

50:44

I can clearly see where they fired

50:46

CyberConnect to. I

50:49

clearly see why they were like, we gotta print this

50:51

thing internally and just make it ourselves. Right,

50:53

right. I'm excited to hear that though, because I

50:55

love the first part and also

50:57

the U-feed DLC, but like it's good to know

50:59

that they're, I mean, it makes sense of course, but

51:01

you're right. I guess in my head, I did not expect any

51:04

part of this trilogy to sort of evolve, I

51:06

guess, so much, but it already sounds

51:08

like they're taking steps to kind of make each game iteratively

51:11

more interesting. And that's super exciting to me.

51:13

I do want to give a proper shout out because

51:15

I chose performance mode, like a good gamer.

51:18

Solid 60, baby. There you go. Locked.

51:21

Beautiful.

51:22

Any last other thoughts from

51:24

TGS? John, did you have

51:26

anything you wanted to say or things you've noticed or

51:28

you played or?

51:29

I'm gonna, well, I had a lot of meaning

51:32

today, so I just made a few quick walkthroughs.

51:34

Thoughts about the new O'Tani lobby? Yeah, the O'Tani

51:36

lobby, got a good comfortable couch. Um,

51:42

so yeah, tomorrow I think I'm gonna go to the indie

51:44

section and try to like go through and really play some

51:46

games there. There's a lot of stuff there. Yeah,

51:48

it does seem like you could spend just a whole There

51:50

is a lot. at the indie corner, basically.

51:53

And it's unfortunate because a lot of people aren't gonna get to check out

51:55

all that stuff because there's just so much stuff. I

51:57

wish it wasn't in Hall 9. I wish they'd swapped

51:59

like Maybe put the PC mural you were at earlier.

52:02

Yeah, it's sort of off in the, it's like the

52:04

Kensha Hall of TGS. But at least

52:06

it's with the mur, and like the public is gonna go there,

52:08

right? So like the public days, it's gonna, everywhere

52:11

is gonna be wall-to-wall people. So I think it'll

52:13

turn out all right. The business days are never gonna

52:15

be that huge for that area anyway, so.

52:19

Where can people find you and follow

52:21

you, mystery guests,

52:24

both of you? Yes. You can find

52:26

me at Porkins, P-0-R-K-1-N-S.

52:31

There we go. Very elite spelling of that. Very

52:34

elite Twitter. And actually

52:36

everywhere. Everywhere. That's pretty much every platform

52:38

you can find. We purposely didn't bring up Ahsoka,

52:40

because we know you talk about her for like two hours straight, so.

52:43

I don't have to. I don't need to prove anything to you about

52:46

your terrible Star Wars opinion. Wait,

52:50

give me the quick one. Is it the best or the

52:52

worst? What, Ahsoka? Yeah.

52:54

Wow, it's, for

52:56

Disney Star Wars, number two.

52:58

Number two. Who won? Mandalorian.

53:01

Mandalorian. By a long way. Come

53:03

on, a long way. Which season? Obviously.

53:06

Any of it, all of it, both seasons? Of what? Oh,

53:09

there's only, the Mandalorian? No, no, Andor. Oh,

53:11

Andor. Oh, oh, okay. I thought you were saying

53:14

like, mandor. Mandor. Mandor,

53:17

yeah. That's what everybody calls. That's what everybody

53:19

calls. Okay, I need to go back to that then, because

53:21

I watched the first episode, and I was like, oh, this is good. It's a

53:23

little slow, but it's good. Yeah,

53:26

Andor. I know, okay, I've definitely

53:30

heard enough, yeah. I know, it's my

53:32

speed. I'm into it, I will do that. That's

53:36

it, yeah. Okay,

53:37

right on, Imran? You can find me on the

53:39

dregs of Twitter, Imran

53:42

ZOMG, a name

53:43

I made 13, 14 years ago, and

53:46

never strayed away from, on

53:48

bluesky at Imran.com,

53:50

or con? Why'd I say dot, okay. Dot com.

53:54

I have been in Tokyo for several days.

53:56

I think I've maybe slept like eight hours total. Beautiful.

53:59

I have a patreon pros

54:02

and cons PR OS e

54:04

Khans, not delicious. Yes,

54:06

there is a good pun that I have to spell it every

54:08

time I'm on a podcast cuz I'm like, oh you can't

54:10

actually understand what I Hope

54:13

you will come. Do you come to Tokyo regularly

54:15

now? I job for my job

54:17

about once a year. Yeah, okay Okay, cool. Well anytime

54:19

you're in town, please do come back on the podcast.

54:21

I'd love to spend more time bucket

54:23

list podcast for me Oh Like

54:27

this and bomb cast and blank check and I'll never

54:29

make the blank check, but I made it to the other two Nice,

54:32

very cool. Thank you. Thank you

54:34

both. Thank you both for stopping by. Have a great

54:36

rest of the show You guys have a beautiful

54:38

office, by the way New eight

54:41

four towers. Yeah first time I know

54:43

I can't wait for all the decorations

54:49

This is what it is, all right while

54:52

we bring on the yeah next to

54:55

me hop over the ropes and Gabe

54:58

did you play anything else at the show? You want to

55:00

talk about the fill to fill this time? I

55:03

had an amusing terrible time playing

55:05

Final Fantasy 14 You

55:08

played Final Fantasy 14 at you yeah, they had

55:11

so they had three random raid bosses And

55:15

did you see the Lego Final Fantasy 14 thing? I

55:17

was no Really? Okay.

55:19

I have to show you guys a picture I was like, I wish I cared

55:21

about fire was 14 because this is cool I

55:23

have to assume it's maybe like the main town

55:25

or something. I don't I'll pull up.

55:28

I do want to talk it's from the

55:31

patch 7 the freaking First

55:34

the first what is the first place? Thanks

55:36

the sanctuary anyway, anyway, they were

55:38

having some promotional I hey do these really hard raids

55:40

with randos Literal like

55:42

other people so what ended up happening was

55:45

I just queued up with eight people and they were like, okay now

55:47

you're all together And

55:49

two of the guys never played the game before and

55:52

I haven't played since I think a year

55:55

and a half And then

55:57

we had one other guy who was like, oh Jesus,

55:59

okay Here we go. Why are they doing this? This was just

56:01

to to what do you win something

56:04

if you do a raid with other randos? At

56:06

TGS or what I think you got like stickers or something

56:08

if you if you beat the the raid boss Okay, we filled

56:10

enough time getting our mystery guys on Markish

56:13

a picture of the Crystal Tower, which is what

56:15

the Lego thing was made. It looked this is amazing

56:17

This is all Lego. Is that shit? This

56:19

was that a good main town in the game? It's

56:22

a very important area in the game.

56:24

Yeah. Yeah, also very important.

56:27

Yes, that's right Please

56:29

mystery guests number one introduce

56:32

yourself. Hello. It's John Lineman from

56:34

digital found First

56:37

time on the podcast we finally

56:39

got you. Yeah. Oh my god Well,

56:42

thank you very much scratching at the walls over there when we were

56:44

talking about performance on Dragon I know I know

56:47

I was like I was double thinking everything

56:49

I was saying cuz like John Lineman

56:51

is right there like the

56:55

The frame rate Mystery other

56:57

mystery guests, please Finally

57:00

diamond fight has come back to eat

57:02

for that's right. The triumphant

57:04

return. Hello, sir How are you technically speaking?

57:07

This is my first time on your podcast? But

57:09

about about ten almost exactly

57:11

ten years ago, we recorded a retronaut

57:13

in your office So it was it was

57:16

eight for Jason. This is your first time on a purple.

57:18

What? Okay, well that good

57:21

thing that we did we rectified that wait and

57:23

you tell tell people for we have a

57:25

big Old folks home audience

57:27

who might not be familiar with either of your your

57:29

works in addition to prisons and correctional facilities

57:33

Tell people what other you know outlets

57:35

where you where you work and what you do and

57:38

yeah where they can find you Well, I do

57:40

most of my work for retronaut these days, but I'm a freelance writer

57:42

But retronaut is probably the big thing that I do I'm

57:44

on the podcast fairly frequently and

57:47

I write a column for our patreon supporters

57:50

And then I read the column for the

57:52

patreon support as well I make a little like audio version of

57:54

it, which is just a fun thing that I started doing Oh,

57:56

that's nice. I never loved it. That's smart right

57:58

on perfect for making coffee in the morning Thank you

58:00

very much. I'm in fight and you just like You

58:03

got the digital foundry a retro shirt

58:06

on you're representing here represent the show,

58:08

you know, and I got stopped by plenty of people I'm

58:10

very grateful. Nice. It's a wild

58:13

to hear your voice in person This is

58:15

the first time that I've ever met you but I've heard

58:17

so many hours. Yeah,

58:20

so many I think so, right? Have you we go

58:22

way back John's window the first aid for office

58:24

actually the one with the wall the chalkboard Yeah,

58:26

wait, so I'm surprised that we never crossed paths

58:29

then I'm not sure I'm gonna go

58:31

to the street at the language school isn't that crazy? No

58:33

kidding. Yeah Yeah in the old the first office

58:36

amazing ever signing the wall That's

58:38

right. Did the top board. You're on the chalkboard on the

58:40

legendary crap. Yep, right on

58:43

so you're here for TGS Yeah,

58:45

exactly just here till next Thursday But you

58:47

know did some TGS going to visit some developers,

58:49

you know, come back to Japan It's about

58:52

time is your TGS experience Are you

58:54

kind of you know focusing on on

58:56

the digital foundry kind of stuff you do or are you here more

58:59

just to sort of play? What you can play and sort of get up to speed

59:01

on what's coming like what I'm here for fun, man Yeah,

59:04

you know, we don't normally attend this kind of

59:06

thing here But I was like, I just want to go back and

59:08

so I was like, I'll go to TGS and good good excuse

59:11

to go to Japan actually When

59:15

was the last time that you were here so you

59:17

went to school here for I was back here

59:19

in 2005

59:20

Right on time ago and then so

59:23

much of my life has changed since then. Yeah, and

59:25

then No,

59:26

you know I ended up in Europe, right

59:29

in Germany in Germany So

59:31

you studied for how long Japanese?

59:34

Oh, I was here for almost a year or

59:36

so and then I think I met you part way through

59:39

Yeah, wait, you guys are like right across the street.

59:41

Yeah, we had you remember that we had that school that

59:43

like language school Across the street like it's always

59:45

students piling out in front of our right. Yeah I

59:47

like worked in an office off of Tokyo station

59:50

and where were you working there doing it was a

59:52

place called Hmm in

59:54

the auto industry. Oh, wow. Okay,

59:56

which I did up until 2013 and then my wife

59:59

I was about to hear him. She's French.

1:00:02

I wanted to go back. So we did. A big theme

1:00:04

in today's podcast. That's right. We keep getting

1:00:06

back to

1:00:08

French people. I want to French friends.

1:00:11

So Ed, how's your Japanese these days? Are

1:00:13

you busting it back out while you're here? Okay, it's very

1:00:15

rusty. But I got to talk to some of the classic

1:00:19

developers, which we'll discuss here shortly. Nice.

1:00:21

You can get real close to the mic too. Get

1:00:24

closer. Okay. I thought about them. The

1:00:26

message might have been, yeah, yeah, exactly. I inverted.

1:00:29

Communication, not Gabe. Strong point. Oh,

1:00:33

oh, no. Oh, I'm sorry, Gabe. I begged to

1:00:35

differ. That was my bad. So how are you

1:00:37

guys? How are you finding Tokyo?

1:00:39

Did you go to TGS while you were here back in the day?

1:00:41

Yeah, I went to the public

1:00:43

day

1:00:44

of 2005. And I think it was when they first showed

1:00:46

PlayStation 3. But

1:00:48

it was terrible, the public day. It was so freaking busy.

1:00:51

The

1:00:51

public days are like... Nightmare. This

1:00:53

was much better. Completely, completely

1:00:56

insane. So difficult. But yeah, it was still

1:00:58

worth seeing. That was an exciting time. That

1:01:00

was before we knew what would happen with the industry

1:01:03

in general and the shift to HD. So

1:01:06

seeing the promise of the new generation.

1:01:09

And we went to the 360 launch, if you remember.

1:01:11

That's right. Yeah. Which is... Yeah. Back

1:01:14

in the day, you would go and wait for

1:01:16

actual launches, right? I love the lining

1:01:18

up outside, lining up outside. Yup, yup. You overreigned?

1:01:21

Did you do an interview for us for 1-Up 2

1:01:24

around that time? Probably. We did a lot. For

1:01:26

the 360. I think you did. We were asking people

1:01:28

in the crowd waiting in line, like, what are you guys

1:01:31

buying? And everybody kept saying Tetris,

1:01:33

which I was like, what? But then later

1:01:36

I discovered, wait, it's a new version

1:01:38

of Tetris the Grandmaster, which is an awesome

1:01:40

arcade version of Tetris, right? Yeah, yeah. So

1:01:43

I actually understand. I would buy a 360 for

1:01:45

Tetris the Grandmaster. That's funny. And

1:01:47

Ridge Racer 6, of course. And that

1:01:49

was like a launch game. So that TGS must have been... Was that like

1:01:51

a big Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer? The

1:01:54

tech demo for Metal Gear Solid 4, running on like

1:01:57

target hardware at like, pace per second.

1:01:59

the final game ships and you're like oh.

1:02:02

I

1:02:04

have a question. So Xbox launched

1:02:07

in 2005. I was here as a

1:02:09

student and I was in Tokyo

1:02:11

over the holidays and I remember

1:02:14

I was walking on Shibuya and I went and I've sort of stumbled

1:02:16

onto an Xbox 360 cafe. Did

1:02:18

you guys see that? Yeah I went there

1:02:20

a bunch. See the thing about that cafe

1:02:22

is that's the place that sold me on plasma

1:02:24

TVs back in the day. Oh wow. My first experience

1:02:27

gaming on one and that was like hot new technology

1:02:29

at the time right? They had these like Pioneer plasmas

1:02:32

set up playing 360. I was like so

1:02:35

blown away by it.

1:02:36

When I got back to the States, it's

1:02:38

the first thing I bought plasma TV. Oh wow.

1:02:41

I had a nice Panasonic.

1:02:43

They had some good plasmas. Fantastic.

1:02:47

But you sold the pop-up cafe? Yeah. I

1:02:49

stumbled onto it and just my

1:02:52

biggest favorite was you know obviously I'm walking on Shibuya and Shibuya

1:02:54

is always crowded. It's like oh this is the one place you believe that's not

1:02:56

crowded. It

1:02:58

was usually rather empty. You know they spent some money

1:03:00

here though and actually you know they

1:03:03

made some ground and they lost it subsequently.

1:03:06

But like yeah they had some big

1:03:08

games. They definitely spend a lot of money.

1:03:11

If you compare a 360 in Japan to Xbox

1:03:13

original in Japan, it's like night and day. But then

1:03:15

Xbox One arrived. It screwed

1:03:17

everything. I was having this conversation with people.

1:03:20

It's almost worse. They started back

1:03:22

lower than the starting line because the thing that

1:03:24

Japanese public and

1:03:27

companies and everybody expects you to do as a

1:03:29

foreign company is to a certain point

1:03:31

cut out and whatever. If you just just

1:03:33

being there and being there and being there and being consistent

1:03:36

is like half of the game. They won't trust you no matter what

1:03:38

you do. No matter how much money you spend, you

1:03:40

just have to spend time and be there and

1:03:43

last. Then

1:03:45

they bugged off with the one,

1:03:47

stopped selling games even in stores

1:03:50

and stuff and completely abandoned Japan.

1:03:52

Now they have to make back tons of ground. Xbox

1:03:55

One is kind of the point where they just drop the ball

1:03:57

hard. In every way. Is

1:04:00

where it is because of Xbox one. I

1:04:03

think it started with connect so we could indirectly blame

1:04:05

the Wii It's

1:04:08

the Wii's fault always always the Wii did

1:04:10

it we saw Would

1:04:12

you guys notice that you were both at the show today? Would

1:04:15

you notice walking the floor just

1:04:17

kind of like yeah big picture

1:04:19

or any like trends or things that surprised

1:04:21

you or? particular games even

1:04:24

I mean

1:04:25

Want to go first you want me? I'll go first go

1:04:28

for I was really pleasant

1:04:30

surprise for me I was walking around and I just

1:04:33

saw a Very small booth

1:04:35

that just said Nevada. Welcome to Nivalis like

1:04:37

that sounds familiar and I had to jack

1:04:39

my memory There was a indie game.

1:04:41

I want to see maybe three four years ago called

1:04:44

cloudpunk and Anyone like

1:04:46

alp. No, yeah, okay, so

1:04:48

cloudpunk was this really cool? I Think

1:04:53

like you're basically this delivery driver and you drive

1:04:55

your flying flying car around this the cyber city everything's

1:04:58

oh, yes I remember now. Yeah,

1:05:01

I'm really cool I know the PC version had a

1:05:03

like a cockpit mode so you literally felt like you're

1:05:05

driving the flying car Which is really nice the

1:05:07

switch port did not do that so the switch port not

1:05:09

great But still really fun game a lot of fun

1:05:11

characters definitely like you know Hit

1:05:14

no the cyberpunk beats like oh, you know We live in the city and

1:05:16

it's grinding us to dust that kind of stuff And

1:05:19

so the city was called Nivalis

1:05:21

and this is

1:05:23

Kind of like a follow-up It's not a sequel because

1:05:25

it's not the same character anything and it definitely

1:05:28

seems like a different game because what's happened is now You're like, you're

1:05:30

not the drive. You're not driving anymore. You're just someone who wakes up and

1:05:33

like you've got an apartment and You've

1:05:35

like inherit someone's noodle shop. So you

1:05:37

like you're like running around the city now You're like getting

1:05:39

into cabs But the city's the

1:05:41

city still made of oxals with the people are now like 3d

1:05:43

models, which is a little weird Hmm, but it still

1:05:46

has like all the great stuff like if you see someone

1:05:48

you talk to the person The conversation

1:05:50

is always gonna be like weird and remember like I

1:05:52

talked someone who's like a game developer and she started

1:05:54

listening to the game She makes they all sounded like really crazy

1:05:56

and the one that sounded normal. She's like, oh, yes, what serial

1:05:59

killers and she laughed Thank

1:06:01

you lady. So I'm really excited about

1:06:03

the game. I want to go back when I go back tomorrow I want to talk

1:06:06

to the developer and find out more about What's

1:06:09

happening and why do they decide to make this sort of new

1:06:11

game in the same city? Yeah sort of Change

1:06:14

it all up as far as how the presentation goes Very

1:06:17

cool.

1:06:18

Very cool. What else? Yeah for me, man. The biggest

1:06:20

thing has to have been shadow of the ninja So

1:06:22

that's a Tango project joint you guys

1:06:24

follow their work. Mm-hmm So these are these guys

1:06:26

that used to work for not to me back

1:06:29

in the day, right? Yeah, a lot of great family comm

1:06:31

super Famicom games. They've recently

1:06:33

brought back Kiki kai kai They did

1:06:35

the ninja warriors once again. Oh, yeah, okay

1:06:38

wild guns that would be Omega 5 on the Xbox 360 So

1:06:42

these like three guys have stayed together for all

1:06:44

these years and they're still doing stuff now They're

1:06:46

basically remaking shadow of the ninja with

1:06:49

any s Famicom game Yeah With

1:06:51

just like they're like masters of the pixel

1:06:53

like the pixel art that these guys are producing is some

1:06:55

of the best that's ever Existed when I

1:06:57

see the games they make it's like what would have happened

1:07:00

if pixel art stayed like like kept going

1:07:02

the common Meeting right? Right. Oligons

1:07:04

like this is what you get and

1:07:06

it's just awesome Like it's true old-school

1:07:08

sensibility with a lot of the new improvements

1:07:11

shadow the ninja Was that the one where

1:07:13

like the boss was just like a giant guy

1:07:15

in the tank top? Yeah I Remember

1:07:19

the screenshots and then have our like wait the ninjas

1:07:21

fighting a giant like drunk at a

1:07:23

bar. What's going on? It's even

1:07:25

better now. It's even better now so

1:07:28

yeah, that is a highlight of the show

1:07:31

and the Composer was there

1:07:33

you what ski so he is a

1:07:35

legendary Famicom guy Like if you

1:07:38

listen to soundtracks just amazing stuff. It

1:07:40

was a pleasure to actually speak with him However

1:07:42

briefly and play that game. So

1:07:44

that was a big one for me. I'm very cool. Nice Where

1:07:47

was that that was in the that was in the indie

1:07:49

hall in the indie hall? Okay, and you say it was Penga

1:07:52

Tango Pango, okay. Penga is very

1:07:54

different Shadow,

1:07:57

um, so the It

1:08:00

seems like Dragon's Dogma is sort of

1:08:02

the, if we're going to walk away from the CGSes, what is the

1:08:04

big thing? It seems like that was the game?

1:08:06

Is there like a not a, what's the biggest game

1:08:08

of the show? It doesn't feel like there's a game of the

1:08:11

show. Yeah, I mean that's the

1:08:13

one that I think hasn't been at, this

1:08:16

is the first time, right? I think that that has

1:08:18

been, has

1:08:19

that been playable before? No.

1:08:21

But this is, so that was kind

1:08:23

of like, yeah, making the news. Yeah, not a lot of like

1:08:26

huge surprises. We

1:08:28

talked about this a little bit last time, but there was not the

1:08:30

like,

1:08:30

you know, used to be TGS to be like the big monster,

1:08:33

the new Monster Hunter game would be there. The

1:08:37

Yakuza

1:08:38

games were there. I mean, the

1:08:40

Kiryu, Man Without a Name and whatever.

1:08:42

But that's kind of so close that it's almost

1:08:45

like, you know, we can just wait for it to hit,

1:08:47

you know? But those, arguably,

1:08:49

those were really big and big presence and a lot

1:08:52

of people, the public will be lining up especially

1:08:54

to play those. I don't know if nobody played any. No,

1:08:56

somebody did play. People lined up for Yakuza 8.

1:08:59

Sandy did. She's going to be on later. Oh,

1:09:01

did she play Yakuza 8? No, she played Man With

1:09:03

No Name. Oh, okay. Yeah, I think Yakuza 8

1:09:05

was playable too. It was. But

1:09:07

the line was like super long for people to get it, but

1:09:09

they just released like a two huge, two

1:09:12

at least huge trailers yesterday, like a 10 minute

1:09:15

trailer and then a story trailer or whatever, and then

1:09:17

like another shorter gameplay trailer, which

1:09:20

both look super interesting. Oh man,

1:09:22

the Man With No Name though. The big thing on that is that

1:09:24

they finally announced Model 3 emulation.

1:09:27

So Virtua Fighter 3 is in there. Daytona 2,

1:09:30

known as Sega Racing Classic 2. That's

1:09:32

right. They don't have

1:09:35

the Daytona 3 anymore. They don't have the Daytona 3 anymore. And I can

1:09:37

just put one more in there.

1:09:39

Spike Out. Spike Out. That's

1:09:42

the other one. That's the third one. So again, I've never

1:09:44

had it. That's the first time they had a Model 3 stuff. Yeah, we've never actually had that.

1:09:46

I mean, we've had a VF3 port, but there's other games.

1:09:48

Never seen a home release before. So it's

1:09:51

kind of nuts that Sega is getting this stuff

1:09:53

into those games. I kind of wish they'd sell

1:09:55

them separately, but you know, that's

1:09:57

eight. I'll take it. Yeah, it's exciting.

1:10:00

I mean that seems to be you could almost see this one if

1:10:02

not if not the it's definitely becoming one of their like

1:10:04

flagship Franchises in terms of like it's arguably

1:10:07

almost as popular in each region, you know, like

1:10:09

it's not like it's only popular in one place Or the other it's

1:10:11

huge in America now. Yeah using Europe huge

1:10:13

in Japan. So it's exciting Yeah square

1:10:16

and square as Final Fantasy Final

1:10:18

Fantasy 7 was a huge Part

1:10:21

of this show, but yeah, that's not

1:10:23

like I guess like a huge surprise

1:10:26

feeling Level 5 didn't

1:10:29

really have anything crazy

1:10:31

Konami is just mostly about

1:10:33

the they had some cool Metal Gear

1:10:35

merch Based around the what

1:10:37

is it called the remaster? Basically,

1:10:40

I was very curious for that because I mean John you're right here.

1:10:42

This seems like it's very much your oh, yeah I was like,

1:10:45

did you look at those games? What did you think as far as

1:10:47

like emulation representation? you

1:10:49

know,

1:10:49

so I

1:10:51

Didn't actually see with the show But I did see direct

1:10:53

feed capture footage from an event

1:10:55

that somebody sent me to look at And I was a

1:10:57

little bit disappointed with it. Basically Which

1:11:00

version of it was station 5? Okay and

1:11:03

pixel counting it it was

1:11:05

Just 1080p and I also saw switch and

1:11:07

that was 720p And I'm

1:11:09

talking about Metal Gear here Or the solid

1:11:12

solid 2 and 3 on switch or

1:11:14

just 30 frames per second, which is

1:11:16

bad Yeah, but then PS live in the

1:11:18

original just 1080p 60, which

1:11:21

is pretty much just like You

1:11:24

know the originals from Blue Point right

1:11:26

stuff happened. Why does it happen? It reminds me of like that

1:11:29

is it not like a big game But the tales of symphonia

1:11:31

like got remastered and it runs like a 30 when the

1:11:33

original GameCube game ran So see like who

1:11:35

makes these decisions and why like that

1:11:37

one that one makes sense So it would tails of symphonia

1:11:40

the original GameCube version got ported to PlayStation 2,

1:11:43

right? And that's the version they had the source code to

1:11:45

well when you apparently sure. Yeah, yeah The

1:11:47

same version is just gone. With Metal Gear though I

1:11:51

mean Blue Point did that original HD version

1:11:53

right and they're owned by Sony now They're

1:11:55

probably busy on their own project. Konami

1:11:58

probably took what Blue Point did and basically

1:12:00

ported it over. And now that

1:12:02

I'm thinking about it, I may have said 1080p for

1:12:05

the Pixel Count, but I think all the footage I looked at was

1:12:07

actually 720p. Oh boy.

1:12:09

Which is the same as PS3.

1:12:11

Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. That's rough.

1:12:14

Anything else? Any other thoughts about

1:12:17

Japan or being in Tokyo Diamond for you or?

1:12:20

Oh gosh. It's

1:12:22

been a wild week for me because, you know, I arrived

1:12:24

on Tuesday, went straight to appointments at Van Dainamco,

1:12:26

which was just kind of a weird morning. And

1:12:29

then like I was feeling kind of ill

1:12:31

yesterday. And I was tired.

1:12:33

I think I was just tired, but I went to a party anyway.

1:12:36

And we went to, I don't know, heard

1:12:38

about Video Game Prom last night, but I was at Video Game Prom. And

1:12:41

apparently I won the Prom King Award, but

1:12:43

I was felt so sick I left before they gave it out. Oh

1:12:46

no. I saw it on

1:12:48

the tweet afterward. They said I won. Did somebody go up

1:12:50

and accept in your honor or? I don't think so. But

1:12:53

Mark, Mark Lenzo, who's over at Two High

1:12:55

Labs and basically in charge of that party, he

1:12:57

did give me a nice present, you know, as a congratulation

1:13:00

for the victory, but we have a king in our midst.

1:13:02

Yeah. Absolutely.

1:13:04

Well, I'm feeling better now, I hope.

1:13:06

Yeah, I think so. I think I took some aspirin today

1:13:08

and I was walking around. I feel a lot better. Yeah. I'd

1:13:10

say as I put my mask back on. John, how about

1:13:13

you? When's the last time you

1:13:15

were in Tokyo? Oh man, 2005. That

1:13:18

was the last time you were here. That was the last time. I haven't had

1:13:20

a chance to come back. It's expensive. Work wouldn't

1:13:22

pay for it, man. So that time with

1:13:24

the way you were at school was the last time that you were

1:13:27

home. Wow. So have you been back

1:13:29

to Shibuya? Cause Shibuya's changed. Yeah. Oh

1:13:31

my God. That's the place to change

1:13:33

the mode. I was there last year and I still

1:13:35

barely recognize it this year. Shibuya's

1:13:37

really radically turning into Shinjuku

1:13:39

kind of in a way, but

1:13:42

any thoughts or stuff you've noticed? I mean, I

1:13:45

remember the game prices of 2005 fondly and

1:13:48

I'm like, those were the times. What

1:13:50

about the arcades? You noticed the dearth of... They've

1:13:54

been reduced a lot, but there's still some cool stuff you

1:13:56

can find, of course, which is nice, but

1:13:58

yeah. Yeah. has changed

1:14:00

kind of for the worst because it feels like

1:14:03

it's due to the rise of mobile phone gaming

1:14:05

more than anything else. Like phones

1:14:07

were big always back then even, but

1:14:09

now it's like everybody's got modern smartphones,

1:14:12

right? Playing games on that. You still

1:14:14

occasionally see the switch, but I still remember people

1:14:16

rocking DS's and PSPs on

1:14:19

the train. You see a lot of PSPs. Oh my God,

1:14:21

there's too many. In an office park

1:14:23

at lunchtime, you'd see three or

1:14:26

four people playing all playing together. Monster

1:14:28

Hunter hit on there and it's just like, it's

1:14:30

a craze. Speaking of Monster

1:14:32

Hunter, is anybody here playing Monster Hunter now? Like,

1:14:35

um, it's actually quite good. Yeah,

1:14:38

we have people in the background and studio audience who

1:14:40

have played, but I will just throw in

1:14:42

really quickly. I started playing it like this week. It came out a couple of

1:14:44

weeks ago. It's a mark. You should

1:14:46

check it out. It's actually really good. I know you. Nobody

1:14:49

here really loves mobile games. What game is it closest to if you had to compare

1:14:51

something from the series? Like a tribe base. What

1:14:55

was the game from Epic?

1:14:58

I guess it was. They made that iPhone game that has a

1:15:00

really good combat. Infinity Blade? Yeah.

1:15:03

It feels like the combat feels really good like

1:15:05

Infinity Blade felt, but then the gameplay it's like Pokemon

1:15:07

Go, but like, with stuff to

1:15:09

do and interesting. And with the Monster Hunter, like

1:15:12

sort of mechanics that you get excited about, like,

1:15:15

you know, different monsters having different elemental,

1:15:17

you know, associations or affiliations.

1:15:19

And so you have to kind of choose your gear based

1:15:22

on who you're going to fight, upgrade your gear. You

1:15:24

know, there's just stuff to do that

1:15:27

feels more like, you know, for lack

1:15:29

of a better word, like real video gaming, you know, than maybe

1:15:31

some of these previous Niantic games and stuff.

1:15:34

But also the asset is just beautiful. It's got the Monster

1:15:36

Hunter aesthetic and everything. I'm kind of into

1:15:38

it. That's cool.

1:15:41

Yeah. Awesome. Guests,

1:15:43

please tell the nice people where they can find

1:15:46

you, follow you, what have you. Sure. Yeah.

1:15:49

You can always find me. Like, subscribe, etc. I'm on

1:15:51

our channel, Digital Foundry, at youtube.com slash

1:15:54

Digital Foundry. We also post stuff on Eurogamer,

1:15:56

which is eurogamer.net slash Digital Foundry.

1:15:59

I am at...

1:15:59

Dark1X on that place, Twitter,

1:16:02

I guess. I'm also on Blue Sky, Dark1X

1:16:05

something. I don't even remember at this point, but

1:16:07

hopefully it takes off. Can I ask, do

1:16:09

you guys have real quick, do you have an army of interns

1:16:11

that just sit there and take the footage? I

1:16:14

wish, but no, there's just like, how the hell

1:16:17

do you do that? It's

1:16:19

insane. It's a lot of work. The amount of stuff

1:16:22

that you guys, you're comparing,

1:16:24

and the amount of different versions that you're comparing,

1:16:26

like back when I did video stuff, that

1:16:29

stuff even did not take very specific

1:16:32

things and then take the same version of a very

1:16:34

specific thing is a huge pain

1:16:37

in the ass. But the fact that you guys do that

1:16:39

and you turn it around, a lot of times, within

1:16:41

like two or three days of

1:16:44

when the game comes out of you got code, you guys must

1:16:46

be pulling crazy long

1:16:48

nights. It's a lot of hours, but

1:16:50

we kinda just get used to doing it, right? And kind of have

1:16:52

all this trick and trade. You must be really fast at it still,

1:16:55

too. We've gotten really, really fast at it. That's

1:16:57

the only way you can survive. That's the YouTube

1:16:59

world, right? You gotta be fast

1:17:01

and, you know. It's just rough for

1:17:03

you. From the outside, it just seems like a fucking work out. It

1:17:05

is pretty rough. It's all respect. You are

1:17:08

doing the Lord's work. Seriously. I know

1:17:10

sometimes you'll have annoying people on

1:17:13

the internet giving you shit about stuff for that man. Exactly,

1:17:15

yeah. Don't let them get you down. No one is doing anywhere. You

1:17:17

are really one of the sources on the internet

1:17:19

that, I don't know what I would say without. Fucking public service

1:17:22

is amazing service. You guys are the gold fucking

1:17:24

standard. I mean, I think you know that. You know what, this is

1:17:26

just podcast. I can tell you that. But

1:17:28

like, yeah, you guys are doing the Lord's work, please.

1:17:30

Well, I appreciate that. Keep it up. You're doing great,

1:17:33

too, Diamond. You're doing good stuff, too.

1:17:37

Where could people find and enjoy your work? Yes,

1:17:40

retronauts. Yeah, besides retronauts, for

1:17:42

me personally, you can find me around the internet by looking

1:17:44

up Fight Club, F-E-I-T. That's

1:17:46

my last name. C-L-U-B. That's

1:17:49

an English noun or verb. Awesome.

1:17:53

Right on. Thank you to Mr. Vegas. Who

1:17:55

are the... Five or six people assembled.

1:17:58

You guys have to fight a sword and... Shield

1:18:00

versus Trident and net to decide

1:18:03

who is gonna be next people although you and

1:18:05

you are being paired together because you guys Needed

1:18:07

to beat each other. So why don't we have

1:18:09

two other people come on and I Apologize

1:18:13

increasingly to each guest because we're gonna have to

1:18:15

get make the time shorter and shorter just to

1:18:18

We're already at time, but we have too many

1:18:21

amazing wonderful guests. Wait, are

1:18:23

we gonna? Oh, we're gonna do it this way Oh, okay

1:18:25

three new guys. All right. Oh you guys you guys

1:18:27

threw a curveball. Awesome. I like it. All right so

1:18:31

mystery guest number one, please That

1:18:34

Mike doesn't actually work John's. Hi

1:18:37

everybody Who are you

1:18:39

introduce yourself? People

1:18:41

who you are Hey, you're working. I

1:18:44

run a small indie studio 17-bit

1:18:46

in lovely rolling green hills of Kyoto, Japan And

1:18:49

what are you working on the best

1:18:51

game? Oh, I almost tricked you.

1:18:53

I almost really good though I think

1:18:55

you're gonna like it. I almost tricked you Jake

1:18:58

what's your favorite game of the last

1:19:01

year? I Would

1:19:03

have to go with the new Zelda. Oh,

1:19:05

there's the kingdom. Okay Unrelated

1:19:09

mystery guest number two. Hello, please

1:19:11

introduce yourself David David

1:19:13

Hellman Hellman Yep, David

1:19:16

Hellman. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome

1:19:18

to Japan. Welcome today foreplay podcast.

1:19:20

Thank you very much Yes

1:19:24

Alright first time long time what tell

1:19:26

tell the nice people what do you what do you do? And

1:19:28

what are you doing now? What are you working on? What have

1:19:30

you worked on? I'm an artist. I've

1:19:33

worked on indie games and comics I've worked

1:19:35

on braid. We're working on a re-release

1:19:38

of braid Thank

1:19:40

you, thank you very much And

1:19:43

I started a company with a few friends

1:19:46

called furniture and mattress and we're working on in something else

1:19:48

I'll never forgive you for that.

1:19:51

I'll never forgive you for that name, but that's I blame

1:19:53

Nick Suttner I don't blame you David. I blame

1:19:55

I blame I blame Nick Suttner most

1:19:59

disappointing game you were looking forward to the most

1:20:01

of the last year. Oh gosh. Um,

1:20:04

you just like, ting it right up from me.

1:20:08

Well, yeah, no, I'm here. We're here to debate.

1:20:11

Here's the kingdom. Whoa, whoa, whoa,

1:20:13

whoa. I didn't tell Jake. Don't

1:20:16

act as a surprise. But

1:20:18

mystery guest number three, you can be the educator.

1:20:22

Adjudicator? Adjudicator, thank you. David,

1:20:24

mystery guest number three, yes.

1:20:27

I also, I guess now

1:20:29

run a

1:20:30

Welcome back to the show, William. Thank you.

1:20:32

This is my fourth, like, substitute appearance,

1:20:35

I think.

1:20:35

I run it even smaller in the studio in

1:20:38

Kia. It might be the

1:20:40

smallest. No, definitely not.

1:20:44

But David, how many people? Uh,

1:20:46

three, like, full time. Well,

1:20:49

four full time. Okay. Three

1:20:52

full time. Minnows

1:20:55

over here. Uh, yeah. Made

1:20:57

a game called Curse for Golf. That's it. Nice to see you. You've

1:21:00

worked on other things. I have worked on other things. Tell all

1:21:02

those things, people, the other things you've worked on. I'm

1:21:04

making a game about it. It's a nikki postman

1:21:06

right now. And also made a game called Curse

1:21:09

for Golf. Previously made a game called Scrapers,

1:21:11

Rapulcade. Previously we're at the Rockstar.

1:21:14

Yeah. Hello. Welcome. Welcome one. Welcome

1:21:17

all. And are you sharing a mic? I

1:21:20

didn't know if you were coming in separate. Mystery

1:21:22

guest number four. David pointed

1:21:24

at you. Now I have to do it. No, you were

1:21:26

key in the spike out thing. Thank

1:21:29

you for the shout out. Please. Mystery guest number four.

1:21:32

Hello. I am Colin Williamson. And

1:21:34

I work at 17 Bit with Jake. On

1:21:36

the best game ever. And I

1:21:38

am currently living in beautiful Nara, Japan.

1:21:42

With a bunch of deer. And

1:21:44

a cat lizard. And

1:21:47

I could not be happier. Once upon a time you did the cover

1:21:49

story for the World of Curse. The

1:21:52

World of World. The

1:21:54

World of Curse. The World.

1:21:58

The World. I was doing Quake 2

1:22:00

and Quake 3. Wait for what outlet? PC Gamer magazine.

1:22:03

Oh, okay. Back in the night, back we were doing

1:22:05

like 500 page issues. Like I was in

1:22:07

a college dorm room, like cranking out like hundreds

1:22:09

of pages. It was great. I didn't know you wrote for

1:22:11

PC Gamer. You worked for IGN. Yeah,

1:22:14

yeah. I was, I also worked for IGN Dreamcast

1:22:17

around the same time. In fact,

1:22:19

we met in Tokyo 24 years ago when

1:22:21

he, when I was at Sega working on Space Channel 5 and

1:22:23

he was Dreamcast IGN. Yeah, I remember.

1:22:26

We were all on the same... That Mikey White dude walked around my office. I'm like,

1:22:28

man, who's in the room? Who's that big? Who's

1:22:30

that big? Why'd you work at a Sega?

1:22:33

So let's get TGS talk out of the way

1:22:36

first. Thoughts from the show? Any

1:22:38

games that people played in particular?

1:22:41

Or even impressions? Can I throw like a left, left? Because

1:22:43

I mean, Kong's got a whole bunch here. Well, Kong's

1:22:45

got a nice little reporters note pad. No

1:22:47

left.

1:22:48

Well, I do the old genre of kati, which

1:22:50

is don't play anything and just walk around. So

1:22:53

my only comment this year is the level design

1:22:55

of TGS this year, which I felt was the best

1:22:58

it's been for

1:23:00

God knows how many years. Why then? Just

1:23:02

like the use of space this year and the

1:23:04

ability to see things and actually, you

1:23:06

know, maneuver around without

1:23:09

like massive

1:23:11

booths that are just wasted space,

1:23:13

you know, like

1:23:14

some unknown random gacha games

1:23:16

that just take up. There's

1:23:19

nothing to play with those games. So they just take up basically

1:23:22

advertising space for years. But it felt this

1:23:24

time walking around like it was like the first time in a while

1:23:26

where

1:23:27

it was like, Oh, there's

1:23:28

actually interesting things to see and maneuver

1:23:31

around. It did feel a little more balanced, I would say like,

1:23:33

I didn't feel like, you know, there wasn't just like a giant

1:23:35

chunk of the show that was just like NFC

1:23:38

garbage or whatever the hockey thing of the month is like

1:23:40

it was relative like the eSports was there, but it wasn't

1:23:42

taken over everywhere. It sounds like it's a

1:23:44

media event. And how many of those big booths

1:23:47

have giant signs, no

1:23:49

pictures, no photographs allowed. There's like people

1:23:51

out there getting in your face. It is amazing to me that.

1:23:54

What to the

1:23:56

point where they have to have a sign that says it's

1:23:58

okay to take a photo. of the

1:24:00

thing where there's like, yeah,

1:24:02

installation, where it's like, no, actually, please take

1:24:04

photos. It's like Japan. Square was always

1:24:07

kind of the more active in trying to keep

1:24:09

you from taking footage because

1:24:11

the games look so good. Your footage,

1:24:14

you could sell it and it's that good. Or

1:24:17

your, you know, shaky cam footage. You will not play the game.

1:24:19

They would just watch the shaky cam footage. You might have been

1:24:21

terrible because some guy's shaky cam.

1:24:26

Less Booth babes than there have

1:24:28

been in the past. Japan

1:24:31

seems to be kind of catching up with the rest of

1:24:33

the world. I actually had a conversation with Hiroko about Booth babes

1:24:35

today because we were walking around and I did see a couple.

1:24:38

And I was thinking like, there was a long period where that's

1:24:41

all there were, right? And then there was, I

1:24:43

think several years where I think everyone,

1:24:45

but Japan too, started to realize, hey, maybe that's

1:24:48

not the greatest idea. And then,

1:24:50

but now there's just like a couple and

1:24:53

they're like dinosaurs. Oh, whoa, I see

1:24:55

one. Like I haven't seen one of these. Like, and it kind

1:24:57

of is nostalgic in a way. And I'm not

1:24:59

like endorsing Booth babes, but more just like, it reminds

1:25:01

me of the old days now because back in the

1:25:04

day, there was a, that's every Booth. Yeah.

1:25:06

Yeah, there was like, there was like one

1:25:09

Booth would have like 20 girls and they're like little

1:25:11

outfits or whatever. I don't know if there was like some weird

1:25:13

rule change this year that I didn't read because I

1:25:15

sold way less, you know, just like for

1:25:17

lack of a better word, per

1:25:20

the photographers, you know, like people

1:25:22

need to get in the way. There's less stuff to

1:25:24

take photos of, you know, just

1:25:26

taking photos of the Booth base. But like, I don't know if

1:25:28

there was a way for the predators. Yeah, exactly.

1:25:30

And I mean, that's ultimately a good thing. So, but

1:25:33

it was funny it came up today. Cause we just, I saw one,

1:25:35

you know, remember like a like Genki or

1:25:37

whatever, like that company with that had all like the race

1:25:39

car, they had the race queens basically

1:25:41

like the girls in like the skimpy car outfits

1:25:43

or whatever. And there were a couple of them walking around today

1:25:45

and it was like, wow, that's, that's something I haven't seen

1:25:47

in a while. It felt just like seeing like something

1:25:50

that's like gone extinct, you know, Jurassic

1:25:52

Park. What else? Other

1:25:55

thoughts? We already talked about the, the, the Indies being in

1:25:57

the areas that they're in. I

1:26:00

didn't hear what you guys talked about earlier, but yeah, to me the AAA

1:26:02

stuff was pretty, you know, kind of

1:26:04

ho-hum. Although I have one gripe, and

1:26:06

I'm looking directly at this guy, Liam. What's my fault? There

1:26:09

was one game that I was excited about. I like how

1:26:11

this became my fault all of a sudden. There was one

1:26:13

game that I was super excited about, and it was the

1:26:15

possibility of Dragon's Dogma 2 showing up. Yeah.

1:26:18

And Cole and I cruised the floor earlier

1:26:20

today, and we kind of did a pretty,

1:26:21

you know,

1:26:22

complete tour of the main halls.

1:26:25

And we kind of cruised by the Capcom booth, and we were kind

1:26:27

of getting hungry and kind of getting a little, you know,

1:26:29

a little hangry. And I looked at the booth,

1:26:31

and we, like, they had a corner booth, and so we kind of

1:26:33

came by two-thirds of it, and I looked

1:26:35

in there, and I didn't see anything. They were like, you know, biohazard

1:26:38

and stuff like that. You didn't see Dragon's Dogma? You did

1:26:40

not see Dragon's Dogma. You didn't see the giant dragon.

1:26:43

The giant dragon with the heart on

1:26:46

its claw that was the corner of the booth, plus

1:26:48

the, like, one-third of the booth that's all

1:26:50

full of all... Somehow. We

1:26:53

were talking about something, I don't know. I didn't

1:26:55

think it was there. And then, at the end of the day, we were

1:26:57

leaving to come here to get here on time. 6.30 sharp. And

1:27:00

I was like, man, the only game I really was hoping to see was Dragon's Dogma. He

1:27:02

was like, dude, it's here! It's on the short floor! It's playable!

1:27:06

Well, we had Gabe played it. Emrom

1:27:09

played it. We just had impressions. We just had impressions

1:27:11

of it. He's not even a new trailer. Look

1:27:14

at the website. I was all, like, hopped up on the trailer. Really?

1:27:16

They didn't do a TGS trailer. No trailer, no nothing. That's

1:27:18

surprising. At least nothing's frozen yet. That's off in

1:27:20

the corner of the website, too. He just missed it. He

1:27:23

missed the Dragon J tag. Big bird, John.

1:27:26

That was bad to click on. Anyways, I love that game, and

1:27:28

I'm really excited about the sequel. But for me, like,

1:27:30

yeah, the AAA stuff was pretty, like, whatever.

1:27:33

But the indie booth did have a bunch of little jams

1:27:35

and had a lot of fun, and so, you

1:27:37

know.

1:27:38

There was a... When you first walk into the show floor,

1:27:40

they, like, literally the first booth you

1:27:42

come to is this massive booth you kind of

1:27:44

get shuffled into, right, as you come off the... Like, they

1:27:47

force you the first time to go through Hall One. And

1:27:50

they shuffled you right into this booth that had this Italian-made

1:27:53

Dark Souls clone called Enotria. The

1:27:57

last song... When you said Italian made, I

1:27:59

thought you meant, like, there was... was an Italian maid.

1:28:01

No, no.

1:28:02

Come on, get your hand out of the gutter, John. I'll

1:28:04

get him that booth, babe. And it

1:28:08

was described to us. We had a demo by a Japanese

1:28:10

fellow. And he said, basically, all these

1:28:12

Soulslike games were stuck in nightmares. This

1:28:14

is like sunny pastures

1:28:17

of medieval Italy. And

1:28:21

so I gave it a spin. It looked nice. It

1:28:23

was an Unreal 5.3. And

1:28:26

it was a Dark Souls that was kind of sunny, in sunny

1:28:28

pastures. Interesting. Parlequins in

1:28:30

Italian history. And these guys were really proud of their Italian history

1:28:32

and their talent heritage. And they wanted to get that out in front of the

1:28:34

world. I played it for a bit. It was fine.

1:28:37

The Soulslikes are really starting to hit

1:28:40

and branch out. It was a straight up Soulslike. I

1:28:42

mean, those are not foreign games. We

1:28:44

dropped a week. Production budget. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thinking

1:28:47

of which. Exactly. The other game that I sat

1:28:49

down and played that I enjoyed was another Soulslike,

1:28:52

a Korean team called Veda. Or the project

1:28:54

is called Veda. And it had a

1:28:56

super deformed, mech-looking

1:28:58

dude with little legs. Kind of cool proportions.

1:29:01

A little kind of stylish design. A

1:29:03

little unusual. I mean, just pretty cyber-punk-y,

1:29:05

tech-y, mech stuff. But

1:29:09

all the enemies are goblins and

1:29:11

fantasy monsters. So you're going

1:29:13

out as this killer robot fucking

1:29:15

up fantasy monsters. And it was just a pretty

1:29:17

straightforward Soulslike again, sort of thing. It

1:29:19

was a roguelike, kind of a smaller team. But

1:29:22

it had a nice presentation. And it just seemed

1:29:24

kind of chill and cool. I enjoyed that. Cool.

1:29:27

Anybody? Anything else? Has anyone talked

1:29:29

about Black Finger Jet? No.

1:29:32

Sounds like you're about to. Black Finger Jet

1:29:34

is a game being made

1:29:38

by the guys who made a little game called Metal

1:29:40

Slug back in the day. Oh. Oh,

1:29:42

that one's there? Yes. With the

1:29:44

Pixel guy who did R-Type? Where was

1:29:46

this? So it's in the indie

1:29:49

haul. Now, it's very easy to

1:29:51

see these guys, because as far as I know, there

1:29:53

are five members of the dev team. And

1:29:56

they're all dressed in these pink t-shirts

1:29:58

with cool pixel art on the back. They are and

1:30:00

what they do And if you

1:30:02

roll by I highly recommend doing this they will

1:30:05

they had a bunch of clear files And

1:30:07

they will autograph those for you also

1:30:09

if you don't have like a metal slug As

1:30:11

that you would like to get Did

1:30:14

you happen to have no no But

1:30:16

if you're if you're in the mood they're

1:30:18

gonna be there I am I was approached by a translator

1:30:21

who because I was super excited about this I found out about

1:30:23

and I ran over there and I was talking to these guys this

1:30:25

translator is like oh, yeah Let me help you translate. No, it's

1:30:27

fine in school. Let's speak Japanese So I just

1:30:30

the producer of the project came up to me and I was like man

1:30:32

I'm a big fan like are you guys like the metal slug team

1:30:34

and like in the hunt? He's like yeah, and there's

1:30:36

like a cast list like next to the thing

1:30:38

with like all the staff

1:30:40

He's like yeah, he worked on that. He worked on that and the rest of

1:30:42

you guys are all metal slug guys and everything And

1:30:44

we just started chatting had a great time and I was

1:30:46

like see you guys based in Tokyo He said no, no, we're kind of all over

1:30:48

Japan. I was like, that's cool. Like, you know, where you base He's

1:30:50

like Oh kodo and I was like, I'm in code. I'm a small studio

1:30:52

in kodo and chatting He's

1:30:55

like actually we're not in kodo or I'm not in kodo I'm actually

1:30:57

like up by the beach north of kodo. No, it's like oh He's

1:30:59

like you've never heard of it. Trust me I was like actually

1:31:01

try me because I do spend a lot of time up there and

1:31:03

it turns out his house Where he grew up and where

1:31:05

he's lived his whole life is like 20 minutes from my you're

1:31:08

kidding. Yeah, that's amazing We're going drink. He's

1:31:10

like, please That's

1:31:14

amazing he's the OG producer of metal slug

1:31:16

and I was just like he was like a nice guy super chill We

1:31:19

had a great time and but it is like it's a run-and-gun

1:31:22

and like your main character kind of like it looks like Looks

1:31:24

like a bad guy. Blade Runner. Yeah from so the

1:31:26

the the backgrounds are like kind of that old What's

1:31:29

called Matt Nesaka? Like what was the name of the company

1:31:31

that they Nesaka? The

1:31:33

backgrounds like look like that but in 3d But you

1:31:36

still have that really good chunky pixel art

1:31:38

for all the character work and it kind of that weird

1:31:40

blend of like lo-fi Like dream

1:31:43

cast ish 3d backgrounds

1:31:46

and then sprite art He was basically

1:31:48

just like metal slug. He really looks like inspect a gadget

1:31:50

to me It's like a like a pixel on inspect

1:31:52

a gadget as very appealing in that kind

1:31:54

of way Yeah, Blade Runner film noir

1:31:57

sort of like a very unique mix

1:31:59

of The one boss I

1:32:01

saw was like a robot gorilla

1:32:03

guy. You know those

1:32:06

jar of monkeys? You put the swords in and then

1:32:08

the thing pops out? Yeah, yeah. It was basically

1:32:10

you're shooting swords into this giant

1:32:13

barrel with pre-existing slots in it with this giant robot

1:32:15

gorilla coming out of it. And I was like, okay, you guys are smoking

1:32:17

the good stuff here. This sounds

1:32:19

awesome. Yeah, I'm very excited about this. Is

1:32:22

there footage of this not being playable for the first

1:32:24

time? It wasn't playable and they don't even have a release date.

1:32:27

It's not playable at the show. There's

1:32:29

a steam page available for it. Is

1:32:31

it holding it? Black Finger Jet. Black

1:32:34

Finger Jet. And so he was telling the story, like my Japanese

1:32:36

is pretty good but not perfect, and he was telling the story of

1:32:38

like why this guy, I think he got his fingers cut off by the mafia,

1:32:41

and he had all his fingers replaced with guns. So

1:32:43

that's sort of the... Oh, okay. Yeah,

1:32:45

so he could just point at his hand and just shoot lots

1:32:47

of guns. Yeah, the clear file Colin was talking

1:32:49

about, the art is pretty sick.

1:32:52

It's very good. And

1:32:54

this is the kind of indie stuff that obviously excites me the

1:32:56

most, like the old school dudes who got like a huge

1:32:58

track record, they're still killing it, and

1:33:01

they're doing crazy new shit on their own without any

1:33:03

sort of corporate overload. Yeah, them being like at the

1:33:05

indie booth, they'll be having like a place

1:33:07

next to all the other indies. It's

1:33:10

like we've come full circle. It's very weird. It's very

1:33:12

strange. David, what about... Have

1:33:14

you been to a TGS before? No, well, I'm

1:33:16

not at TGS now. You're not at TGS now? No,

1:33:20

that's why I haven't said anything. I'm

1:33:22

in my hotel room. You're not at TGS? Are you going to

1:33:24

hit the show at all while you're here? It's pretty far outside

1:33:27

of Tokyo. So you're just here to... It's too out

1:33:29

of the way for me. Right on. Okay, cool. Are

1:33:31

you... I'm in Japan, but I just want to stay in the hotel. Yeah,

1:33:34

yeah. Sure, right on. Are

1:33:37

you hunting for any certain games

1:33:39

or keepsakes or doing any shopping

1:33:41

while you're here? No, I'm working for a couple days

1:33:43

in the hotel room. I'm here doing this right

1:33:45

now. Right.

1:33:47

And then Sean and I are going to

1:33:49

Hokkaido for a week.

1:33:51

Very cool. Yeah, you guys have traveled a bunch

1:33:53

around all types of Japan. Yes. The

1:33:56

Braid remaster remade? What's it called? Anniversary

1:33:58

Edition. Anniversary Edition. Okay,

1:34:01

is there an official I'm not like the hinting for

1:34:03

a 23rd anniversary. Okay I'm not like

1:34:05

anything for info hunting for info or anything

1:34:07

like that But is that what is the is there an announced release

1:34:09

date for that? What is there's no announced release date,

1:34:12

but I can tell you it is it is coming

1:34:14

along cool. Okay Confirm

1:34:18

most of my work is wrapped up and has been wrapped

1:34:20

up for a while But right now I've been working

1:34:22

on the commentary feature now. You

1:34:24

have a

1:34:25

kind of extensive commentary feature

1:34:27

Cool games need that. Yeah,

1:34:29

I a hundred percent agree. That's the best

1:34:31

thing about the valve the valve What

1:34:34

they've done Listening

1:34:37

to Jake talk about his own games. Oh my god What

1:34:44

about furniture and mattress yes

1:34:47

stuff that you're doing anything you can talk about well

1:34:49

I don't know we can't talk I can't talk about the game because it's not announced

1:34:51

But I'm having a good time with the team and we're

1:34:54

all good friends and turn of the show Nick setner

1:34:57

Yep, I blamed earlier for that for

1:34:59

that for that name But you

1:35:01

were also very well known as

1:35:03

a huge Zelda fan That's

1:35:06

right. And as a Zelda fan, sometimes

1:35:08

you are a Zelda critic Because

1:35:10

you've been known to be yeah, right like

1:35:12

before before breath of the wild Yeah,

1:35:15

you had a very it was not Blanking

1:35:18

is not Twilight Princess. What was the wagon?

1:35:21

I worked or okay you were it kind

1:35:24

of became kind of I think known

1:35:26

in Canon that That

1:35:28

that was kind of a misstep and that Zelda

1:35:30

had started over explaining everything and whatever

1:35:33

But I think you were one of the early voices There

1:35:35

was kind of out there saying like hey

1:35:37

guys Like I

1:35:39

think we've gone a little too far down is a

1:35:42

good thing where it started but now you've kind of lost the

1:35:44

early feeling of Adventure

1:35:46

and like figuring stuff out and like

1:35:49

hey wouldn't it be cool if and

1:35:51

that's what we all started Thinking

1:35:53

and that's kind of what breath of the wild ended up being exactly

1:35:55

Yeah, actually that's a very good frame because there's

1:35:58

a often like a Consensus a

1:36:00

very euphoric consensus about Zelda

1:36:02

games at first, and then like

1:36:04

over time some... Any big hyped AAA

1:36:07

game is gonna, as long as it takes a

1:36:09

few years. Do you feel like Zelda, I don't know, we're

1:36:11

gonna get sidetracked, but I feel like Zelda has a particular aura

1:36:13

around it. I think it's very beloved. I,

1:36:16

Skyward Sword, I bounced off it immediately. I hated

1:36:18

the controls. Same here. I didn't, I never finished

1:36:20

it. I didn't even get that far on it. I just, it

1:36:22

didn't work for me. The most egregious thing I ever felt

1:36:24

about Skyward Sword is with the remake. They added like

1:36:26

the ability where you don't have to use the wacko

1:36:29

shit, right? You can use just the normal camera.

1:36:31

But they put it where you have to like hold the

1:36:33

trigger down to do it, and there's no adjustable

1:36:36

controls. And it's like,

1:36:38

guys, for the love

1:36:40

of God, like just

1:36:42

let people change shit, and like,

1:36:45

you know, make, and that game would be great if you

1:36:47

could do that. But no, I feel

1:36:49

bad about the Switch version. I'm like, well, maybe I'll try

1:36:51

again. I was just like, you know. Yeah,

1:36:54

I bounced off it pretty quickly. I actually

1:36:56

never even played it because I was

1:36:58

just like, I wanted to sleep through that year.

1:37:00

I was like, when they announced that I was, that the Zelda

1:37:02

release this year would be Skyward Sword again, I was

1:37:04

like, let me just wake up in a year. Because,

1:37:08

yeah, I think beyond like the mechanical

1:37:10

frustrations, even like the structure

1:37:12

of the game, it's just very stifling and like railroaded

1:37:15

you through things and was kind

1:37:17

of, the game

1:37:19

had gotten so complex and they have all these mechanisms

1:37:21

to like shove you back into

1:37:23

line and get you to do the thing you're supposed to do. It

1:37:25

didn't feel like exploring to me

1:37:27

in any way. And

1:37:29

you mentioned like, so to fill

1:37:32

in slightly, Tevis Thompson, writer,

1:37:35

wrote a Saving Zelda

1:37:37

piece about how the Zelda series had

1:37:40

become more like that

1:37:42

rather than about free exploration. And

1:37:44

it was actually a pretty good, like pretty

1:37:47

energetic response to that. And then I got

1:37:49

in touch with him when we did a graphic novel called Second

1:37:52

Quest that's not really available anymore. You can get the

1:37:54

PDF, but secondquestcomic.com.

1:37:56

But I did this whole project with Tevis

1:37:59

I'm disappointed in how the spirit of adventure had

1:38:02

been lost, I

1:38:04

guess. Yeah.

1:38:06

So I think that's why. I

1:38:09

think that is why Breath of the Wild

1:38:11

turned out so good because of my book. Basically,

1:38:16

the team had it open at their desk

1:38:18

as they were typing and programming. Give

1:38:20

it to Alan Numa. Turn the next page. Oh, that's true.

1:38:23

Yeah. No, you gave

1:38:25

David's book to Alan Numa then. Thanks, Alan.

1:38:28

Well, it was Shochu. Jake's

1:38:30

a little older. Oh, it's on the Shochu clock. We

1:38:33

actually, yeah, that did happen. All right. So

1:38:36

I have a photo. I know it happened. I'm

1:38:38

joking, of course. But the people

1:38:40

who make these games are my heroes. And

1:38:43

Breath of the Wild is my favorite game.

1:38:46

And it's a revelation to me. I

1:38:48

mean, I was so gratified they kind

1:38:50

of came to some of the same conclusions that we came

1:38:52

to. And it's a game really about freedom

1:38:55

and player agency and

1:38:59

kind of creating your

1:39:02

own agenda, like looking out into the

1:39:04

world.

1:39:05

Like the way it opens, I actually still

1:39:07

feel so passionate about it. It opens with this

1:39:09

kind of sense of quiet and space

1:39:11

and like it's communicated in the

1:39:13

audio design and everything. And

1:39:15

you walk out there and you have to just kind of observe

1:39:18

and notice one thing at a time and figure out what

1:39:20

can you do here. And I just think

1:39:22

the opening of that game is still just beautiful.

1:39:25

So I'm very gratified

1:39:27

and happy just seeing that, to me,

1:39:30

the Zelda

1:39:32

series, I mean, it's just a series of games. The

1:39:37

people responsible have changed hands

1:39:39

to some degree. But whatever

1:39:41

it represents to those of us who care, it

1:39:43

seems to be in good hands and very

1:39:47

healthy in the sense of valuing the right

1:39:49

things, I think. So I think that's still the

1:39:51

case, although I have certain criticisms of Tears of the

1:39:53

Kingdom. Well, and very successful, too,

1:39:55

right? Like Zelda was not the...

1:39:59

front runner and like Nintendo sales

1:40:02

in the last even the like well regarded

1:40:04

games were never like you know it was like

1:40:06

it would sell like a fifth or sixth of what Mario

1:40:09

Kart did but like Breath of the Wild

1:40:11

proved that like

1:40:12

if you really knocked it out of the park it

1:40:15

can be one of those games it can sell 20 25 million 30

1:40:19

million or whatever like it can it

1:40:21

can go toe to toe and so yeah I think

1:40:23

then

1:40:24

now Tears is inheriting that it's like oh no

1:40:26

this is not just for like the passionate fan

1:40:28

base like this can be one of the biggest Nintendo

1:40:31

games and franchises out there um which

1:40:34

is yeah which is totally what Breath of the Wild

1:40:36

I think proved and I'm so I'm curious to

1:40:38

hear again if we can do it without

1:40:40

spoilers I'm convinced that it's impossible

1:40:43

that this conversation is going to turn into spoilers I'm going

1:40:45

to have to recuse myself and just leave

1:40:47

which is fine why would you have

1:40:49

to do that have you not finished it I've not finished

1:40:51

it I'm like like I I

1:40:55

spoilers as I'd say is ridiculousness

1:40:57

but I've like just landed on like

1:40:59

terra firma maybe like two

1:41:02

hours ago yeah I have a fucking two-year-old at home okay

1:41:04

give me a fucking break I'm a good dad

1:41:07

not like you

1:41:09

I care I care about my kids

1:41:12

I care about my kids um

1:41:14

so but uh yeah I am

1:41:16

curious now to hear I know that

1:41:18

you are you still playing it yes

1:41:21

well I'm taking a breather but I'm coming back to it John

1:41:23

are you still playing it I finally I'm not

1:41:25

but I absolutely got my fill

1:41:28

of like 250 hours or so I'm about 225

1:41:30

and I still have a lot to do so

1:41:33

like my I've talked about one of my early impressions

1:41:35

from the game was that

1:41:37

okay I come up to a bunch of just like

1:41:40

building blocks of shit and that's like you

1:41:42

know what like if I was in college this

1:41:44

would be cool I'd be like I want to make a fucking

1:41:46

plane I'm gonna make a train I'm gonna make

1:41:48

a whatever and it's like now I'm just gonna

1:41:51

make the fucking ugliest thing

1:41:53

that will get me across the gap as immediately

1:41:56

as possible and so like yeah

1:41:58

I can still enjoy all that other stuff

1:41:59

on Twitter, YouTube videos if I wasn't blocking

1:42:02

them and avoiding them because that... Isn't there a

1:42:04

beauty to that, Mark? Like the

1:42:07

fact that that gameplay does allow for someone

1:42:09