Rebel FM
Rebel FM - Episode 9 - 03/04/09
This week the normal crew is joined by Patrick Klepek and Jonathan Mann, AKA GameJew. We talk about what we've been playing, then move on to a conversation about music in games. Features "The Lizard Wizard," and "Shigeru Miyamoto" by Sr. Mann.
[Music] [Music] It is Wednesday March 4th, 2009. Welcome to episode 9 of Rebel FM. My name is Philip Kohler. Joining me this week is the staff of eat-sleep-game.com. Anthony Gaiegos. Hello, and Arthur Geese. What up? Also joining us today, XMTV multiplayer writer and X-Phil Kohler boss, Patrick Kleppic. Also, Eater of the burritos this week. That's correct. And a masterful musician, Jonathan Mann. Hello. So, this week we're going to be talking about music. I think that's going to be our main topic this week. Well, music in games. Music in general. Let's just talk about music. Let's just have a music talk about what we've been listening to lately. Oh, man. Like, basically an extended portion of that question from last week. So, basically, we're taking the off-topic and making it topical. Exactly. Ooh. Nice. No, we probably... Yeah, we'll talk about music in video games and music around video games. That kind of stuff. Anthony and I went to see video games live, so we'll talk about that a little bit. We'll be doing some letters, and of course we're going to start with talking about what we've been playing. Arthur, I want you to kick us off this week. Oh, man. A ton of stuff, actually. So, like we posted yesterday, we made our Epic GameStop journey yesterday and ended up believing with Halo Wars. Actually, let me mention, too, that people should go check out that post on the site, which is about Game Club being delayed. We should probably mention also Game Club this week. It just kind of didn't happen. I've been sick. I'm just finally starting to feel better, and the Area 5 guys were really, really busy this week. So, kind of had to push it off, but we'll be doing Part 3 of our Call of Cthulhu Game Club next week. Which is good, because everyone, including the readers, were behind. Yeah, that's right. So, but check out that post that we have on eat-sleep-game.com about the delay, because it has the picture that you're talking about that shows the stash that you guys got of games yesterday. And then also a cool Rebel FM background that was created by listener Ronan 478. And it's a pretty awesome background. I'm using it now, so. Oh, man. So, we left GameStop with Anthony Petrop kills on to be both Grabbed Halo Wars. I got House of the Dead overkill and Street Fighter IV. So, yeah, last week played a lot of Viva Pinata. I don't know if there's really anything more to say about that than any original Viva Pinata 2. Which is, I mean, it's just more Viva Pinata except... Why did you go just wearing a mood for Viva Pinata? Hearing Anthony talk about his Viva Gulag. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, the Pinata Gulag and that stuff. I never got around to buying Viva Pinata Triple and Paradise, so I finally picked it up and gave it a whirl, which is, I mean, it's still fun. It's still great. One thing that's different than the first game is that it is a harsh fucking mistress with achievement points. Yeah. Yeah, I'm like seven hours in and not one achievement. Anthony's just looking at me like I'm an asshole. Yeah, that's not why you play Viva Pinata. It's not why I play Viva Pinata. That's not why you play Viva Pinata. No, that's not why Viva Pinata exists, is not for achievements. No, I'm... It exists. Man, you just totally shut him down. Wow. It exists for breeding and destroying the lives. Well, but when you go off in an argument like that, I mean, you might as well say there's no point in playing any game, because every, virtually every game we play has some form of keeping track of your progress. And tracking your progress is different than jokes. Yeah, but achievements are Microsoft Nerdpoints. My achievements are just a way of tracking a metagame thing, and they're a way of encouraging alternate means of play. Dick. I did... I did agree to run you through instances in World of Warcraft specifically, because I wanted achievements for them. I haven't. That benefited me, so I didn't care. How does this punish you? It doesn't, but it doesn't benefit me either. So that it's going to make fun of it. Okay, so it must be destroyed. So, some Viva, I played a fair amount of House of the Dead overkill last night. I want to hear all about this. As I mentioned, it might be weird. We did. Our worst one-hop FM interview ever was for House of the Dead overkill. You remember that? Awesome/horrible. Yeah. That was both, I think. You listened to that? That was really bad. Yeah, I listened to the entire thing. It was like, mostly because it sounded so god-name uncomfortable for you guys. But you really tried to think of some decent questions, and then the zombies would just... I would laugh every time because it was just, it sounded so annoying. And there was PR people sitting there like probably laughing along the whole time. I was like, that's amazing. So for those people who didn't listen to this, we had a back on one-up FM back in November or something. Sega brought some people into the one-up offices to show off House of the Dead overkill, and we got to play it and then interview them for one-up FM. Some undead people. But they brought along with the person that they brought to answer questions. They also brought along two zombies. Two zombies. Yeah. And they decided that they would put those zombies on the podcast because it would be funny. And we were like, all right, I guess that will be funny for a little while. And we were like, why don't you guys stop making zombie noises after like two minutes? And then they didn't stop. And then I actually... This fucking interview is over. No, we stopped at some point and were like, okay, seriously though, you should probably stop that because that'll be annoying. But they still didn't stop at all. In retrospect, that's amazing. That's like a family guy bit where he just sits on the ground for five minutes. So that was a really rough interview. So, wow. Go listen to me. I mean, I guess that speaks to how hard they really try to sell the game. But it pushes the exploitation flick, the grindhouse sort of style almost to its breaking point. But the nice thing about it is that House of the Dead has always been silly. Like the story has always been stupid, the voice acting has always been stupid and the game has been fun. Whereas this is by virtue of it acknowledging how ridiculous it is and really embracing that. And having it not just come off as bad, it's the least stupid of the House of the Dead games. Which you suffer like G did in this one as well. You are G. You are? Yeah. Amazing. With a black sidekick. Did you ever actually play as G? I just remember that line from House of the Dead 2. It wasn't G in the first one. I don't know. And it wasn't Suffer. It wasn't Suffer. It was that little flying fucker with the weird helium voice that said that shit. Oh, yeah. I actually was annoying to shoot in Dreamcast. This is also the first House of the Dead that's designed for a console instead of an arcade. So a lot of the... Actually, wasn't House of the Dead 3 originally in the next box game? The 3 was on both. But I think it was designed as the next box game that came to the arcade. But the point is that there are certain points to an arcade game that are adhered to in the other House of the Dead games where they're designed to take people's money. It's like, how does it not do that in over time? It might take you one or two continues to get through in earlier House of the Dead level. I mean, you have a pretty full health bar in House of the Dead overkill. So as you progress, you can actually make it through a level without dying. Like, you don't have to nail all the health pickups or be some kind of God-definished level. It's like I never finished two. I would always get to the final boss and then I would just crap out. Even in typing of the dead, I would always crap out at the last boss. It's the six syllable words that get you on the end. But no, I mean, every mission is framed as its own little movie or part of a movie. And once you finish a mission, it dumps you back out to the menu screen. So there's no... So like, choose your own... There's not actually an actual story. There's a story too, but you don't have to finish it all at once. It's not formatted like an arcade game. It's formatted like a game. So you can turn it off and come back to it? Yes. Which is what I did after about an hour and a half because my fucking hand was killing me after playing with the Wii Moat for that long. But it's good. I mean, it's got a lot of the stuff that I enjoyed from the House of the Dead to your Dreamcast version like buying weapons and power-ups and stuff like that. There's the overkill mode where you hit these little green things that are situated around the level and the game goes into slow-mo and you do way more damage and get combos and stuff like that. And the thing that made me curious is like that whole grand house feel that you're talking about, I think that is sort of necessary because a simple shooter like this, I think they need a gimmick. They need something to pull people in. Definitely. Because if you look at some of the other like Wii shooters that Sega has done, like I don't know what they did like Go Squad and they also did a re-release of House of the Dead 2 and 3, right? Yes. Which seems like there isn't enough there to make people want to pay money for that. Well, I mean, in the House of the Dead 2 and 3 compilation it had the Dreamcast version of House of the Dead which actually had a lot of unlockables and a lot of stuff to do. The only reason I figured that out is because it was one of the launch Dreamcast games I picked up and I spent way too much time with it like eight years ago. But, yeah, the Grand House aesthetic is almost pushed too far in spots just because eventually even I hit a threshold where motherfucker just starts to fall on death pills. I mean you. Yeah, even I get tired of the word fuck sometimes. You wouldn't know it from listening to the podcast. But yeah, the aesthetic is really cool. Instead of going for a broader grindhouse depth that kind of sticks toward the machete trailer and grindhouse more than anything. But it's fun. Played some Street Fighter 4. Everyone else has talked about that game forever. So I don't know that there's anything else I have to contribute to that discussion. Are you like a big fighting game fan in general? Can you beat Seth? Uh, I... Fuck, Seth. I didn't-- That's all I know about Street Fighter 4 is whatever. Yeah, is that Seth? Seth sucks. Seth is a dirty whore. Seth just cheats. I mean, that sounds like the standard frustrated gamer tirade, but it's like he breaks all the rules that are established in the Street Fighter game, like the range of his throws and everything are just ridiculous, and the damage he does is ridiculous. But after like four or five tries, I can beat him. But I mean, I thought that maybe it was just that I suck at Street Fighter now, but I went online and did all right. So like the difficulty to see sauce all over the place. Yeah, but what's your ranking online? I haven't played enough to have a ranking yet. It's kind of hard to find a match online too. Oh, really? Which is weird. That's weird if it's like fizzing out already online. I don't know. I think it's just difficult. I don't know. I don't know. I think it's less says about the player base more about the-- I've heard some complaints about the online. Yeah, that's what I've heard as well. Like I've been promising like a champion mode patch or something. Also, are you playing with the actual 360 controller? I am, although-- I read a lot of-- at least a couple of comments on people who saw that picture and were like, "Oh, you bought the 360 version? You better buy a stick too?" Or you're not going to be able to enjoy it. Yeah. But actually, I have a kind of modded 360 controller that has some of the mods that people talk about doing with deep heads to make them a little better. Oh, sure. And it has the stuff-- it has most of the guts from an original Xbox controller. So it controls reasonably well. I'm having fun. Fair enough. I did try to find an arcade stick and could not. All right, that's fair. Do you think you're going to keep playing in enough that it might be worth buying one at some point? Or is it just something that you're going to play a little bit more of? I don't know. I think if Capcom upgrades the matchmaking, then I could. Cool. But none of you guys play. That makes me sad. There are other people who are playing. Like that of our group of people you know. Yeah, but they're never online. I bet you could find some listeners who play. I bet I could find some listeners who play. And then they could come up with embarrassing tales of how they beat you. Awesome. More embarrassing. That's what I'm here for. Excellent. Someone's got to do it. Yeah. I will be that guy. I will take what the fuck is going on over there? Can't knock. I like Anthony's cat. Anthony's cat knocks something over so he knocks something over there. Yeah, no. More dawn of war. I haven't gotten around to Halo Wars yet because I wanted to play Street Fighter last night. All right. Fair enough. Jonathan. Let's go to you. All right. Well, I'm extremely poor right now. Right now. Exceedingly poor. So we were all laid off. We were all laid off. Everyone here. So we're right off. Well, I mean the idea of going to a game stop and like coming out with a bundle of games just seems like totally a dream right now. You're looking at us like, who are these princes? Anthony, do it. I've been playing cave story actually for the first time. Oh, excellent. So I went into it not really knowing that much about it, just hearing that it was great. It's made by one guy, right? Yeah, just one dude that made it. So I heard that. I mean, just in and of itself, that's absolutely astounding to me that one person can beat, can create something so kind of dance and that play so well and reminds me of, you know, my childhood and all that. Yeah, it was going to download it and then the moment they announced the WiiWare version, I thought, well, I've heard so much about this. I would want to pay this guy. So I'll just wait for the WiiWare version as a way of, and I've heard a lot of people that have already played it. That's how they're approaching the WiiWare one is like, yeah, I'll mess around with it. But it's really just a way of paying the guy for all the hard work he's done. Yeah, totally. And, you know, part of playing it now is I kind of just want to compare and see what it's like when the WiiWare version comes out. I'm definitely going to get the WiiWare version because honestly, I hate playing games on keyboards. Especially platformers. It doesn't work for me. It's terrible. It doesn't work. Yeah, but it's the game. I don't know. If you haven't played it, it's like astounding. I heard it'll make you cry. It hasn't even cried yet, but I can see where it could. The chairs are kind of weird. You're excited to cry. I'm excited for that moment when I'm going to start balling. And I've been watching my roommate actually play Odin Sphere. I think that's what it's called. Yeah, I remember that two years ago. It's like the huge pixel, the huge sprites. Yeah, and that's pretty amazing. It's not really my kind of game. I played, but I must have gotten like 10 hours into that and then kind of gave up. I heard it got really repetitive. Yeah, it gets a little repetitive. It's fantastic. Well, it's got the grinding from an RPG. Exactly. It just kind of where it loses me as well. It's like, I can't. It's a very like action platforming and it's look, but then yeah, you do have to cry. It's like super fun for this X amount of time and then you just sort of have your film. Yeah, that was a problem with me at least. But there's like a sequel coming out to the Wii or not a sequel, but like it's made by the same team. Yeah. It's the same kind of aesthetic. At this point, I've never played Odin Sphere, but I've always wanted to. So I've heard that complaint from everyone that you had filled, so I'm just going to sort of like, I'm just going to make a statement. When we ask Patrick what he's playing, he's just going to be like, well, I'm not playing anything, but here's the games that I'm waiting to play because I want them to fix the problems from the last one. Here, too. Screw it. I'm waiting for you. All right, exactly. Anyway, I didn't mean to take away. No, no. I mean, that's pretty much it. It's been Cave Story for the last couple of weeks. I'm actually really not very good at video games, so it takes me a while even to do a game like that. I'm kind of dense when it comes to going around and you have to talk to all kinds of different people and figure stuff out. It's intimidating. It tends to confuse me. So just a little bit off topic. I guess someone who feels that they're not really good at video games, do you feel like you're sort of getting phased out with a lot of games, or do you feel like they're... No, although, I mean, I feel like Cave Story is kind of a throwback in some ways, although I haven't died yet. It's kind of difficult to die. He gives you a lot of power-ups. He gives you a lot of health and stuff. But games, I don't know. It seems like they're getting easier, if anything. The last real game that I played through was the Orange Box. I played through all the games, aside from Team Fortress, but I played through all the games. I was actually able to do it. I had to go and cheat and look on game facts or whatever a couple of times. So no, I don't totally feel that way. Although I don't play enough games, maybe, to really be the best judge of that. That's fair. Fair enough. Patrick. Well, I actually just worked... Have you been not waiting for anything? Yeah, I was waiting for everything to screw it. No, I actually just worked game over here. I finished Halo Wars. Oh god, the cat again. I'm trying to not go over here. Anthony's cat is like a sort of... Anthony's like a little dart that he can shoot at the cats and we're crossing the room. Knock them out for 10 minutes. I finished Halo Wars. They were like half an hour before I came over. All right, well, I think, Anthony, you've been playing Halo Wars as well, right? I did. I beat it as well. So you guys can talk about that? Okay. Last time I was here where I just played the demo. But my impression having finished it, I really enjoyed it more or less when I started to finish. It's a flawed game, but I really enjoyed it. I guess it's okay if it was on the normal skill. It's super easy. I don't know if you felt that way, but I never... Yeah, I don't think I'm terrible at games, but I have not played strategy games in a long time. So I adopted my... Like I talked about my Starcraft mentality. I just build shit and I throw it out. It does allow you to more or less do that, but... The cat. The cat. The cat. I swear. The cat came back. But yeah, I mean, so I... Yeah, like, what did... Okay. I'm listening up last week. Like, you're coming, I think, from the same strategy background or at least a similar strategy around us, "Garnite." We're like, "Very steeped in PC strategy than following the genre." Like, do you think that tainted your... Oh, no. Now the cat's on top of the bookcase. The model tank. This is absurd! This is also real-time strategy, boy. This is real-time strategy manipulation of the cat before they... Really? You should lock her in the bathroom. Send her to kitty time out. Oh, no! She broke a model. She also bit the shit out of him earlier in the podcast. This is an ambitious cat. That'd be scary for even me to go up there. I could picture it. I'll work on it later. All right, so do you think that tainted your opinion or like... I don't know, yeah, I guess maybe for the average person that doesn't play strategy games or something. Yeah. It's like not as easy. But for me, it wasn't until like mission 10 to 15 that I even lost once. Yeah. Because that game, like since it's not timed or anything, all I would do would like hoard the most obscene amount of forces and then just wipe the whole map with it. So wait, is 10? You had no problem the first time beating the scare of mission where the scare was half built? Yeah. Damn, I died like eight times at that mission. But that's just because, again, I just sat there and like built up my base and then all I did is I figured out what was the best thing to fight it with. And then I just built that one unit over and over again. Yeah, I mean, it is a game of just finding that unit that essentially dominates that map. It's basically an exploit for every map. Yeah. And there's a nice way for every map. And so as someone who was kind of, you know, as I had said before and listened up, like looking at Halo Wars is sort of a one time. I'm not going to play, you know, skirmish, I'm not going to play multiplayer. I just kind of had one have a fun, different take on the Halo universe. I thought Halo Wars executed in that respect. It was just sort of a fun, different take on Halo as opposed to a deep, really interesting strategy game. And I think depending on how you go into Halo Wars or what you're expecting out of it, I think it can be really satisfying from that perspective. Yeah, I didn't think it was bad. I just didn't think it was like great either. I haven't tried the multiplayer either. But I've heard the Covenant as it is pretty interesting. And I thought it was really disappointing. I don't know if this was just because they scaled back to the scope of the game or not. But it seemed to have made perfect sense that you'd be swapping between the two races throughout the campaign. And instead they created this whole Covenant structure and it plays very differently from what I understand from the humans. And then it's just in multiplayer where I can imagine a lot of people not even knowing. Unless you play the tutorial where they make you play with the Covenant a little bit. Never knowing that you even play is the Covenant. Yeah. But so you didn't really like it? No, I thought it was okay. But I was also writing a guide for it. And anytime you're writing a guide, it colors your experience with a game considerably. Like, feel like Killzone, kind of, but I'm sure like when he thinks about Killzone now. I mean, yeah, I mean, I still liked Killzone despite the guide writing process. But it was definitely like, I could tell that it was despite the guide. Like the guide writing process made me kind of want to gouge my eyes out a little bit. But that's just how writing a guide is. Yeah. I think if you're Patrick, don't do it. It's not worth it. I won't. I haven't written a guide since I was 6 years old. I know, there's a reason that I offered a hand. I offered a hand. I offered Halo Wars. Just get full disclosure. You haven't even tried to pawn that one off. I was like, I don't really have to do it. And I know you just got laid off if you wanted it. I turned it down. Yes. Maybe that's why I enjoyed Halo Wars. But I think, I think really specifically, if you're, if you're into strategy games, Halo Wars, probably not your thing. If you're super into Halo, and you're looking for a pretty bare minimum strategy game, Halo Wars is super fun. So it just, it's, I think it really is sort of your perspective on that. Like if you're really into the fiction, you know, people I've talked to, like the cinematics are really good in Halo Wars. And does, is the plot actually worthwhile? Like I mean, I'm not a huge fan of the Halo series. I'm not really big into the Halo mythos. I've only played the main game, so I don't, I don't, I couldn't tell you the timeline. But it was reasonably interesting. I don't know if the annotations are. It has, it has no bearing basically on the events of Halo 1, 2 or 3. It's like, it's a tangent. I mean, because like the flood come into it, but you know, you really, they don't learn the flood until Halo 1, so I, I've been told that it does fit into the timeline somehow. And it's not, it's not like a complete dissolution. I'm like David Ellis, showing you like charts of like, oh yeah, you can see, you can see his bathroom. Or not. Excellent. So yeah, I just finished Halo Wars and then also just before I came over, I played about five minutes of the Chronicles of Riddick demo that came out. Yeah, I was really excited about that. Yeah, because I never played the Xbox one and then, man, I'm on a tradition here. I didn't play it, so I was just waiting for the remake. Okay, so, so as someone who didn't play the original, how did you feel about the demo? Well, I, like I said, I downloaded just before I jumped on the bar to come over here. So I played roughly five minutes. I got as far as the demo of the new, the new stuff, the assault on. It's all from the Dark Athena. Okay, so is it? Okay, so the demo, the way it starts with a little minute, it drops you in. Riddick is hanging over a conversation between two dudes. And then I'd like to how it says, instead of just jump down, it says interrupt the conversation. And then that, you hit Y and then Riddick jumps down and like slashes their neck. So I just thought it was kind of a funny way instead of the cats are fighting. [laughter] The cats are out of control. This is worse than any other podcast. I brought this smell of my dog over my clothes. It's Patrick's driving and that's him. Patrick's raw animal magnetism. I guess it's the stake in my bruise. You can have some of the breed of cats. So yeah, and then I got as far as introducing more or less the basic mechanics of the fighting and the drones, which I don't know if that was in the A-Rids or not. No, that's definitely new. Drones is new? Yeah. Okay, so it looks gorgeous. And the fighting, the few fights I was in was really satisfying. And I just, I loved the idea in the demo was these, essentially you go into these like pod things that you need to control of these, essentially they're just like lifeless pods that you get to control remotely. So they're like regular soldiers, but they have very limited health. But there's a ton of them that you can go through. And that's how, at least in the demo, you are going through these waves of enemies with guns while you don't have any guns. So you just like suit into these drones, plot out, and then start taking on the enemies. And then also one of the early puzzles in the demo is you shoot open this grate that leads to a fan that you need to get through. And above the grate it says drones are not invincible, which is essentially the game telling you you need to run the drone into the fan to break the fan. So you're controlling the drone and you just walk the guy into the fan and he turns into like this give to mess, which breaks up the fan. And then you immediately transfer to a new drone so that you can continue down the hallway and so you can clear the path so that really can get through. But yeah, I'm really excited to play more and I don't know how long the demo goes. I actually, I played probably about half of assault on Dark Athena a few months ago for a preview that I wrote for EGM. And I actually, like I said, I played about half but I never even got to the part where they introduced those drones. So it's really interesting. Like I must be pretty far into the game for the demo. Maybe. My concern is that that demo isn't really indicative of a lot of the gameplay. But yeah, the problem is it doesn't explain anything, Niga dropped in. So you load up the demo and it shows you the control scheme with like 50 different things you can do as Riddick and doesn't explain anything you're supposed to do. So you're sort of just like playing around trying to understand the stealth mechanic. So as a demo in the first couple minutes, it's pretty poor if you've never played Riddick before because it doesn't. I don't think it gives you a proper understanding of all the glowing things I hear about Riddick, which is a lot of like the first-person experience, hand-to-hand combat and so that visceral feel. So you get a little bit of that but I was a little upset that maybe it seems like the demo was designed for people that have already played Riddick that want to see the new content. As opposed to a whole lot of people, I think might be in my boat. You have not played it at all. And more people are going to drop into this demo and just go WTF. So yeah, I actually feel like this is their demo that's trying to appeal to a broader demographic because there's so much shooting. But in the original game, the stealth to gunplay quotient was something like, what the fuck? Was something like 65-35-35? Like there's definitely more sneaking around than anything. I mean, from what I've played of Assault on Dark Athena, it's still the same in that. There's a lot more sneaking around than anything else. I don't know. I'm still really excited. From what I've already played of it, I can tell that I don't think Assault on Dark Athena is as good as the original. But it's still fun. And the fact that the original is in there completely with upgraded graphics. I mean, I still think it's going to be a game worth, especially if you haven't played the original. It's 100% worth picking up from what I can tell. Yeah. So I'm excited to play more. I don't know how long the demo goes, but like I said, I only played 5 minutes and it's really good. Also, I've been attempting to play Puzzle Quest Galactrix on DS, but it has loading times. So I've been considering switching over to... I never played Puzzle Quest before, so Galactrix showed up in the mail and I thought, "Hey, I've never played Puzzle Quest," but then played about an hour and yeah, there were loading times. Like every time you finish a battle or load up a mini game or pause your game and it says in the corner, now loading. Like I can't run the last DS game that had a loading screen. And it'd be one thing if it was just when you boot up or save, but it's all the time. And I can imagine Puzzle Quest is a game you play for a dozen dozen hours. That would add up to a lot of wasted time by the time I finish it. So, I'm thinking of, I don't know, picking up like the Xbox Live or Kater, the PC version. Is it out on XB? No, it's not. That's the version I'm going to play, but Amanda's been playing the PC version, so I've gotten to see a little bit of it. Oh, and the last thing I am like a week late to the party, but did anyone play like the "don't shit your pants"? Oh man, I totally played the "don't shit your pants" game. What is it? It's a text adventure. I saw it somewhere, I didn't play it. Yeah, it's a graphical text adventure, and it's on a congregate? Congregate. You know, let's say it's got like a bajillion free games. And yeah, it's got like this really old-school graphics, you know, maniac mansion, like King's Cross sort of thing. And it's a very short game where you are a man and you are about to shit your pants. And so you have to, in the game starts with I think 45 seconds, there's a timer. And you have to, in that 45 seconds, figure out how not to shit your pants. Or come up with ingenious ways of shitting your pants, but still winning. And so, what kind of ingenious ways of winning? The fun of the game is finding, you know, it's a text-based game, so the fun of it is finding out what ways the game has been programmed to respond to. You couldn't do that. It'll be like, when there's like 15 seconds left, it'll be like, the pressure's mounting, find some way to relieve it. So you'll be like fart, and it'll be like, "Oh, the force was too much, you shit your pants." Yeah, and then you have to think about it more like, "Well, it told me I should go..." So, what if I just did a small fart, and then it'll go 45 seconds, and like you get 45 more seconds before you shit your pants? It's a really short game, and depending on the ways you play, because there's multiple ways to finish it, you get different achievements. And so, you're encouraged to go back and play the game to find the different... Well, clearly I never got that achievement, so how do I get that playing the game a different way? There's like a achievement for shitting on the floor, as opposed to shitting on the toilet, that sort of thing. You can like, shit and forget to take off your pants. The game really lets you go crazy with the inputs. And, yeah, I highly recommend just Google, "Don't shit your pants." Don't Google Image Search. But I highly recommend, it's like the first thing that comes up, says congregate. And it's really funny, and I haven't played a game like that in a long time, but I would love if there was... Maybe it exists like a tool that allowed people to sort of just create games like that, like in that style. I can't imagine that would be too difficult. Is the Xbox Live Arcade version of that one out yet? Maybe that's in the works. I want to actually don't shit your pants into you. That's a community game working on that. I mean, congregate has achievements, right? Yeah, congregate has a big system. Yeah, I don't really play too much on there. I mean, I thought that you could like, log in to chat room. That's one of the big things about congregate, like they're trying to push. That's a selling point. It's like a big social network where you can get achievements while you play these casual games. And there's actually a special achievement in that game, which is where if you type in "shit my pants" at the very beginning, you get an achievement right away. For shitting, like for jumping the gun is what it's got. Yeah, I had a big minute. It's got survival tips for real life too, so. Anthony. I play don't shit your pants, I play Halo Wars. I've been playing some Killzone, but I don't really want to talk about that because I'd rather wait until we play some multiplayer. Yeah, we should push on the question. It's good, it's fun. It looks great. And then I'm just like, "You can't like it." And then I've just been selling a lot of the World of Warcraft. So, I don't know. Anything interesting in World of Warcraft? We, we finally got together in the game world for the first time. How do you like how my undead mage looks? It's okay. I wasn't too excited about grouping with the public group of people there. Well, yeah, we got like two people and they weren't. They didn't talk, I liked that. They weren't awful people. I shut up. I hated when they talk. They stayed at every place. I was like it when they were there. I was looking for people and was like, "We're looking for people, but we don't want you to mouth off to us." It's not what I said. Your money is on the dresser. I just have no interest in talking to these people. I'm just like, "Let's get business done if we're both here because it's like a fucking transaction. Like we both need this. I need you, you need me. Let's just get this done." I don't want to fucking act like we're going to be friends or anything like that. Yeah, I mean, you know, I basically left the money on the bedside table and was like, "Do you want me to get the fuck out?" Until it was the one that was always like, "Oh, congrats on your item." Wait a minute, fuck that. You said congrats before me for this one guy who you rolled on the same item as him. That's because I was trying not to get spiteful for the fact that he got it. And I felt like... You should have challenged him to a duel. I got it. Did you wipe your sword on their knee when you were finished? I... God. But yeah, I don't know. I just been playing some World of Warcraft. I told Arthur there's like a direct correlation to how sad my life is to how much World of Warcraft. So like... That's why I can't start playing it because I have the pride and same thing around my hand. I don't want it. What scientists have yet to determine is whether or not it's Warcraft that makes his life sad or his life being sad that makes Warcraft. From there, I get to be a grubcast, the orc, Death Knight. I don't have to be me. Is that your name? Yeah. What does it mean? Did you explain when that's goblin work in Dorvish? Word. Oh my God. [laughter] What's your World of Warcraft name? My World of Warcraft. Dr. Badass? My name is Quinlan. And Quinlan. We had Dorvish for something? We had some guy in our group that named like One Bad Dude. [laughter] I was like fuck that guy. [laughter] As soon as we finish this instance, I'm going to fucking gank his ass. I wouldn't have been upset that he was joining us except he was our healer. We had to have a healer. Actually, I'm probably one of the things I would stress out the most is I have a real problem with just naming characters. Like, I tend to be really cool. So honestly, like, can I be really boring and just name them Patrick? Like, I don't play a lot of multiplayer games, I don't have to get unique. But like, I really stressed out over in the name screen. But what is a Warcraft type of random name just like that? Yeah, well, I was just going to say that's honestly all I do is I hit random name generator until it comes up with something that I think is actually interesting. I was going to say yeah. Your girlfriend's character is definitely a random name generator. No, they're not. Really? It has like so many random, like- They're from, uh, they're from Carmen Punishment. Oh, got it. The characters from that. It didn't look like- It didn't look like- Anthony is demonstrated as a literary. It knows. You saw- If I showed you this name, you'd be like, that is not- There's no human being on Earth that possesses this name. It looks like someone started tapping, like, consonants and vowels. That is how like, Dosteevsky wrote his novels. Man, you kids and your automatic name generators. Back when we played Diablo 2, we had to come up with something. I always come up with something. I consult my fucking books. Did you say that they're going to do a Diablo 2 patch again? Like a content patch? Diablo 2? Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. It does make sense. It's on Korean. Well, it's not just Korea. I think it's also like, there will be random ads on BattleNet when people sign up saying, Diablo 3 is coming out or- Well, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, every time Blizzard announces a new sequel, like, if you just go to Amazon the next day, the game is spiked. So if they release a patch, that'll spike sales for the game. And I mean, when they were officially announcing Starcraft, I think they released a patch right before the- Yeah. The first one. What do you plan for? Well, I finished up Grand Theft Auto 4, Lost in the Damned. Have you- Any of you guys played- I mean, have you finished- I played a little more. I haven't finished it. I'm a bad person. I finished it. Sorry. What did you think overall? I really enjoyed it. From what I heard on Listen Up, it sounded like you had sort of the same impressions you did with GTA 4, which was kind of a loose scene again. Yeah. I was speaking strictly of the story. If you take it strictly in the story, since I felt the dialogue, the character- I felt the dialogue and characters are phenomenal throughout. I just felt the actual story, the progression of Johnny. That's the main character, right? Yeah. That was the other game. Just kind of fell apart in the middle when it became a little gamey. You needed more missions. You were kind of doing stuff that- I guess it was really- I don't want to spoil the end, but the way the game concludes and comes full circle with the character- Can I spoil the end? No. Can I spoil what the last mission is without telling you? I will shove that mic into your face, full of color. You need to actually finish it then. I won't finish it, and then we can talk to you. The last mission is really grando. It's huge, and it's epic, and it's really fun, but it doesn't fit with what you do at the end of the mission, and it's not satisfying on a character level. It's unbelievably fun to play for multiple reasons, but I agree that if you look at it in terms of the context of the world, even in a world as ridiculous as Liberty City, it feels out of place. It feels like too big. And that's disappointing, because everything else in the game that you're doing often feels appropriate. I think, yeah, up to a point it really does. How did you like the crossovers with the original GTA 4? I thought it was cool, and at first the first mission that you encounter, the crossovers, is the museum mission with Nico. At first I felt like this feels really shoehorned in. It kind of felt like, I don't remember GTA 4 that well. So, like Johnny might not have actually been there, but then I was reading a line. I saw videos of Johnny was actually in there. It was clear that Rockstar had planned the evening towards the end. I thought that was really cool. Yeah, for me it was kind of the opposite where I was like, I didn't remember well enough, so I just assumed he had been there, and I was like, that's awesome. For all I know, he could have not been there, and I wouldn't have known any better. Right, and so it could have gone either way, but it was cool to see that he wasn't there. And yeah, Lost and Damned by far has, like, GTA 4 has some really strong characters in dialogue, but because Lost and Damned was so tight and so unique, the complaints I would have, where I kind of say the story falls apart, well the story falls apart, the mission is like, it's only like an eight-hour game, so like, for it to sort of drift off a little bit, really isn't that big a deal because it's so strong throughout otherwise, that by the time it's over, it's kind of after I'd finished it, I was like, wait, that wasn't as satisfying as I was hoping, but that was an awesome eight-hours regardless. Well actually, I just finished a review for it, and that's sort of what I said, the exact same thing in the review, which was that it kind of, it drops off in the same way as GTA 4, it has some of the same problems as GTA 4, but because it's smaller overall and more tightly focused, those problems don't become as big of a deal. Yeah, because in Fortin, with Nico, you're playing another 20 hours, and you're sort of dealing with the same issues for 20 hours after the game has sort of gone off the tangent of his character, and that doesn't happen in loss of names, so any problems was sort of like when I was thinking about it afterwards, and I was like, if that's the impression I'm getting, like, I got my $20 worth, and like, I would love to see way more of these, and it's a perfect city. Yeah, I hope that. I would love if this is just where Rockstar keeps focus now, instead of putting out a huge Grand Theft Auto, another huge game this generation, they just focus on like these smaller, tighter stories. Yeah, even if the next Grand Theft Auto is just a collection of these smaller story arcs instead of one huge story arc. Yeah, I mean, I could see that like for how big Liberty City is, it would seem such a waste to just move on to the next game so quickly. I would love to see two years of episodes, you know, four to six episodes, but bundle those, then you could promote that as a big pack with GTA 4, and then move on to like, it's, I mean, it's almost crazy to think we wouldn't get one more, this generation, one big GTA sequel, but I would love if the episodes are sort of in between, and then if they make that a compilation, there's no, you know, reason like they can't, can't use that as a stopgap, and yeah, I just, I just love the idea of these, my problem with GTA has always been that it's a four-hour, 40-hour game, and I just don't have time for that, so I just usually would pass on them, but the idea of these eight-hour chunks, like it's concentrated, like, I just, yeah, I'm a huge fan of Lost and Damned, and I can't wait to see what they do with the next one. Yeah, for sure. I've also been playing Dragon Quest V for the DS, and this game is really, really fantastic. I mean, if, if you're at all interested in RPGs, I think anybody who's into RPGs should play this. I think the way that Jeremy Parrish wrote it in his, in his review, he said that the game made him feel nostalgic, even though he'd never played it before, and that's exactly the feeling I have, and the thing that's also catching me, I'm about maybe six or seven hours in, but already I can just, you can feel kind of how big it is and how epic it is, and, like, I mean, it's a very sort of traditional Dragon Quest generic fantasy world, but you start off like you're a young kid, and there's constant references to your age, so I kind of get the impression, and I don't know if this is actually true or not, because I haven't read that much in the game, but I get the feeling that you're kind of kind of be, like, growing up as you go, and you, like, already, at about the three-hour mark, you get transported to a whole complete another world, so there's, like, another world map, and, I don't know, there's all this stuff that I'm really excited to see how it plays out, so despite being this, like, very traditional JRPG, it's really, really fun. I've heard it's pretty hard. You know, a couple of people have been saying that, and then I've had other people, like, actually, Jeremy told me that you don't have to grind at all, and I'm just kind of grinding, because I'm used to grinding in Dragon Quest games? Yeah, like, so whenever I get to a new town, I'm like, all right, now I'm gonna grind for, like, half an hour so that I can buy all the best armor and weapons, and that's just how I play Dragon Quest games, so I'm very used to that, and I don't know. I guess I haven't been having troubles because I'm doing that, and because I'm always equipped in the best stuff, but some other people, I guess, have. I think if you take it a little bit slower, it's not gonna be an issue, but I know that some people say, like, every time they get to a boss, they just get destroyed and then have to go grind for a while before they can kill the boss. Like I said, it's a very old-school RPG, so I mean, it's almost expected that that's going to happen, but I'm still really, really enjoying it, and I think, like I said, anybody who's into RPGs at all should probably check this out. Have you played, like, Dragon Quest is probably one of the only major RPG series that I haven't touched any of the insolences for... They've always since been them just far more hardcore, like, I've just always kind of stuck to Final Fantasy because there was enough of those that I just got in my fill, so if you hadn't played any of them, and now there are so many of these remakes, like, would this be the one, like, the entry gate or were there? So far, like, I mean, I haven't played Dragon Quest 4, I will say that, but Final Fantasy 3 and 4, between those two and this one, I would probably say go with Dragon Quest 5. Okay. Like, so far at least it's the one that's just giving me the most pure enjoyment. I mean, are we ignoring all the other square RPGs on the DS, like Chrono Trigger? Well, I think I'm kind of talking about these games that, like, have a come over here, or, like, you, like, games like Chrono Trigger, like, almost universally most people play this, and like, Dragon Quest 5 would be far less likely that someone would have played, so... Yeah, and I'm trying to find, like, if I think of all those as a collective, these DS remakes, if I can, I'm not going to play all and I could pick one, I could be the most user-friendly to... And Chrono Trigger is more of a straight part, but with some bonus material, whereas this is, like, a full-on remake. But, of course, like, it's hard to say don't go play Chrono Trigger because Chrono Trigger is fantastic. This is assumed. Yeah. So you can play Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest 5. It's part of the SNES Holy Trinity. I don't know. I am really enjoying it, though, and it makes me want to go back and play Dragon Quest 4, but that makes me want to have time to go back and play Dragon Quest 4, and I don't, so... Alright, that's it for me. We'll take a break and come back and talk about video game musics. Back in. Answer me, my love. Exactly why you had to go if you knew it was dangerous. This ain't the first time. No, and I can't keep wandering around. Looking for your risk in life and limits all. I can do to keep loving you. I've been firing the bits of hell. I've fought sharks on the ocean's floor. I teach that you've come to life. Even talking dinosaurs. But I've traded them all instantly. Just to see. Just to glance a little piece of you. I do it again and again. I can keep loving you. Now I'm falling and I'm screaming. We came out there so quick. There's no way I could have worried. He's the wizard. He's the wizard. And he's born as a man and born as a leader. He comes through those turtles. There's their full blood. And this spring to life out of mud. I'm gonna follow you. You can really own death. Oh, you have to kill all. Oh, you have to kill all. Which I ain't got some more than sweat. I've turned around and he's disappeared. I can't have left for all of those. You've got to relieve me. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Anthony, you joined me this weekend on a romantic date to Videoam's Life. It's true. I actually paid like more than I care to say for really nice tickets on the floor. And then I sat in the fucking balcony with you because... [laughter] Everyone knows that no one can see what happens in the back of the theater, though. No, it was like I could tell looking at the balcony you could still see just fine. They were good seats. And more importantly, I got to sit with Phil and Amanda. Those things are more fun with people. Yeah, exactly. I got to sit there and exchange comments. Jade was also there, but I like to throw my jokes down on Phil first. As a filter for what's good. [laughter] But yeah, it was pretty interesting. I don't know, I would like to because I paid for it, but I don't know. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to buy tickets anyways, but then I ended up getting free tickets, courtesy of Amanda and her job, so that was nice. Well, that whole event was sponsored by IGN. Yeah, we got to hear about IGN a lot throughout that event, so that was nice. They gave away like 4DSs throughout it, so. Well, along with these IGN bowling bags is what they looked like, so. But I mean, it was my first time going to video games live, and I've always wanted to go, and I know that Amanda's always wanted to as well, so we both were really psyched and enjoyed it quite a bit. The event went a little bit long. I mean, I know by the end, they came out for like two encores, and by the time they came out for that second encore, I know you, Anthony, you were like, pretty much just getting up to leave. You were like, fuck this, I'm done. Yeah, well, it's because like for every song they would play, there would be like something I recognized and do. Then they'd play something that I didn't at all, or something that I was like, that just didn't seem like it really was worthy of having its own song in there. Like even the Halo stuff was ruined for me, and it doesn't because like, I did not like the Halo music, but it was- I thought the Halo one was actually good. I thought it was good too, but I didn't need to see it being like, all attention focused on Tommy Tallarico rocking the guitar, the easiest guitar part. I mean, I've been a couple times, and you know, I love- I like Tommy a lot, I think he's a really nice guy. Oh, I'm absolutely positive, he's nice. No, he's totally cool, and you know, and like, it's like, that's part of anyone's issue with video games live, is it kind of is like the Tommy Tallarico show, and it's like, it's a way- it's his baby. And every other time that I've gone, did they do Advent Rising, because usually they- They did not do Advent Rising. They do Advent Rising. It's like, and you're like, you know, it's why they're doing Advent Rising, but it totally doesn't belong in, you know, fence obviously, but like, it doesn't belong in the same kind of category as mostly- Advent Rising doesn't belong in the canon of great video games. They actually did that as well. There was another one that seemed like it was there, just so Tommy could play guitar, which was that they did that Aerosmith song from Guitar Hero. Yeah, they had a guitar Hero tournament before the show. They had a guitar Hero tournament before the show, and then they brought the winner on stage, and they said, we're going to let you play this song from Guitar Hero Aerosmith. I don't even remember what song they played. Sweet Emotion. Yeah, that's right, and then Tommy Tallarico played along on real guitar. Wait, but I have to ask you, was it the guitar that doesn't have the head? See, that's like, that shit drives me insane. It seems like so much of you are right next to him with a guitar. Exactly, and you expect him to have that, but man, that's just- And it was just like watching somebody play guitar Hero, not very fun. Yeah, and then it was supposed to be some sort of point challenge where he had to get a certain number of points to win a DS, and then he was- Originally, they were just going to have him play it on hard, but he went to Expert, and Tommy Tallarico's like freaking out, and he's like, oh, you want to play on Expert, big shot? And I'm all like, if this guy just won a guitar Hero tournament, I hope he's playing on Expert. I mean, I wouldn't play on Expert, but I suck. So yeah, that was one of the ones that was kind of like, all right, well, this is kind of making the show drag. So it was like, just too encompassing? Like, it tries to please too many people, or is it just- It tries to hit on like the biggest ones. I think part of it too is that- and this is also part of why it's cool, though, is they have- they said they have like 60 or 70 segments, and then each show they just- they pull like 20 together. I thought it was 40. I think it's just 20 per show or something like that. And then- so yeah, like every time you go, it's going to be a slightly different show. They'll probably- there's some that they probably do every time. Like, I'm sure they do Zelda music every time in Final Fantasy and stuff like that, but- so they- that's a part of the issue, I think, is just that there's so much to pull from and event, like inevitably some shows they're going to use some that are less exciting for some of the audience members. And yeah, it is a case, I guess, where they're trying to please everyone. Did they do the Frogger thing? Where they're playing the live Frogger music and they have someone on stage- Oh, they did a Frogger. They did to Space Invaders. Space Invaders. Yeah. Every time I've seen it, it's been Frogger, where they, you know, they have like the live action person on stage running back and forth to try to- Because they're on motion track, so they're playing the game on screen, but they're actually motion tracked by the shirt they're wearing. That's kind of awesome. Yeah. But that dude lost. And Tommy Del Rico just kind of sat there on stage like making fun of him the whole time? Yeah, but that's- that's the thing. Oh, you've got to shoot out the corners. And he could just kept yelling at him for not shooting out the corners. Did he come out like MC the whole thing while the music's playing? He comes out in between a lot of the songs and we'll do little bits. There was one part where he came out and he kind of started- He kind of went into like video game pre-term mode, where he was like- He was like- I called him the Martin Luther King of video games. He was like, "Some people want to take away our video games." And the crowd's like, "No, boo!" It was like, it was literally just being- Who are you guys being? Please tell me you were- No, I was not. I sat there silently. It was like being in church a little bit. He squeezed one in. Philip, I'm so proud of you. That was not a bad thing. I'm just saying- No, you looked at me motherfucker. You knew exactly what I was talking about. I know what you're talking about. But, and in his defense, he's been a huge advocate for video game music. I mean, since the '80s, since like the '80s when he started or whatever. And his passion really does come through. And despite some parts where it felt like a kind of drag. Overall, it was a very good experience. Yeah, seeing the kid play all the music on piano. I forget that kid's name and everything. That was pretty spectacular. For video game pianists. Yeah, the video game pianist kid. Like the one that did a blindfold Mario song or whatever. He was back there. He's part of the show, you know. And did he do the thing where he does it really fast? I forget what it was like, final fantasy or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he did. There was like a Mario song where he speeds it up. And you know, he's like, starts doing it super fast. I kept on making jokes to fill the whole night. That kid's actually Tommy Tallerico's slave. Because I kept on seeing him like full of this collar a little bit when he'd come out. That's like because they unhook his neck collar like right before he does. So he gets to do it and then like snap him right back up in the back. I wonder why he ran out the front door at the end. I didn't know. So were his hands so bloody? Well, it's like the only part of who they don't bloody. Because that's the money maker. So good. I guess overall my favorite segment was probably the Metroid one because the music for Metroid is really fantastic. The Metroid one was. I feel like that's, to me, that was one where I can see them not doing that on every show. But I'm glad that it was included for this one because it was, I really like the mic. I don't know how you didn't like the Sip Four one the best. The Sip Four one was also very... Because it involves the whole choir and the whole orchestra as well. And they, I forget the name of that song. But... It sounds amazing. What was your least favorite out of what was performed there? I don't know. Halo. Again. Fucking knew you were going to say that. Because it was just the main theme. And it sounded pretty good. But the guitar part really was... One that was interesting is that for the first time ever they actually debuted... Obviously. Yeah, the Aerosmith one was probably the worst. But they actually debuted the Chrono Trigger music. This is the first time that they've ever played it. And the music from Chrono Trigger is really good. But this segment like you, I could tell it was their first time playing it. It seemed like it needed a little work yet. And it was very short. And so they kind of didn't get in all of the music that I would have liked from Chrono Trigger. So that was a little bit. And it was like the Halo music got, got slightly made bad by the fact that they kept clipping in Cortana speaking parts. That was, that was taking me out of it a little bit. And actually like they had like the trailer for Halo 3 playing in the background. Including all of the Cortana parts that were speaking. They had those... Yeah, see like I could have done without that. I just wanted to hear the music. That kept on being like kind of like a little cheesy to me. There are some parts that were kind of cheesy like that in a lot of the songs. But like I don't... The Halo music would be going and you'd get going and feel good. And then Cortana would break it up and you'd have to start all over. Yeah, that's a kind of how it would be. And you'd be like that was weird. So, but I don't know actually and also the montage one they did when they had like 30 different games going on. And they were constantly switching like back and forth. That was also really cool seeing that. I don't know. That was a lot of like older games and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, back in Chicago before right around the time video games live got started. There was something called the Play Symphony which was I don't even know. I don't even know if they still do play. They do still do it. Yeah, so they're sort of competing but they're very different in that a lot of stuff that you guys are talking about. This like having Guitar Hero like it's sort of commercialized a little bit trying to incorporate a lot of like really modern things. Play doesn't really try to do that so much. It's like a proper symphony. It is. Like you're supposed to dress up. Like it's it's it's it's serious because like it was birthed out of... I just want to say I dressed up. I was wearing a very nice t-shirt. I had washed it before. Yeah, most people were not dressed up by any stretch in imagination. Oh, and so people were dressed up in costumes from Wonderland. Yeah, and at Play even though the emphasis was supposed to be that was pretty nice. Like of course, you know, half people. I don't know if they owned stuff to dress up nice just to put it kindly. And to put it kindly. Wow. And so yeah, so so playing as a collection, but it was it's much more serious and it's although they still manage to. I think my biggest planet at the Play Symphony in Chicago is they played one-winged angel twice. Because like... They played one-wing angel twice during this too. Oh, did they? Okay, so maybe this is just like... They play I once it was the... It's systemic problem of video like... Yeah, once it was the video game pianist and then once they played it. Oh, they did they did like the choir version twice. Like they did it and then they brought them out for the encore and no one was excited about the encore. It's like we already got excited for the song. And so I've seen the play one. Yeah, there's footage behind them when they're doing it. Yeah, Play just has gameplay footage or cinematic footage going on. There's no people on stage. There's no MC. I think also, weren't you telling me anything? Was it you who said this? For the actual Final Fantasy stuff, which they did a lot of Final Fantasy music and then also the Chrono Trigger stuff. But they had gameplay footage for a lot of things but not for the square stuff. No, they would always show the cinematics. And that was the case that before Play, Play was worth that of a Final Fantasy series that started in a couple of cities like Chicago. And that was headed up by Nobu Umatsu, the Final Fantasy composer. And yeah, it was always definitely serious. And you weren't allowed to film the screen. Like, you could take pictures all you want, but you weren't allowed to like, you were heavily encouraged to not take pictures of the screen. Which were only just showing cinematics of Final Fantasy games. Everyone in the audience had already played. But the, yeah, so I've been to a couple of those but those were all in Chicago and they're a little more serious. I hadn't been to video games live where it's more of a, I guess, a spectacle. Like it's more of a big bombastic. Yeah, it's like a, it's more of a celebration of a lot more video game culture than the player Final Fantasy ones which are sort of specific and have a certain attitude. And there's not, there's not an MC. There's no guy coming out in guitar. Although the, the play when they did, they, I went to the first one which is in Chicago so they had pretty much all the big composers there. You know, they had Umatsu and they had a Mardiodontal. And who's the, the Zelda guy I'm blanking on. Yeah, Koji Kondo. Like Koji Kondo would come out and he played a couple of themes like along with the orchestra. And so they would, that, that one was really cool and what play would go around and it would have, instead of like the Chicago one where it had like all the composers, it would have a handful. I don't know if video games live actually has any of the composers. They have, I mean, I think for specific events that they'll bring them in for special ones but in the, in general, I think they just do like videos with like some of the composers. Like introducing. Yeah. Right. Two years ago at, at video games live, they had a bunch of, it was, it was as part of GDC. It was like right after GDC. So they had a bunch of, the Koji Kondo was there and I actually got to meet Koji Kondo, which was great. It's really, really nice guy. He's so cool. And you know, he doesn't speak that much English. And so I was like talking to his interpreter and I was trying to explain to him that I wrote like this Mario opera that was like based off of his music and how much his music meant to me. And you know, talking to the translator and I had a CD and I gave it a translator and the translator seemed really into it. You know, he was like, wow, you know, that's really great. And he's trying to explain to him. So I don't know if it totally got through, but hopefully it didn't. You try. Yeah. That's more than most people ever get the opportunity to. What else? I mean, what else? What did you think of video games live from the couple? Because you didn't go to this event, but you've been there a couple of times already. Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's a really fun experience, especially like, I think once is probably enough, you know, having gone twice. It's like, and you're right that it is like slightly different every time, but it's not different enough every time to make it, I think, worth it. Although that might be a function of like, I went two years in a row. So maybe like, you know, you wait a couple years before you go. And I'm kind of on the fence about all the like stuff in between because it's nice to sort of break it up or whatever. And did they do the Metal Gear thing? They have this guy come out in Metal Gear costume and get under the box and move around and has this cool like device where he flips a thing and a question mark shows up over his head or whatever. I think there's maybe a middle ground between those two where video games live goes a little too far sometimes and something I play which is a little too serious and really it's the fans that are the ones that have to make it a little more playful because they come dressed in costumes and stuff like that. But then maybe there's somewhere in between the two where it's embracing that video game culture is like that. Like people want to act out like that and it is really fun. You don't want to just sit there like dressed up and pretend like you're not excited when they play the Zelda theme or something like that. And then maybe, I think probably video games live has a better chance to maybe just sort of scale it back a little bit and maybe become that. Instead of having all those acts just have one show that's a really, really awesome show as opposed to attempting to mix it up for people and then probably just disappointing people that go a couple. It does lack a certain cohesion. I don't know if you guys felt like that but just trying to be a variety show. It was like anytime they stopped the show to do a giveaway or to bring somebody on stage it was like you lose momentum. Like the space invader thing was cool but it felt very gimmicky and it was like well this isn't really about the music anymore even though they were playing music during it. It was about the spectacle of the guy on stage like we said and I think alcohol would help too honestly. They did but they did serve alcohol. Did they really, oh wow well that, there you go. I guess maybe that's a function of the Fox theater versus the Masonic Temple. Which I've seen it twice but. Do you think they're just catering to what they feel might be a shorter attention span like they don't want to lose people? I did note I mean the times that I've been it's that the crowd has been really skewed really young. I don't know what it was like when you guys went but I'd say it's late teens early twenties. Yeah the times of the time it's been some of that and then a lot of developers you know from the GDC but the vast majority it seems like were you know between nine and like 15 year olds. You know really young and so I can see where that stuff would like just you know be hitting out of the park for those kids but like. For the rest of us it's super cheesy and a little too over the top. So I'm curious also I mean I guess we can move into a more general discussion of music in video games like what some of our favorite pieces are but I'm also just curious about because Jonathan you make music and your music is heavily inspired by video games. So I'm just curious if you want to talk about that a little tell people where they can check out some of your stuff. Yeah yeah I mean to speak to what you were saying Patrick like this idea of a sort of something that the video game community can enjoy that sort of in the middle ground. I have this vision with the Mario Opera you know it was like I wanted to take the story of Mario and like make a rock opera out of it right. Okay and I took all the music and sort of wrote original songs based around the music from the games adding lyrics and changing chords around and stuff and actually performed it around LA for a while. It debuted at CalArts where I was in grad school at the time and the problem of course came like when I can't get the licensing from Nintendo. Like Nintendo they know about it they like they know it exists and stuff and I sort of let it exist on a tone but if you wanted to take it a step further. If I ever wanted to actually really do it it'd be impossible you know because Nintendo is so tight with their with their I don't know brands you know it's like Nintendo is listening light and up guys. Yeah seriously it is too bad because you see stuff like in my list. You see like Evil Dead the musical or Spider-Man the musical is coming out and like that's right there's like three Phoenix Wright musicals in Japan. Really? It's true one of those here. So you need a Mega Man opera. Okay so there's two Mega Man operas actually. There's the proto men who are fucking amazing. I mean they in many ways are doing what I wanted to do with Mario Opera and doing it in some ways better. They are from Memphis, Tennessee and they have this whole sort of shtick that they do where they're called the proto men and they like don't break character. Ever for anything and so it's just it's like a story of proto man like wanting to destroy humanity because of what because if they don't appreciate him and Mega Man trying to stop him basically is like the the gist of the thing. And the music is so badass. I mean you guys should check it out. I think it's just proto men.com. Have you ever heard any of it? I've heard of that. It's so good. And they're totally just a rock show. They're like I saw them play. They came to LA and I just saw them in some some club. I forget exactly where it was the echo or something. And yeah they're just a rock show. They're just like but they do like they do small skits where you know the proto man who his microphone plugs in through a jack in the back of his helmet. So he's like a he's a microphone rigged into his helmet and it's like this red proto man helmet and he jacks it in and it's so badass and the guy has a great voice. And then there's another mega man thing called the megas who sort of take Mega Man music and transform it into songs. And I think they're just the megas.com or whatever. And they're good too. If you want to see the Mario Opera stuff there's no the mariooper.com sort of doesn't exist anymore. But if you go to manmade.tv m-a-n-n-made.tv a lot of the Mario Opera stuff is still there. And I'm hoping to bring it back. We'll put the address in the show notes this week. Cool. And there's other stuff as well. I'm trying to remember there's of course the way that I sort of first got the idea to start doing video game music that way was the mini bosses. I saw the mini bosses play and of course they've been doing it since like 1999 like far before anybody else sort of really did it. And I don't know if you guys have a chance to see that but they're now in a completely badass and like an amazing and the advantage as well. You know yeah I didn't see the mini bosses. I saw the advantage when they were in San Francisco maybe a year ago. And it's cool like what the mini bosses in an advantage both do. They both only cover video game music like that's what they do. Well didn't the mini bosses write some original stuff like I have a lot of mini bosses stuff. No really I haven't I didn't know that I haven't heard any of their original level. They have some stuff with actual singing. Oh interesting. Yeah. I mean they have a huge following now you know because of the video game stuff. And they're sort of more I don't know I'd say they're more hard, more metal based. Whereas the advantage tend to take things that are really like they'll take a video game tune and kind of interpret it. And it's almost like there's some jazz and some funk in there and they really like to make it crazy. So they're really good. Yeah but what I wanted to do with the Mario Opera was sort of they were just covering the music. I wanted to sort of like take the music and be inspired by it and turn it to something else. And what I actually find is that music that I write that is based off of especially Koji Kondo stuff who's an amazing composer. Music that I write that's based off of the music and video games tends to be like some of my best songs. You know like I it really like I don't know if you're a songwriter it can really like force you out of your habits and you can find new and interesting combinations of chords and melodies and things. Cool. Is that just a function of how video game music is composed because you're talking about like a lot of old school music. Yeah. Where it's really thematic something that's just was there was it was born out of limitations because there was only so much they could do so they had to come up with a really catchy theme that looped over and over again and you wouldn't get tired of it. If you played the game for dozens of hours. Which you know Koji Kondo is like the master. Yeah. I mean like if you think about all the themes that he's done that that that you're not tired. I mean even now you're not tired of them. In fact the first the first song that I wrote for the Mario Opera was actually the last song of the first act. It's called the lizard wizard and spay lizard wizard is magic Koopa. Yeah. In the in the Mario Opera and at the end of the first act Mario has sort of been through all this all this shit. Mario starts out not knowing who he is. He doesn't realize that he's Mario but he's thrust into this video game world as like Mario the plumber from Brooklyn. But everyone in the video game world knows him as Mario the like video game superstar. And so over the course of the first act he's sort of like is discovering that he's done this like thousands of times before like every time anybody's ever played Mario like he's been through this experience of like saving the princess and killing killing the Koopas and stuff. And at the end of the first act he's killed by magic Koopa. It's this song called the lizard wizard and the music is taken from the castle in Super Mario World. That theme the da da da da da da da da da da da da. And I just I was sort of listening to that and I was playing a lot of Super Mario World at the time just like revisiting and stuff. And that theme I think is just like so amazing. And the chord progression is like A minor this diminished chord D minor and E major and it's just it's a great little chord progression. So I just took that chord progression and I started writing a new song on top of that chord progression. And it turned into and that's sort of like what birthed the whole thing is like you know I would have never come up with that chord progression. It's just like not something that is in my kind of milieu I guess. But you know I took it and I ran with it and it was turned out really just amazing like better than most of my other stuff. I'm curious too like obviously you're inspired by the music from the games as you're writing this but are you also like thinking about the gameplay? Is that like the stuff like are you reminiscing about your times with the game as you're coming up with the songs as well? Does that come into it? Being familiar with the games is like key and the other whole thing about Mario is I was like I was coming back to Mario at the time from not having played video games since I was like you know I sort of stopped playing video games when I was 11 or 12 and I was coming back to it in my early 20s and having all these like crazy I mean you guys know like the crazy nostalgic feelings that you get. And it was from that feeling that I started you know that I started writing the memories and the sort of schmaltzy you know yellow tinted world of youth. And it was that that I wanted to convey and I think same thing with video games live you know it's like and that's what I wanted to bring to other people and sort of join in the celebration of like of that childhood that we kind of all. I think it's amazing that we all sort of like we all shared this experience of Super Mario 3 like you remember like the anticipation that you had for that game like the the utter unbelievable just tearing your hair out wanting to play it. We all like the utter confusion when Super Mario Brothers 2 came out. Yeah what is this you know and we these are these are like our cultural as gamers like our real cultural history not even just as gamers I find that like Mario especially reaches everybody you know. I went to Africa and then like in one of my games you episodes I went to Africa and like the one game that I could that I could connect with people in Africa on was Mario there are people is like play the star theme from Mario and guitar and I was like. That's amazing. They start these specifically and they knew it they're like. And you go like in this is tiny village in Africa and like right there in the middle of the villages is this little shack with Mario painted on the side is clearly Mario with the hat and M and the and the overalls and you go inside and there's like 3 PS 2 set up and like 3 TVs and it's like a little arcade and they're just playing soccer games like in the middle of this village in this shack in Africa with Mario painted on the side. And that's when I was like wow what you don't know is that that's been there for like 200 years and that's where Miyamoto actually got the idea for Mario. It's actually a tribal picture. It was actually painted on cave so many people know that. So yeah, all right well why don't we I mean go around and start talking about some of our favorite memories of music and games or just some of their favorite music from games. Arthur do you want to start us off do you have anything to talk about Halo perhaps. Just because I got asked to leave from a video games live performance for indecent exposure in front of a child during the other theme. That was slightly different than what we talked about before we started recording and took it to a place that. Wow. That's that's what I'm good for. I man. I just the most formative music for me I think video game wise is definitely like playing Zelda and I think the nice thing about the Zelda music that a lot of other games didn't do is that this. The themes are very simple and they repeated but the music that you heard in Zelda was broken up so often where I mean you explored for like a minute and a half and you get to a different area and the music would change and then you'd explore for a minute and a half and the music would change. That helped ease the repetition that was sort of necessary for for those games and also a lot of games on Nintendo had interesting music that started out that way because they started on a more advanced version of the Nintendo games that were in Japan and then got sort of tweaked and tried to fit in on cartridges here because I mean there was they had the floppy system for the Nintendo in Japan right had a lot of stuff that the domestic system didn't do and so hearing stories about how they had to change the music to get it to fit onto a cartridge like I know that the Castlevania series definitely had a lot of changes coming over like. And I mean Castlevania is another game that had music that I will always remember like I have to adjust my pants when I'm listening to the mini bosses versions of all the different Castlevania songs because they kill that stuff. When you hear them play when you hear their versions of the Castlevania songs that's exactly how you heard it in your head after not playing Castlevania for you. You're like man that is fucking amazing that is exactly how I remember it and then you go back and you're like oh that's what they're trying to do. You're like oh that's an electric guitar sample on the Nintendo that's why it sounded like that. And then I feel like it's harder to find music in games now that I'm that I'm as interested in. Yeah I mean it's weird that like Patrick you brought up the fact that older games they were like they were very limited in what they could do. But for some reason when I think about music in games it's always the older games that come to mind like it is like Metroid and Mario and Zelda stuff obviously and old or final fantasy stuff. But now that they aren't limited now that they can do these big you know giant orchestral music pieces I don't remember them quite as often. It's like it's harder to get true. And I think that's a problem you know I think I do in some ways because they because then they end up sounding like like movie scores you know. The problem is that there are a lot of movie scores I listen to independent of films but there aren't a lot of modern games I listen to independent of the game. I think Bioshock was the last time I tracked one down but that was only because they released it free on the Internet. Yeah and I think I think part of that is because with the reason we think things are finally these older games than music is because of the limitations and that they had to be really good and a lot of you are repetitive and still listenable. In games these days games have so much more player choice the game the music has to be able to stand up over a longer period of time and people will notice the repetition more and not put up with it as much. So I think games these days have trouble coming up with thematic like themes that they can always come back to. Dynamic music is essentially what we're missing like games need and I think it's more technology than some single thing. Some games have pulled that off really well like I mean Halo is something that comes to mind as far as it goes. Look yeah we talk about Halo's music people really like Halo's music and that's because it's used effectively dynamically when you enter a battle you get that battle music like you get that guitar coming in. And I don't think or another one that doesn't get a lot of credit but I think that if you go back actually has really excellent music is the Half-Life series both Half-Life and Half-Life. I was just going to say like foul stuff generally. Their use of silence is so key you know it's like a really they know when to back off and just be like we're just not going to have any music in this. And just really strong isolation of sound effects like when you kill a con mind soldier and you have the flat line noise that you hear knowing that you killed them. So good. I mean I think that the Halo music works because Mario Donald is such a strong presence on that team. I mean there's there aren't any I can't think of any other American composers for music that you can that you can think of other than maybe Tommy Tallarico. But I mean other than yeah for different reasons. I mean he's reasonably well known for for game music as well as being the driving force behind video games live. But I mean Jasper Kidd does a lot of really amazing stuff in the hit man games. I like the music in the hit man games. Who does the I know I'm playing it I think the guy did oblivion. I don't remember his name but he actually does some really there's a lot of a lot of really great stuff. And I know people are big fan of oblivion's music and I can't I can't I'm blanking. But then again that's you know indicative of part of the problem is there's there's not a lot of it's a part of technology problem in that games need to find effective use of music. And now that they have much larger more interpretive open world player experiences. And then also yeah there's just I think not a lot of really really good games that know how to make use of the music and composers that know how to make use of the game. Yeah and in the music is just it's they're putting in music that it seems like they think they want us to hear. They think we want to hear what we're playing that game is opposed to music that's really indicative of the game we're playing. Two downloadable games that that have amazing music are braid. I love the music and braid but even more the music and world of goo is like stellar. Did anybody play it? Yeah the music is I mean that's that's actually the last soundtrack I downloaded because the music I don't know who did it you know. I have no clue. It's fucking great. It's like it's a and I don't know it's interesting that's a downloadable game you know like a smaller experience. Probably way more limitations. But the music is damn catchy like just a lot of it's like really epic and soaring and like just puts you in this mood when you're playing it. That's that's almost in Congress with what you're doing but at the same time there's like that underlying story and world of goo that is kind of like weird and epic that it fits. And it's just another great downloadable one for music is Castle Crashers. The music in Castle Crashers I think is fantastic but again this is very much like a it's a throwback kind of music. It's a it's make trying to bring back that retro feeling so it's very simple. Well yeah and they're coming from a background where I mean the music that you put into a flash game has to be very. Yeah. Very limited. That's true. Cave Story 2 obviously is well known for the music as well and it's and it is lives up to it. One of my favorite memories of music from game is a Final Fantasy 6 which I played as Final Fantasy 3 on the Super Nintendo. But the opera theme in that which is I've heard about I'm not a Final Fantasy guy but I've always heard people talk about it. Incredible and it comes it's sort of like you don't really know it's coming and then all of a sudden you're like in an opera and it's just I don't know it always blew me away as a kid. And it like it is just this thing where like nowadays I don't think it would affect me as much like if they did a current gen remake of Final Fantasy 3. The actual voices play like you have to do things during the opera. Yeah during the opera you have to choose the right lines to sing along and the stuff that fits and then you can kind of hear the little pixelated voices singing but it's still productive. Yeah but it still like works in a way that affects you even though it's not real voices and it's not really strongly developed music. I don't know it's fantastic. I mean people talk about the uncanny valley and visuals as far as like the closer we get to realism the more people notice the difference. It's similar for sound in that the farther away from the conventions of movie sound that games were the more they were taken on their own merits and the more they could be appreciated for what they were doing. Yeah well it's and then it's like that's a the opera scene in Final Fantasy is something that's going to stick with me musically much much longer than for example Final Fantasy 8 when they had an actual theme song that was sung in certain scenes. Like I don't remember that at all. Like disposable j-pop. Exactly. One of my memories from younger was when the occasional game there's like this brief trend of games having I think was called Red Book Audio which is where the music could also be. Command and conquer. Command and conquer. Command and conquer Red Alert. I would just listen to the music like after like Red Alert has both the original and Red Alert had phenomenal music and they had that. I remember Manic Conquer did have good music. But Red Alert had yeah that Red Book Audio where you could put it in your CD player and then the soundtrack was on. Oh really? Oh really? So did Sam and Max hit the road. That was when I used to listen to the CD all the time. I think when I was growing up the first time I really paid attention to the music in a game and this is going to make me sound like a total douche is when Trent Reznor was doing the music for Quake. Oh man. That also sounded like a total douche. That was a game. Those were games that were, I mean the reason they could do that is because you could have, the only way you'd have music is with reading it off the CD while you're playing. It was just basically playing in music. Yeah. Yeah actually this is the same thing in Half-Life. This still works in Half-Life if you play it on Steam now. If you have a CD in your computer a music CD suddenly tracks will start playing because it'll be loading up the tracks from the CD. It'll be loading up the tracks from the CD. So whatever CD you have in there. It's amazing. Yeah I think like back in the office when we were still working on one up Tina was playing through Half-Life and got all freaked out when suddenly her CD started playing and she's like this is the music in Half-Life. What? I mean. I've seen Agileira in my Half-Life. Like I thought that Trent Reznor's sensibilities were really, lent themselves really well to that game and Trent Reznor was a gamer. I mean like that worked but maybe that was sort of the start of a sort of bastardization of game music. I don't know. Because then by the end of it you have the drummer who got kicked out of Niles doing the theme song for Doom 3 and shit like that. And it's like this isn't really worked for me anymore. I remember Final Fantasy VII came around the time when I was using computers and you could find video game music. Like you could go on the internet and you could go to like a news group so you could go on IRC and you'd be able to find bots that would be able to like deliver to you like game music. And a lot of times you'd just end up finding like awful MIDI covers like 8 million MIDI covers. I remember Final Fantasy VII being when I was, I guess, conscious as thinking of myself as like someone that's really into games and not just that's something that all kids do when they were growing up. It's like at that point in my life around Final Fantasy VII I had friends that they weren't doing games anymore. They were doing sports or they were doing music or girls. Yeah, they were doing girls. Screws all that. And I wanted to do Eris. And Final Fantasy VII was probably the first time where I was really kind of like, "I really, really like this music." I was picturing Patrick by looking at his sister's doll collection or something going, "Man, that really looks like Eris. I'll be right back with this." Inappropriate comment. Don't take me back to that place. Plus I don't have a sister. I was wanting sisters. It was me. Damn it, you bred through the lines. Hey, you had to learn how to comb your pretty hair somewhere. I'm sorry, we are distracting you from your point. Final Fantasy VII. I don't really ever pretend to have a point. I was a huge fan of Desert Round VII made me conscious of Womatsu. I would go back and check. That's one of the reasons I went back and played Chrono Trigger. I really liked his stuff and then I would learn about all the squares. Womatsu was one of the first video game composers I became aware of as a composer of who this guy is. What else has he done? I want to play these things because all the stuff he contributed. That was the first time I was conscious of video. I don't know when the time that you guys became conscious of wanting to be interested in the music past the point of just enjoying it in the game. Yeah, I actually remember around the same time specifically because, like you said, it started becoming available online where I would go to Final Fantasy fan sites. There would be a link for specifically music. A week of files. Yeah, exactly. So I would go check that out. Sam and Max have a thread. I used to just listen to the CD all the time. I don't remember the music on that, but I mean, I love to hit the road. Anthony will sing it for you if you ask. There's no, I won't. Actually, if I ask, like, real nice. I'd go get the CD out of my room. No. So. Can you guys think of the nail? Like, of any... Like, I know you mentioned Brad Kaskers, like any... What's like the last big video game soundtrack that you can remember coming away of like, "Man, I really like that music." I mean, Metal Gear Solid 4, I think, had really great music, but the stuff that I like the most on it is sort of the retreads of stuff that has been in previous Metal Gear games. Good nostalgia. Yeah, it's not exactly new ground, I guess. I love the remix and the intros too, like the plays during the beginning, like the remix of the original Metal Gear theme. I really loved the music in Mayor's Edge. I really loved the score in Dead Space. It was excellent. I don't know, it was a big fan of Silent Hill music. I don't know. I mean, it's not like the type of shit that you listen to for fun, but it's still really... It's a game. It's super good. Both Silent Hill and Dead Space, I think those are cases where like, the music is really good in those games. It's just not, it's not the type of music that you would listen to outside of the game, but while you're playing it. Well, I mean, that's not a soundtrack. I do know people, like, that listen to it outside the game in like, part three, I think, came with the soundtrack. But it's just like, you put that on and then you just like... It's disturbing. I'm like... Think about killing yourself. I'm not enjoying myself. It's good all your music on shuffle when it comes on at three in the morning and you wake up and wonder where the fuck you are. Man, I remember, I remember really liking the music in the original Silent Hill a lot. It is, it is very good. It's the same guy that does all of it, and I can't think of his name right now. If you're a butcher's last name, Yamoka, or... He was the, like, design consultant for the US team that did the... Yeah, he's done the music for all of them. He did the music on TV as well, I believe. He did? He did? He did a lot of contributions to it. Like, he's considered the Silent Hill scour now. Yep. Patrick, you're out of your contract now, but I know you wanted to talk about Rock Man a little, right? Yeah, well, I mean, like, you're not contractually required. Yeah, as you know, I haven't mentioned it every hour. So, now they don't work for MTV. But, like, Rock Man, like, sort of... When Harmonic's, like, Embrace Rock Man is calling, like, a platform. Like, I ran with that concept, and, like, I bought it on 360. I've never wanted to buy. I love the fact that I'm making my own little karaoke machine, like, with Rock Man. And, like, it'll upset me greatly if the Beatles game comes out, and I cannot export those songs onto Rock Man. Although, that's kind of... A lot of if I can play this separate experience, 'cause... I'm fully confident that Harmonic's is gonna make, like, this... Super kick-ass Beatles game, 'cause there's a lot of potential for that. But, at the end of the day, I can't bring that back into Rock Man when I'm tired of just playing all Beatles songs for two hours. Like, I hope they can... are able to continue with that, because... Rock Man has, like, sort of changed the way... Like, that is, like, the future of music games for me. Like, I don't need it to change that much, 'cause if they just... They could just keep... Yeah. ...bringing out new music for that, and, like, I would be happy for years. Yeah. They've perfected that style, and they can go do deviations. They can have new instruments. But, they've got that four instrument core that just works so well, and, like, they... I don't... That's one of those things where, like, I just don't want them to touch it. I hope there's just a team that just makes music forever, like, expanding that. It's gonna be a Beatles Rock Man version. Is that, in addition to the Beatles game? No, it's just the Beatles game. It's the same thing. It's, like, they're not doing a Rock Man 3 this fall. They're doing... A... Yeah, Rock Man Beatles, or whatever. They're going to end up calling it. It's supposed to be not, like, take... The way it's been described is looking at what they've done with guitar or Metallica, or guitar erosmith. Like, that's just, like, essentially baby steps, what they want to do a big... They want to do, like, an experience, not just a Metallica career, right? Like, whether they deliver on that with the Beatles game, but that's... The way it's always been... But I do agree that, like, yeah... I hope that they pull off that experience, but I also hope that you can then take that music and bring it back. Right, then, I know you're going to get tired of it. What do they mean by they want to make it an experience? Like, I want to know what is my Beatles experience, like... I don't know, I mean... I'm thinking, you know, like, hard days night, like, the video game. It's, like, progressing through their careers and their development as artists, hopefully, without all the arguments and fighting and drugs. No, I want all of that. Hopefully, yeah, that's what you do with the drugs. Yeah, that's what I'm wondering, yeah, but it's going to be like... I want you to, like, play which Beatles you want to be at the... Like, you pick which Beatles you want to be at the beginning, and then... I mean, you essentially will be, won't you? I guess with, like, the instruments, but I don't know. Yeah. And then, but then you actually have to, like, choose dialogue options for him and build up his stats. I want to be able to replace one of the Beatles with my virtual self. As if I was just born then to that other person who didn't exist. The drummer sucks. Who cares about it? I would love to see you with a Beatles haircut. Well, I can't have a Beatles haircut unless I got my shit straightened. Let's do it. Let's do it. It's very difficult, but it is possible. We have money. Donation money. We can... I can't exactly... Can we officially ask permission to have Anthony go get his hair professionally straightened? We'll do a vote. We'll put a fucking poll up on the site. Yeah. Is it worth $100 of donation money to see Anthony with that... I would rather just get my hair cut, like, normal. I haven't gotten a haircut since I got laid off, since it's way before I just do it. I've come out of this, I hear own hair. That's what I just... It's what I'm thinking I'm going to do, but... It's easy with curly hair, because you can't tell the difference. You can just hold it out and just do it. He trims a little, and then he has me clean it up. It's really pathetic. Yeah. God, that is funny. This is adorable. A horrible scene in the bathroom. Me down on my knees, him standing behind me, cutting the back of my head. Trying to get rid of the fucking mullet I've constructed. Facing away. Facing away. Facing away. I'm curious what you guys think of other games in which music is sort of an integral part. Jonathan Max game, or Jonathan Blow. What was that guy's name? The kid who made the... It was like a shooter, but there was all... Everyday shooter? Everyday shooter. Like that, or Rez or something. Or also there's stuff like audio surf, which is very, very music-based, but you're picking the music yourself. Oh, that's online, right? It's on Steam. And it's really, really excellent for anybody who hasn't played it before. I highly recommend checking that out. I was trying to think there's been other games recently that have been doing things with music, too. I want to say other PSN games besides... Yeah, there's... It seems like there's a little... There's like a little other sub-genre. Oh, flowers, well. Right, flowers. You mess with the music as in it as well. The game that Nick had mentioned a couple of episodes ago grew. The community game. That's where the Geometry Wars meets... I don't know. We're like mid-playing the music. If you haven't played it yet, at least down in the demo, like when you purchase the game, you get the remixed version of the music. But the entire game is completely free in the trial, and it's essentially Geometry Wars, but the music is manipulated as you're shooting the enemies, so you're composing it as you're shooting. And the guy... I was talking to some of the X and A folks for how he would have managed to make that game. He hacked the crap out of this free software that put Microsoft out to create this. It's so good, it only costs $2. If you still have not played Groove yet, if you at least play the demo, you will be sold on your $2, even if you're poor. Yeah, I want to check that out. I really want to make a game... My whole thing is writing songs. I really want to make a game in which the songs are somehow drive the gameplay. I mean, I don't know, I'm not a game designer, but I was suggesting earlier today to a friend that there should be a musical RPG, but just an RPG where it is a musical. Right. Something like that would be amazing. Between battles or during battles, even. Let's sing during battles. It turns out I want to not be doing a rock music. It turns out I want to be sort of like dangled in front of that, but... Like what do you mean? Like the musical parts you do are your attacks? No, I mean, I just want you to be singing the whole time. I want you to be singing during battles, I want you to be singing when you're in towns and you're talking to the townsfolk. I want you to be singing. It can involve a USB microphone. I want 40 hours of singing. You have to hit certain notes in the right pitch and stuff to... No, that's not special. That actually sounds really awful now. Sounds really difficult anyway. I'm hoping, remember, there was a PS2 game called Ephemeral Fantasia. I believe there's what it is called. I only recall this. Sounds like a porno game. It sounds like a code-speak for a wet dream, is what it sounds like. Last night I had an... It turned before, but it does now. And you could... I don't ever have ephemeral Fantasia's. I thought I'd answer it. Oh, my gosh. I mean, now that I'm unemployed in home all the time, that was the only idea. What else are you supposed to do every 15 minutes? I'd like to know where the ephemeral part comes in. [laughter] What are the cats doing? [laughter] No, if I'm a Fantasia... There's no place we involved in this conversation. It was made by Konami, and it was an RPG. And not a particularly good one, but there were music parts to the game. I forget how the mechanic worked in. It wasn't during battle, but there were parts where you could plug in your guitar freak's guitar. And it would bring up a traditional interface, and this is separate from the normal game, and the rest of the game would be playing regular RPG with a PlayStation controller. But then it would be optional, like plug in your guitar freak's controller, and you would get bonus points or something. I've been secretly hoping that Brutal Legend does something along those lines. I would love if part of the battle mechanics involved you strapping on a rock band guitar. That would definitely make me a femoral Fantasia in my pants. [laughter] That would be fast. It just came with a new internet meme right there. [laughter] That's some of the T-shirts. That's two T-shirts. [laughter] Femoral Fantasia in my pants. I will be debuting the chimp attack in a femoral Fantasia T-shirts next week. [laughter] I can't wait. Did you listen to our last podcast? Do you even know what chimp attack is? No. We don't need to go in it again. Just listen to the last podcast. You should listen to the last podcast. You should listen to the last podcast. You shouldn't give up on the idea of this chimp ripping off this lady's jaw. [laughter] No, it really happened. It really happened. Oh, and Robert Ashley. [laughter] It's kind of funny, though. Robert Ashley. I'm going to take back my laugh. Robert Ashley listened to the 911 call of the lady that was watching it all happen. Oh, my God. It's like he's like, "It's eating her face. It's eating her face." It's her jaw. And that somehow segued into his love for God of War. Yeah. And how... Robert Ashley shared a lot of really... There's no way to explain the last episode. You just got to listen to it. All right, I will. Then Robert Ashley left my house and told me he was sober. And then immediately got home and Twittered that he wasn't. [laughter] Oh, he didn't mind the way he was. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Do we want to... Well, should we talk about some music we've just been listening to? Also, other music. Jade said the music from "Ein Hander" is supposed to be ridiculously good. I never played that game. Ooh, yeah. That is good. I remember that. I mainly sound like an Uncharted fan. Uncharted had excellent music, which was composed by the same person that did the music for "Firefly." So... The bias confirmed. I'm just saying, listen to the music for Uncharted. It is phenomenal. Just pop it in and don't press start and just let it go. I'm going to blow your mind. That is usually how I play my games, so... You don't need... [laughter] I turn them on. I turn them on, and then I'm like, "I'm just waiting for the sequel. I'm going to pull a classic." [laughter] Oh. All right, man. At least the music in Uncharted is good. I just like there are so many other games recently where the music seems okay at first, and then it just gets wearing. If you will talk about, for example, the gears of war music and how it's good, but if you want to try something interesting, get ahold of the Dark Knight soundtrack and put it on in the background while you're playing Gears of War, all of a sudden it's so much more fun. It's so much more epic with the Dark Knight music on in the background. Interesting. And maybe that's just it, just that all this music is written by people. If you stream that while you're playing on your Xbox through the audio, does that replace the music in the game, or does it just play over? Where the hell have you been? I never did. That's how I use custom soundtracks. I basically just listen to usually like hardcore hip-hop. Maybe some damage. It feels good to be a gangster. Yeah, that's what I listen to when I'm playing Gears of War. Do you believe me at all? No, I totally believe you. I'm getting jiggy. I'm so like you. I did used to play a lot of Will Smith actually. I want to say that listeners don't know, but Anthony used Will Smith to harass me when I first came to one of them. If you had warned me about this a little bit, he was like, "Anthony's going to ask you about Will Smith a lot. Don't disappoint him." It was Will Smith Friday's. After 5 p.m. I would just, I'd get everyone to start getting jiggy with it, because it was blast. I remember like about 30 minutes after we'd gotten the news that we'd been laid off and we were all back at our desk packing. I remember I played, I forgot what it was, but it was definitely some of Smith. It might have been just the two of us. Yeah, it was just the two of us. But I was blasting at that point because I was like, "It wouldn't have been laid off. It doesn't matter." "It kicked me out of the building now." Also, did you say after 5 on Fridays? We were there that late on Fridays? Yeah. This is why I got laid off. Alright, I'm filled up after lunch. Actually, the most recent song that I thought was really cool was, was checking out NoBNoBBoy. And the game itself doesn't have any particular memory of music, but if you enable the, you guys remember the TGS trailer? Like, the really weird, like it didn't tell you anything about the game. You can enable that game in NoBNoBBoy with some button press, and it has this really, really catchy Katamari-esque, "NoBNoBBoy" song. It's like, "NoBNoBBoy, NoBNoBBoy." Like, it's really, really catchy. I really wish for you to come up for the hand movements you're doing right now. Me, me, me. We'll record an animated GIF and put it in the show notes, but that's the last song that I've really, like, song, song, like, in a game that's really stuck out to me. Because now that you're home, like, before you were working at home and now you're just home, I just picture you, like, slowly degrading to where you just wake up in your underwear and socks, and then you just sit there and dance in your room by yourself to know me to be boy. "NoBNoBoy, NoBNoBoy." I'll make sure to update everyone on my degradation promises. We take a break. Alright, yeah, that was a fun discussion. We'll be back with some letters. [Music] And then I'll just video games that works with our heart and I want the whole wide world to know that everything he's done has come from his heart and that's what makes him different. Step back or you might miss it Taking the whole picture, he's me, I'm old too. Well, I can still remember exactly how it felt but I was five years old and it all made sense all I took was someone giving me a chance and I knew because he showed me ways of thinking for myself and I said, "Oh, thank you." He'd make you see in ways that you don't normally see and you'd always think that the idea was coming from you and so they're not just video games that works with our heart and I'll shout it until the whole wide world knows that the things that he keeps close at him are hard and so it's no wonder that he paints with more color no, there is no other like me among so he showed us ways of thinking we don't normally think with a little man in a space through all our hero name length he'd give you just a little, never you too much and when you found a secret man you felt that rush [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] All right, we're back. We're going to finish things off with some letters beginning with this one from Darren N. He says, "First up, I want to thank you all for the amazing work you've been doing on Eat Sleep Game and with the podcast. It brightens my long commutes to work on the tube." I don't know what the tube is. He's from London. That doesn't make any sense to me. Secondly, I wanted to submit a question for discussion. He says, "How do you see game journalism evolving in the future? Do you think a game website or magazine can be successful without any element of review or previews, but not by specializing in one topic or genre?" I think with both of those, it's kind of tough. I don't know what that magazine would contain, I guess. We're strictly talking about magazines? Well, he says, "Yeah, he says website of our magazine, I guess so." Yeah, talking from a website at MTV Multiplayer, we were, and they still are, a blog that heavily specialized in original content. The idea was not to try and do everything, try and get up every news piece, every game announcement. Because those sites exist already. Well, yeah, those exist, so what doesn't exist is people focusing on original content. Original content is usually something that's supplementary to the breadth of regurgitated content, the echo chamber, and that's usually not a whole lot of original content. The idea behind the stuff that we're doing at MTV was, "Well, you make this original content and people will come to your blog strictly for the original content." One of the problems we constantly ran into was the way the sites that already exist work, like the Kotaku's "Enjoy Six of the World" would link to your stuff. MTV Multiplayer is probably the best linked blog on the internet, but the least read, just because, I mean, I'll be strictly, and when I read Kotaku, a lot of times, I don't click the link. Yeah, you get the story. Our culture nowadays, in everything, gaming and all that social media is you want the summary, if you're interested enough, you'll click the link, but nine times out of ten, you get your summation. So that was, like, for us, it is difficult to find a way to focus on -- our focus was not even on one topic or one area. It was just original content of all the other stuff people were talking about, and we had such a difficult time getting people to -- we had a very hardcore following, but getting the larger community to look at us in any sort of concentrated way was very difficult. So it is tough to do that. I don't have a good answer for that unless you want to be a site that does everything. Yeah. I mean, I think it's -- without having either the reviews or previews or a very specialized topic, I think that makes it really hard. So, like, obviously, you can be like, let's say, "Wow Insider." They're a really great World of Warcraft focus blog, and obviously they don't need to do reviews or previews. But I don't know, like, a general video game website not doing them as -- Is the escapists still around? The escapists magazine? Yeah, but they're actually -- they're doing reviews and previews now. They become more generalized. Yes. As they still do, I mean, back, you know, a couple of years ago, I mean, I would read them all the time. Yeah. They still do the new issue every week, which has, you know, articles on certain topics, and those are still really excellent, but then they also do on top of that normal, like, the kind of reviews you find everywhere else. Like, what you're saying they gave in, and they probably had to say it. I mean, I think part of it, just is that you can do the sites, like, this guy's talking about, like, something that doesn't do reviews and everything, as long as you go into it with the understanding that you're not going to pay a full-time staff. Yeah. Like, if you're trying -- It's not going to become Kotaku. It's not going to become kotaku. You're not going to become one-time staff. I mean, they just have a bunch of people that they pay per post and stuff. I mean, yeah, you're not going to be a one-up or a game spot or an IGN without having covering everything. Like, it's just not going to happen. And I don't think you should. I mean, covering one specific topic, I think, is like, in our culture, like, if you don't go to Kotaku for any aggregate site, for that matter, for really, really detailed information, you go to get -- Shit, I was on vacation for the last week. Like, what did I miss? Like, you don't go and check 800 sites. You check your favorite aggregator site, whatever writers you connect with. You get caught up, but, say, you want to know, like, you know, was it massively? The MMO site. Like, MMOs are a good example of this, of people that have found a way to be very successful with very specific topics, because there's so much interest in that specific topic. So, you'll see successful -- I'm not sure how many other games can support individual websites under the Warcraft. Yeah. But that's just so big. But I think genres, or at least maybe MMOs, like, there are ways to be successful with a specific topic. You just need to be smart about how you do it. Or if you look at, like, what OneUp is doing now with column blogs. And I have no clue how successful these are, but, you know, they have these things called column blogs now that include, like, they have, like, a retro column blog and an RPG column blog. There's an iPhone one. There's an iPhone one. And that, like, that seems like a really cool idea where, at least there's opportunity for that. And, like, you're giving people a place to go for specific content. Like, if I, you know, like, I said, I'm really big into iPhone games. Like, I'll check Tilt a lot as opposed to going to the front page of OneUp and seeing where the iPhone coverage comes every day. Yeah, I mean, I'm still curious, though, about, like, do you think, like, those aggregator sites? Because all those aggregator sites now are all starting to try and push out, like, like, reviews and stuff now as well. And they actually do previews, even though they want to say a call at that. And they'll also push out features. Like, I'm wondering, like, how much that's actually going to cut into sites, like, OneUp or whatever. I mean, 'cause those aggregator sites have always gotten more hits than sites. Oh, absolutely. And anyways, it makes total sense for those sites to start doing their own, whether they call them strictly reviews, previews or, or features. Like, they, they have the numbers already. So it makes absolute sense for them to start, because it really aggregators, like, like, that, in a sense, are really just, they're, they're really, uh, heavily moderated message boards. Like, they're, they're really good moderators. They're talented writers who are essentially 90% of the time creating topic threads for people to talk about in the comments section. And that's, I mean, like, and that's what people want. And, like, as opposed to, like, you know, you were talking about the, the escape is giving in. I don't think it's so much a, a matter of the escape is giving in as much as that's the reality. Like, this is how people want to consume something. Instead of, I think a lot of times in the, in the enthusiast press, they're sort of, there, there is this feeling of contempt towards the blogs and their, their increased, uh, domination over, like, the gaming conversation. And I think the enthusiast press would be better. And at this point, it's not even just the, to the press is separate. Like, I think blogs are very much the enthusiast press. I mean, I think they should embrace why people like these sites and incorporate, because there still is so much more and a lot more. I think for a lot of people, it's moved, moved beyond that. Like, a lot of people in the industry, it's moved beyond contempt for them and towards, like, understanding like, okay, this is how things are now. It's confusion. But can we figure out how to do this, but still have a content that has depth and that's well written, because a lot of, you know, like, not to not co-talk or a joystick or anything like that, they have some really great writers. But a lot of times you'll look at these blogs and see stories that aren't that well written, or that, you know, they, they do have a lot of problems sometimes with a fact. I think the industry is just like that. It's just like that. I think that for a long time, it was the people who were willing to write and could string a sentence together. And now that there are so many people who can do that, that good writing is what we need. It'll naturally come, though. Like, that's just, I mean, for every website that closes, you know, eight more open up, whether they're actually properly funded or not. And that, it's just like, blogs are, like, at least the way blogs have, and these blog aggregators have created how people like to consume. They're media and information. That's just, it's a matter for the people still left in enthusiast press to find a way to use that to their advantage. Because that's clearly how people want to get their information. And if they want to continue to stay relevant and still have enough, like, there's every bit of opportunity to do what makes those sites successful and take it a step further with quality and investigative reporting. And it's just a matter of finding a way to marry the two. But that's, that's extremely difficult. Yeah. All right. Moving on to more extremely difficult questions. Matthew E. writes, I just wanted to say that episode eight of Rebel FM was probably the best episode so far. The ghost of GFW radio had to be in the room possessing everyone and making it feel more genuine and laid back. I would love to see more episodes like this just having fun and talking about video games. Before I get on to this question, I just, I wanted to bring that up because I wanted to thank everybody for the nice feedback, especially the people who compared to GFW radio. That was, that was very nice. GFW radio is, you know, without a doubt, in my opinion, the greatest video game podcast ever. Yeah, I just don't think it'll be like that every time. No, no. And certainly like, I'm sure we'll have Robert back on and I'm sure we will have more episodes that are, you know, crazy and totally off topic like that. I don't think we want to do that every single week. So, you know, some weeks we'll have more straightforward discussion like we did this week, but we'll definitely be doing that again. I'm certain. And the only problem, I mean, people have made mention like complaining that I was, I apologize in a couple spots. It was joking. It was joking. I mean, the only, the only thing about last week that kind of made me sad is that there were a lot of really great reader and listener submissions that we didn't get a chance to go over because we were all too busy fucking off and having fun. And that's sort of the point of doing the podcast. But I don't want. But also like we, we did have some really awesome readers. And I think that at some point we're going to have to go back to some of that and cover it a little bit. But I, I. Fuck him. Those are the listeners. Thank you. Anthony. Laura. No, but I mean. Subscribe. Yes. We don't, we don't want people to think that we're just blowing shit off when they make a contribution. Like we, we actually really like it. And I, I mentioned this, I've mentioned this before, but I will mention it again. When we have those, uh, those posts on our site where we're asking people to contribute, I highly recommend listeners go back and read through some of those comments, because just the discussions people have in the comments that our listeners are making are extremely intelligent, well written, really interesting to read above and beyond what I would expect from random video game podcasts. I love you guys. The listeners, that is not, not, not anyone in this room. Okay. So Matthew, he goes on. I also wanted to ask if you or the rest of the Eat Sleep game staff have any tips for being a freelance game journalist. I've always wanted to write about games, but never really had the savvy to know how to get into freelance writing. I have my own blog. And his blog is at www.thelocalrk.com, uh, which he, I used to refine my writing. If you guys have any tips on getting into freelance writing, it would be cool to hear from people who have done it and do it well. Yeah. I mean, uh, mostly I just prefer that you didn't because I would like to take the money out of his pocket. No. The honest answer is really, um, I would only say don't or just set your ambitions a little lower because there's, there's so much opportunity, lots of really interesting writing, but don't approach it as how do I get into getting paid right now? Yeah. Because there's just not a lot to go around. Yeah. The problem is flooded right now with a lot of really talented people. The problem is, yeah, there's a, like, pretty much everybody is cutting their freelance budgets, but at the same time there's, you know, people getting laid off like us, like all of us here. So there's a lot, there are a lot of writers out there. Um, you know, I wouldn't say don't, but I mean, having your own blog is a great place to start. And if you can, you know, use that to start talking to people who have other websites where they talk about games and whether or not it's paid, you can start out and volunteer, but like, you know, that's what I started out doing. That's what I started out doing too. I started for some, some smaller RPG fan sites and then I wrote for evil avatar and then kind of went from there. So it's just a matter of really doing a lot of work and keep it, keep writing. Be a whore. Like you really just write whoever, like sell your body for money. Yes. Yes. And what you're writing. So you're writing. Well, if you can sell your body, that helps ends make, that helps ends meet like really easily. Like after this podcast, I fully intend upon walking down to the church's chicken and offering, you know. It's hard to compete with the crackheads. It's an easy transaction. Whatever it takes. My hair is long enough. Everything accepts PayPal. Yeah. So. It's a very effeminate mustache you have right now. Yeah. Um, I think the one thing that I noticed about a lot of video game, a lot of the submissions that we got, um, one thing I think people should be really interested in is finding someone that can, can really go over their stuff and give good editing tips and give a lot of feedback in that regard because I think that editing is sort of an under appreciated aspect. Yeah. Of a lot of good sites. Yeah. And there's something that I didn't learn until I had been writing for a long time. Um, until a while after I started getting paid to freelance actually, but at some point I realized like, after you write your stuff, take a break. Don't, don't put it online yet, but take a break, you know, chill out for a while and then go back and reread it and, and really like cut out the parts that aren't necessary and, you know, actually find that you print it. Like actually reading something you've written in front of you on a piece of paper gives you like, and get like a pen out. Yeah. It gives you a vastly different perspective than just sitting and looking at a computer monitor. Like I, I would also reading out loud sometimes helps as well because you will realize like, oh, this sentence sounds really goofy. That too. Just basically like try to imagine the harshest critic you could and be that person when you're reading your stuff. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, at the same, at the same time, like, you know, if you like writing about games, just don't, don't give up writing about games. Just keep writing, but you know, don't have high hopes of getting paid for it right now because it is, it is very, very difficult. Yeah, not yet. But if you're, if you're good and you keep putting in the work, eventually you're going to get noticed and yeah, just keep writing. Yeah, just keep writing. Find a really good nine to five job and do it on the side. I know that's what I would say. Yeah. We're sure to move on. Or just keep going to college. Like just, just keep going. Yeah. That masters. Keep taking out. Never looked so good. Keep taking out loans. Eventually, eventually maybe you'll find something. And then Chris M sent in a bunch of questions sort of targeted at specific individuals. Something with Arthur, he says, "You caught my attention when I heard you mentioned the new walls of Jericho album as I am an avid hardcore fan. Being over here, I don't always keep up with what's current on the hardcore scenes so much." Oh, I knew you were going to pick this letter. This guy's in Japan. Wanted to hear your recommendations for some recent hardcore you like hook a brother up pretty police. Man, I don't. I just like with preferences that if you're hardcore, like you wear a bandana out of your back pocket and fucking dude fucking roundhouse kicks into people's chests when you go to concerts, I don't like you. I don't think there are any of those kids around anymore. I don't know. They exist. Oh. They did 30% of central Illinois. Oh. Which is where I'm from. Man, I don't listen to a ton of hardcore, like a lot of the stuff I listen to is like the crossover stuff, like even walls of Jericho doesn't really feel like hardcore to me so much as they're bridging on to the whole metal core/new wave of American heavy metal stuff. Oh, Sleeper. Their album is pretty good. The new August Burns Red is pretty good. If you like hardcore and some metal, the new Asaiway Dying is really good. A band not a lot of people heard of it's really good as planes mistaken for stars. Oh, yeah. I feel like if we could just make up some shit while we're in here. Yeah, I know, right? I mean, we're all talented. We band don't shit your pants. I'm actually pretty sure. That actually sounds like a hardcore band, actually. I would listen to them. If you haven't heard older stuff like Snapcase is a pretty influential, hardcore band refused ridges the hardcore punch. No, Norma Jean for her Christian people out there. Did Norma Jean break up? I don't know. They did. Whatever. They got some okay songs. Wolfbiker, who I put in the last podcast, I like Wolfbiker, or not Wolfbiker, but Evergreen Terrace in the album is Wolfbiker. All right. I'm cutting out the lot. Anthony, that's what you get. He says, one, sorry if this has already been asked, but I'm curious about the origin of your nickname, Chuff. I know you've explained this before, but go on. I see. It's working. Word in the book of dwarf language from Warhammer. So apparently in the UK, it actually means like vagina or something like that. Does that mean fart or something like that? Well, it can mean that. It can mean like masturbating, but I assert it means vagina. It can mean like a bunch of dirty shit, which makes sense why it ended up in a book written by a bunch of UK people as a dwarf word. But in the dwarf language it means piece of cheese, the dwarf miner keeps under the hat in case of emergencies. And so years ago when I was playing, shut the fuck up, he was drinking a Patrick for that time. Years ago, when Patrick was looking at Anthony, like, losing years ago, years ago when I played Everquest, I had to think of a name for my dwarf and there was no name generator and Everquest, if I don't, if I remember it, maybe there was and no maps, no name generators. And I just, you know, opened up my dwarf book and looked for something because I remember, I think it gave you a tip when you were in Everquest and it was like, "Tips for naming. Your name should be very short and easy to remember so people can always remember your name." And I was like, "Alright, this is four letters long. That's all I wanted. Chuff. There you go." That's what's the symbolic meaning of the piece of cheese? How is that important in your life? I don't know, man. That's what he cares about. Are you kind of like a piece of cheese that we can keep under our house? He actually somewhat bothers me when people outside of Sean Eilat call me that, like, in real life, like in person. Like even the other day... Is that why, like, every time I greet you, you look like you're about to... The other day. About to punch me. For instance, the other day, like, Jade, who's like a super good friend of mine, she gave me a CD back and on top of it, she'd stuck a post-it note that says, "Remember this for Chuff." And I was like, "What?" Like, "You've never once called me that." Like, like, "Why?" I don't know, I just don't get it when people say that. But if you want a shortened version of his name, just call him Aunt. So yeah, I mean, you know, Sean Eilat's like the one person that can call me. Well, I mean, you let Sean Eilat call you whatever he wants to do because that's just the relationship you guys have. The only thing Sean Eilat, the only thing he won't, Sean Eilat will let him call him is the one thing he'd really want to hear. Oh, honey. Sweetie. Sugar. That is a sad story. Okay, he has another question for you. He says, "I'm also a huge horror/survival horror fan and was curious if you're a horror movie fan, if so, what are some of your favorites?" And then actually he says for mine, "Sorry, Phil. I don't have any Phil-specific questions at this time." "Are you a horror/movie game fan?" And he was still good enough to pick your question. You fucking be grateful. Oh, wait. So he asked me the horror question? He asked both of us that because he didn't have one. Does he want to know games or movies? Oh, movies. Movies. I love horror movies. Yeah, I love Patrick getting them this more because I watch him because people I know are watching him and I enjoy them, but I don't go out of my way to watch one of these. See, one of the more, yeah, the horror is like my favorite. You saw the Friday the 13th remake, right? Yeah, I thought it was. I don't know how it was. Friday the 13th was, I thought it was really good. It's a compilation of the first three Friday the 13th films. And it's basically the motto of the film is don't deal Jason's weed and are there boobs and death? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. If you see that movie, you will find yourself fitting stupendous into your vocabulary wherever you can. Yeah. Did you have an ephemeral fan-tasia? [LAUGHTER] Not a teenager in that film we're trying to. Yeah, trying to talk to the fan-tasia. One that I always try to recommend to people is there was a remake that came out. Not too long ago called Quarantine. I was starring the sister from Dexter, but it's based on a Spanish horror film called Rec, you know, for record. And it's the remake is not bad. It's basically a shot for shot remake of the Spanish film that came out two years ago, but I highly recommend just ignoring the quarantine and just seeking out the Spanish version of Rec. It's probably one of the scariest films. It's hard to scare me because I watched so many horror films, but Rec like left me up for nights like with the last couple of minutes. Quarantine does work as a really good introduction movie to left for dead though. That's true. That's what it felt like. Yeah, yeah. It definitely has that feeling of just like swarms of swarms of zombies coming at you. Rec it is. Oh, it's too late now, but then my bloody Valentine in 3D was really, really good. Really? Oh my God. It's a fine good. I want to know what you think of as good in a horror movie because I'm curious because I saw a Friday 13th-- That was a podcast. It was not what I would label the Friday 13th remake. Oh, I would. For the Friday the 13th film, that wasn't good. Like, oh, I'm sorry. Are you a big fan of Friday the 3rd and 8th? Jason goes to Manhattan. No, I really like Jason's ex. It's really good. Jason goes to Manhattan as a phenomenal fan. Jason goes to Manhattan, introduces Jason as the ability to go stealth. He has a stealthy mechanic. If you want to call it, dad, he drives a boat. He tracks down a specific group of people as opposed to just slaughtering them. They really do a lot of character development in 8th. It's highly underrated versus the other Friday the 3rd theme films, but I will agree with you. Jason ex was the perfect fucking Friday the 13th movie. Jason ex is really good when he goes to space. Yeah, I'm a big fan. But have you seen Jason ex? No. It is a throwaway. It is a throwaway. This is the point where Anthony can lose respect for you guys. Oh. Hey, I own an-- the difference is that when I was sitting there by myself reading my dwarf, but I was having to sit there and touch myself. Maybe Patrick was getting a hand job in the team. You know what I mean? From the other Friday the 13th nerd sitting next to him. Exactly. Yeah, I paid $100 for a puppet master box set, of which I only liked two of the movies. I remember when we were in the office. You had to come with that. You had that. You had that. You had that. You had that really expensive pinhead. Oh, yeah. One that makes noise. And when people would pass in front of it. Yeah. Hellraiser is one of my other movies, just bar none of all time. But yeah, Pinhead, the horror character that I bought this on eBay, like it was like $25. It was like a deal on this, like it's almost $60, really expensive pinhead dial. And he had motion censoring that when you would go buy him you would make these noises. But unfortunately it's like super sensitive. So like I would kick my knee against my desk and he would just not only that, but it was like samples from the movie. So there's like this part was like you've solved the box, blah, blah, blah, but in the background there's like screaming by like me. As as this character going, you solve the box. Now you must die. But it really doesn't sound like she's having a good time in the background, but like there's no context for it. It's mild discomfort. What's it's? I don't know. I like it. I don't know if that says about me, but I enjoy it. I remember when we saw a Rambo last year and you're drunk and excitement over midnight meat train. Oh, yeah. Well, that's not a crime. Did you do it a crime marker? Yeah. It's okay. It's I like the, who's the director's name? Metacoram? I don't know. I just remember that Vinny Jones is, a minute, me train is, is we're seeking out. It's not, it's not the best. It's a much better book and the ending doesn't make any sense in the movie because it's not explained at all in the movie. But perhaps that is enough explanation of it. I wanted to also mention some buddies of mine do a horror movie podcast called Invasion of the Podcasters, which you can find at InvasionOfThePodcasters.com, where you... I will have to check this out. Each episode they watch a horror movie that range from like actually good ones to just crappy ones that they wanted to talk about and then have a discussion on it, usually really super long discussion. I don't think they've updated in a while, but they've been doing it for a long time. I'm sure they'll be back and they're fantastic. All right. So I think this is our last letter from Tim L, who's actually a buddy of ours from Crystal Dynamics. He says, "Holy crap, you guys, episode eight is freaking classic and I'm only to the first break." It isn't just, it isn't just that Robert is there. Boy, I missed him, but I think he does bring out the best in everyone, or is it that Nick is gone. Don't tell him I said that. Nick, if you're listening, don't listen to that part. And then he answered his question, yes. He says, "I mean, you have it all, cats, chimps, Civ4, Dawn of War II, debate about games is toys and much more. And I agree, all of this episode, we maybe had a little bit too much cats, maybe a lot of cats." Then he goes into his question, he says, "I'll use this as an opportunity to ask Anthony about Dawn of War II. I've been so excited to play that thing and I'm happy to hear it, hear it as good so far. I tried to play company of heroes and even asked for some advice from Sean, but couldn't get over World War II. I'm so done with World War II, it isn't funny. I really wanted something new in RTS's and it sounded like that was it, but maybe now with Warhammer setting, I can finally see the relic gold. I actually purchased all the first Dawn of War games but haven't finished them and I'm a completist so I want to finish them, but do I need to in order to enjoy Dawn of War II." What does this guy do at Crystal? I'm not sure what his title is, but he's pretty... He's for designs games, he should get over his World War II fear and play the company of heroes games so that he can make something good in the future and then as far as like does he need to play those first games, he doesn't at all. Dawn of War II is completely disconnected. It touches upon the storyline of the old one, but it's not important whatsoever. If he really wants to find out about that question about the experience from items and multiplayer, I'm not sure, but he could find out a lot from one of his co-workers named Ian Johnson, who currently has like nothing but maxed out characters in that game. Go find Ian in the QA department of where you work and go talk to him about Dawn of War. That's my advice to you. Now Tim's a super cool guy. He will probably be on the show at some point so... Cool. Alright. I think that's going to wrap it up this week. I just wanted to mention that guy that emailed us and said that they got mad at us because he said we weren't being respectful to Christian gamers. He also equated religious persecution with the persecution of gays in our culture. Yeah, because he was saying that we afford gay people in a respect, not say words like fag and stuff. We should afford Christian people the same respect and not kind of bash on religion, which I cannot abide by, but I mean it's not a problem. That comparison is just... That's a really... That's a really flawed... Man, you were talking about... Well, but I think he was specifically referring to Arthur when you had said in one of the podcasts we were talking about. Actually, I believe first he mentioned the Christ Mount. Oh, wow. That was Nick. That was Nick. Nick is godless heathen. Nick is past... Nick is past... Who looks like the Savior. I remember doing enough. Yes. Well, the pictures... Okay, the cracker saved me. The point I wanted to make to him is that Arthur said that there was no place for God on this podcast, but I wanted to say that there is a place for God on this podcast because as he knows, as a Bible-toten Christian, God is everywhere. So God is everywhere, even in the podcast right now, but you know... Also Arthur, you were just quoting the Simpsons. Yeah, it was just a Simpsons reference. Jesus Christ. But plus people just seem to get over it. I mean, a lot of us don't really. We're not religious and we're not trying to purposefully disrespect your religion, but I don't know, you know, respect my beliefs, to not respect yours. I just want to point out that I love everybody. I love everybody, too. I'm just kidding. I'm just trying to make eye of it. I'm just claiming I'm a cat. Let's tell everyone where they can find us on the Internet. All right, wait. Please check out eat-sleep-game.com for the latest episodes of Rebel FM. Also check out our new post on Game Club, which I mentioned earlier for that background created by our listener, Ronin478, and yeah, let's find out where listeners can find us this week. Patrick? I'm on Twitter, Twitter.com/exxy, and then I started up a small personal blog, clupic.wordpress.com, k-l-e-p-e-k.wordpress.com, and then also I'm still working out freelance at various places that already started contributing some news to one-up again, and I'll be popping up at various places with you. How's that feel? Being back. I figured I was an underling again, and it made me feel good. Did you remember that time when your last name, clupic, was being used as a euphemism for penis? Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. It was Halloween, and this drunk fairy came up to me. She was fucking trashed, and she just started, I think she said it to someone to Sam or something, show me your dick or something, and all of a sudden Sam was like, "Have you met Patrick clupic?" And he pointed to me, and I remember she was like, "Show me your clupic." And Sam was like, "Yeah, show me your clupic." This was at the Hellgate London launch party. That's a really strange story. Yeah, and I just remember I was super uncomfortable, and I was like, "I need to leave." But did you? Not then. But only because I knew I would have lost their respect around me. Had it been about myself. True. I mean, I didn't even have to slip this go roofie. She got her own. She had an outtoids tin full of them. So, yeah, anyways, that's my clupic story. I just want to let people know that I love everyone. I do not believe in date rape, date rape is bad. So of course, if people can't understand that, then they're right up there with the other people that are just ignorant and get mad at the stuff we say. Where can we find you on the internet? Well, I'm at twitter.com/gameju and I'm also writing a song every day and posting it to the internet. Right now, I'm on day #63. Jesus Christ. Wow. And did you find time to write a song today despite being here? Are you writing it after this? I'll be writing it after. Okay. Are you going to be okay? Oh, yeah. I don't know. You need help? I can whip up some lyrics. Yeah, sure. I'm always looking. You know. I've been starting to take suggestions from the audience so far. Let's see. The other day was a song in the form of a knock-knock joke. Someone wanted... I thought that was a good one, so I didn't watch all of these, but I have watched quite a few, so I highly recommend that the listeners go check this out. Where can they find these? That's at rockcookibotum.com. And also, they can actually purchase the songs, right? If they like them, you have them as videos. Many of them are... The better ones you can purchase, and they're not all about video games, I should say. Of course. But many of them... Some of them are. There's a Battlestar Galactica one, actually. Can you write a song about Lost? I could... I don't know that... Could you write a song about being completely oblivious to Lost and not getting it at all? That would be much easier for me to do. I highly recommend that people go check this out and purchase some songs, so I'm just gonna throw that out there. And watch Lost. And watch Lost. Got the same time. This is what I'm gonna do to you all at the same time. You don't mind? I'm gonna make the show make about as much sense. Excellent. Alright, anywhere else that you want to do? Is that... That's the best. I guess you mentioned manmade.tv is where you can find all my old Mario Opera and Game Jew videos as well. Excellent. Alright Arthur hit us with the Twitter.com/AEGIS and it's a game I should be putting some stuff up. Like impressions and stuff I've been playing this week. Cool. Awesome. Anthony. Twitter.com/chefmoney. I don't know. And then that's pretty much it. I guess I have a couple of guides up on my cheats, but I don't even have a bite line. So who gives a fuck? You know? [laughter] So yeah, that's about it. I have to tell you another story about by lines of him not giving a fuck after we're done. It was pretty great. You can tell me after it. I'll be at Twitter.com/pcholar. I've also got my Grand Theft Auto 4 Lost the Dam reviews up now on geek.com, so go check that out. And I did the Killzone 2 guide on my cheats, which I don't have a by line, but they did give me a shout out on the front page, so that was kind of cool I guess. It's because they like Philip. It's because they're trying to capitalize on Phil's fucking popularity for Clay's. The Phil-Cholar brand. I got them so many ad impressions. All right, so yeah, that'll be it for the show. I wanted to bring up, too. Can I just mention this? I don't know if we're supposed to talk about this on the show, but Anthony and I, on Friday, we went over to Wunderkahn to get our badges, and I ended up being pretty sick all week, so I didn't really-- I still can say this. I didn't go, but in order to get our press badges, we brought along issues of EGM that we had written in, so we got admitted as members of the press, and our press badges said with EGM. We should've dressed as zombies, but the next day I got Jade's sister in as a photographer for EGM. I didn't know that part was awesome, so I've still got my Wunderkahn press badge with EGM. I don't think I'm ever going to get rid of that press badge. That means a lot to me. That's it. You can sell that. I might sell it. I'm going to sell mine. We'll see you. We'll see how the freelance journalist thing goes. We'll see how desperate I get. After this advice that we gave for freelance journalists, I'm feeling pretty depressing, so. All right, you can subscribe to Rebel FM on iTunes and Zoom if you use either of these services please subscribe, we'll review. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week, and go check out Jonathan Mann on his websites. Please. He's poor. Oh, God. What's up? - Ah, God.