Host Ilias Niemi invites guest Kevin McCartney to discuss one of the most influential indie games in internet history, the Touhou Project.
WBCA Podcasts
Maverick 64
(upbeat music) - Oh my God, hi. - Hi. - I'm here with Kevin. My name, I'm gonna turn this all the way down. That was a nice fade out. - Beautiful. - I was here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm so nervous. (laughing) - Hi bro, hi bro. - Let me start out with the station ID. You're listening to WBCALP102.9 FM Boston. - Ooh, can I try? - Yes, you can. - Let me try? - Yeah, go ahead. - You're listening to WBCALP102.9 FM Boston. Boston's only community radio station. - Are we the only one? - I think so, but I might be lying. - I mean, we'll find out if we get, we'll find out the hard way through a fine. - Yeah, you are not the only one. - You are. (laughing) - It's not up bro, you are not the only one. - We have, we have, we actually live in the red building and there's a blue building across the street that looks exactly like ours. - Oh my God, like TF2. (laughing) - You're stupid nerds. - On your stupid nerd show. - That's true, okay. So, this is Maverick 64. - 64? - 64. - Like Nintendo 64. (laughing) - It is, it's exactly that. - Oh my God, dude. - I couldn't think of anything, I couldn't think of it. - No, that's awesome. - I was told it sounds like a cool name. I gotta get to, I gotta get to the material. - Yeah. - Basically, on this show we talk about independently developed video games or indie games as they're known colloquially. And I texted a bunch of people, 'cause I'm in like a friend group that knows about, like a fair amount about these. And I texted a bunch of people and Kevin responded in all caps. Yes, I'd love to be on that. Like yes, yes, yes, yes, please let me on the show. (laughing) - I love indie games. - I do too, so Kevin, what game are you here to talk about? - Oh my God, don't get me started bro. - Y'all heard about Toho? - Yes. - I love Toho. - I actually have not touched Toho at all. - That's, honestly, I was gonna say that's crazy, but like most Toho fans have never played any of the games. - Wait, how does that work? - It's like Earthbound. - It's like Earthbound, there's a lot of like fan content and all of the games have to be like translated by fans. - Oh, I see. - There's no localization really. - That happened with off. - Yeah, that did happen with off. I remember they've like released like, I think it was a 2019, there was like a new translation that came out and it's like so much better 'cause I remember trying to play off and the translation was just so, like the stuff did not translate. He uses a lot of big words in that game. - He does. - And trying to translate that into English is just like, you lose me a little bit, but still a good game. - It's so good. It's like one of the, I think that was my first experience liking something that made me uncomfortable. You know what I mean? - Right, yeah. - Like it was like a weird negative inverse enjoyment to it. Like I appreciated how much it pushed me to play it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a similar game like that, even though I feel like it's like so much more like positive and beautiful is ever heard, I think is what it's called. The kind of undertale like, except your, instead of dodging bullets, you're dodging like rhythm game map charts. And it's so fun, but there's this like, and I'm not gonna spoil it, but there's a sudden turn in the game and it made me so uncomfortable because like it was just like right in your face. I remember walking into one area. The area had changed, but it was so like just funnily just like horrible that like I was like losing it. I was taking screenshots and sending it to people. They're like, what is going on right now, dude? What is happening? - There's a weird movement in video games like the past decade, half decade, where they really, really, really liked the bass switch. - They love that. - They love doing like the cute, oh God, guys, this game is so, you see there's one that was just straightforward about it. There's one called Pony Island. - Yes. - Yes. - And it was clearly just doing that. - But that was such a good one. I like that they like went out of the screen. Like so that you were like playing as the person at the arcade console or whatever. - Oh, yeah, I remember that. - That was an interesting like way to go about that 'cause it did like add like a sense of, oh, well, this is an as real as it could be because you're playing as the person playing at the arcade machine. - Yeah. - Toho kinda does that. - Does it? - You'll get to talk about it. - I will kind of like, I don't know, it is just cute little anime girls with like, it's a bullet house or that you're just shooting at each other. It's fun. You're dodging a bunch of like cool looking bullet patterns, but like it's a very pretty game. It's very cute game. The art style is very unique. It's not bad. I like it. A lot of people say it's bad. I think it like, it's fun. It's very like old game style art style. - It reminds me of 90s anime. - Yeah, it's 'cause like the one developer, Zoon, he was so inspired by that stuff. There's this like one manga that is like about like maids or whatever. I can never remember the name. And there's like, it's like basically lost media at this point. There's like no translation to English. - Oh, okay. - And like there's not a lot of scans at all of it. But like supposedly that like really inspired his like style and what he goes about for online, which is cool. - I love that. I love the, the, the inspiration. - Oh, there's so much inspiration. - Where you can like look at something and you can find the artists talking about like what they're into. And then you can just follow this weird, gangly trail back in history about that stuff. - Yeah, which is, I feel like, which is how a lot of people found out about Tojo is because of that inspiration web where Toby Fox, creator of Undertale, would not have created the game without Earthbound in Tojo. - Yep. Funnily enough, Earthbound would not have been real without the book Slaughterhouse 5 or Peanuts. - Really? - Yeah, no, they were, the original game especially 'cause Earthbound is, for those who don't know, Earthbound is the, the sequel to, was originally just a game called Mother. And so it's technically Mother 2 and... - We got like Mother 2 and Mother 3 as English translations, which was Earthbound 1 and Earthbound 2, right? - I think, well, no, 'cause what happened was Earthbound was translated. - The original? - Yes. - Or, okay. - No, no. - Or is that Mother 2? Oh my God, it's so confusing. - It is confusing, it's really confusing. Some people, some people like to refer to Mother 3 as Earthbound 2, which is very confusing. - Right. - And then the first one is Earthbound 0, which is even more confusing. - Right, isn't that how it was released in America? - No, 'cause... - I heard they did like a translation at one point. - They did, what happened was, and I know this 'cause I own it. - Oh. - They have, they, in like 1995, I think, they released Earthbound in English to America, and it was like, it was a very cult thing. It's like one of the most... - It's a cult classic. - Yeah, it's like one of the most standard examples of like a cult classic in video games, but with Mother 1, what happened was for a later handheld console, the Game Boy Advance, they released this weird thing that was called Mother 1+2. - Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - And dude, that was weird. - Well, no, it wasn't just weird because of the way they executed it. It was also the fact that what happened was, they didn't really check it as they ported it, so Mother 1-- - Oh, is there a lot of glitches? - Yes, Mother 1 remains intact. Mother 1 was perfectly fine, but Earthbound, Mother 2, it was like, it was, every text, every bit of text was just shapes, like-- - Oh no, wait, it was all symbols and stuff, like it didn't actually like translate the text over at all. - Something with the cool, like fiddled with on the way over to the Game Boy, so not only is the music like a lower fidelity, but like you'll go to savior, the way you save your game is you talk to your dad over the phone, and like an old like rotary phone. - Yeah, yeah. - And in the original game, it would be like, "Ness, it's your dad." - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - I have put a gazillion dollars into your account, and the money would go up as you like gained levels in the game, but in the Game Boy version, what happened, it was, you get a little snippet of it, you get, "Ness, it's your dad." And then like a bunch of triangles and lines. - Dude, creepy pasta, how many kids got this game and thought that like they had a ghost in their machine, bro. - I got this game and I stopped playing it. Well, you can't play it, you're not getting any content. - No, you don't know, you can't play that game. You don't know what the hell is going on. I just swore, I need to bleep that out. - Oh, I've been trying so hard not to swear, guys. - Well, actually. - We're allowed to say something. - Well, okay, so you can say, like I don't wanna say too many, I don't wanna test it, you'll find out, you can learn. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - If you fans, my million fans out there. - Oh, one million, more like two, make that two. - Two million. - Yeah, 'cause one million for each of us, we're giving each other exposure. - Yeah, none of us are getting paid. - We haven't talked at all about Toho. - That's okay. We can totally just cut (beep) or cut stuff. - Do you want to, is that okay? - Yeah, no, that's okay. - Okay, I'm gonna, like there's a lot of fat to this, so if it like ends up being too fatty, I can like cut out stuff like that. - Yeah, we can totally, I was expecting us to like accidentally talk for like two to three hours, just on just random topics in general, and then have to go back and cut everything down into an actual segment. - Well, because this is like a half hour, half hour worth of information. I was like, let's do 45 minutes, 'cause we'll have conversations, but we've just had a bunch of conversations about like, not what we want to do. - Yeah, exactly, it's okay. - So give us, give us some, you had like, stuff written down, right? - Oh my God, so I said to burn my script if I brought it in, so it's a, it's my notes app. So there's not a real script, it's my notes app, and I'm not gonna read directly off of it. - All right. - Isn't that beautiful, it's an improv. - That is beautiful. - So yeah, just to basically describe Toho, it's an indie game, or like a Do-jin game, which like Do-jin games are like, either fan games or original games that are created by someone like independently, or created by a small like group of people, like a Do-jin circle, basically the same thing as an indie game. I think it's just what they call it over there, or just like basic like, same difference type thing. But like, it's all created by one guy, and like maybe some play testers, or like some collaborative like games. There's this other developer that he sometimes collaborates with to make the fighting games, but like, those aren't in the real like, those are in the Toho timeline, 'cause there's a huge like expansive lore to the series, because there's like almost 20. No, there's more than 20 games, but there's almost 20 canon games now. - Okay, yeah, 'cause when people will talk about this, they'll be like, oh my God, Toho Project 20 came out, and it'll be like there are 20 installments already. - And there's more than that, because it's not counting the point fives, which are like the fighting games. - Oh my God. - And it's not counting any of the original five games that were released on PC 98, 'cause those are regarded as not canon. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, so it's really interesting. The first five games, the first four of those, I believe either first three or four were like breakout clones. So you had the little like ball, you're playing as Raimu, which is who you usually play as. She's like the shrine maiden. The whole game is like lore wise, you're in like a kind of an alternate reality Japan. It's on the other side or whatever, they call it Gen Siyoko. There are other characters that just live on Earth, and they just like don't see Gen Siyoko, 'cause that's like the land of the yokai and stuff. That's where all like the creatures and stuff live from folklore. - Oh, is it like a parallel universe? - Kind of like a parallel universe. Like people are able to get to that side. There's like some characters that show up in games. I forget her name, but there's other characters, like Mary and this other person. I've just started to learn about them because they're not in the games at all. They're just in Zun's like albums, because Toho was created as a way to get people listen to his music, because his music has story to it. - That's really fun actually. - So there's these concept albums that he does with these two characters that are on the outside world, and they're just in like a ghost hunting club. And sometimes they're able to pass over and like see Gen Siyoko and like meet the other yokai over there. It's really cool. - I can see the nerd value in this. - Oh, there's so much nerd value. - This is like, I was talking to friends about this. There's this weird, I mean, I don't want to get too into it. There's this weird through line between nerd culture where if it's like, if it has the ability, if you have the ability to gain a lexical amount of knowledge on it. - Yes. - Then it will, I think that's like one of the key things like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings. - Pokemon. - Pokemon. - Pokemon. - Pokemon. - Pokemon, absolutely. - We both do also have almost all the Pokemon memorized up to a point. - No. - Oh, so that's like a thing that happens. - Yeah, I know it does 'cause I have a bunch of friends. This is the thing I've talked to them about is like I dodged the Pokemon bullet. - I almost did. (laughing) - Oh, it's such like a capitalist little thing to be into. - So like, yeah, just like the-- - It's a brand now. - This like giant, fragmented, like infinitely thing that just like has so many details and characters and stats and everything all over the place. - Yeah, 'cause I was into the stupid games. Everybody else around me was like, oh, I'm into the cards. Like, I like collecting cards. I like looking at the pictures. I played the card game, I played it. Like, I collected the cards, but I also played it. And I played a lot of the video games and everybody else was like, oh, I collect the cards. I like watch the television show. And I'm not that much into it. I was so nerdy about it. I was so, I come from like a gamer family. Like, we had like a lot of old ass, oop, we had a lot of old consoles. We had a lot of old consoles. - I might be able to let that sound like I'll find out. - Was he? - Yeah, I had a lot of old consoles. So I knew a lot of the original Pokemon up to like, maybe like generation seven is where they lost me. But there is this little part in your brain that they've researched that doesn't get utilized unless you're memorizing a large portion of things. And it happened to a lot of kids where they have only have that section of their brain working to have all the Pokemon memorized. And I feel like that happened to me as well, both of Pokemon, but with Toho. I have like so many Toho characters memorized and it's not all of them. It's not all of them, I need to get all of them, dude. - That is, that's how I am with King Gizzard. - Oh. - 'Cause the way, like you said, they have a bunch of concept albums. That's kind of what I like about them is that all their stuff is like this clean concept album. That's just like nicely, neatly organized. And what they do is they have like a mythology that goes between their albums. You can like follow a loose story. - Yes, yes, that happens in the Toho concept albums too. 'Cause you're following the same two characters, but it's like a different incident every time. Like how every game in Toho has like a different, it follows the same story or like structure where it's like something bad happened. Some other anime girl must be up to it. Let's go fight her, but like friendly fight. - That's such nerd bait. - Yeah. - That's like-- - And then it's the same thing over and over except there's like a deeper story every time. So like you get to look into it and it's like, oh my God, it's great. - I can't wait to spend three hours a day on this wiki page. - Yes, yes, because like the translation's bad usually. So it's not that bad. But like after wait like a couple of weeks for like newer translations to come out, like there was a new game recently. I think it was like Unconnected Marketeers or that one might have been the one before the newer game. He's been releasing a lot recently. It's scary and I had to wait like a week for like an English translation and I get it 'cause it's like all fan made, but then I look into it and it's like, oh, maybe I should just read the wiki. Like instead of trying to play the game because the game's hard and I won't be able to get to all of the content. - That's the thing about like fan content, especially when it comes to like, there's a similar issue in like the open source community which you know what that is, right? - Like open source like CS. - Well, kind of, it's like there's like, there's this Ask Dana, our professor about it. - Oh, like open source, like open source code. - Yeah, yeah, like in the community. - I thought you were talking about like CSGO. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. - In the community of like people who like open source stuff and like make free-- - Put that stuff on GitHub. - Yeah, they like make free technology free, everybody use free code, it's just like on the internet forever, you can use it when you go. - Which I think is a beautiful thing. - I think it's beautiful, but because of that, it's like all over the place and I like that. I think I'd prefer that as opposed to something that's like hyper curated. - Yeah. - I like when stuff's just kind of messy all over the place for the reason that people really wanna mess with it. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I don't like things that are hyper curated. - I mean, you know me. I love so many different things and I've been in so many different like communities that are just like so all over the place. So all over the place, but it's like beautiful. I rather have everything, everyone has their own like opinion or whatever and we all fight about it rather than everyone has one opinion and it's hyper curated on one like subject and we're all going to be doing the same code forever. - Yeah. - That'd be sad. - It would be. - That's why I like, I tried it. That's why I'm, I don't get too off topic. - Oh yeah. - That's why, that's why I hate Mac books and then back to the topic. - Oh. - Mac book, back to the top. It's great segue, bro. - I'm just gonna let the viewer deal with that. - Yeah, just MacBook, just so you know. - I just so you know, I don't like MacBooks. All right, back to the anime game. - Back to the anime girls, back to my little anime girls. I love Toho, so like I love Toho. - I love Toho. I talked about the premise. I'll mention a little bit on this subject since it's like kind of current news type thing. - Oh, for real. - So like described as a dojan game described as like an indie game. I guess there is like a little bit of a difference but there isn't that much of a difference. - Okay. - 'Cause like Zune himself like says, oh, I'm a dojan creator. Oh, I'm an indie creator. Like basically same difference. But like this like week maybe or maybe it was at last week, some past couple of weeks. You know, Power World, that other indie game? - I hate Power World. - Oh, don't get started. - I hate Power World so much. - As much as I hate capitalism, that's just the same thing as Pokemon, right? - Power World is its own deal. It takes like, it amalgamates all these different aspects of like farming games, Pokemon. - Oh, it's like a Sims. - Fortnite, for some reason. It's just like this big-- - Amalgamation. - Yes, this big mess is this big, like throw everything together and they clearly-- - It's just a cash grab. - Yeah. - Sounds like. - Yeah, no, and it was like, it was, I-- - Let me guess, is it Open World? - Yeah. - Oh, you lost me. - I know, I feel so bad 'cause I love Open World games. - No, Open World games are done well a lot but it's become such a trend in video gaming, 'cause it's like AA games where everything should be open world now. - Well, that's, 'cause it's like when you give someone a lot of opportunity, like when games like League of Legends will say there are this many combinations of games, 'cause you have this many characters. - Yeah. - It's like, I'm just gonna say quantity over quality with like a lot more words to it. It's like, it gives the person a lot more perceived opportunity, so-- - Right, they're done like actually having real quality opportunity. - Yeah, so it's like, the fun of the game is kind of just spread thin and it's something that sells well, but it doesn't, it's just not fun. - Yeah, it doesn't play well. - Yeah, it doesn't play well. Yeah, it sells well, it doesn't play well. Who else said, I agree. - Yeah, recently Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against Powerworld for like going against their patent on Pokemon, which like we were waiting for it, right? - We were waiting for it, we were absolutely waiting for it. - They were sitting on that and they have let it launch and Powerworld like releases some like big Twitter statement where they have like verified status, so they're able to make a whole ass like, excuse me, they're able to make an essay, like an actual like whole essay, just on Twitter, bro. And it's like the most like subpar statement known to man. And so many indie devs are up in arms about being like compared to them now and like just being like in the same like indie category because Powerworld's an indie game that did make it big for like a second. But like it did make it big. And now a lot of indie devs are like, we don't want to be compared to like, if this is what indie gaming looks like now, we're not indie devs. And Zoon made like a joking statement on it, which basically translated to, yeah, no, I'm not an indie dev anymore. I make dojin games because he does not wanna be compared to that and like I get it. - Wait, Kevin, hold that thought. - Holding. - You're listening to WBCALP, one of 2.9 FM Boston, Boston's maybe only community radio station. - We don't know yet. - All right. Okay, that's all I had to say. - Oh, okay. - We don't even need, I don't think we need breaks, do we? - We might not, I mean, do we? - Okay, I have an idea. - Yeah. - If we need a break cut in here. - Oh, oh, for you to like add a break. - Yeah. - So if whoever's editing this was probably me in 20 minutes, yeah, me in 20 minutes. - Yeah. - If I need a break, I'll just cut it there and there will be like three ads there. - Okay, Chow. - Three ads. - Maybe, well three PSAs. - Okay, Chow. - Like you can come to VNN studio and give your own radio show, whatever. - Do it. (laughing) - Everyone gets, everyone can talk. - All right. - It's like easy. - Back to Toho. - Back to Toho. - I'm so fascinated. - So a lot of people like find out about Toho from like a lot of different things. One big one, Bad Apple. Everyone knows Bad Apple. If you've been online, you've seen Bad Apple. - I'm so glad you brought up Bad Apple. I was watching a Bad Apple video game video this morning. - Oh, wait, like the history of it? - No, no, no, no, like one of the-- - Or one of the, like I recreated Bad Apple in that-- - Yes, yes. - Love those. - Okay, do you wanna explain Bad Apple? - Oh, okay. So it's like, there's like this whole like extensive history on it, but basically it comes from Toho 5, non-canon game. Remember, first five games are for the PC-98. They're not canon, so Windows era is canon. When we moved to Windows, everything there is canon. But, Toho 5, they have this really awesome song called Bad Apple that plays in one of the stages. - Mm-hmm. - And everyone forgot about it. Everyone forgets about these like first five PC-98 games because like they're not being played. They're not being like, it's so hard to emulate PC-98 on a Windows 11 machine. - What is, is PC-98 Windows? - No, so PC-98 is a completely different computing system that was Japan only. It was like the home computing system of Japan. - Oh. - And then when Windows made it big, everyone switches to Windows. - Oh my God, there was a lot of-- - So PC-98 just like went to found it. - There was a lot of those when Windows and Mac showed up that just like died at like the Amiga systems. - Yeah, or like, I forget what it was called. It was like T or something. Or maybe started with a T. It was like this old computing system that Radio Shack used to sell. I was watching a William Osman video and he just kept getting like stuff from the system but not the system itself. Like he got a bunch of like add-ons for the computer in the mail and didn't get the computer. But yeah, there was a lot of these just, that just went defunct when Windows and Apple just like all just kind of took over. - Yep. - But yeah, so none of those games are canon now but you have to emulate this different computing system on like a Windows computer or Apple computer. It's like trying to do a virtual machine I guess. I've tried it, it sucked, I couldn't do it. I couldn't figure it out. But yeah, Total 5 has bad Apple as a stage theme. People forget about it. All the like new Windows games comes out but one like Dozen Circle which are doing songs like fan songs because by the way, Total was like copyright free or whatever. Zoom just wants you guys to make games and you want you guys to make fan games, want you guys to make fan songs, want you guys to like do all this stuff. Or not you guys, but fans, if you're a fan, he's like, please create content for the game or not for the game but for yourself because you like the game and I think that's beautiful. - I like that. - Well, where was I? - We're talking about bad Apple. - Oh yeah. - It was like a white video. - Yeah, yeah. So some like it starts with an A, that Dozen Circle, something records like makes a remix of the song like just a vocal cover called Bad Apple and releases it. People love it, becomes super popular but they don't have a music video for it. So there was like a fun little contest for people to just try and recreate a music video. Somebody made like Oniko Nikodoga which is like the YouTube of Japan. Someone made a like storyboard because they're like, I can't draw. Can someone help me make this black and white music video if they really want to? And like the most popular one was this one, like 3D animated one, which everyone's really seen which is the black and white and it goes through the song and you get to see like all the different Toho characters appear and it like the silhouette like fades into each other and it's like, it's a really good music video. And that was like completely fan made by a fan of a fan of a song which was a fan song of made by a fan of a game. - It keeps going down. - And the inspiration rabbit hole just continues. - It's fans all the way down. - It's fans all the way down. So like a lot of people definitely just heard of Toho from Bad Apple and because that like video was created in a ton of different ways. Like people created on like calculators or on like, I don't know, Discord and people did like the Discord message one. - Yup, yup. - And so a lot of people found out about Toho from that. A lot of other people found out about Toho from YouTube poop. - Yup. - Yes. - Do you love YouTube poop? - I'd have to say I would consider myself an enthusiast or a connoisseur. - Oh, yeah, me too. - Of YouTube poop connoisseur. - Are we allowed to say this is kind of all dirty? - WTP or no YTP. - YTP. - YTP. - We can say YTP or mad but that's-- - Well, okay. So you're not allowed to talk about like the act of doing so but you can say it in like-- - You can say poop. - Yeah, you can. (laughing) - That's it. - Sorry. (laughing) - All right, let's continue. - Oh yeah. So like, so basically do you want to describe 'cause you are able to describe what these are like better than me. - Okay, okay. So-- - 'Cause you did a panel on this. Well, I was doing a panel on Toho. - That's actually really fun. You're right, I did do that. We had a convention in our major and everybody hosted panels and this was the one I hosted. So basically a YouTube poop really hope I'm allowed to say that 'cause if I don't, there's gonna be a lot of you think out. - Oh god. - It's the Wikipedia definition is actually a pretty apt description. It's just like, you take a clip of an already existing video. One of the common things people do is take episodes of SpongeBob or Family Guy. - Yeah. - A popular one takes an episode of ICarly. - Oh yeah, I've seen that one. - Yup, and you know exactly what you're talking about. - I know what you're talking about. - I can't say the name on radio, but that's a good one. - No you can't, but it's a good one. - Yeah, and basically the whole point is to just edit this video into complete nonsense. Like people will color code the screen so it's all rainbows, they'll impose like a bunch of swears over SpongeBob. So SpongeBob screaming and saying swears, they'll like add a bunch of swirly effects all over the screen. It's really goofy. It's basically, if you ever watch Tim and Eric, it's on the same level where it's kind of like, it's taking advantage of the idea of low fidelity video and just turning it into a big joke that if you watched it as a child, you might have an attention deficit disorder now because it does that to you. - It does that to you, it's just nonsense. - Yeah, it's such complete nonsense. And so there's like this other like kind of subcategory of YTP, YTP. There's this other sub like category called MAD, which is like what is done a lot more so in Japan, even though there's like English like MAD creators, it was popularized in Japan because it's YTPs except instead of a lot of pitch shifting, there's a lot of like vocal splicing to make people say words because there's supposed to be music videos. And so one very popular one is that one Ronald McDonald one where he's falling off the chair punch and it's from that like one commercial and they did it with you and Owen was her, which is a Toho song. And it's like, I feel like it's called on YouTube, like this is the most crazy Ronald McDonald video you'll ever see, like Ronald McDonald insane. It's something like so utterly stupid like that. But that is just ripped from Niko Nikodoga re-uploaded on YouTube and it's a remix like MAD music video of the Toho song. - Oh, that's fun. - From Toho 6, which is the one that most people know. The embodiment of Scarlet Devil, it's the big popular one because it was the first Windows release. And it has Flaundry Scarlet, which she's like the final boss character you've seen her. She's like, she's one I have a Fumo of. - A Fumo? - My little plushie. - Oh, oh, I don't know what you're saying. - She has little wings that are rainbow. She's a little vampire. - Oh, is it the wings with like the little rambuses hanging off with them? - Yeah, the little crystals. - Yes, yes, yes, yes. I remember that. She was in the, she was in Bad Apple. - She was in Bad Apple? - Yeah. - And she's the one that smiles very easily. - Ah, I remember that. I know exactly what you're talking about. - Yeah. - Actually, before you continue, can I say one thing about Bad Apple? - Oh, sure. - Basically, I can tie in indie games to this. - Yes. - Someone, I watched a video today called Bad Apple, but it's animated with Minecraft generation. - Oh, interesting. I've seen the sheep one. - No, so what they did with this one was that they had it so that the black was land and the white was water. - And it's just someone looking down the ground, so every frame is just like-- - Nice. - An instantaneous moment of the music video. - Nice, that's so cool. - Yeah, it was really cool. - I've seen a couple of Minecraft ones. There was one where they did it with sheep, so there was this code that they implemented, so that it was white and black sheep, all in this pen, that was the shape of the video, and it would just change the color of the sheep. And there was this other one where it was the map. You would hold up the map and it was going through a code, so it was actually generating it, I think with wool or something, like above them or below them, and they had the map up and it was consistently changing with every frame of the video. - That's really fun. - Yeah, it's so cool. - I saw one by a coding channel I watched that was just like Bad Apple, but it's a fluid simulation, so when the black portion of the screen moves around, it pushes around a bunch of fluid particles. - Oh, it's fun. - So it's like there's this blue watery stuff that's squishing and flowing around them while they're dancing. - Oh my God, that's so cool though. - I know. - It's what? - People get really creative with this. - People get super creative with this, with music videos for all this stuff. There's so many fan-made music videos for so many other fan-made songs. There's this one Dozen circle like Iosys. I-O-Y-S? No, I-O-S-Y-S, it's hard name. But they make a lot of Toho fan songs. Have you heard of Giorno's Perfect Math class? Maybe? - The name slightly rings a bell, but I-- - They've made YouTube boop of that. - Okay, I had a feeling, I had a feeling. - There's a couple of other ones. They made like Overdrive where it helped popularize that one image of like the two rabbits from Toho, raisin and Tayy, or not Tayy, Tayy, but it's spelled like T-E-W-I and it's pronounced Tayy, but I always see the word in my head and I go, Tayy, Tayy, Tayy, Tayy. But it's raisin and Tayy and they're like, why you play on easy mode, have only like losers play on the easy mode and they laugh at you and it's taken from this other like manga panel that got popularized, I'm like, gulp, two-chan. - I haven't, I know nothing about that one. - That's 4chan, but in Japan. I think that was created before 4chan, and 4chan was like made as like a Western version of that. Fun fact, to all those scared parents out there who have heard about 4chan on New York Times, that website was based off of an anime character. - Oh, it was, I mean, it might be like an unofficial based off it and then they like took her, but Yotsuba. Are you talking about? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, like the design was based on it. - The design is-- - The website was not. The website was just a not-- - The website is just a forum posting and on this website. - It's just named after this one character who had like four ponytails in the shape of a clover, so that's why that's like the logo of the website. - Yeah, oh my God. - Fun food for thought. - Food for thought, I still don't let your kids go on that. - Do not let your kids go on with, oh my God. - I should move. - Website is so scary. - Oh, it is a cesspool. Like that is like the best way to describe it, but lots of people talk about Toa on there. That's why I was on it, you know, like finally someone talking about my nerdy interests. What other things should I talk about? - I have-- - Where you continue. - Oh yeah. - You're listening to WBCALP, one of 2.9 F of Boston, Boston's Community Radio Station. It's just like customary, I gotta-- - Yeah, no, you have to. - Yeah, I'm like, I'm looking at the time and I'm doing the math on my head 'cause we have about like five minutes of nonsense at the beginning that we talked about, so I gotta be like, is this enough? Is this enough? Is this enough? We're at like 36 now, but I know we're not gonna be at 36 to whoever's listening. - To whoever's listening. - Are millions of bands at home. - Elias, who's editing this? - Yeah, me too. - Hey, man. - Hey, future Elias, put in a boring sound effect. (beep) - Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You don't do it some day, wait. (laughing) - Wait, do it again, though. - Okay, I gotta do a different sound. Future Elias, put in, what should I put? What should he put in? - I was just thinking about another blue line. You could put like, hi, say hi. - Hello. - That was so cute. - Oh my God, it's future to me. - Hi, oh my God. (laughing) - What? - What? - I love editor bits like this. - Oh my God, me too. It's just so fun. Oh, you and Owen was her. Like that song that I was talking about, how like Ronald McDonald. - Back on track. - Back on track. That one, a very interesting naming scheme. You know the Agatha Christie novel. It's called, and then there were none. It's like a direct reference, that naming scheme, UN Ellen was her, is a direct reference to that novel because it's like old, old book. So I'm gonna spoil it. Basically, it like goes through this like old like poem of like 12 soldiers that like all drop dead. And so they all get invited to this house, all these people. They all like did something bad, oh no. And the person, the evil person, the house, and we don't know who's the evil person is sending them letters and being like, this is the next line of the poem. One of you is going to die. And it's always signed with UN, Owen. Unknown is like UN, Owen. And if you like put it together, it says unknown. - Oh my God. - Yeah. And they find out who it is at the end of the novel after everyone dies. But like, it's like a direct reference to that because it's like, oh, what if Flandre is her? But also it's like that character and like the, that game series, or not game series, that like game like incident itself that happens in the game is very like inspired by like, I'd say Eastern European, like vampire folklore and literature. And so there's a lot of like kind of referential, like socia that made there is like meant to be Jack the Ripper or not meant to be, but it's like a reference to Jack the Ripper. - Oh, that's fun. - 'Cause you can like stop time and like throw a bunch of knives at you and then start time again and you pout. - I, yeah. - Wait, hold that thought. - Holding. - I've seen that in a thumbnail. - Oh my God. - Is, does she have anything to do with Night of Knights? - Yes. - Okay. - So that's one of the very popular remixes is Night of Knights, which is a remix of her song and it's like crazy like, fast, very fun song. A lot of rhythm games use that song. A lot of rhythm games use Tojo music just in general. - Well, I was gonna bring up that in YTPs. - In YTPs, it is utilized. - It is, and I remember watching there was, there was one called, I hope these words aren't swears. There is, it was a SpongeBob video that someone edited. It was the, the Krusty Krab training video. - Oh, yeah, yeah. - And they just, of course they feel, it was 2011. They filled it with nonsense and like Sony Vegas. And at one point at the end, they had like a Night of Knights remix. - That's so awesome. - And that's, I've, once again, you're right. Like there's, Tojo is scattered across the internet. - Oh my God. - It's just everywhere. - Every fandom that you'll go into, you will meet someone or meet another community of people in that fandom who also really like Tojo. It's why I am also so much into like Team Fortress 2. It's because there is such an overlap between the two. There's like video essays on this, on YouTube. If you look it up, or if you want to look it up, there's like actual like video essays talking about the, the correlation between the Tojo fandom and the TF2 fandom and why do you always find the two together? Why is there so much TF2 Tojo content? Like Chiramiru, which Bancudiru, have you seen that one? - No. - It's like basically recreating that Chirano music video with the scout because Chiramiru is like about like, what if there is this drink that makes Chirano stronger and smarter because she's the dumb character? And she's on my backpack actually, back there. I have Ramu, I have Marisa, I have Chirano, all my backpack, I carry them around. - What do I have on my backpack? - I wonder. - It's not, oh, you know what, on my backpack, I have, it's gonna be embarrassing. I have a key chain of Equius from Homestock. - Bro. - You know what was also inspired by Tojo and a way is Homestock. - Homestock is inspired by Tojo? - In a way, Toby Fox, because Toby Fox is so inspired by Tojo music-wise. A lot of the music that is made for Homestock by him, like you can feel like, or like how like the melodies are made and stuff like that is kind of Tojo, like referential, megalovania, there is just sounds like a Tojo song. - That song, I have to say. - That's why there's a, I'll go ahead. - No, we're gonna say. - Oh, Toby Fox and Zune like have made remixes together of Undertale and Tojo music because they fit so well together because they're both so inspired by each other. - And also 'cause he's Japanese, and Toby Fox can speak Japanese. - Toby Fox's Japanese is incredible. - He's really good at it. - He's really good at it. And I love hearing him pronounce English words like in the middle of the sentences during like his announcements and Japanese. - Tojo project. - Tojo project. And then he goes straight back into like fluent sounding Japanese. It's so beautiful. - It's a complete flip-flop. - Yeah, but what were you gonna say? - Oh, okay, I was gonna say, well this is just like, this is not anything to do with Tojo. I was just gonna say like, I'm gonna be perfectly honest. I really like that song only in the Homestock version. - The Homestock version is awesome. I love the Earthbound Halloween mod version the most. - Yes, this is really, this is like-- - Oh, this is, this is nerd, this is sneaky. - You need to dig deep if you wanna know what we're talking about. - Yeah, oh, I'm not, I'm not giving any, any context. - Unless you go to our school, in which case you probably, you and everybody's mother knows what we're talking about. - Yeah, yeah, 'cause everyone, we go to nerd school. - We do, we go to a Massachusetts College of Art and Design where everybody's a nerd or an architect. We're like, where are we, that's a BM. (laughing) Dude, actually the whole architecture major is gonna be against us now. - Oh, they hate us. Us and our two people in the major. - They're plotting. - I love you guys, they're literally plotting. (laughing) - Stupid. - Turn it on. - Turn it on. - It's done. - We're done. - We can't. - We do the math, what time are we at? - Where time are we at? - We should be good, we should be good. I feel so bad, we're so off topic. - We can just do another segment later where we actually try and stay on topic and that's the challenge for every time we have an episode together. Is, are we gonna stay on topic? - What game do we both know about? - Off, I guess. - Have you played off? - I've played off. - Oh, I've played off. - We're doing an off episode. - We're doing an off episode. - After replay, but I played it young and it was before that new translation came out, so. - Well, yeah. - The one I was talking about, like 2019, maybe it was when it was updated, but I played it like way back. - I think I played it a little after that translation. - Yeah. - Like I played it. - Better translation. - Oh my God. - Oh my God, dude. (laughing) - It's okay, that was vulgarity, I will have to believe that out. - P you. (laughing) - Anyways. - Anyways. - You were, and still are, hopefully, listening to WBCILP 102.9 FM Boston. Boston's community radio station, maybe the only one. - Maybe the only one. - But we don't know. - I'll have to walk down the-- - Are we the only one? - I'll have to walk down the sidewalk with a magnifying glass. - Oh, and look around to find the other ones. - We'll just be looking up and down on the ground on the floor. - Birds share lock homes. (laughing) - All right, so well, we're so good at getting distracted. This is not fair. - Yeah, that was me having about Toho, I guess. We talked about Toby Fox a lot here, but I didn't, like, say, like, how much inspiration. - Toby Fox is important, because people know about Undertale. Undertale is like a household name at this point, a little bit. - It is. - A little bit. - A little bit. - I don't want to exaggerate. - No, I feel like, I mean, my mom knows about Undertale, bro. - My mom knows about it, too, but because she's the high school teacher. - Oh, well, my mom did teach, like, I'll match your school on one point. But, like, I don't know. - I feel like me and my sibling have been, like, are such nerds that we, like, are constantly just referencing stuff and, like, bringing my mom into it. And, like, my mother has gone to a, I'm pretty sure it might've only been Torp, but you know Torp. - Yes, yes I do. - She loves Ninja Sex Party. My mother. - Are we allowed to say that? - I don't know if we're allowed to say that. - She loves-- - I don't know if I was about to say Danny Sex Bangs, this is Dan. (laughing) No, she loves NSP. - NSP, there we go. - My sibling got her really, and I almost did that, my mom. My sibling got her really into NSP, and, like, Torp. And, oh, my God, I'm so jealous. They went to a concert and I was being a little bit of a-- - An angsty teen. - An angsty teen. And I was like, I don't want to go. I don't want to like the same things as my sibling, even though we like the same things. We both are, like, music producers. Like, we both really like Game Grumps. - Smooth. - Yeah, we had the same upbringing. We're both such gamers, so. But yeah, average younger sibling behavior where it's like, I don't want to go and hang out with you guys. And then I was in my room, and I was like, I could have been seeing Anna's B right now in Torp. - You missed NSP. - I wasn't as into them at the time as well. And then I had, like, such a resurgence recently, not recently, maybe like a couple years back of, like, re-watching Game Grumps and stuff. And then that got me back into them, and I'm like, oh, I was being a little bit of an angsty teen. Like, this is actually fun music, it's fun. - That almost happened to me with David Byrne. My parents were going to a David Byrne concert. And as a, I did not miss it. - Good. - I'm glad I didn't. I was like, I was at that age where I just like, if I'm ever asked to do anything, it feels like a Herculean effort to not be angry that someone's making me do. - Oh, I know, right? - My, like, amount of sitting around doing nothing all day. So, like, I go to this concert and I'm like, (sighs) I don't even know who David Byrne is. And it's like the best concert I've ever-- - Oh my God, that's crazy. - Ever, ever, ever. It got me into talking heads. - No shot. - Yeah, no, for real. - That's crazy. - I've, I've always wanted to see David. - I'm skipping this part because it's more off topic than usual. - My body temperature does not change with the environment that I'm in. So, I'm constantly at this, like, constant warm all the time. And so, when it's cold outside or it starts to get a little cold outside, I feel that shift so immensely. And I'm like shivering more. I'm just like dying from heat. It sucks. But, (sighs) I'm watching so fun though. - Did we forget to talk about Toby Fox? - We, like, totally did. We got off topic again. - Okay, I'll leave so, I'll, there's gonna be a lot of edits on my part. - I'm just gonna-- - I'm so sorry. - Here's the mark. I'm gonna put an edit in earlier that says, if you don't wanna hear us talk about sweating and rape, get to hear. - Yeah, skip the year. - I actually forgot to do that part. - Okay, so Toby Fox so inspired by Toho, it's insane. - My music is very inspired by Toby Fox, so I'm transitively inspired by Toho. - Yeah, it's same with me. - Like, so, how do I like start this off? It's just the whole bullet hell aspect was like a big thing because it was like one of the first RPGs and Earthbound Ask Mother Ask RPGs to include a different fighting system than the regular return-based combat that's gonna be-- - It was fun too. - And it's fun. And what made it so good is because Toby Fox like purposely made there be like bullet patterns but it's easy. Like you're able to get through the game without having to like do super hard fights, but you're also able to get through the game without like having to worry about the combat system too much. - It's so fun. - It's really good. - It's so good. - That is such a detriment with Toho. - Oh my God. - It's because that game focuses very heavily on having insane bullet patterns and just like some of the hardest boss battles you'll ever see in a like Don Maku style game which is bullet hell and like Japanese are like the same. It's the same difference. - Like that's on the screen genre. - Yeah. - That's on the screen genre. - Okay. So you said that there are play testers. Are these games tested well? Like is the challenge well? - It's like people who are good at these games that are usually play testing them or just testing them for like glitches and then they're just like the only other name in the credit is some like random dude who play tested this. Or some random circle of people who have play tested. It's usually to just try and like, I don't know to be honest, but what I assume is that it's just to find any glitches, any like exploits that you could do in the game, but it's also to like see if it's possible. - Yes. - Because these people are playing at like, I think it's called lunatic mode, which is the highest level difficulty. (laughing) And that's like, yeah. Like the average person's playing on easy. - Lunatic mode. - Lunatic mode, yeah. - Is it just go easy, medium, hard lunatic? - Easy, medium, hard lunatic. Sometimes it's called a different thing depending on like the themeology of the game, but usually people call it lunatic mode. - I really like when games do that where they have like easy, medium, hard and like just like ludicrous or something like that. - That's another like thing that Undertale kind of did in a way as well where it's like, you have to get to get the full story. You have to get through the hard part. - Yes. - Which is like that spoilers, but it's like from 2018, who cares, um. - 2015. - 2015? - Yeah, we're old. - Am I old? - We're old? - No, there's no, I believe you, but like, wow. - Yeah, no, I have shingles. - What? (laughing) - Oh my God, dude, I'm well. (laughing) I just started to get like wrinkles recently maybe, but like that's like, oh, I just hit the mic, but like that's, I'm sorry about your shingles. (laughing) - I don't have shingles. - Oh. - Oh, no, I was, I was telling a joke 'cause it's like-- - No, no, no, I know, but I just wanted to like, make sure like you knew that, like if you did have shingles, like I'm sorry. - No, no, it's okay. - Um. - I'm recovering well. - Oh, they went away? I don't know if they could do that. - Yeah, they just, they walked off. - Oh, that happened to me before. - They got bored. - Nice. - Mm-hmm. - What were we talking about? (laughing) - No, that's um. - Toby Fox. - Toby Fox and Undertale and the Inspiration. Yeah, you had to get through the really hard part of the game with the Sans fight. - Yes. - Yes. - In comparison to Toho, by the way, easy. - That's funny to me. That's funny to me 'cause people, I remember when that came out, people were like, this has to be the hardest boss battle. - No. - That has ever been in video games. - No. Try going up against like, I don't know, clown piece in Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. - I know what that means. I don't. - Clown piece. - Clown, what it-- - She's the little America character, hold up. So she's like this anime girl, that's like a fairy. She's the fairy of hell. 'Cause there's hell in this game. There's an underworld and there's another world and there's hell and there's like a bunch of different sex and there's like different kingdoms of hell. - There's more than one underworld. - There's like the netherworld and hell. And like the netherworld is kind of like purgatory-esque, I think where it's like-- - Oh. - Where ghosts go. But hell is like where all the like humans go and like there's like these different realms that are from folklore, like Asian folklore where it's like they're different like three animal realms. - Oh, that's um, that is Buddhism. - Yes. - In Buddhism there's the-- - Yes, the animal. - Like six realms. You have like the living, the gods, the dead. - Yeah, there's a lot of Buddhists and Taoist. That's actually like a big thing in the game is like the Buddhism versus Taoism thing. - That's fun. - It's really cool. But this is, I'm gonna show Elias a picture of clown piece. And you can join us if you want, if you feel the need to look it up. So here's the problem is that I have one bar of data. So I'm gonna go to our Discord messages. I'm gonna point her out because she's on one of the songs. - I have my phone in my hand right now. - Look at her. Look at this one, this one. - The middle one? - The middle one. She's like wearing like the USA outfit. - Oh yeah, look at that. That's a bunch of red, white and blue. - Yeah, red stripes, blue. - The purer of the Star Spangled Wire. - The Star Spangled Banner. - The American. - I don't know, she's the fairy of hell. I guess America's hell. - That's funny. - I love her, she's funny. But hard boss battle, Junko, same game, hard boss battle. Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom is basically about what if we killed everyone on the moon? (laughing) - Okay, 'cause there's like moon people as well. - Classic storyline. - Classic storyline. There's moon people as well because in Chinese and Japanese folklore, there's like the woman on the moon. Chang'e, and like moon rabbits. - Oh yes, yeah. - So there's some earth rabbits and earth rabbits and there's moon rabbits. And moon rabbits sometimes come down from the moon to talk with all the little earth rabbits, but they can go like back and forth or whatever. - That's really fun. - And so Chang'e, somewhere up on the moon, 'cause she's up there. She's banished up on the moon forever or whatever. Like in my little pony or something. (laughing) But yeah, she's up there on the moon and this one character, Junko, which is actually based off of this legend, had her son killed by Chang'e. So she hates Lunarians. She hates all the people from the moon. She hates the moon rabbits. She hates the regular rabbits. She hates the people on the moon. She hates Chang'e the most 'cause she killed her son. - This sounds like a Ray Bradbury novel. - Dude, kind of. - Probably. Kevin, I have bad news. - Oh. - Are we out of time? - I think we are. - Well, to end that off, she tries to kill Chang'e, doesn't work out. And she's a really hard boss battle to get through. And by the way, you never meet Chang'e. - You know what? Actually, before we leave, Kevin, for recommendation, mostly for me, but for also people listening, what would be, since there's so many of them, will it be a good starting Toho game? - Okay. - Yeah, that's a good question. I started with embodiment of Scarlet Devil, because that's the first canon game. It's hard to emulate, but it's hard to play on Windows 11. And 'cause it's like meant for older Windows. It's from 2006, so it glitches out a lot. And it's before, like, Zun perfected the bullet house style and your hit box isn't shown ever, really. So that's like a good one to start out with. If you wanna go through, like, the timeline. But I think the best one to, like, start with is Imperishable Night. - Imperishable Night. - That's where all, like, you meet all the rabbits and stuff. It's a fun storyline. It's still, like, kind of hard, but it's like one of the easier games. I think it comes out after, no, it's the one after two games after the first, like, Windows game. So it's six, seven, and Imperishable Night is eight. - Very nice. - And it's a really great game, easier. And you get to, like, kind of learn about, like, the style of Toho. A lot of the humor doesn't translate well, but that, like, makes it funnier, because it's a very blunt, humor style. It's very absurdist of a game. A lot, I love it. And you'll meet one of my favorite characters, if you play it, and get kind of far raisin. She is the purple-haired bunny girl. - I'm about to play the song, her theme. - She makes you go insane to look at her eyes. Don't listen to her theme. - Oh, my God. - She's gonna make you go, "Oh, echo!" (laughing) - All right, well, thank you for joining us for the first episode of Maverick 64. We're the first episode, I'm on the first episode. - Yeah. - Bruh. Hi. - Hey. - Thank you all. Farewell. - Farewell. Oh, here we go. - Wait, I cut you out. Do you have something to say? - Oh, I was just gonna, like, can you fade me out? - Yeah. - Oh, no, I'm, I'm leaving. - I'm leaving. - Now you're being heard through my mic. Oh, I'm fading out, too. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)