216: The Sickos Rank Still More Game Mechanics

[00:00:00] Behold, a cold open. Joe, you'll never believe this. I was at Aldi the other day. You want to know why? Because you got to eat food every day. It never goes down. It never takes. Like, I always feel like I make a really good dinner and I'm just like, this is the one that's gonna fucking work. This is the one that sticks? Yeah. Never. I was at Aldi. Normally at Aldi there's not a lot of interesting events that occur.

[00:00:28] I don't go to the Aldi that had the coyote in the fridge. Did you see that by the way? No, I missed that. There was a, I think in the 90s there was a Quiznos coyote in Chicago. They're probably related. He was next to the Sobeys. I think he wanted a Sobe and he knew it was the only way that he could get one. Because in the coyote world, in the wild, they don't give you Sobe. Yeah, there's vending machines everywhere and he has no coins.

[00:00:54] Yeah. I drank a Sobe a lot of the time in college and then in like senior year, I looked at the label and saw that it was like 200% daily sugar and I was like, oh fuck, that ain't good. Anyway, I was at Aldi and Joe, the eggs were, you're not gonna believe this, it's not relevant to me because I don't really like eggs or buy them very often.

[00:01:18] But the eggs were for a dozen, $5.98. And I saw something else. That wasn't what shocked me. What shocked me was what I saw next. A woman with her partner, boyfriend, husband, I couldn't tell. Fella. Fella. With her fella. Was shopping. Also at Aldi. They needed eggs. They went up to the thing where the eggs are. They saw the little sign on the door with the price.

[00:01:47] She turned to him and said with no guile or irony in her voice whatsoever, why are these eggs so fucking expensive? So Tom, her job was to do environmental storytelling for you. Yes. She's the person writing, cut off their limbs in her own blood on the wall. Writing in her journal. The event will never occur. And then chucking the journal behind a door.

[00:02:17] Uh, I would, like, imagine the clear, untrammeled brain. Nothing in there. No, no dark dirt ruining her thoughts. It's just literally the only thing people talked about either earnestly or to be stupid about it. But it was eggs talk always. Why are these eggs so fucking expensive? Lady, how long do you have?

[00:02:44] Like, do you truly not know about any of the events? It's like, how do you even start? It's like, okay, let's sit down. You know that there's a job called the president, right? Like, he's the egg setter. Yeah. And, like, you know the thing that's going to make you be in your house for a year in a couple months? Well, that's, that's going on. Also.

[00:03:13] Why are these eggs? Joe, it wasn't even, like, an indignation thing. Just like, ugh. Look at this. It's like, how come the eggheads in charge can't get it together? It was straight up just like, I'm receiving brand new information and it seems absurd. Like, I'm simply confused by this. I could not believe it. I was talking with my therapist about how this feels very much February before COVID.

[00:03:42] Again, just like, it just, like, no one's noticing it and then something will happen. Like, the NBA being canceled or something and everyone's going to notice it. I, uh, I'm saying this because when she finds out the egg lady, we will have all reached awareness. Like, it will be common knowledge where we're at when she is like, oh, God.

[00:04:09] Hello, everybody.

[00:04:39] Why are eggs so fucking expensive? How come? We just noticed this. It doesn't make any sense. They just come out of chickens. It's not hard. There's a lot of chickens around it. You just got to feed them, like, dust and sand, I think. They, like, peck at it and then they make an egg. Honestly, I don't know why the eggheads in charge haven't figured this out if they're so smart. This is Anime Sicko's podcast. It's the podcast for geniuses and the only podcast where we look at the four pillars of modern misery, anime, gaming, posting, and jobs.

[00:05:09] I am Tom in Anime Sicko. I am Joe, an anime sicko. We have three Patreon givers to thank for giving us five of them dollar bills. Thank you. Our first Patreon giver is someone who has a funny joke name where it's a sentence instead of a name. And it's goth girls will save us all. I don't disagree. Like, it's... I sure hope it's true. Yeah. There's a lot of saving that I need.

[00:05:40] But thank you. I mean, I'll say it. Like, giving us five dollars is in many ways saving us in the sense that we can't live off the Patreon money. But the Patreon money renders our unemployment depressing. Doable. Instead of terrifying. Our next Patreon giver is Mark Barks. Mark Barks. This is like a puppy girl. I was going to say a dog attorney. It's one of those.

[00:06:08] Mark, thanks for barking and giving us money. Thank you, Mark. Joe, our next Patreon giver has given himself a nickname. The, like, nickname in quotes between the real first and last name. Which, I know that sort of received wisdom is like you can't give yourself a nickname. But doing shit like this is so bold that I kind of like... I'm like, yeah, no, you earned it through the brazenness.

[00:06:35] Because it's Connor Big Man Webb. I was, like, hoping for Connor the laser or something. But Big Man's good. He's the big man. Connor, you truly are the big man for giving us the five big bucks. And you can give us five big bucks if you go to patreon.com slash anime sickos. And it really helps us not go fucking insane. And make the show, I guess. That's fucking secondary.

[00:07:05] To a lesser extent. Speaking of making the show, we're going to rank game mechanics on a tier list. You may recall we did this. We're going to, before we get going, we'll sort of summarize what we have now. But, you know, it's an ongoing thing we've had. A segment that's not been that successful. It's fun for us, not so much for the listeners. So, we're going to wrap it up today. This one should be the last one. If I'm looking at the list correctly, we only have 330 to rank still.

[00:07:34] So, we're going to have to go a little bit faster. But, whatever. You won't probably know this. We're going to pick up the pace. This is the last one, though. Yes, for sure. Let's go through what our current rankings are. So, do you want to read what we got in an S tier? I'd be happy to. S tier. Cream of the crop, baby. We got double jump. Level ups where they say every single stat change. And the wagon from Dragon Quest. For A rank, which is like, what if S rank sucked? Yeah. Levels.

[00:08:04] Just leveling up. Yeah. Full heal on level up. Regenerating shield, but non-regenerating health. And getting a rating at the end of a level. For B tier, which is like, what if A tier was fucking incompetent? We have jump, single version. We have a sliding dash. We have where you press jump when you land on an enemy and you get a whole new jump instead of just doing a little bounce.

[00:08:33] We have job experience. This is a different from normal experience. Dracula shooting three fireballs. A roll with iframes. And a homing attack. And then we got C tier, which is like if D tier locked in. We got air dash. We got MP, as in magic points, the things you use to cast spells. XP, the whole point of games to make the level up bar go up.

[00:09:02] This one's cut off. I know what it is. It's when there's a cut scene and someone is drinking from a glass and they drink and their eyes look fucked up. And then their mouth looks fucked up and their wrist looks fucked up. Yeah, like this is every Yakuza game when you talk to someone as they drink. It's very good. It's important. Yeah. But it's a C tier. And the last one is the mechanic.

[00:09:27] Like near and dear to our hearts, but still just C tier, is when you are pursued by a freak. And we got D tier. D tier is if it stopped being locked in and just started fucking up again. As it always does. God, D tier, get it fucking together. We got missables, like from RPGs where you're just like, I wonder how come I don't have that sword that I see in game footage.

[00:09:53] And it's like, you need to have gotten that before you go to the Mystic Grotto. And it's like, I went to the Mystic Grotto. Biggest crime of this is Final Fantasy IX with Excalibur II. Oh, yeah. Which is just like, if you didn't get to this treasure chest on like disc three in 20 minutes or something, it's not there. Yeah, you have to speed run and skip the game. It's just like, I don't want to do that. It's like too fucking bad. I had the strategy guide and I still was like, everyone will betray me. Yeah, it's bullshit. That's why it's in D tier, dude.

[00:10:22] And also in D tier, you have the homing attack specifically from 3D Sonic games. What's an E tier, Joe? We got triple jump. It's too many jumps. It's too many. It's decadent. Junctioning GFs, Guardian Forces from Final Fantasy VIII. A mechanic everyone loves to talk about. Yeah. Everyone's always yammering about this. Bring it back. Bring it back, you know? Mm-hmm. And then roll. This is specifically roll without iframes. This is because roll with iframes, you recall, was earlier in B tier.

[00:10:52] So this is- And obviously fucking better. Yeah. I mean, if I'm rolling, I mean, and I feel this in real life. Like, this just feels true. Like, if I saw like a huge like blade shooting at me, like horizontally, like out of a wall, like in a big slot and it's just like coming from my waist. It just feels like if I rolled, even if the blade hit my body, it would just go through. And you're not saying you shouldn't get hit at any point in the roll.

[00:11:21] You're just saying at the start of the roll, it would go through. Like when I'm in the air still. Like when I start, when I hit the ground and I'm like, you know, on my shoulder and I'm doing the actual rolling part, like obviously that would kill me. But, you know, you get it. And then we have F tier, which is the only- We only put something in F tier if it truly- It disgusts us. Yeah.

[00:11:45] If we truly believe that it could never make a game better in any circumstance. And the only thing we have there so far is level ups where they don't tell you anything. It just says level up. And you just have to sit there and wonder what the fuck that means. They do it in Final Fantasy XII, which I like a lot in a lot of ways. But when you level up, it just says level up.

[00:12:12] And I want to like kill- I need to know what that means. It needs to have meaning. And also you're not like, well, maybe you are, but when you're playing XII, it's not like you have a running mental stat sheet that you can just like, oh, it's different now. I certainly don't. From the level up. Joe, I'm glad- I'm sort of touched that you think that I might have the fucking calculatorable

[00:12:37] capacity in my stupid brain to run a running stat sheet of the Final Fantasy XII characters, but I assure you I do not. So we need to fucking pick a new mechanic to rank. Joe, we've got our menu open. Pick a delicious treat for us. I got a bread and butter one. Gimme. One that's not like inherently goofy. We're just- we're just talking mechanics. Base assault mission, as in you fight a million guys that are coming at you. Base assault mission.

[00:13:07] This is- XCOM's got one of these. You see this a lot in the open world games these days. That's like one of the modular events that you can put anywhere that doesn't have any plot relevance, but you can like jimmy up the layout of the base based on like where on the map you slap it down. You don't even have to like make it good because you can just drop a circle and be like, oh,

[00:13:35] the guys are gonna come here. Like, you can be real lazy about it. The thing is, standing in mostly one place where a bunch of people come at you and you shoot them is- I mean, that's gaming, folks. Well, okay. So I need to stop you there because that's true, but I fear that we're- that we're gonna diverge in what we're talking about. When I'm thinking about base assault mission, the first thing I'm going to is the fucking

[00:14:00] Spider-Man game where there was base assault and like you would go to a place and like press like start mission and then you would just like have to fight guys for three minutes and then be done. What you were describing, standing in a room as people come at you and you shoot them all, that's smash TV. That's- that's a whole different thing. Okay, so where does the Gears of War horde mode fall? Because that's just like a Gears of War map that's very small. Guys come at you until you die.

[00:14:30] It's literally like you do a last stand forever. Whatever. Is- is that a base assault mission or is that a different thing? Because I like- That's a good question. Is that a- is that a like a mission? I haven't played that, so I have to ask you for these- this piece of information. Is that like a- like a game of Missile Command where like you- are you're guaranteed to lose and the game is just how long can you last? Yes, it's literally that. Okay. And it's co-op.

[00:15:00] Okay. I think- is that different? Is that different? Is that a different- So the distinction here is last stand games versus defend the base. Because like when you defend the base, you are doing so with the intent that you will not die. But if it's like, eh, we're gonna just see how far we get, we will die. Yeah, that's- that'd be a last stand mode. I would put that on the end.

[00:15:23] And I know we need to get to the end and- by adding a new thing when we're doing our first mechanic of the day that we have essentially had a net zero progress. Yeah, but these kind of canceled out. Yeah, this happens. This is just how- this is- trust the process. Trust the process. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so last stand mode, that's a different thing. And I think that's pretty good. And also, I'm not talking about like tower defense games.

[00:15:53] I'm talking- and the way that you can tell is this is base assault mission. Like this is a- this is a distinct like opt-in chunk of game. Where like in this part and in this part only, you're in a little area and you gotta fight all the guys. And they're gonna keep coming in waves until it says, you did it. I know exactly what you're saying. I associate it with like video game churn. I mean this in the most neutral sense. Like it's like you drop it in a destiny map or something like that.

[00:16:25] It is a- like flavorless workhorse in that- in that context, I believe. Yes, it is. Like I said, it is a modular standard issue open world game chore. Like you can- like, okay, there are 15 areas in my open world. I'll put down 15 fucking base assault missions. Whatever. Don't need to think about them. Just to- to design a little map for each one.

[00:16:53] Each map's a little different and fucking guys come out. So I am- here's what I'm thinking, Joe. I'm leaning C and I'll tell you why. Because I agree with you that this is a flavorless mush that I call root marm. But it does- unlike a lot of open world game chores, this actually does serve a purpose and can be fun.

[00:17:15] Which is if the game- and this is a big if- if the game has an interesting combat system that's actually fun to do, the base assault mission gives you just like a lot of time to like live in it. Because a lot of the times in these games that have big combat systems and it's like, oh, there's so much options.

[00:17:36] But like the actual like main missions, you know, they're designed for like little kids and people with full-time jobs to beat them. So like it doesn't actually require you to do anything that interesting with the combat. And it's like, when do I ever get to like really dig into my options? And it's like, well, here's an optional part. We'll just let you fucking- like it's basically training mode. You can just go nutty for five minutes for free whenever you want.

[00:18:06] What do you think of that? And like I think that is useful. It is definitely an inelegant way of implementing that. But, you know. I don't disagree. I think C is correct. I'm willing to put C there. I will say in its favor, we are using sort of like the Destiny open world MMO-esque shooter sort of event example.

[00:18:31] Just saying, if that is the type of game where that is happening, these like last stand missions, these base assault missions, that means there's absolutely shittier ones where you have to find a bunch of things. Uh-huh. Yeah. And this is better because you're in one place. They come to you. Yes. Yes. Yes. There's so many of these stupid chores and guaranteed some of them are going to be stupid gimmicks that are not fun.

[00:18:55] And when compared to those, just like, hey, you just fight fucking like enemies. Yeah. Well, there you go. Oh, and also it lets you have like the full menu of combat options because like, because it's just like you're standing in place and there are waves of enemies. Like if every wave there's going to be more enemy types until you have seen every enemy type in the game in one encounter. And it's like, ah, cool. A variety.

[00:19:24] I'm fine with C in that, like, I don't think it'll ever detract, but I do think it's sort of inelegant usually. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It would be better if this thing was accomplished naturally. Uh, and this seems like a band-aid solution, but it is a solution. So, C. It's okay. Not bad. It's D if it locked in, like you said. Uh, alrighty. Let's see.

[00:19:54] What next do we want to do? Joe, I have one for you. I think this might be, uh, interesting to you. It's runs. Like a game that has runs. Like the concept of runs. So, this is the shit. A run is a unit of life. It is a basic building block of life. Uh, uh, before I was laid off,

[00:20:20] I was, uh, hysterically, extensively trained to be a scrum master, which I was very excited about for many reasons. Uh, the main thing, though, that, like, made me like, oh, I'm looking forward to this, is that every sprint is a run. It's just a run. Uh, and I was like, okay, cool, I'm gonna have a roguelike job. And they were like, just kidding, bitch. Um, so, I am gonna put runs at either S or A. And as a, as a father, it's wonderful.

[00:20:48] Even though I played games that were heavily run-based before, it is super good to have, like, that sort of, like, bracketed gaming experience. Like, there's a start and stop here. I have a, uh, an easy out. Mm-hmm. Um, and yes, you can stop playing a game and do whatever, but the point is, the run gives you, like, the full game experience, which is, like, you start with nothing, and then you get to do the stuff where you mindlessly, uh, have a build,

[00:21:18] and then you beat a boss. It's, like, the whole, it's, it's Bollywood. It does everything. Yeah. Yes. Yes. It also has the sort of, um, appeal of gambling, but without being satanic. Because it's one thing to just start playing a game you like, but when the game has runs, you always think this might be a good run.

[00:21:47] And that feeling you get when you're midway through it, and you're just like, this is a good run. Like, that is, that's really something. This is not 100% the case, but games with runs very often have a wonderful stat summary screen at the end that is just fun to look at. Oh, yeah. The purpose of which is just, like, uh, if you have a friend that's also, like, doing Slay the Spire shit, you can just send them that screen. You don't have to, like, tell them, like, what you even did. Mm-hmm.

[00:22:16] You're just like, oh, they're like, oh, this is insane shiv city. Cool. Mm-hmm. Uh, so I think that is crucial. I actually think printers are bad. Computer printers have never worked. However, every time you beat a computer game, no, not even beat, every time you complete a run in a game that has runs, a very old printer should fucking print out the summary sheet, and you can't stop it. It has to do it. It's very loud and annoying.

[00:22:44] Gotta be one of those ones that has holes on the side, and that, like, That has, like, foldy accordion back and forthies built into the paper. What do you call that? I don't know. Um, but I agree completely. Joe, I just want to, this is splitting hairs, but I want to see how you define it so that just we know what we're talking about. When we talk about runs, do you count, like, retro, like, arcade-style games where, like, like, you just, you're supposed to play it a million,

[00:23:13] it's not like a narrative game from now where you play the game and you beat it, and you're like, and then the game is now over forever. But, like, Defender, is that, does that have, do you play a run of Defender? Or, like, Mario Brothers? Like, Mario, if you play it right, it takes, like, 20 minutes to beat. Like, Slay the Spire might. When you, like, boot up Mario Brothers, is that a run of Mario? I just want to know where you're at with it. Uh, no. I will say no, because games that have runs are designed with the idea that you are, uh,

[00:23:42] playing a game that's going to be repeated just a bajillion times. Like, the repetition is the point. Uh, and some of those old classic games, the purpose of which is to extract coins from people at the cabinet. Uh, also, games with runs are going to have some element of randomness something that's going to cause churn. And, uh, the Michael Jackson arcade game, does it have a run? I would say no. No. Because it's the same every time.

[00:24:11] I, I think you've hit upon the key distinction, which is the randomness and also that it's the selling point. Is that like, hey, this is, like, like, we have a great product for you. It's a game that you're, that you play a million times. I don't mean that the game is so good that once you beat it, you'll be like, I want to play it again. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like, the play, like, when you sit down to play it, you will play it at least like three times per sitting. And like, oh, that, that's runs. Okay.

[00:24:41] You know what it is also in runs favor? Is it, it's not this, but it's a cousin of the feeling of, okay, I played a board game today. I did like a thing. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You get, because it's just a run. It's just, yes. I agree completely. Joe, I am with you on it being extremely good. I only hesitate to put it in S because S is shit that would make every game better. Uh, double jump, level up to this, every stat change in the wagon. He's like, logically that doesn't work

[00:25:11] because not every game can take runs. Exactly. So I'm thinking A. Yeah, that's a big A. Hell yeah, I love that. I love that we have covered runs. Uh, Joe, give me another, give me another one. Pick the next one. Uh, you know what? We love our tactics games. Uh-huh. Our Final Fantasy tactics games that have jobs. We do. Okay. So let's go with something, uh, downstream from that. Uh, when a game has the joke class, a joke class,

[00:25:40] Joe, is so fucking good. If you aren't aware, if you haven't played any RPGs, you've got the class or job systems where you can assign someone a class or a job and then that has special abilities that only that class or job can do and they're generally stuff like warrior or mage or, I don't know, like, like summoner, animal tamer. But, uh, there's some

[00:26:09] that just suck ass and they're on, they're in the game to be funny and, well, Joe, I think we love being funny. I think we really respect it. Are we on the same page here? Yeah, so, like, what's, what's it called, Gadabout in Dragon Quest? Yes. It's, uh, a guy whose skills are about slacking off, like, that's just what it is. It's so funny that they don't even, like, trick you with it. Like, someone in the, uh, temple

[00:26:37] that you assign jobs at is, like, make sure you don't give anyone a Gadabout job. The Gadabouts don't give a shit about RPGs, dude. They'll, like, fall asleep in the middle of a fight because they just don't care. And if you give someone the Gadabout class, yeah, they, they fall asleep and you say attack and they go, I fell asleep. So the only problem I have with

[00:27:06] joke classes is that they sometimes are required for unlocking awesome shit later. Basically, whenever I play a game that has a job system, I will look up if there's advanced jobs that have to be unlocked and not just, like, for spoilery stuff, but it's just, like, I'm gonna just pick the stuff at the start that's gonna lead me to, you know, the shit I want. It's just saving me time and effort. Mm-hmm. I hate when I'm choosing something at the start that I know sucks, there's just dead weight

[00:27:36] in the party that I'm just waiting for them to get better so they can eventually become something useful. It just feels like you have, instead of a party, a full party, you're like, and I have this, like, strange dog that doesn't do anything. Also, the Gadabout is gendered, I forgot. Yeah, I just, I was looking up, like, does the Gadabout, because I was like, does the Gadabout have that thing where, like, because I don't remember, where if you, like, level Gadabout up all the way, it does that, like, magic carp to Gyarados thing where, like,

[00:28:05] actually this is the strongest, and I don't think so, I think it just really is a terrible class on purpose, but, you know, there are male and female versions of the Gadabout. The male Gadabout is a big tubby clown wearing a nightgown who has clown makeup and a big cartoon mouth and a hat that was like a dunce cap from school. And then if you're a girl Gadabout, you're a

[00:28:35] porno lady from Playboy. Yeah, same word though, Gadabout. Yes, Gadabout. That's, uh, that means the same. Joke class, Joe, the only, I think the thing that makes the joke class so good and that makes the joke so funny is that it really is just that bad, and it's just like what a waste of time to program this piece of shit and put it in my game. As long as it's not required for something cool later, I'm fine

[00:29:05] deferring to you. Yeah, I don't know. I'm thinking C. You know, C is right on the line of like always good. Joke class, I think, needs to be in a game where the normal classes are really good and fun. It neither needs to be a level of high quality just across the board and then there's the one bad one and it's just the fact that it's there when you know the level of quality that the

[00:29:35] team making this game can get to. That's what makes it funny and I think that's sort of a rare, you know, it requires a rare level of skill otherwise. So as good as it can be like I wouldn't want a crappy RPG to have a joke class because like I'm sure that half the classes are like broken with how crappy they are but they didn't even intend that so the joke class just feels like more of an insult. That's what I'm thinking see. That's actually a good point. I feel like things that aren't joke

[00:30:04] classes end up being joke classes because they just suck but it's not like oh this is funny. It's just like ah this is outclassed in every way by this other stuff. Yeah. It's like this class is a joke but like you mean that in like a insulting way whereas the Gadabout like this class is a joke. He's literally putting on in clown pants like clown pants, clown pants. There's a guy who's the tutorializing guy who says don't give anyone the Gadabout class like it just

[00:30:34] sucks. They're useless and yeah see. See. See. All right. Let's do another fucking one. Oh this is a classic of the genre. This really this is like you think of video games you think of this. You get fucking hired to write sketches for dorkly.com. This is your pitch on day one is a riff on this. I'm talking about enemies who it hurts to touch.

[00:31:04] They're not attacking you. There's no weapon. but it just hurts to touch. It's a wonderful reduction of purpose. They don't need to be shooting fireballs. They don't need to be throwing things. They just need to walk at you. Yeah. Super Ghosts and Goblins is just this and also when you get hit you have an awful stun jump where you go backwards 100 feet. It sucks shit. Yeah that's on the list I'll swear but we'll get to that another time.

[00:31:34] No we won't we'll get to it today because we're doing this was a huge the enemies which hurts to touch was huge in the NES and SNES era. I mean talk about hurts to touch Goombas. That's like the original hurts to touch. It's also just like understood like no matter what game you're playing you've sort of just completely internalized something that maybe reads as an enemy if it touches my guy it shouldn't like I shouldn't let that happen

[00:32:04] just that is your opening strategy. Maybe you'll get more information than change but do not let anything touch you is video games 101 for a reason. I'm thinking about like okay what games in that era didn't have that and I'm thinking like the only thing I can think of are like beat-em-ups like your double dragons and your streets of rages where like the enemy only hurts you if they're like doing something. You can also walk through them physically like they you clip. Yes yes exactly.

[00:32:34] I think also I can't think of any right now and maybe I'm talking out of my ass but I'm pretty sure that there are some NES bosses in games where normally enemies hurts you to touch where you can like touch them because they're like doing big like animations. I'm thinking like Ninja Gaiden or like they do big slashes and stuff and like that's the part that hits but like you can like walk up under them and go check check check check. For me it doesn't it's got to be if you touch a pixel of the other guy you

[00:33:04] take damage. What do you think of it? Does it make you feel good? I mean I see the appeal in that it is such an elegant abstraction that takes a lot of the sort of guesswork out but also it's stupid as shit. Personally speaking it's never happened to me because I'm good at video games. So I'm actually really open to suggestions here because it's not going to happen to me in the future either because I'm not going to get bad at video games.

[00:33:34] Yeah. Well here's something else to consider. I've been thinking of this exclusively in the retro gaming context but we're not ranking retro gaming mechanics. This is all games and like I'm thinking about modern games. I don't think you can get away with an enemy who it hurts to touch unless like they are obviously like some sort of goo monster who like is made of the goo that gives you poison damage that you like had to walk through earlier in to introduce

[00:34:04] you what the goo meant. Like if I was playing fucking like some triple a adventure game and I came across a marauder and or bandit and they just like walked into me and my guy died like from that like that would be like what the fuck like no. But that is bump combat. That's different. That's different and it's on the it's also on. I know it's on there. I know it's on there but like it is you know what no it's different because

[00:34:34] the enemy gets hurt by you too. Yeah. Yes. It's a totally different thing. This is like enemies are hurt and that's the other thing. Okay. This is something that I'm glad you said because this needs to be said and I was going to forget it and I had this thought a lot when I was a kid especially I had this NES game because all my games were games that my brothers got and I didn't it took me a long time to realize that like you could get more games like I thought this was all the games that were and I had one game that was called

[00:35:01] Rush Attack for the NES where you are a guy who is trying to run to the right and you're in like military bases and you want to like destroy them and like any operative who's dropped into an active enemy military base you have one knife that is your only weapon and you were constantly having guys come at you who are going to rush and attack or you think they would but they don't attack because they hurt you by touching so they just

[00:35:31] rush the game is just called Rush but I got so fucking pissed playing that game when I was a kid because I didn't know I know now the game fucking sucks ass it's like objectively bad but as a kid I just assumed all games were good because I liked games and these were the games that were and I got so fucking mad like why is it that these other guys kill me instantly by touching me but I don't hurt them back why is like why am I the

[00:36:00] big bitch of life it's not like in Mario it makes sense because like you can jump on them and so it's like we both have we both have an advantage in different ways in like Russian attack it's and like what I'm sorry what like no you're just better than me at being hurting so I feel like the best version of this and it's more modern than I mean it's classic but it's not like 8-bit

[00:36:29] of a game that has damage upon you being walked into but also it's not annoying is Metal Slug because you will knife immediately like it's yes you will get hurt by a guy walking at you however if you are pressing fire and you are because there's no reason to ever stop pushing the button and a guy gets close to you you automatically knife him when he's in knife range that seems like a fair balance of power

[00:36:58] between the hurting walking and the gamer that's true I agree completely but you have to understand that what you're doing here is you are arguing for the goodness of auto knife attack yeah it kicks ass did you not just hear what I said no I agree completely but auto knife attack does not change the inherent quality of enemies who it hurts to touch so I would put auto knife attack at like a you know what

[00:37:28] let me add auto knife melee to the list and then give it an a because I completely agree and also we need to get through all 330 of these auto knife attack is a band-aid not a band-aid but it's an addition that makes enemies who it hurts to touch better I think enemies who it hurts to touch is is it D here's okay I'm gonna give you the reasoning I think because it's really been outclassed like it had

[00:37:58] it's it had a moment where technology was such that you had to do that but like we're past that now and now like there are so many games where the enemies don't hurt to touch they hurt when they attack you that like going back to it like if you made a game now where the enemies hurt to touch and it wasn't explicitly retro themed people would get fucking pissed and I think they that would be reasonable and that's why I'm thinking D D is not like

[00:38:27] E and F are like just truly rancid shit I do not think it's truly rancid but I just think that it you get me I agree I have more evidence that it should stay in D and I want to just bring your attention to like an awful gaming feeling which is when you're playing Mario and you die and it's like no I fucking jumped on him but yeah yes I am on him not touching the side

[00:38:57] it's so true so D D yeah all right so I want to do this one next uh this is a big one this is a classic I'm talking about consumables your potions your ethers your uh sword oils consumables I mean they're good my problem is I'd never use items like in a like a chrono trigger final fantasy thing like you look at my inventory and there's stuff I could have used that I did not uh that's not really an issue

[00:39:27] with the consumables that's my own flaw as a creature of sin no no no Joe I am gonna you you're so down on yourself I'm gonna absolutely disagree with you there it is the game's fault and I'll tell you why if I get a fucking like arctic wind item and I'm like what the fuck is this and it's like arctic wind casts a ice spell and I'm like well I can already do that so this is never getting used also I do not have the brain power to think to sell it so I will just

[00:39:55] stay in a state of inaction uh with a bunch of shit that fills up my inventory yes yes yes and also the other thing especially I mean for like health items where that it's like it says how much it heals you it's like okay I know exactly what this is a lot of the weirder items I don't really fully know what they do like like uh uh like some some of the weird bombs and oils and elden ring or like those those like items in rpgs where it's like it casts a spell for you and I'm just like well what

[00:40:25] does that mean casts a spell does it use the same damage calculation as if the person no it means it does 50 damage to everything exactly that's so fucking often the case and if for example that wasn't the case if the item really did do like the best version of what I thought it did well I just used it in a test scenario and it's gone like okay that's what save scumming is for but are you you don't you wouldn't do that

[00:40:55] no I would not also in a rpg that's too much fucking work I'm already in menus constantly anyway to go to the fucking like emulator menu in addition to the no oh also sometimes consumables are too good I'm thinking about the hero drink from final fantasy like 8 where it's just like you win the game when you drink the hero drink and like was it like you mean it buffs you in combat or what does it do it makes you take no damage and I think it makes you have full limit

[00:41:24] break always and it lasts like a minute so like that's pretty good the game's over I guess and they're not that hard to get either super mario rpg had good consumables that you'd like save for stuff I remember there is like a secret boss that's like qlex it's like a final fantasy boss that mario has to fight for some reason and it's like way harder than everything else and it's not a cartoon it's like a mono art

[00:41:53] like monster and that was like the reason you keep all the shit that like makes you invincible for three turns or do all this stuff for that fight I'm indifferent about it I would say c like it's like air to me yeah yeah here's joe you're not a souls like head like me I need to specifically call out and this is something that might push it down to d maybe maybe I could live with c

[00:42:23] in the souls like games they give you a lot of consumables like you give things that you could eat a piece of meat that makes you do more damage for a while you could eat a prawn and if you take less damage for a while you could put oil on your sword you could throw a little bomb thingy at the enemies and that's I understand why they would do that you know makes sense here's the thing when you're first playing against a

[00:42:53] from soft boss or in a new level you're going to something's going to happen to you which can only be described as getting rinsed you're going to get rinsed immediately there's no chance you're going to win on the first try that's you're collecting data and the way to get data is that you have to get punched in the face a hundred times yeah get rinsed um and that's fine getting rinsed there's nothing wrong with that eventually you're going to get what the boss or level is all about you're going to get further and further

[00:43:22] and then eventually uh you're going to win okay and the consumables are supposed to be your little leg up you know uh this boss is weak to fire and they'll simply use fire paper on my weapon to make it a fire weapon for a minute now that will truly ruin the boss's day here's the thing these consumables in like the best case scenario and if they do their job perfectly what does that mean it means like the boss's health meter is like

[00:43:52] 20% smaller functionally because you're like doing that much more damage so basically it just means that on a run where you would have gotten the boss to 20% health you win here's the thing uh I don't know when that's gonna fucking happen uh and if I'm like struggling and I'm like I just I can't if I'm thinking I can't beat this boss I need some help well guess what that means I'm not good enough to regularly get it to 20% health and thus I'm using my legs

[00:44:22] up the legs up run out it's like you can buy more with what souls I keep dying I'm I'm I'm poor and at the wall I have no money this is this is the same logic for why I I I both understand the value but generally dislike any upgrade in a roguelike where it's like upon death just you get another life and it's like that's objectively amazing however I'm probably fucking it up yes yes if I died like I wasn't good enough so you're just

[00:44:52] saying that the boss gets to kill me twice cool yeah like like the lizard tale from slay the spire like the only time that you die and you come back with 50% health the only time that's useful is if triggers on the final boss because otherwise it's like well I died when I had 100% health so like this is not going to help and again to go back to the souls like thing if I am able to get the boss to 20% health I don't go oh boy time to use my consumables I go

[00:45:22] I got this and then like two or three runs later I do it because like I got this oh if I'm getting it to this low I'm only making a couple mistakes I got this I'll get better and I do fuck them I'm that's why

[00:45:54] and I will tell you why Nioh is like a souls like ninja gaiden it's got ninja gaiden combat but it's a souls like in

[00:46:24] consumables are I think one of the smartest things I'm seriously thinking S I can be talked down to A and no lower here's how it works there are stats in Nioh that you can level up that are like magic and like ninjutsu and what do they do do they do damage because if you level up your strength you do more damage you level up your health your HP goes

[00:46:54] in Nioh a great deal of them that do a number of interesting and useful things much like in any souls like game and much like in any souls like game I'm like I got two fucking talismans that enchant my weapon with fire okay so I'm going to use these against the boss that's weak to fire get rinsed both times and back to nowhere but with the added benefit of I'm sad that I lost my thing okay fuck this however when you are at a bonfire you are able to conjure

[00:47:24] from fucking nothing some consumables how come what's the fuel am I crafting them out of crafting items I picked up no no no imagination you're crafting them out of your magic and ninjitsu stat if you have a high magic stat if you have like 10 in there's like a talisman that costs 4 to make and so I can make 2 of those and then another thing from another magical item that costs 2 and I just

[00:47:54] have them if I use them against the boss and I die I'm back at the bonfire and I ます is almost all consumables if you level up your shit high enough you can just be like dude you never use your fucking weapon you just

[00:48:24] like throw shit out you drop traps on the ground and you can afford to fuck around with that and experiment because this shit is free it's consumable for this instance and then when you die and have to try again they come back it's so fucking smart and it really

[00:48:46] oh my god it fits the souls like structure so much better than the stupid standard like you find it on the ground and this is the only one you have so hearing you talk about that the thing that jumped out to me is that how it specifically enables player experimentation without you worrying about like oh man i want to figure out how this fire potion works but i hope

[00:49:11] i don't waste it uh that's objectively better because regular consumables just hang out and they suck whatever in general i was going to suggest something like uh the souls genre has sort of put us at peak bonfire yeah and when i was about to say that i meant specifically the just the refilling of the healing items at the bonfire which is not to say it's bad it's just like it's

[00:49:35] it's it's everything because it actually makes a lot of sense it works whatever this and i've not played neo it was the first time i thought the bonfire was cool again yes it it it's so good and also like when you when you put it like the way you did it makes like it's insane that no other designer thought of this and that from soft hasn't thought of this because it's the same fucking thing it's the same it's the same like basic idea which is like you have a limited amount of of things that

[00:50:05] help you and you have to make the most of them and if you run out you can't get more but when you get to the checkpoint who will take a breather because they all come back and now you get a send so that that's why it's such a safe place just do that but for in addition to healing for all your shit it's so smart like it's so fucking smart i can't believe it and i the reason there's magic in ninjutsu

[00:50:33] is because like there are magic items and then there's like items that are just like from real life like you know knives and spike traps and uh smoke bombs that kind of shit uh and they want you to not be able to use all of them unless you really invest in both stats which i think that's smart but like the core even if they didn't have two stats and it was just like there was just a stat that was

[00:50:57] called like building like crafting doodads yeah dude there's a doodad stat and and the doodad stat let you make doodads for free at the bonfire the fact that you don't need to like collect like fiber and wood you want to go to a workbench yeah like i oh shit i can't make i can't make a kunai because i don't have fiber i gotta go grind fiber like it's like almost like it's the feeling when you see

[00:51:24] something and you're just like i don't think humans made this like this is divine like this came from god like that's how i feel about neo consumables a giant on the stone came up with this yes the stone so they went out to the stone in the sea the team that was building neo was like you guys been working so hard we're gonna do a team building exercise where you your favorite thing as you're japanese it's whaling so get on the boat guys and then they were passing by the stone in the

[00:51:49] sea and the giant was there he's not always there and they're like hey giant what's up and uh he opened his one big eye and looked right at them and he spoke without talking his mouth didn't move but they all heard him and he explained this shit he's like what if there was a doodad stat regular consumables are washed and they're like the doodad stat would be too powerful he's like mix it up into magic and

[00:52:17] ninjutsu and they're like you got it oh man i'm putting it in a or s a s or a what do you think i'm open to s i just haven't played the game but based on what you're saying and it's like it feels kind of like oh no shit that's smart the same way yeah your backpack is unlimited space like it's just like no fucking duh like why isn't it always like that i don't know joe and like the the

[00:52:43] feeling if you don't invest in it which i didn't really i i was using a big ass sword that was investing in use of big ass sword but i had enough points so that i could make like two talismans that would enchant my sword with uh elemental damage per uh rest at the bonfire and the fact that like when a boss had an elemental weakness i knew like i will always

[00:53:12] be able to take advantage of that i mean you still have to like do the little animation of putting it on so like it's if you need to figure out a safe time but like or with original consumables it feels like that entire part of the game is just shut off because it's like i will waste them and then that's it so i might as well not use them ever just the fact that i'm putting an s it's an s s s s i was able

[00:53:39] to play through an entire game with that shitty fucking loot system because of how good the consumables were i could not even believe it's so good anyway that's that uh what do you think is we got enough for a couple hundred more at least two more yeah uh how do we feel about this pressing the thumb stick down ever boo

[00:54:07] joe i was up on the highs of s tier and then you told me about the least satisfying physical action you can do when you have like a piece of of skin on your cuticle and you pull it and it just goes all the way down your finger and has like a big strip of ouchiness that's gonna be the maggots start coming out yeah that is like only slightly worse than when you have to

[00:54:34] click down the thumb stick on the controller it is an it is a nasty evil uh button to push and especially when so many controllers have stick drift it really just feels like you're breaking it on purpose i feel like the xbox 360 was the height of developers being like you love to sprint with pushing down the thumb stick yes especially for first person shooters uh oh also and your sprint

[00:55:02] is only a couple seconds and you go huff huff so you constantly have to be clicking it again and again and again and again and again if you want to keep sprinting which of course you do it's just like an unpleasant action i'm not saying it like hurts or anything but it's not something i want to be like i just want to push a button just let me push a normal button it's like joe you don't like a big cartoon lever remember the walker texas ranger lever from conan a big cartoon lever it's a long thingy it's a long pole with a handle and you pull it and goes ka-chunk that is a totally

[00:55:31] reasonable item everyone loves it that's why they put in cartoons now imagine if like you had to push the entire lever like in to do a second thing it would feel perverse it would it honestly looks i'm thinking about it now i'm visualizing it obscene i hate it that's what this is it's like you took a perfectly good item and then like you've you've made it like nauseatingly weird but it feels mushy

[00:55:58] uh it feels like you don't have uh an actual sense that like you're pressing it like i've played games a lot when i go to press a i know what's gonna happen there's just something like sort of tactically mushy and non-precise about pushing down a thumbstick which means it would have to if you're going to use it it should be something that's like not all the time like a map i guess but i don't want to be in a situation where like i have to reactively press a thumbstick down while moving you know the thumbstick

[00:56:26] at the same time yeah uh that is it has a nightmare it's just they've already come up with other buttons what are we doing you know other buttons is a great point because i think the fact that there is not wide mainstream acceptance and standardization of paddle buttons on the back of the controller because some custom controllers have that the steam deck has that they have paddles on the back so

[00:56:52] where your your big hands are holding like the thingy like the handle parts normally they're not doing anything like that's a sprint button better than a thumbstick because it's a fucking button it meant it's meant to be pushed you push it and you don't feel like this shouldn't be doing this like you click the thumbstick and you're like this shouldn't that's just not what this is for buttons

[00:57:12] aren't this tall i think just if i could reduce my problems with it down it's that a hundred percent of video games are just you moving the thumbstick anyway so why are you adding uh an additional sloppy action into the mix uh it just doesn't feel good and the click is not satisfying they need to make it way better or like maybe a clown horn or something i don't know it just needs to have something

[00:57:37] you do the bike horn i would love that um i'm i'm leaning f in the sense that again i don't think that any game is ever made better by clicking the thumbstick down if any game you're like i like this part oh the clicking the thumbstick down wasn't that bad imagine it was a paddle on the back wouldn't it be better i i have i have an exception i just thought of one it's not it's not constant use it's just a

[00:58:01] one-off thing i believe it is the ps3 god of war when you go to gouge out somebody's eyes and they you do both thumbsticks to do it that's really good but like doesn't like you but you're not doing that in the course of a regular game it's like a cinematic sort of thing and you're being prompted and also it's to make you feel gross about like the the act of doing it we're not talking about

[00:58:27] dashing around with your thumbstick i'm not i see what you're saying and but you're you're sort of like caveats to sort of downplay it are not working on me because i'm not i'm not trying to get convinced that this is actually b or a i know this is terrible it's just but if if there is an example of it being good it can't go in f tier and that and that what you just described is good because

[00:58:53] you are you are doing in the game a grotesque awful action that feels very wrong and unfortunately that uses the act of pushing the thumbstick to a really it uses it really well because that is that is it it's and also it's worth mentioning that kind of only really works with the playstation controller because the the thumbsticks are next to each other you know what i mean like if you want to get oh

[00:59:19] yeah you're gouging out of guy's eyes his head would be weird if it was a 360 or you're holding his head sideways yes what so what the i'm fine with e i think one instance of it not being total dog shit uh sounds about right yes and and as we've discussed that is all it takes to get you out of f uh i think the only thing in app is still level ups where they don't tell you anything

[00:59:45] and again that there is that is never ever ever there's no you can never give me a situation where that would be good when you could just tell me every stat change i'm sitting so mad about that um so yeah i think we have time for one more uh why don't you tell us what do you want to end on i really thought we would get through all 300 i guess we'll have to do at least one more we were close

[01:00:12] though yeah and we did add a couple so you know we i we did sort of make no progress whatsoever breakable parts oh breakable parts we're talking about on enemies not like your parts of your kit breakable parts on okay so just out of the out of the gate the monster hunter hammer is just for this uh it's wonderful it's the skull cracker playing the hammer with monster hunter is so fun

[01:00:41] because it's not like oh we're gonna kill the monster it's like no how many like how fucked up can i make it before it dies like how many pieces of it can i knock off uh so in monster hunter it kicks ass it rules also it's just so fucking cool when it just so happens to be the strike that knocks something off that was yes a very cool time for it to happen or maybe like you saved a guy by

[01:01:05] interrupting their animation that's what i'm talking about yes that hit where the breakable part explodes and shattered and here's i think this is i think a a key thing of defining breakable parts you have to see it it has to have it has to visually occur in the game like you have to see the monster to get fucked up yes um that hit especially on monster hunter where you hit the

[01:01:31] monster 500 fucking times before it goes down the hit where the part breaks that is i think video games need to focus on this more and we talked about this with runs briefly but when games take gambling but use them in moral non-satanic ways you get the high without the the downside that is so good it

[01:01:58] is so fucking fun because every single hit especially like the first couple hits no way it's gonna break too too strong oh and with the hammer too you are so the hammer is like the dopamine reward weapon because you are simultaneously trying to knock everything off but also you know that like you're gonna get like maybe two or three stuns in there oh yes which is great just hitting that ball

[01:02:23] and monster hunter has the the thing where like when you break something hitting it further sucks for the monster so you get to sort of do like a meat spec on the menu boys when you like crack them open i don't want to make this all about monster hunter although monster hunter does the i think it's the best yes the king like does not be but but i want to say i just want to make it clear that it's not

[01:02:48] only monster hunter that does this some people didn't like this game i thought it was good but i understand where they were coming from doom eternal the sequel to doom 2016 has breakable parts on almost every single monster it doesn't do it in the same way that uh monster hunter does it where you have to focus down a part and then it will break when it hits its threshold what the breakable parts are in doom

[01:03:16] eternal it's just a health bar but instead of the health bar floating over the enemy's head it just as they get closer and closer to death more meat falls off of them until like at the end of their life they are like a shambling corpse with a little bit of tendons still were i mean they're all weight they're all corpses but there's just like only a tiny little bit of meat keeping the skeleton going

[01:03:41] and then you shoot in the last time they explode and it's fucking great it's like when i saw the first teasers and trailers for doom eternal because i thought doom 2016 was great i mean i saw what they were doing with all this and that and the jumping and the swishing and the you know movement effects and the freeze grenade and the i didn't really care i'm like whatever i'll get i felt there was too many gizmos yeah it's just like whatever gizmos i didn't really care about that i know like you know

[01:04:11] some people didn't like it i think you didn't like how there's too many i was like whatever i don't care about that that's just guns whatever i'll figure it out when i am playing it but when they were like also all the enemies have huge fucking chunks of meat jump off of them when you shoot them and that way you can tell how close they are to death and it's like you couldn't fucking tell how close they were to death in doom 2016 and it was really frustrating the parts fall you feel so

[01:04:34] goddamn cool you shoot them with a fucking shotgun and huge meat sheets of them just fucking vaporize rules i love breakable parts a i'm serious i think it's good yeah i'm with you i'm with you why not s is there ever a time when it wouldn't be relevant here's the thing i'm i'm unsure and i think the fact that i'm unsure says it all i would have to be sure that like breakable

[01:05:00] parts are always good also breakable parts fallout yes i was gonna say uh oh god what was that playstation game that was like the the robot dinosaurs with the archer lady uh shit horizon horizon zero dawn okay so i think that so this is a useful example to bring up because that game is just breaking parts because like all the dinosaurs like fall apart and shit yeah i think it actually becomes tedious at a

[01:05:26] certain point it's it's it's not like monster hunter where it's like oh i'm wailing on the the crab and then uh parts of it fall off and i get additional drops as a result it's just like oh man this giant t-rex sucks unless i take out this this this this this and this this order yeah yeah yeah yeah uh and what it becomes is although that's like interesting from a gameplay perspective it just becomes like very

[01:05:50] rote it just seems like a very uh established process which kind of takes away from like the hunting trapping feel of the game yes joe that is so fucking smart i'm so glad you said that because and i hate this is gonna sound bad but i'm i hope you can hear me out i'm thinking actually this goes in b because and i don't mean that by saying it's not as good as a however what you've described makes

[01:06:15] it clear to me that breakable parts although it kicks fucking ass is it could be implemented in a non-perfect way yeah but and the and the correct way to implement it is as a like a light little sauce like ding right on top if you try to to dig into it that's when because yes yes yeah it stops being

[01:06:41] like i'm fighting the boss and sometimes if i'm really lucky some fucking amazing shit will happen it's gonna change the whole vibe it's like well i'm fighting a monster but i can't do any damage to it unless i first shoot their fuel tanks which is gonna make them uh weak to fire and then once their fuel tanks are gone i have to get the coupling because then that's behind but credit where

[01:07:05] credits do they they made a game that the bad guys had fire barrels like in them like they were they were walking around with fire barrels like as part of their body we don't have fire barrels on this fucking list let me fix that red red barrels put green ones in there too those do gas green barrels poison what were we talking about we're talking about breakable parts yeah i'm thinking

[01:07:33] of b just because it is among the very best things you can put in a video game but only if used sparingly and i think that that not quality but the fact that like we don't want to get anyone having the wrong idea yeah yeah yeah yeah like paprika is great but if i were to get like

[01:07:57] a meal that was like over 50 percent paprika i'd be like i absolutely thought you're talking about the movie i was so okay yeah i was but you're gonna eat half of a movie yeah dude if someone gave me like a sandwich where one of the slices of bread was a freaking dvd of satoshi colin's classic paprika i would say i don't like this i'm thinking b for this reason am i crazy do we stick with that because

[01:08:25] i can i can stick with that no the a distinction is basically for me if i'm hearing you correctly is that if the mechanic is included it is almost a guaranteed value add or slam dunk like it's it's it's fine like it's going to be good no matter what with b and what we're saying now is that like implementation does matter it has to be done well or rather it can't be uh you can't like squeeze

[01:08:55] you can't get blood out of a stone from it like you can't lean into it too hard yeah like we haven't beat dracula shooting three fireballs and obviously in castlevania that's great but imagine you were making a non-castlevania halloween themed game and you made like the common enemy dracula and he was shooting three fireballs like and like there was 10 draculas on screen and they were shooting three fireballs every two seconds if you did this i would come find you i would attack you i mean i'm insane

[01:09:19] now rfk is going to take away all my meds i'm going to become so scary uh god i hate that man you know who i really wish would get uh so it's going it's going in a tier i'm sorry it's going in b tier yeah reason said previously yeah it still is when implemented well in the same way the jump

[01:09:43] is when implemented well it can be the greatest thing in the world but yeah i think to be an a or s it has to be that it will always be good in any game as like a core thing i feel good about this i want to end on just an observation because you brought up jump and i think it's worth saying it is like fucked up how bad the mario brothers arcade game feels though right like it controls like absolute

[01:10:09] shit yeah in a way that feels like it's like a trick i wonder if it would be as awful if it was the first time and also do you i'm also lumping the donkey kong arcade game because mario moves the exact fucking same in that like an asshole i wonder if it would be as awful if you hadn't first come to

[01:10:33] know mario absolutely real mario it's like i've every time i've played the mario brothers arcade game it's been on a cart of a real mario game yes so it's like okay cool i get to experience regular mario speed and then it's like would you love to play this two-player game where he for some reason just like forgot to walk he just sucks uh his jumps are weird it's so there was such a

[01:10:58] fucking time in the 2000s where nintendo was so horny for being like hey and as an added bonus you can play the mario brothers arcade game on this in a and this game comes with a free turd why is this never this i mean obviously nintendo should be leaning into you know art archivists and like maintaining the their their art of course they're not you know they don't care about retro

[01:11:27] stuff they don't they don't support emulation other than these are the handful of old nes shit that we can sell to them for the hundredth time ha ha ha ha i think the one place where they should still be evil is like they need to make mario brothers arcade game like not accessible like they need to take that away from history that's not good um also playing this again and he just controls

[01:11:55] like shit i don't know what we were thinking the first time i played it when it was a bonus on some fucking game i don't remember which but i was like i'm gonna experience some history right now i wonder how fun this is joe the fact that they're trying to sell this to you they're trying to they're trying to get you to play it they're telling you that it's a good thing to play you boot it up there's a koopa troopa you're like i'm gonna jump on that fucker and then you do and you die like

[01:12:24] that is deeply evil like whoa social contract broken and i know the game came first but they have to what tom said they should have gone back in history and removed it uh-huh and it would still work in terms of like the whole point is that you're trying to kill luigi and or vice versa which that's fuck oh i hate this oh i forgot that that was the point of the game that you're trying to kill your brother

[01:12:53] man i'm getting i'm getting heated i can't i gotta stop this is unhealthy um okay so we we have uh like two more left that will pick up in another episode right two or uh oh it looks like a 328 yeah uh for this week what have we done let's go over our rankings neo consumables we put that in s runs that's in a auto knife melee we didn't really talk about that but if you just put it in a just

[01:13:21] because like obviously um breakable parts that's in b base assault mission that's in c joke class c enemies with hers to touch d consumables normal style d pressing the thumb stick down ever is e i i stand by all of these and if anyone says we put them in the wrong place i would advise you to instead of saying that fucking kill yourself um okay coming in a little hot uh i uh i maybe do soul searching

[01:13:49] instead of yeah yeah i got too heated thinking about mario brothers arcade that was wrong of me don't do it um do your soul searching instead fix yourself you know what i'm gonna split the difference fix your hearts or die david lynch rest in peace my man anyway that's all the time we have for anime sickos i gotta eat lunch i'm hungry we've recorded this in the morning i've been tom why did i say all that let everybody know i'm joe an anime sicko we'll see you next time bye bye

[01:14:16] thank you for listening to anime sickos i've been tom a sicko you can follow me on blue sky at tom harrison joe was also a sicko you can follow him on blue sky at sharia uncle you can follow anime sickos on blue sky at anime sickos or email us at anime sickos at gmail.com you can give us money at patreon.com slash anime sickos if you want uh please leave us a review or something i don't know

[01:14:43] tell a friend uh anyway until next time bye