258: The Sickos Meet a Real Vampire

[00:00:00] Behold, A Cold Open Tom, you recently sent me a text that I can only describe as a text I would normally send you which is a no-context image of you at Medieval Joust saying, I'm at the Joust. I think I sent you a picture of the Blue Knight and I said, dude, this guy just did a Kaioken

[00:00:26] which that is the very Joe thing to say. I went to Medieval Times, folks. Here's why. We went, me and all my siblings, to my cousin's wedding a while ago, like a month or two, April, I believe. And in doing so, we had to drive up to Wisconsin. And when you're driving up to Wisconsin, you see the fucking dregs of Chicagoland as you leave the comfort of home behind.

[00:00:54] And one thing that we drove past that was a, it was a Medieval fucking Times, which all of us were amazed was still around. I thought that Medieval Times closed down when the cable guy did that expose about how Jim Carrey works there. But it's still around. And so we were all like, let's go.

[00:01:20] All my siblings are going to be in town over the summer. Let's go then. It'll be funny. I don't have like a joke or a punchline. It's just that Medieval Times is still around and it's like legitimately the best thing. Like if all you fucking freaks out there, I know you love wrestling. This is what if wrestling had a lot of horsies and the horses were fucking pretty, dude. Yes, yes. Okay, what is like NWO but like a noble house?

[00:01:49] And then there's people fighting under that banner of NWO. Yeah. Like it's the same thing, right? Yeah, there's an evil knight, dude. I won't tell you which one because they probably switch it every show. Halfway through the king and queen are talking between all the fucking doodads, all the set pieces. Halfway through the queen is just like there's no sport to the tournament if there is no risk

[00:02:14] and demands that all the remaining fights be to the death, which is hilarious. That's good. All right. The only way you know that someone has taken a deathly whap to the tummy because that's all. And every time they like do like a hit, they whap the opponent in the tummy with the flat side of the sword and they go, ooh.

[00:02:37] The only way you can tell if that was a deadly ooh or just I'm a little off balance ooh is if a big red light, pow, spotlight appears on the victim, they died. Oh, there's a UI element. That's cool. Yes. And they have a horsey. They have a falconer dude who comes out with a falcon. The falcon flies like right above you. It owns.

[00:03:01] They shove in the dark while you're distracted the crappiest, cheapest frozen food you've ever had in your life right in front of you. Oh, I know. It's like banquet, right? It's banquet. Yeah.

[00:03:40] Yeah.

[00:04:10] This is a hard left. The falcon. It's a good thing. I know.

[00:04:41] I'm going to be talking to you. I know. I know. It's not really happening to you.

[00:05:08] It's not really happening to you in real life.

[00:05:40] Asi. Okay. The falcon. The falcon. Jesus. I think I do. The golden egg factory is inside the goose. Yes.

[00:06:08] And what produces them is the factory itself. You remember that classic tweet that's like I walk by business classes and they're all writing down profit equals revenue minus cost like it's real school. Can you read that? But for geese, I'd be I'd be happy to. This is not a visual medium. So simply close your eyes. Imagine I'm writing what I'm saying on a blackboard. Okay. Yeah.

[00:06:36] Market capitalization equals. Egg value plus goose value equals. I think this means yen. Yeah. Okay. So again, for the idiots in back market capitalization equals egg value plus goose value equals yen plus alpha. Alpha is an investing word that means behavior that gets you more money.

[00:07:06] It means goose value. 74 trillion Japanese yen. I should be clear. I guess that's egg value. Take me down. Because like I think we need some examples here. Let's let's just plug in some values into this equation and just sort of talk about what happens in the interest of something about what an egg is generally. I'm looking I'm remembering when I went to the store. How much is an egg? And I'm thinking it's 74 trillion Japanese yen.

[00:07:33] That's a that's a pretty conservative just if we're working with fuzzy math type of value for an egg. So that's our starting egg value. As for the goose value. The golden egg factory inside the goose what you see the eggs what produces them is the factory itself. The true source of value something and that's like alpha. So yeah, I think that we can all understand how we calculate market capitalization from that.

[00:08:03] Here's my question and it's answered on the next page, but I'm going to put it to you. In this scenario, what is the shareholder value? Well, it can't be one egg. I'm stumped Joe. I need I need you to help me out. Three eggs Tom. Oh my God. Okay. And here's the thing where you need to make sure you're sitting down. Eggs do not lay eggs. Okay.

[00:08:37] It was the goose that created value. There's okay. Goose was not valued, but it was the goose was spurned by its lover. Eggs do not. Okay. Oh, the phrase. This is three slides in a row. This is sequential art is best. The goose begins goose value zero question mark.

[00:09:05] Then we see three goes to 74 increase 71. Those three eggs that were the shareholder value before are now next to 71 additional eggs. I think in goose math, like the timeline starts at three. So like three is actually zero. Yeah.

[00:09:24] I just love how triumphant the goose appears visually when everyone when like his comeuppance is given him what his do is given him. And everyone knows that goose value is actually 71 instead of zero. You know, his whole life people have been saying there's three eggs. Eggs do not lay eggs. Also, I think it's am I understanding this correct correctly.

[00:09:53] I mean, I think maybe I'm coming at this from a wrong perspective, even on to even conceive of it as something that could be understood. But am I understanding this correctly that soft bank man is trying to say, like, don't kill the golden goose for the eggs. I think that's a good idea for the eggs I don't know, but if I'm not going to buy the eggs that are better than myself. The guys go for a long term. My dumb guy reading of this is that it is no different than the original Uber plan, which is have enough money and outlast everything.

[00:10:21] and then you know you're the only game in town uh which famously worked for uber which is now the only ride share company and also there's self-driving cars everywhere yeah uh yeah i don't know uh the thing is if you have i cannot stress enough these are like the money guys doing this this is not tom doing this for me this is a presentation for serious people by serious

[00:10:49] people uh which i am just saying this for the purpose of just apply for that job that's a reach who gives a fuck yeah it's just so clearly like 20 years ago someone who actually knew what they were talking about told masayoshi son about the golden the goose that laid the golden egg and like it's a cautionary tale that like don't try to cash out your short-term gains right away realize that it's more

[00:11:18] valuable to go slow and steady and build wealth over a increased period of time and he took that to be wow geese are so wise i like when you talk about geese it just fucking hits bro what strikes me is very funny is like if if the slides ended before it got to this slide where it starts plugging in

[00:11:47] hard numbers like 71 and 74 like that would actually probably be better because you're like oh we're talking about a very abstract concept but when they're like no three shareholder values increase by 71 the goose value 71 the stuff that's the stuff so in conclusion if you live near medieval times go visit yeah did you eat like a leg of something that's the only thing that matters yeah they gave you half a

[00:12:16] chicken you have to eat it with your hands it's great but did you walk around when you ate it because that's kind of a big deal no no no it's during the show if you're walking around you're missing the fucking sword fight dude you're sitting your ass down you have to holler for your night you get assigned a night based on where you sit i got the blue knight he was the best one except he died

[00:12:38] because it was rigged hello everybody welcome to anime sickos it's the podcast for geniuses and the

[00:13:11] only podcast where we look at the four pillars of modern misery anime gaming posting and jobs i am tom an anime sicko i am joe an anime sicko and i was just thinking the other day we're gonna live forever we are it's true that's why we've been putting out episodes so consistently because everything is so

[00:13:33] the foundation is so strong and america is soaring we are uh it's rough out there folks uh yeah me personally i just got done with like a depressive episode that was like why it's like i you know why there's no there's uh it's funny when it's just like oh why am i sad well a very reasonable reason actually hmm all right yeah well back to the drawing board i guess um one of those ones

[00:14:02] where everyone looking out is just like what's how's joe like today and i'm like well you know how his life is a sine wave that goes up and down well it's down the down one now meanwhile joe is just like how could this have happened how could this have happened uh yeah yeah and then tom had his uh in-laws over so he lost his the one of like the the greatest sacrifices a man can make is to give up for

[00:14:32] a little bit the space where he podcast to his in-laws that's like giving all of your organs to your mother-in-law yeah i did it i did it for like two weeks they were here they were in the states for three weeks they were somewhere else in the states visiting additional friends for one of the three weeks uh but yeah there was three weeks but i had no podcasting space and you know why i did that because i'm the greatest son-in-law that ever lived it was fun they were great we we went to um

[00:15:01] we took a day trip to milwaukee we went to the milwaukee art museum and if there's one thing that i really have to praise the milwaukee art museum for is that there's no ever there's no like screaming men who who emerge uh who yell uh they're gonna kill me okay you know what uh uh i did i if you are familiar with the show i'd said this before but my wife and i went to milwaukee uh a little while ago

[00:15:28] and when we were there a guy who was like in his jogging clothes just ran in and was just like they're gonna fucking kill me and uh he was had to be like sort of wrangled uh and i i was like alarmed not because like i was like worried about like the guy is scary i was like his mental illness is going to activate mine he has to go away now like this is not yeah uh but anyway time at a normal time he's gonna make some good points about who is coming for him and why and it'll be like

[00:15:56] joe's joe will just be like shit goose value is 71 sorry honey i'm scared too ah but it's an awesome museum it looks so cool it really is badass i have to uh recommend milwaukee uh if you have not been especially if you're in chicago i've never been i mean i was i think i was in milwaukee at some point when i was like little but anything that happened to me before i was 14 in terms of like tourism does not count because like one i'm not paying attention i'm thinking about like

[00:16:26] where's my game boy and like two it's just i'm getting took into place that my parents are going which is the same as what happens at home so i don't consider it novel or new um so uh that's why it's been a while and you know what happens when it's been a while since the last episode is a lot of patrons accrue without us thanking them so we're gonna do that now sorry for the ones at the beginning of this list because but it's been a long ass time since you started your patronage and uh

[00:16:56] we haven't thanked you it may even be that you've already ended it and if you did we accept your choice yeah it's fair i mean i know about the money there ain't none to be had so so i get it uh but our first new uh patron from what's the fifth month called from may uh man sorry about that uh is misha longman

[00:17:23] thank you misha thank you thank you oh my god this next patron this is a stalwart she is a absolute hero of the anime sigos discord you see her all the time if you are on the anime sigos discord saying incredible things uh and speaking of incredible things she has patronized us twice the the amount that is requested ten dollars we were receiving from from this person this is platinum quill thank you

[00:17:50] platinum quill thank you you get new game plus when you die because you gave us twice as much we don't advertise that because people would uh if they knew they'd abuse it but that's true you do get that and what is it specifically it's when you you get to you get to heaven and then you get to keep all your stuff mm-hmm mm-hmm and like the first few levels you're like oh my god this is so easy

[00:18:16] but then you didn't know but the scale enemy scaling is like exponentially faster so like they have new resistance game yeah by the time you're mid game it's like as hard as it was before uh but you get that boost right at the beginning anyway our next patron is max brown max brown thank you max thank you thank you thank you thank you uh our next two are patrons who patronized us and then had to stop

[00:18:45] and then came back how do i know because i remember the gags that we did about their names last time first one is rd the patron thank you rd you are the patron thank you thank you uh and then the rain raven the rain raven no spells folks that's just facts all kinds of spells you got elemental ones divination divination how do you say that divination divination yeah and then some other examples that i'm not thinking of right now did you hear about i don't know if i'm gonna get into this because it's

[00:19:15] not interesting enough for a segment it's just like wow huh can you believe uh there was a minor fooferah on the website threads because a young adult author thought that the word scrying something divination magicians do thought that the word scrying was too uh difficult and obscure and was saying like authors it is uh think you're being ableist when you put difficult words in your book scrying is a word

[00:19:44] on magic cards like magic cards are not high intellect lexicon stuff i think i think she needs to play more magic that's true um also that was very funny because i had seen that just as i had finished reading for the first time blood meridian which like if you aren't gonna be reading that with a dictionary you just have to be so ready to assume that half the words you see are some

[00:20:13] shit in the desert uh part of a horse that you didn't know about there's like so many pages where it's like they walked over the and there was on the side of the and it's just like what the and you look it up like that's a fucking that's something it's like a rock in the desert you look up the other word that's a plant in the desert and it's like okay well i'm not gonna look up any rest of this shit it's they're in the desert yeah it's it's a very esoteric usage of something that there's a

[00:20:39] obviously better word for but like yes but like i don't know like he made those choices he's not afraid of scrying who cares yeah uh you're talking about patrons our second to last new patron is rosalie king thank you rosalie thank you thank you and then our final new patron alexis yo thank you alexis thank you thank you you can go to our patron patreon.com slash enemies that goes and

[00:21:09] patronize us and you get nothing you get what you just heard um you get our undying appreciation that's true we've done it won't die until we die and it's like that's kind of like when you get like a lifetime subscription to something it's their lifetime it's like the lifetime of the company yeah so you know if we get hit by two big trucks or one truck that like hit one of us and got the

[00:21:37] taste and hunts the other then that's then the thanks will end um but until then it's done die okay joe uh you i don't know where you got this from and i kind of don't want to know but you recently found a holy text you know how there's like some or maybe not anymore and the in the 20th century when sort of like culture was at its zenith there would be scholars

[00:22:04] who would just read and publish on one author there'd be like a dickens scholar there'd be like my mom was like a jane austen scholar like these people who would like find a text that was so rich that like the rest of their life they were like i bet i'll never stop thinking of things

[00:22:28] to talk about re this text we're that now for this i found this because it was someone just posted it on blue sky i didn't look at any of the context because it's a youtube comment and it's just a beautiful found poem can i read it can i read the beautiful found poem okay uh this is a youtube comment by user

[00:22:58] kels militant played baseball with a vampire when i was a child in the bronx nyc dot dot he's doing the dot dot dot dot dot dot it's the two dot ellipses i love it he had sunglasses latino looking with fangs he was hitting home runs like no tomorrow i asked him you a vampire and his whole aura changed when i did

[00:23:25] and he just disappeared after i'll never forget this i'm 29 now shit still with me everything you said resonated my brother this has just been in my head i'm mumbling all of these parts to this fucking thing as i go about my day you a vampire oh my god i joe the only thing i think when i'm hit a lull

[00:23:54] when i when the when the the train of my thoughts takes a little break and i i just exhale and then i come back to myself first thing i think always is i got one question man you tell me who next and then i laugh at that um that's from eli's rap we've talked about that very briefly um

[00:24:20] in an earlier episode but that's that's just like the the that's just the priming the pump i got one fashion man tell me who next you a vampire you a vampire his whole aura changed he was embarrassed i guess if i okay i liked so obviously i believe this like this is 100% what happened

[00:24:43] yes uh but for a thought exercise i was like what if it wasn't real what actually happened i'm imagining i'm uh a badass guy in new york and i am like holding fucking court on the diamond i'm ripping shit up and some kid comes up to me and asks you a vampire i'm just like okay this kid is

[00:25:08] gonna be a fucking nightmare to deal with because there's no answer i'm gonna give him that's gonna make him stop asking me vampire questions but what if i act weird and never show up again that might be funny i mean that's just him being like okay well this is not fun anymore i'm gonna go do something else which to which but again it's the same problem it's just like if a kid is asking you you a vampire

[00:25:34] like that is not a question that the kid isn't sure of the answer you know he's asking you you a vampire because he's like you are i mean like i i figured it out whether or not you say yeah if you say yes okay then i'm right if you say no you're hiding something you're scared yeah you're the masquerade yeah and i i love that this has the teen wolf logic which is a movie monster is good at sports

[00:26:03] he was hitting home runs like no tomorrow well if he wasn't joe if my if movie monsters and halloween beasts could not excel we played baseball with a vampire and he was just like regular good like he was like he he had a few unforced errors but like and he made it up else but like he

[00:26:25] he was still just human good he had a slider which could get kind of schnasty but his fastball was like 70 like that's not you can't go pro with that i if a halloween beast is just good at sports what are we scared of them for like huh huh it doesn't make sense he was hitting home runs like no no more i'm 29

[00:26:51] i'm a old man at the end of my life i'm looking back at everything that's happened to me in my vampire filled bronx life yes yes the framing of like i'm the gray beard but i i'm looking back i've had to walk around with this this whole time like i had

[00:27:13] to live my long 29 years with the knowledge that monsters are fucking real but they get really upset and self-conscious if you ask you if they're vampire they're so nervous also just a basic question like i i said to obviously look into this too much but like so you're playing at night then because

[00:27:36] like just just like the basic the basic vampire thing is just no son and i don't mean i'm not trying to be like actually i'm just saying it's like it's a there there is a logistical thing here uh maybe they're playing at night with like the lights like the the with the the stadium or the field

[00:27:58] lit up and then furthermore he's wearing sunglasses on top of that that'd be pretty nuts oh my god well that would be like the vampire from preacher did you ever read that that i love preach i actually i shouldn't say i love preacher i like i love that depiction of a vampire which is that uh he still has to like do the blood drinking but like doesn't have fangs he just like bites you like a guy yeah

[00:28:24] that was the same that's from uh near dark i think where like they the big the famous uh vampire feast scene is the vampires who are all just rednecks and bill paxton go into a bar and like they just they like slit people's throats with normal knives and put the bar cups bar cups the big mugs that the that the bar has like under their necks and like drink them like beers because they just have normal

[00:28:51] mouths um yeah he's like the vampire from from preacher that's why he has sunglasses on at night actually i was just thinking about this i think maybe vampires have a special connection to baseball because you know how vampires can't enter a home unless they're invited i thought you're going to baseball i thought you were going to talk about bats i really thought you were going to do some corny i really thought you were going to do some really corny shit about that um that's pretty good too okay

[00:29:19] well that's double we're doubling up on why the vampires would love yeah because they're they have to be invited home by an rbi you can't just go there you have to earn it yeah yeah mm-hmm and then bats of course um so public parks sometimes have lights on the baseball fields but i i mean i i i'm not exactly the most knowledgeable person here but my understanding was they turn on the lights when

[00:29:47] there's like a little league game or like a high school game not just like four guys fucking around no it's like they do the lights on for an organized scheduled thing but it's also better just to have lights on at night because it's like lighting and then if you want to use it at night it's fine uh joe actually i just i just thought of a question i had about this whole story you a vampire you a vampire

[00:30:14] you he got him dead right just fucking sniped i asked him you're a vampire played baseball with a frankenstein when i was a child in the bronx nyc he had a flat top green looking with bolts yes yes i used to bowl with the frankenstein uh what i did not mention on the youtube comment which is a beautiful digital artifact that should be

[00:30:41] pointed to is that it has the indicator that the owner of the video liked this comment they were like oh yes thank you i agree i think that needs to be taken and appreciated in concert with the final line of the comment which is of course again everything you said resonated my brother so what

[00:31:03] the fuck what are you talking about what is this halloween beasts is real ass video that this conversation occurs on i mean i think this also slots into the larger movie monster genre of the giant on the stone like these are all from the same mile because all these monsters are like not weird creatures

[00:31:26] they are by the book movie mask guys yeah yes and i think the reason that we believe these theories are stupid easily well yeah but also these are not irrational beings these are actors who exist in a system and behave thusly yeah to which i mean the giant he's in the sea he's on the stone he's got

[00:31:56] to sit on it it makes sense meanwhile like the vampire clearly has like rules he operates by you're in no danger unless yeah oh i mean you're in no danger period and then the only thing that i guess you can do to make him go away is point out that he's a vampire you vampire he gets really upset about that self-conscious it's because he doesn't want to be seen as cheating because obviously he's more athletically inclined due to

[00:32:23] all the dark magic he would feel like a fraud like he didn't earn those home runs he was hitting like no tomorrow you know okay i'm thinking about vampires again i'm doing another interjection that it's related on this vector only you know what's another really good uh representation or take on vampire is whatever clan that is in a vampire the masquerade that like like didn't actually become vampires but

[00:32:49] they just like did blood magic until they were oh yeah yeah yeah they hacked it yeah i just fucking love that it's just like we didn't even do it for real like we just got in the lab and figured it out the heck heads out at hq found the vampiric gene uh so we got that brother i thought you were gonna talk about the clan that's just kooky that's just the joan the jonker oh the one who's like the you

[00:33:18] like the light the light post will talk to you and stuff yeah yeah and i'll say something that doesn't make any sense but then when you find like the last level it's like you were talking about the plot of this oh you lamp post you such a kooky man you you a lamp post you a lamp post uh also the blood magic clan gets blood magic uh the best of which is a spell that just makes the person puke blood standing up and like so they stop all their other animation stuff and it's just it's like the

[00:33:47] best thing in the game because uh they can't every high dramatic intensity boss fight is actually just you pointing and the other guy puking and then you slap it's so fucking funny played baseball with a vampire while i was a child in the bronx nyc i used my spell on him started puking he was puking

[00:34:12] blood like no tomorrow i asked him you a vampire and uh his whole order changed when i did he just disappeared after he just disappeared he okay do you mean he left did he did he like turn to mist or did he just be like oh like somewhere to go i took that to mean like he did not show up after but i i guess it could be like someone like killed him in the past and he slowly faded away i asked him

[00:34:40] you a vampire what would joe what would it take for someone to ask you you a vampire and your aura not change like the only way i see that happening is if you like pull down his sunglasses and did like a little wink just like yeah i am and i am so confident telling you that i'm a vampire that my aura will not change because i am a cool customer as far as vampires go this would had to be a low ranking one

[00:35:08] because he got totally tilted off a child asking him one question this is not a powerful creature also he's in the bronx dude uh but the vampires live in manhattan okay they're fancy guys there should be a vampire clan that is just like brooklyn plumbers

[00:35:35] hey oh you're fucking you gotta you shouldn't be flushing them wipes they're not flushable like they do not remove your clan overalls you will get a serious debuff if those come off your body also do you have any blood i can have i'm really feeling oh you know what they do actually this is it they do the thing that you have to do if you're one of the ugly vampires in the game uh and you just

[00:36:00] you eat rat blood in the sewer and they're in the sewer because they're plumbers yeah they live there yeah that would be dude that's a niche that needs to get filled think of how much you would want to hire a plumber if like say your neighbor was getting some work done and like their plumber like popped out of the sewer he knows it there he knows got there through the suit and it's just like man

[00:36:28] you live it well like if you're in a fucked up blame city and there's all these pipes and shit around and you hire a guide you want him to like come out of some weird hole because you're like oh thank god yeah he knows what this is about and he knows where everything goes you a vampire you a vampire um you are you a vampire uh played baseball with a mummy while i was a child in the bronze nyc he had

[00:36:55] mummy wraps egyptian looking with scepters i don't believe that one because of the tripping hazard i just don't the running it's too obvious uh everyone was going to be watching you eat shit uh a swamp thing is just like a wet guy right yeah yeah that's just someone sweaty that's just a greek guy you're gonna you're gonna mistake the body hair for like vines i asked him you a mummy his old

[00:37:24] art just changed he ran away and i was stepping on his uh toilet paper and when it unraveled there was nothing underneath there's no baseball genie that that i'm confident saying there's no baseball genie played baseball with the genie when i was a child in the bronze nyc he had a wisp for an ass arabic looking with uh manacles he was hitting roam runs i know tomorrow i asked him you a genie his whole art changed when i did and he gave me three wishes he's always singing you ain't never

[00:37:53] had a friend like me what a guy it's true i didn't all they were none of them were blue prior to that after that either everything you said resonated my brother all right this is uh we've been we're back in the saddle after a long absence so we need to get our fundamentals back so we're gonna do the

[00:38:18] fundamentals and rank game mechanics on our frontier list the segment that everyone hollers for so you have a something you want to talk about specifically i do i i want to bring up what's going to be the first mechanic uh i want to talk about a little bit i was just at the sink doing dishes uh and then i just remembered this part of the game and i just started laughing and it was how earthbound has a

[00:38:46] condiment system so when when you like for instance eat a hard-boiled egg and you have a packet of salt in your backpack the packet of salt will automatically put itself on the egg allowing you to utilize two inventory spaces at once and then you heal effectively like three more health it doesn't

[00:39:07] fucking matter uh wow what a system unreal how much work and thought went in to perhaps the least usable least usable system in the history of rpgs um because if you played earthbound you know you got

[00:39:37] no fucking space in your inventory the main reason you get new people at earthbound is because they have backpacks and you can put stuff in there and when you get jeff you're like fuck because his entire gimmick is that his attacks are terrible but he has items that he can use to attack with uh that no one

[00:40:01] else is smart enough to use that do crazy damage but that's still a half a backpack that's still a he's yeah and he can't use magic he's just sucks dude no he's great if you have the stuff but if you don't have the stuff he's just like i don't got no stuff um you know what it's kind of like if there was a vampire without a baseball bat it's like what's he gonna do just okay let's let's just get real

[00:40:28] crunchy for a moment let's let's think of the game in terms of the our most awful min maxing selves let's use our awful maths here i'm imagining i'm in the bronx nyc i'm nine years old it's nighttime so the actual process that happens with this condiment thing is that you buy a food item and then you eat

[00:40:53] during combat taking a turn and then the condiment adds healing factor to it automatically but as tom has said there's like no inventory space in earthbound everybody gets like 10 spots total so you are on the hook for two inventory spots for one healing item uh and this is made worse by the fact

[00:41:18] that you can just buy two eggs dude just get two hard-boiled fucking eggs which is more and it allows you to split it up because you can you know i'm saying this is such a like amazingly why was this made system uh and i love it so much for this reason i have nothing but respect for it please please do

[00:41:41] not misunderstand me it's very funny uh you gotta love it so i joe it's been a while since i played earthbound i've only played it the one time so maybe you know the granular bits a little bit better than me is it not true that there are just like potions and like like or like like medicine that is just way

[00:42:02] better at healing than any food i if if like cost is like no objection and you're like gonna just grind a little and have money i think the best way to heal everybody is to get the biggest pizzas delivered because i think those feed everybody uh and i think that is just like the best way to do it like the best way to do it is to actually use your psi powers to do the healing because then you don't use items

[00:42:31] oh that's true okay okay so i'm looking yeah i that's folks that's my bad all the recovery items in earthbounder food um there's no potions to be had that's my bad okay so here's the thing that's so fucking funny you have to in order to take advantage of this condiment system you have to

[00:42:55] go to a shop with an empty inventory space and see that they have like mustard and salt and pepper and be like that's smart real quick what you're saying is absolutely true but you're you're denying yourself a good point here also if you really want to use these condiments they're not available everywhere they're only that one guy in that one fucking town so you'd have to be going back

[00:43:23] like all the time to get ketchup and shit which is also funny also it's not like you can put every condiment on every food uh and they don't tell you what you have to just use your mind every food has a wife and you have to figure it out by eating it in combat

[00:43:44] so and then again this is a game where like fully half the time like the the real time that you spend playing it is you waiting for the courier to come and pick up your xx items and take them to the the vault after you call them on the phone because the actual programmers who were making the game part

[00:44:14] had no fucking idea how to make menus and so they were just like we're gonna bind it to a guy pop-ups yeah and the guy came really slowly and like talked to you and he can only take three things at a time uh my god what were they thinking the condiments is so fucking funny this is the this is the purest

[00:44:36] earthbound thing because what happened was shigesato itoi who is not a game he's like just like a sort of renaissance man who's making a game for fun because everyone thinks he's so charming and he's just like you know you should heal by eating food and you should be able to put condiments on the food and you know that that's like all he said he's just like yeah don't you love in your own life putting

[00:45:05] condiments on food i would love to do that in the game and they're like yes sir oh fuck what do we do and that they introduced that in the second town which is in my opinion like the peak earthbound experience which is you are still only ness you're one guy uh and then there's just like a little bit

[00:45:26] too much stuff going on yep um god it's so funny i i put it at like like in terms of making something and putting it into the world it's s tier but it i would an actual like uh mechanic value and allowing that the value can just be that it's fucking stupid i would put it at an a or a b um

[00:45:54] because it just feels like uh the game is like by the way you're gonna wear this silly hat the whole game have fun yeah i'm thinking a b and this is why because how apropos that we're talking about condiments because this is a seasoning that that you should apply to a game uh which is to say a mechanic that is extremely stupid unusable and like vaguely hostile to the player but at the same time funny

[00:46:23] so that like you can't help but smile when it happens and this is the only thing you don't miss out on anything by not doing it exactly you the you get just as much enjoyment from like getting told this is how it works and and like seeing like footage of someone be like what the fuck the ketchup went on

[00:46:48] the hot dog what the fuck uh then you like you don't have to do it but it's better the game feels richer for knowing it's there yes yeah i like that that distinction richer we need to call when a thing just adds texture to the game by which i mean like it doesn't really add any like strict value in like a gaming sense but like it is a richer grittier not grittier a chunkier experience that

[00:47:18] it's in there because there's just more intent bouncing around so yeah i think b's good b it is all right next up on the list i gotta roll the big die joe what do you think about respects respects you put all your talents into uh and all your points into specific talents you've

[00:47:45] leveled up certain skills and you think to yourself man i really fucked it this time you're gonna want to respect what do you think about respects i need them like air because i'm gonna read some shit wrong tom like i need it uh games that don't have it it's just like it's it feels so actively hostile it's weird to think that uh when i played diablo 2 and the expansion for it

[00:48:15] the game didn't have respect so you just had to make a new guy of if you wanted to do like a different skill distribution or whatever and uh it's one of those things where it's like now having been without and now that it's like a standard thing in games i think we can agree that respec is just sort of a a quality of life thing that is assumed for a game that has something like a tech tree

[00:48:42] mm-hmm uh i so i guess my thing is i don't know if do i like them do i like respects or do i just hate the the the the feeling of being locked in for choices i don't fully understand because any game it's like oh yeah pick some skills also like the skills affect other skills later you're like i don't fucking know what anything is going to look like i don't even know what the stats are

[00:49:08] going to be called in like 10 hours mm-hmm uh especially in like a dark soul type of game where it's like yeah do you want to upgrade vigor or intensity and it's just like what the fuck what the hell are you talking about about those i don't understand what that is i'm thinking about um i'm imagining dragon quest 8 where you have skill points and a skilled tree oh my god but it's dragon

[00:49:37] quest like the game is easy as shit and you get you you like you have enough points eventually to unlock everything anyway you don't need a respec on that because the game is set up that you cannot through your own ignorance just ruin yourself what you can only do is get stuff in an unoptimal order like each character has like skills groupings that are like not the stuff you'd want to throw all your

[00:50:07] points at first like that's the worst you can do and like you have to know that going in like that because it's so obvious that like there's not there's not like dragon quest not the kind of game that has a bunch of like math going on under the hood what you see is what you get like an attack like this attack hits all enemies and it's like that sounds great and like this attack might charm one enemy for one turn like you're not gonna be like that's my one you're gonna know not to put

[00:50:36] skill points into the boobies skill right away you save that for later when the booby character is already sort of established useful so you don't need and that's in that sense in games like that a respec is not necessary i guess the question then becomes not all games can be as simple mechanically

[00:50:56] as dragon quest that would become boring so is it just a natural side effect of a complex game that you must respec or is it possible to design it and uh communicate information to the players so well that they won't feel like their first couple of decisions are going to be made totally at fucking

[00:51:22] random and then they're going to blunder forth only to find that they fucked themselves in a huge way oh this is hard because like i'm thinking about wow and wow got away from the annoying talent tree format because it was like what you said which is like okay yeah everyone's got these three talent trees for every class but like if you don't pick these things you're fucking stupid so

[00:51:48] yeah effectively your choice parameters are actually much smaller or whatever and the designers of wow and they said as much it's like what happens is like for the talent tree decision process because of how the game is like most of the choices are basically built in and then it's just little things that are here and there yeah they went with a different thing which is like there's like i don't

[00:52:14] know like every 10 levels or five levels you get you pick one of three abilities and when i say abilities it's like a new capability it's not like yeah 20 percent more damage to orcs it's like an actual function and then you can change which of those that you're picking in town i think or something

[00:52:36] in that case it's fine i i just think like at baseline if you don't have a respect option in some way you're evil like i just hate you now it's 2026 yeah uh the only this guy gets a pass because you can like kill a guy and reincarnate him for zero which is technically better so i don't know yeah uh i'm

[00:53:02] thinking also about i mean mentioned souls like i'm going to talk about elden ring elden ring is a big respect game oh yeah yeah yes yes so a lot of the times people do want to respect in elden ring especially if they're new to this genre is because they fucking didn't know how to make informed decisions about how

[00:53:27] to level up because how could they fucking it's impossible to do that in your first try because the game does not tell you uh and thus so everyone's going to be at a position where they're like my guy is the biggest piece of shit that ever was and then so when they eventually get the ability to respect it's going to feel like oh my god the pressure valve is off i get to redo and like actually

[00:53:52] make decisions that make any sense and so that's good and that's one way that's the kind of what i was saying before where it's just like it's a pressure release valve to make up for the fact that the game doesn't communicate well enough to you what type what your decisions are even doing you know uh so you end up in a situation where your decisions have done bullshit to you and so okay uh and

[00:54:18] in that sense it's just like well that's not fun that's just like a band-aid over another issue elsewhere in the game however consider this when you are good at elden ring when you have played it multiple times when you've done multiple runs uh the respect is so fucking fun because you end up with all the weapons and spells and everything and most of them you're not going to be able to use

[00:54:43] because you don't meet the stat requirements like i'm doing a magic build so you get the huge club with like a super super cool attack but like and now all of a sudden it's actually an option yes and you can just go to respect and it's just like i'm the bunga dunga club man now i hate magic and i forgot how to use it bye bye magic and then you there's a boss where it's like you would be really useful have that spell back it's like okay i'm magic again i forgot about how to hold a club i'm too weak i could

[00:55:13] never do it that's very fun the ability to just like it's it's a lot like a game with stance switching but uh you get to make the stance and it takes longer that doesn't sound that good no it doesn't but like consider the alternative which is i think the thing that frustrates me the most which is what i was describing was i don't know if i can respect or not or my choice is locked in here

[00:55:40] it's just if i could make it very concrete it's like i don't know if i'm like experimenting or trying to line stuff up for the long haul and it's i need to know which one uh i i i just need to know which one i really do i think that's a great point that that the that where where you need am i trying shit out then i'll do it but it's not like oh you're you're uh your interest in trying out different things has actually sort of fucked you in terms of uh

[00:56:09] specializing oh no like i don't want that like it's your first ever skill point by the way this is the final exam like if you don't spend it right you're fucked so and that's the thing about i i don't know if this is how do i say this i feel like japanese game development has so much more of that still i don't know what else to call it like this like sort of like fuck you skill allocation stuff that's like intentionally obtuse uh not super clear i'm thinking about the entrant odyssey

[00:56:38] skill system which is not really a like a complicated system it's just like you literally get skills it put points into them but it's just you have to know what's happening so far ahead of time it's it's like clunky and awful you know what i'm thinking for respects i'm thinking that this is a

[00:57:03] c and i'll say that not because it's bad but i'm going to say that because it seems like they sort of exist independently not independently but like it's not about them it's about everything that surrounds the respect you know it's about are there basic quality of life considerations happening here so like will it be good to have a respect in some games as you say like not having

[00:57:32] one is like unthinkably cruel but like in some games if if they're if they've done enough to help you out you don't need it something can see just like it's something that that when you put it in it doesn't really change anything it's it's kind of like air where it's like if it's gone yo it's air it's air

[00:57:57] i'm putting in the c all right you agree c is working for you yeah yeah okay this next one i'm not gonna roll the big die i'm gonna go for the exact next one on the list free respects joe what if there was no cost to the respect at all you could do it infinite times whenever i think that's a b or an a and

[00:58:24] the reason i think that is like okay you put a cost on it uh to dissuade fast switching that's why you're doing that's why there's a cost associated with it why do you hate people experimenting i mean if i think you shouldn't have to pay a cost to respect if anything it should just be going to a specific location uh and the reason i say that i right because then then it keeps like the there is

[00:58:50] still like a parameter you have to fulfill but it's not money and uh the other thing is like if you wanted to make a game around free respec that was like intentionally like i guess glitchy or whatever the game would have like you can respec in any location so you could like get past something respec do a bunch of shit respec that would be kind of fun and kind of broken yo actually you know what

[00:59:16] i've just that's given me an idea i'm not going to make this for obvious reasons folks but if any of you out there are game designers feel free to take this i think it would be really fun to have a game where it's it's got to be turn-based but sort of real time in like the atv sort of system where like you can't wait around forever and the reason it has to be like that is you should be able

[00:59:41] to respec during a combat dude but but like it's in real time so like if you want to like take 10 points away from health and put them into strength you have to click one two three four five six seven eight nine ten okay in strength one two then like when you have them in like the the ether when you haven't reallocated them you've just made yourself 10 levels weaker but let's go further let's you know

[01:00:06] the game and watch game octopus where you are a little diver grabbing money and then bringing up to the boat imagine the stats are little orbs you pull out of other stats and have to rearrange them and move them about in combat so it's like oh i got to get this health into damage now oh baby so what we need is someone to make this game and then give us all the money uh it's called uh

[01:00:29] anime sickos podcast yeah i just had i like i'm weeping because this is too beautiful and i know it'll never exist you're talking about orbs and stuff okay part of the respecging and the way that the skills and stats work has to be like orbs and gem like materia essentially like you're moving around orbs and gems from like you have like the bag where there's this unallocated stuff and it's where

[01:00:57] you have to move something you know when you change it you put in the bag you then you have an empty spot and you can work with then you take it out of the bag and put it back in the empty spot um and obviously you're gonna have you know different boards with different connections so you can switch a board yes you can actually you can switch the sphere grid because different spheres having different connections and uh having like lines between them uh makes them you know connected in

[01:01:23] some way it activates some sort of adjacency skill and so you can have different shapes and um oh my god ds dude ds oh that's the fucking lower screen and it's a touch screen so you can be dragging the fucking gems god damn it why is the ds not just like an assumed standard i don't mean like nintendo makes them all forever i mean like everyone assumed just like a tv is a big panel

[01:01:52] that everyone has a two-screen handheld device with a touch screen with a touch screen of course and it has street pass we were gonna do uh let's talk about the horrors this episode i don't think we have the time because we're kind of near the end already yeah and things have been getting so much better i really do think that like the same impulse that makes computers uh unaffordable that makes

[01:02:15] a guy say the goose created the value uh that 74 trillion yen plus alpha equals goose it's that same evil that made that happen it made the ds go away i mean we did a whole episode about this but like it bears the gist of which was us just looking at the ds and being like damn they really crushed it what they should have

[01:02:45] the government of the world you know this is actually why we need a one world government uh the the fascists are right the leftists do want a one world government but it's for a good reason it's because the government should manufacture ds's and give you one for free yeah and also like life better the ds will have new specs and get upgrades so it's obviously going to

[01:03:09] be the the charge of the government to distribute the upgraded devices and then finding good uses for those previous like it's so obvious when i say it out loud i'm so fucking pissed i should be running everything we're it's so dude it is so fucking frustrating that we the idiots it's like really really good chance that any major like world leadership position if filled by us knowing what

[01:03:38] we know now we would do like a 10 times better job it's it's not like goofy to say that like the soft bank presentation that we talked about is literally proof like these are the world's serious people they are in charge of the allocation of just mind-boggling amounts of capital and then their their their their goose slides suck shit tom yeah they're they're all like i had no idea epstein was like

[01:04:05] that it's just like oh so well we knew because we were hearing jokes about it so like we would have steered clear yeah we i was not ever i was never invited and i knew about it uh so you yeah you you got on a plane uh i just i i just mean like it's pretty clear oh my god and also if the government

[01:04:30] was making new updated uh ds's well that's gonna prevent the sort of like computer part bubble we're in now because oh my god it would it would be like how there's like uh industrial standard for like iso metal number 499 whatever it's like this is this iteration of the ds yeah it is yes it is like this is everything you need for it here are all the parts for it it is supported forever because

[01:04:55] the the as we know any software company doesn't actually want to support anything after it's pushed out ever but you're gonna have to the the the the army and military might of the one world government is backing up this uh mandate for everyone to have a free ds so like they don't have a choice they have to do it and like because of that like you can't say like yeah no ram is 200 now it's like nobody

[01:05:25] everyone gets free ram this is literally like how does how does medicare for all work it's because the government can act as a huge buyer and get economy at scale that's what they would do to nintendo parts dude actually legitimately medicare for all plus ds for all seems like an incredibly smart i mean this is the same thing like if we were the if we were president ds for all is a like a

[01:05:52] much to get your ds you have to go get your annual checkup yes which is now covered yes yes yes this would be like the can you fucking deny listener that the world like legitimately not like funny like the country would be so much fucking better if this i miss street i miss street pass i love street pass i loved writing the l with that sucker and then like you would just at the end of the day

[01:06:21] you open it up and it's like you passed bob you passed hail satan you passed i just love it yo he'll say my man so we were talking about free respects i think that uh my one sort of counter example or counter argument to free respects being a and this is uh being done out of necessity not that i actually think this is that uh you might want to you might you might do it too many times and devalue

[01:06:50] your decision i was thinking the same thing uh that is just an impulse control problem that rests with the player and not the game itself because you could also say there's no limit on jumping you don't you don't lose yourself in a jumping orgy you might like the the player what's stopping the player from like jacking off too much while they're playing and it's like nothing it's a huge problem yeah okay i'm thinking a for free respects yeah i guess if i could put it more

[01:07:19] succinctly if you're making them the player that is you're making the player pay for respects like are you their mom like what are you trying to do are you trying to instill a sense of responsibility i'm actually i'm gonna sell tell you something about elden ring um because saying mom has uh reminded me of that what what do you think of this so in elden ring it is kind of like a free

[01:07:45] respect in the sense that once you get to the point where respects are unlocked you can essentially do them as much as you want unless you are sort of unless you're doing it as a joke you know like the amount the the amount of and frequency of respects that a person could conceivably reasonably want is totally within your grasp you have to go to ranala the big witch lady in the magic academy

[01:08:12] after you beat her as a boss and she is sort of like regressed mentally to be like a dude she's like a baby she's like oh hello beepy boop boop uh and then she can respect if you give her a fucking placenta that you found on the ground before video games are so cool you get like 30 of these there's no way you will run out and here's why i think this is good one it allows the game to

[01:08:41] have another thing that you can find after a crazy platforming challenge or when you go down like a hidden route you find a fucking placenta and you go oh shit okay cool like i can use this it's always useful uh but the respects are essentially free because they have no secondary use and you get so many that again to run out would be like you just respect 10 times in a row without playing the game

[01:09:09] which you never would so it's essentially free but then also it's a really it fits the the flavor of the world because of course you would give a placenta to a baby-brained giant woman to so that you could be reborn it makes sense yeah that pencils out yeah i'm still putting it in a i just wanted to bring that up video games are so stupid they really are imagine if elven ring was on the dsd

[01:09:39] dude i'm imagining it now and again it's like in two frames per second it it is running poorly no but dude it's on your new government issued current ds oh my god here's another reason why this government plan specs yes here's another reason why this this government mandated plan for ds is is again a good idea we have strayed from the light in the world of video game development

[01:10:05] which is that uh there was a time when there would be like an n64 game and then that same game would be on game boy and it would be just something fucking totally different it was just like yeah i guess it's okay this will restart that again we need to be having this is the weird handheld version of gax like you know what i mean we we need to get that infrastructure up and running now but because

[01:10:28] everything is the same platform there's no d making happening i rented the first time i sort of was aware of this i played tony hawk on my my homies uh n64 at his house i didn't have it and then i got yes used i think i got the game boy tony hawk thinking it would be close enough no no uh you

[01:10:56] literally you know when the simpsons were they're like oh you got these hover bikes kids and no they're just real bikes we have to return them now the tony hawk game boy game was the hover bike you're like i love tony hawk i cannot wait to play this and it's because i i had that game too it's like an isometric view it's very strange yes oh my god it's impossible to line your guy up with anything everything's diagonal but you have a fucking d-pad that's straight up and down and that was

[01:11:22] i don't know if you remember the gba launch but that was like the killer app with it because that came out with the castle the first castlevania circle the moon i think uh and those were like the and hilariously the first gba was very dark and hard to see so like you couldn't even play tony hawk because it was too dark like the warehouse level was too dark you couldn't see fucking anything uh but it was no it's so funny that it's not technically a lie to be like hey kid we got this

[01:11:51] on your system too don't worry yeah jesus christ dude another thing i just occurred to me if there was some fucking republican pedophile senator who said i don't think we should give everyone a ds president sickos

[01:12:14] the first dual president president sickos is out of their mind with this because a lot of people don't want to play video games what would be the point of giving them a system well you'll recall that the ds this is back when the nintendo was it on in on this i know what you're gonna say you're so smart you're so smart yes going keep going it was there would be software that was just

[01:12:36] like puzzles and sudokus yes for grandmas and so our plan that shit our plan defeats dementia like it fucking puts it in the ground you understand yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah legitimately this is a great platform honestly i think someone in dsa should should start talking about this in a serious way um government mandated ds's you know computers and computing

[01:13:06] and technology and hardware is like is a security issue now we need control of it and we need to make sure that these companies do not fucking exploit us and one way is to make sure they give us ds's and one thing uh to go back i will even allow what you said which is like hey not everybody like wants to play a game like or they don't even know yet and let's say even allowing for the brain age stuff

[01:13:28] what what's going to happen and that's why you get assigned a government tastemaker right and he sits with you this is actually what our job would be in perfect we would sit with you we find out like it's basically uh the steam recommender but it's like a human person that's made with love and cares about the mechanics you care about this is a jobs program for fucking 30 year old guys yeah exactly

[01:13:56] and this is where you find out though even though you didn't know what a visual novel is you find out what they are and then you find out a good starting example and we set you down on a path to being a horrible pervert yes that'll be good that'll be good oh my god i think we've really hit upon something very strong i hope some future politicians have heard this and honestly that game where you're

[01:14:24] where the main oh the main mechanic is a respec in your gems during the real time combat so fucking better be fast you can unlock oh my god this would be dope dude dude one of the gems could be like a a you know you give up a slot on your grid because this gem isn't actually giving you any stats but

[01:14:49] it allows you to like make pre-made chunks of other gems yes so that instead of like one two three take them out and then put three new ones in you can like take the three gem chunk out and put a new three gem chunk in like it like they're arranged like uh connected materia and they stay like that exactly yes and so instead of having to to put it all in manually it's just you can you can clunk them together and so you have to do fewer apm in order to affect the change you want and again

[01:15:18] and this is probably something that like speed runners and like high level players wouldn't use because again it's going to be taking up slots that could be uh more effectively synergizing and but but i mean it's just you know it's an option god damn it we're so fucking smart this is the best podcast of all time my brain is so heavy this is why the world wants to keep us down

[01:15:43] so much because if we were able to thrive and uh and really soar it's all over for all you fuckers if i'm allowed to soar it's all over for you fuckers i think that's where we're gonna have to end this episode of anime sickos how are we gonna get any better than that uh folks thanks for tuning in we're gonna try to make the episodes again yeah we're we're back on it the world sucks for everybody

[01:16:11] including us so like get off our nuts but also thank you yes that's a good way of putting it anyway until next time i have been tom in anime sicko i'm joe in anime sicko we'll see you next time bye bye 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

[01:16:39] 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 tell a friend uh anyway until next time bye