Giant Bombcast 962: EMAIL EXTRAVAGANZA

Hey! Hey! Everybody, it's Tuesday when you're listening to this, and it'll be October 13th, 2026. I'm your host. Welcome to the Giant Bomb Cast. I'm your host, Gianna Cho. Joining me as always, co-captain of the.

Ship, Jeff Grubb. I bought a mace.

Like, the swinging mace or the spraying mace? Or the rapper mace? Yes, I bought, no, I did not buy the human rapper mace. He's got too many questionable associations.

I thought about it. Oh, right. I bought a big, heavy, like, workout mace, a big, heavy object that has a big, like, ball on the end so I can, like, swing it around and feel like I'm cool.

Speaking about big things that are cool, we got Big Daddy Cool, Chuck Zimmerheld.

What's up?

Player uh i i get served content from these like um not cosplaying they're like learning how to use renaissance era weaponry i get served that content i don't subscribe to these guys but i will always give them a watch on their shorts.

What are they training for though you know oh okay the race war jesus Speaking about race, he's racing to the top, and always in first place, the boy genius Turbo Sean, Sean McDowell.

Jan, I bought Axe.

You bought the body spray? Yeah, the body spray. Like, why are we all buying weapons? Did I miss something in a meeting? I bought cyber weapons. Also, I bought Axe like 20 years ago. Who the fuck buys Axe in 2026? Yeah, I was going to say, I didn't really believe you bought Axe. Old Spice, I feel like it's still, you could still get away with that. Yeah, it's the socially acceptable Axe.

Absolutely.

Especially like the sweeter ones. They have some more like floral ones. You know, they can't call them floral because they're for men.

Right, exactly.

They smell kind of nice. That's a flower.

Do they have like a brand for ladies called Shaxx? Shiaxx? They can have that one for free if they want.

She acts. Okay, I get it.

Not your best word, Jack. I'll be honest with you.

Shaquille O'Neal's body spray.

Jackson.

Folks, we're pre-recording the Bombcast because a lot of us, well, specifically myself and maybe some other people will be traveling for the Giant Bombathon, folks, October 15th, 16th. uh, you can go support us becoming by becoming a premium member. Uh, so we're pre-recording today's episode on a Friday, October 9th, 2026.

So we'll be a little bit of.

A shorter show.

Uh, we'll skip over the preamble of how to support us and everything, but we hope you tune in on October 15th, October 16th to 12 hour days of streaming. Um, It's going to be fun times. We've had several meetings, and I still feel like we are woefully unprepared. But it's part of the magic, baby. We'll do it live.

Exactly.

Fantastic. Gang, how are y'all doing?

I'm all right. I'm all right. You know, I'm excited. Mike left for New York already, so it's like, oh, it's already kind of starting. Like, he's going there for a wedding, but he's just going to stay in town. It's like, man, I really have to recognize and reckon with the fact that I'm going to be in, you know, on the East Coast in a week from now, and we're going to be doing the Bomb-A-Thon. And that is exciting.

I really enjoy hanging out.

You know.

We do a lot of stuff remote. That's the business. But I think we get together a lot and we do stuff together a lot. And it is to me like at least once a quarter we're doing something big to that end. And I always really enjoy it. And I think at the same time it still feels really special. So getting excited about that. I'm going to be spending this weekend like putting together a USB stick filled with games.

And who knows? I might bring some surprising stuff as well.

Some other USB sticks I get.

I mean, listen, that's between you and me, Jan. Like, I know you made that request, so I got you, man.

Okay, thank you. Like a Randy Pitchford type USB stick?

I mean, look, Randy Pitchford, his USB stick's got nothing on the real deal.

Grubb's USB stick.

Is so moist, you have no idea.

You want to be like, yeah, wrap it in some paper towel before you pick it up.

Would you be, like, faster to, like, And I know you shouldn't in either instance, right? Would you be faster to insert a random USB drive you find on the ground or a SD card?

Definitely not a USB stick. Definitely not a USB stick.

Please don't do either of those. Speaking as your information technology, your principal engineer of GiantBomb.com, don't. plug anything into a computer that you didn't like procure from a reliable, secure source. You know what I'm saying?

Like a lot of like legitimate or like USB sticks from legitimate places are actually compromised. So like the one off the ground, do not fuck with that. Chuck, what if I brought it to an Apple store?

An Apple store?

I don't know.

Any jabroni can like open an Apple store, work in an Apple store. So I don't know.

What if I did a hypervisor?

It's a hypervisor.

Are you just saying that? Cause you don't know what it means.

I think I have like, I have like 2% understanding of what it means.

You were going to sneak that past me.

No, I knew, I knew you were going to catch me. I, but you know, I thought it'd be fun to say, and then I was going to let you take it away.

A hypervisor is like, so I don't, I don't fuck with like hardware level programming, but I think that is a, That's a security thing for motherboards and CPUs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I fuck with hardware stuff. Dude, actual relevant news. Did you hear that they finally bypassed the hypervisor in a permanent way on the Xbox 360?

No. Yes. Yes, I did see that.

You can have a persistent soft mod on your Xbox 360 now that boots in only like 20 seconds. It's really cool.

So why do I have this hard modded one over here? What's the fucking point?

Because I got the same situation. I got mine, what, like a year and a half ago.

That's why. I don't know about you.

I got mine like 20 years ago from a guy. Well, I took mine to a guy on Craigslist.

You're old.

Oh, man.

Oh, yeah.

Wow. Do you think people are still modding consoles on Craigslist? I mean, we could check that out locally.

Yes, they are. It's the marketplace where a lot of that shit is, to be honest. Yeah.

I got my mod through a reputable guy who's been doing it since the early 360 days, but he still does post all of his business stuff just on Facebook still, just because he's been doing it for 20 years, you know?

That's crazy.

Have I told you guys I got a bat ps3 um modded so it has like the the cpu from like the one of the newer ps3s to deal with the power issues yeah i got the frankie done um and then get some other stuff done to it but yeah that thing is that thing's locked and loaded yeah that's that's really cool the r guys don't know because the later ps3s are more reliable but the hardware is like mostly interoperable people do basically surgery on the PS3s to take like the more efficient, more reliable slim chips and put them into a, a fat, that's all it's backwards compatibility. Yeah. PS3 natively plays the PS1 and PS2 games.

The other ones don't. So yeah.

Gang, I'm a little scared because, uh, I'm hoping by the time this podcast airs, I would have gotten an answer whether or not I'm getting a, uh, I'm able now to now move to a, uh, an apartment. Uh, I'm scared of what will happen when I have space.

What are you going to, what does that mean?

He's going to collect. He's going to get nasty with it.

He's going to get a big espresso machine. That's the fear, Chuck. I'm not into, as of right now, maybe purely because of space, but collecting things and reacquiring things.

Spending money on things.

Yes. I'm scared once I have space, is this going to be terrible? Am I going to buy a film projector that I don't need? Like a reel-to-reel that I don't need?

You're definitely going to do that. Yeah.

Oh, no. Oh, no.

Are you going to get a one-to-one scale model of Rex from the Clone Wars? Is that going to show up in your place?

I would love that.

Yeah, I know you would.

Actually, a Dexter Jetster right in my bathroom. To sleep in the bed with you, of course.

Is that the Clone Wars guy?

That's the Attack of the Clones guy, the diner guy.

He owns a diner. The diner guy. George Lucas is like, I'm going to start doing character work. I'm going to start getting these.

Charming, wholesome characters. His cousin runs Galactic Racer or whatever. Yeah.

Hell yeah.

That's probably actually racist. I shouldn't do that. I'm sorry, Dexter Jester.

It's space racist. It's fine. It's racist.

It's fine. I guess we got a couple of games if we want to talk about them. So I'll hit the music now.

Can I admit something to you, Jan, before we get into this? When you started the podcast and played the intro, I thought it was going to be the voicemail dump truck remix. For some reason, my brain was just waiting for it.

Shout out to Ricky B. Fantastic.

That was sick.

Folks, if you.

Ricky Bismarck, if you missed the voicemail dump truck last week, go at least listen to the last call. On the main show, Banger of a Call. Shouts out to Ricky Bismarck. I don't have any games on the rundown here, but what do you all want to talk about?

I played Antivirus. Let me get the full name here so I get it right. you open up my steam uh antivirus survivors 2003 professional uh creaky legs community member uh gifted this to me and i'll you know what i'll play it and uh legs shots out the creaky legs and uh i was yeah immediately into it this is a vampire survivors like but it all happens in the environment of the uh like a windows 95 maybe windows 98 desktop like the setting is you are a mouse cursor trying to avoid glitches and stuff that are coming for you. And then as you move the mouse cursor around, you will find files that you can click on that are your upgrades. And there's a variety of files.

And you have to click on certain files. If you get to, I think, maybe. bats, you do seven. bat files, you complete the level, and you move on to the next level. And I thought that everything it did to establish that this is Windows 95, the look, the feel... The sounds, the.

Way that the different files are named, all that stuff was perfect. They really got that right here. I don't know if the game comes together all that well in terms of like, oh, not all that well, as well as some of the other games in the genre where I'm like, oh, yeah, this is all I want to play.

This one's like, oh, yeah, they did it. They went for it. I get it. It's not like hooking me to the point to the point where I can't wait to keep playing this. other than to keep seeing all the Windows 95 bullshit. But yeah, I think if you are into that stuff, which I definitely am, I like all this stuff. Desktop Explorer earlier this year really got me.

People should check this out. It's not like super expensive or anything, but it might not necessarily be the one where it's like, oh, I'm going to play this for 400 hours like you might with Vampire Survivors or something like that.

Where are we with the state of Vampire Survivors likes? Are we... oversaturated at this point or.

I mean yeah i mean that's going to be you know you ask one person you definitely ask another be like i don't know i play a couple here or there so no i'll just find the next one i'm into uh it is just a new structure for a video game so we're going to keep getting these uh and i think people who like they played their one and that's probably good and then excuse me, there's probably going to be others that are like, no, this is one of the game types of games that I will keep in my rotation going forward kind of forever. Cause I just really like this, this way of engaging with a game. And you know, the fun, obviously part of the fun is it's overwhelming at the same time. It is, you have to go with the flow. It's a little

bit passive at the same time and it strikes those balance real bad, but balance really well, this overall concept and really comes down to each game individually to, Make it feel like you still have a ton of control, even though you're just moving around. What is the strategy? Stuff like, what was the Terratech Legion, the one that Dan and Mike really liked? Obviously, building your vehicle out there, that's a big part of it. It's like, oh, that's where I have the most agency. And that's huge. And then there's definitely some others where it is just more mindless.

But at the same time, that's definitely a key part of these games. Antivirus Survivors definitely has that. And it was easy to get myself over to it and have a good time on that front.

I enjoy when they will have, like, a very, very different look than what I'm anticipating. Because, like, some Vampire Survivors clones look too much like the original. I like that this antivirus Survivors game looks like it's from Windows 95.

Yeah, I mean, they really get the aesthetics. It's, you know, you got the WinRAR-looking files and... the window, the windows, um, alert icon, the triangle with the exclamation point in it and all that stuff is instantly recognizable to a huge group of people that would be playing this game. And again, they nailed it.

For me, like talking about the fatigue for a vampire survivors, like is like akin to the idea of getting fatigued by a first person shooter to me, because it's just like a, uh, a core gameplay element of, moving something through a space, obliterating everything that like comes near you, comes in contact with you. And then on top of that, it's kind of like up to the developer, right? What they can like layer on top and make their own spin on it. That's why Terratech Legion can look so completely different and play so completely differently than a Vampire Survivors.

So I don't know. I don't see fatigue coming for me with those types of games, as long as like the developers are actually using fresh ideas and concepts and not just like copy pasting.

Yeah, I'm in a similar place, but maybe on the opposite approach where I am kind of just over that sort of genre as it is on Steam right now, where there's a lot of them that kind of just are riffing on the original formula of Vampire Survivors. And I think when, you know, we do keep saying like Terratech Legion, because I do think that's a good example of something that's doing something differently. I think just the nature of something like Vampire Survivors being a little more passive means that um there's less to riff on you know like the first person shooters you can have say like uh with valve's own you could have half-life which is a more traditional shooter uh you can have something more team-based like a counter-strike and they can also have

portal technically a first-person shooter but they turn into a first-person puzzle game so i think there's a little more variety there but when some something like terror tech is like really doing something different like they just said hey what if car building. We tossed that together with the Vampire Survivors formula.

I think that is.

Even that is enough to make it feel different. It's kind of like we were talking about.

Even less than that, like Blood Dungeon, what if also just platformer?

Just 2D platformer. It's kind of like... We talked about this recently when I talked to Grubb somewhere about Star Wars Galactic Racer. I think it was on GMM where we talked about, you know, like Rogue Light isn't really... a genre it's a gameplay mechanic and i think yeah when you are smart about combining two things together like they did with run-based racing run-based rogue light those two fit together even just doing something smart like that can really make it feel uh different and fresh so i think that's where the alleviating the fatigue comes from in something like this.

Definitely uh speaking about half-life chuck you mentioned before we started rolling you beat half-life the original i.

Did i did Because I'm a fraud. I've been working here for a year and a half. I'd never actually beaten Half-Life on PC. And I finally did it. I've been doing like a stream series for months now at this point, which is playing through all the games on that very important video games list I did for the website.

And Half-Life is on there. I had it marked as played, not beaten. And that's because it came out... Is that 98, Grubb?

1998?

Is that Half-Life? 98 is what I see.

Here, yeah.

It's the Zelda year, Half-Life year, yep.

So I was eight years old, swiped that game from my dad, who was a gamer and a nerd.

Cool.

And that game scared the shit out of me because I was eight years old, and the headcrabs were jumping at me. It was really fun playing through it on stream because I was like, I remember this, I remember this, I remember this. And then at a certain point, it falls off a cliff where I didn't recognize or remember anything.

And the boss fight that I could tell I hit a wall as a kid was... like the plant monster where it's like kind of poking and tapping around these platforms because it can't see you can only hear you. I was like, there it was. That's where I, that's where I stopped playing as a kid. So it was really fun kind of going back and rediscovering the game, which I'm going to say this is, I think that game is more lauded rightfully for its vibes and look and for the, the way it plays out the story environmentally and its cut scenes. It's those things are really great.

I don't think the game itself and how it plays through to the end is like the reason that game is remembered as great.

Right.

Sure.

The very last section I had heard that was kind of weak. Uh, you go to spoilers for a 20 year old video game, 30 year old video game. I was going to.

Say, it's older than 20. I know.

I know. Yeah. Uh, you go to this like other dimension Zen and uh, yeah, you could, you could tell it was rushed because I was zinning. What does that mean?

It means you're putting pouches of nicotine in your.

Yeah, Gordon Freeman with a pouch of nicotine in Half-Life 3. It's coming, folks. It's going to happen. No, yeah, it kind of falls apart there. And it's like, of course, it's like the third act of a video game where they're probably rushing to get that release out and stuff. And just finally finish working on it, wrap it up.

I was banging my head against the final boss fight, which is this big floating brain baby thing. I didn't realize there was a damage check because I was shooting rockets at this thing and nothing was happening. It was just kind of tanking those. I was like, okay, so I clearly need to use the platforms that are in the room, blow up these crystals, and then I'll go do something at the very top platform. It was like this natural level design progression that I needed to follow to do. But no, actually you need to do some of that progression, then damage it a lot, get it to a certain state, and then finish doing all the platforms, which is just, it's a level design we would, critique now pretty harshly i think like make it obvious to

some extent i don't want yellow paint slathered all over this like baby when i need to shoot it and everything but don't paint babies everybody stop stop painting babies that's right stop it especially with with toxic paint no um yeah it was but it's a 30 year old game showing its age in some of those areas but the environmental storytelling is what really stood out to me sure the first two thirds of the game you just you can just fly through on just like instincts and vibes because they're just subtly directing you in really smart ways to the solutions to puzzles everything's always like aha oh yeah of course and it feels really really good doesn't feel dumbed down but it just feels like you

get to be a natural at something for a while it's really, really great. Sick.

Uh, do you have any plans to move on to half-life two, perhaps truck?

I'd be half-life two. Um, I only, only beat that like five or six years ago. I think right when the pandemic started, I'd be half-life two beat chapter, uh, be part one or wait, You did those. I beat the first one and then the episode episode. Thank you. And then the second episode, I have not finished. I think I got two thirds of the way through that.

So maybe I need to go finish that one. But for my stream series, trying to get through all those old games.

I really want to play Alex. I just don't want to.

It's fun. It's got all that environmental storytelling, but in VR with all kinds of stuff you can pick up and interact with.

Yeah, the yoink, the gravity glove or whatever they call it, where you can yoink an object on the ground to your hand.

It feels so good. It feels really, really good. Yeah.

It's got dry erase markers where you can write high janitor in there like I did.

You could draw a big point.

You also said other things. You said some other things in that.

I don't recall. I don't recall.

Yeah, when Dan and I checked out the Steam Frame originally, that was my first time playing Half-Life Alyx, and it was one of those where, oh, this is what everyone has been wanting to do, huh? This is where we should be at. That's a bummer. Maybe eventually. Maybe I'll steal Dan's Steam Frame. Play some Titanfall 2 VR.

Those are the two killer apps right now, man.

Chris from Aftermath. This motherfucker.

Hey, I got some grievances to air.

He's the one that DM'd me about it. I was like, oh, yeah.

Chris is responsible for influencing me on like the most things recently. This motherfucker, not only chairs, not only here, right?

Yes.

The God, yeah. Several other things this year, the way this man tinkers, I just want to tinker with him. So Chris, we should hang out. Yes.

It's a, you know, I want to live that life. Uh, he is very good at that.

Yeah.

Uh, any other games anyone wants to talk?

I was going to say with half-life Alex, like, uh, It doesn't get talked about much, does it? It doesn't get brought up a lot.

The reality is audiences don't want to hear about VR games. They're over VR and they don't want to hear about it. That was true even at the time.

That game can't change that and get everybody converted to the VR life. Not until the technology makes a massive change.

Sean, you were raising your hand.

Yeah, I got something I want to talk about because I realized I haven't had a chance to talk about it yet anywhere. I played something called Hero of Law. I streamed this a couple of weekends ago. It is a... Calling it a ROM hack feels like a disservice. It's really more of a fan game.

But it is.

They take Ocarina of Time as the base and entirely remix assets and created new assets. It's an Ace Attorney case.

Done in right right right yes yeah so like link is phoenix right ganondorf uh takes on the prosecutor's role.

Bomb chew girl is innocent i don't give a shit all right.

Sean she's not a trial it's malin it's malin well i mean we all know it pop chew girl can kill whoever she wants malin has the bowser the bowser thing right on on her yeah yeah.

Yeah she's guilty uh so anyways yeah it's an ace attorney case it plays just like ace attorney because it's a fan game you know they could only do so much because there's a lot of writing in those games i was um you know i've been watching uh author blues play the first ace attorney game he's been streaming that and it just made me want to go back and play this which i it made me want to go back and play it for the first time. Cause I never checked it out when it first came out.

And it was just, there was so much TLC put into this game. Just they, they got everything right with the vibes. The writing is very smart. Ace attorney is a series that theoretically never should have been able to be localized. Cause there's so many puns. There's so much witty writing and the localizers did a fantastic job. They always do with this series, translating everything into English or like, Having a good equivalent in English. And that shines here in this fan game where they're constantly making because you don't want to overdo it. You don't want to like hit people over the head with the fan service. You just want to make like little references to Ocarina of Time here and there in very like witty dialogue hidden

in the Ace Attorney style of when someone gives their testimony, you can either present evidence or press them for more information. And so they'll hide little references in when you press them about something and they'll make a little reference to like, I was doing this thing. And you're like, oh, yeah, this character does do that thing in Ocarina of Time.

Stuff like that. It's very smart. I think also from a technical perspective, what they pulled off was really interesting. I was getting a little bit of like developer commentary because one of the artists who worked on this, I forget their full name, but Jimbo is what they go by online. They were like giving me a little commentary in the chat because they were watching me stream it.

and um cool the tech stuff is very cool with this where they uh he said that they designed it first and foremost to run on like original hardware through flash cards and then the most common like source of emulation so like a wii virtual console and then you can also even like inject it into the zelda collector's edition on gamecube and stuff to play it on gamecube it's really cool but what they did with the hardware was native n64 stuff uh so like if you have a microphone you You can yell objection just like the DS games. So if you have the Hey You Pikachu microphone, for example. But the really cool one is with the transfer pack. You can unlock additional stuff by inserting into the N64 transfer pack, you know, normally used for inserting

Pokemon games into the N64 controller. So that way you can like play them and transfer Pokemon in Pokemon Stadium. Some other games used it, and specifically this uses it. So if you put the Zelda Oracle games into the transfer pack, it unlocks bonus stuff that normally you would have to get by doing other things within the ROM hack.

But a really, really cool thing that they did is if you have Link's Awakening, if you have a late-game Link's Awakening save, very specifically it needs to be a little later in the game for all of this to work, when you put it into the transfer pack, and then load it up, it unlocks a bonus case that is all about Link's Awakening. I don't want to give any spoilers.

It's very cool. And they read your data to pull a bunch of things from your save file. So someone who appears in Hero of Law is altered based on the things that you've done in the game in a very, very cool way. I'm like, That's the cherry on top. I love that this team did it. By the way, like, yeah, full credit to a newer team. Like, I believe they get their name from their first ROM hack was a newer Super Mario Brothers, like Wii ROM hack back in the day. But they did a fantastic job with this.

And so I really wanted to give them some credit. I always talk about, you know, people should be playing more retro games. They should be playing more ROM hacks and fan games. Because like, if you don't want to play modern AAA games, you want to save some money or you're just kind of tired of some of this stuff people are doing really cool stuff in the retro scene and stuff like this is a good example of it so good like i definitely recommend people check out hero of law it's like it's you know again they could only do so much so it's like a short-ish experience it's like three to four hours depending on how much you like uh look at all the little different stuff they put in i think the extra case adds

about an hour um it's really really cool and i cannot recommend it enough.

Yeah, the ROM scene for, like, Pokemon games also has kind of exploded in, like, the last couple years. Yeah. There was one specifically that I really meant to check out in the last year or so. But, yeah, folks, be more adventurous. Be curious online. If you, like Sean said, if you are upsetting spaghetti with the current state of things and you can't stand things, also, maybe, hey, go explore that world yourself in terms of, like, if you want to futz around with anything. Um, except, you know, don't include any, uh, AI stuff in it, please.

For the love of God. You can, you can open up these like decompiled, um, N64 games and like, yeah, it is like, if you have any kind of like programming know-how, it's like, it's a language I, I don't work in, but it's stuff I can read almost anything at this point. Even if I don't know, like, um, methods or, uh, like the, like if you're, if you're trained in some of these languages, like, uh, like C and everything. They're more natural to you, but I can still go through and read everything. Like when I did the Super Mario 64 hack for Dan last year. It's fun to open these up, go read through. How does Mario jump when a button is pressed? You can go find that stuff and learn a lot just by reading

through some of it. And I assume the same is true for some of these decomp Zelda games as well.

Well, speaking more to that creation side of things, a lot of the programmer streamers I watch They really recommend GB Studio. It's an open source tool that's entirely GUI graphical. So you can make Game Boy demos and games. entirely by just like using visual tools of like, you know, it'll be all, you don't have to necessarily know the programming language to know that, okay, I'm going to design an overworld. I'm going to click on this tile and whatever I drew on that tile, whether it's a door or a cave entrance or whatever, it's going to link to a different place and they'll pop up a different window of like, okay, it links to this, got it.

And then you can design the interior and whatnot. Uh, it's like some of the, if you've seen some of the game boy promo games that like, I think McDonald's put out a grimace one a few years ago, right? They used to be a studio. Cause like, it's easy to do this graphically and you can make the music in there.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's never been a better time to be a retro gamer.

Yeah, there we go. Uh, Gang, anything else we want to talk about?

We beat Big Walk, but we can probably maybe mostly talk about that when the rest of the crew is back next week. But we finished it, and people should go watch that. And I don't know. I thought that to be... I found it to be pretty moving, Jan. Yes, yes.

As always, special, special shouts out to Sean right here on the podcast for live directing that and having all of us yelling in his ear. And also, especially having Kayla... Matt Shipman, and now Chuck also yelling in his ear and not being able to switch to any of their perspectives. God, what a special game. Man. It made it.

I realized I was like, oh, I have a one-to-one line with Sean and I can just say things to him specifically that no one else is going to hear.

The guys all slowly realized that over the playthrough too. It would just make comments to me that just make me chuckle. It was pretty funny.

Yeah, definitely go check out that whole series. It's a very fun time. It's a very, very special game. And yeah, we should definitely talk about it when more of the crew is here.

There's a playlist on YouTube, we should say, for Big Walk if you want to watch through all that. And then I think you made it a show on the website, Jan. Is that right?

I did not.

No, I've been managing it.

And yeah, I just I just put under the respective different series because it's weird. Someone mentioned this the other day.

I think me, Mike.

It started as a quick look. And then we just decide we want to play more of that. So we played on UPF and then we just decide, oh, no, we're finishing this game because it's so good. And so you I put under the GB plays banner. um but i i think i want me just like because i think it's short enough that i could compile it and do this everywhere including youtube i think i think i want to compile everything into one video so that way people i.

Was about to say i was i was thinking about doing that okay so same wavelength shot there we go yeah teamwork is happening already we'll.

Put that up at some point maybe like over the break for people to watch if they haven't yet or something.

Yeah cool all right support playlists custom playlists on the website i'm just gonna put that in my All right.

Yeah.

Put that in your little log.

That's one more thing for Chuck. Yeah.

Yeah. You're not doing enough.

That's right.

Folks, we're going to take a quick, bricky break. Grubb, do we have news or should we go straight to emails?

Let's go straight to emails.

Yeah.

By the time people hear this, it'll be out of date.

Okay.

Well, we'll take a quick, bricky break. We'll be back with emails, Discord Q & As, and no Super Chats because we're not live. Oh, wrong one.

These are the emails for the show.

Emails. Actually, quick news thing. Best Buy did announce Instagram. Best Buy did talk about they're going to have a midnight launch for Zelda.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, and this will be another chance to get one of the Zelda-themed Switch 2s. But most of them are just like, would you guys go to a midnight launch? Because I'm kind of, I mean, this might be the game to do it. I might try to go to a midnight launch for Ocarina of Time.

Is that in November?

Yeah. Let's see. November 4th. Yep.

I don't know if y'all have seen this, but I've seen stores like Best Buy, Costco, and this is specifically towards GameStop's. uh, specifically towards card sales, whenever like new Pokemon stuff will drop or whatever else. Um, people, store managers are like cracking down on ghost chairs, which are people just parking their empty camp chairs as like a placeholder in line and just leaving and going home and sleeping. Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, so I've seen several managers be like, if you're going to wait out here and cause a ruckus, uh, Uh, or, or take up space. You physically have to be here. Don't leave your fucking chair here.

I think that's fair.

Yeah.

Cause a ruckus in person or don't.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, if you're going to take up space, you take up the space.

Right.

Folks, bombcastgiantbomb.com is the email address to send your emails to. We have a boatload of emails and let's get to them. Uh, first email comes from Jimmy J from sunny Southwest Florida.

Get that Jimmy Jam.

I don't know why Mike decided to invade my dreams. I want him to answer for his crimes. Sorry that Mike isn't here today. The dream started off being normal. I'm a musician in real life, so playing a dive bar show felt like a normal dream. Everything was fine until the second act got on stage in an out of town band fronted by Mike Minotti. My dream mind was blown. The man, the myth. The legend was up on stage singing Disney theme songs like no other person could.

Shortly after the singing started, I woke up, but the thought of Mitch never left my mind. Much love, duders. Jimmy J. from sunny southwest Florida.

Jimmy, did you also marry Mike for tax purposes for the business you both work at? Like, what was happening with Mike and people's dreams?

Is Mike being like that Nick Cage character from that movie where everyone's having dreams about Nick Cage? Oh, that's a fun movie. God. Is Mike Freddy Krueger?

Mike Freddy Krueger is a more important question.

Is he inceptioning everyone now?

He might be, yeah.

Mike is incepting all over the place, man.

Is he good?

Oh, gross. Is it not enough that he occupies so much of my brain in my waking hours that he now has to occupy my sleeping hours?

Yeah, he wants it all. Oh, God.

Oh, God.

Okay, Chris writes in, hey, Microsoft is opening a theme park and they knew the Bombcast crew are the perfect ones to plan it out. So what worlds would be there besides layoff land? And what kinds of rides would they have? Love the show. Keep up the good work. Kiss on the cheek. Chris.

That was a good joke, Chris.

I would want a small, like kind of a decrepit, like dilapidated part of the world that is a space cadet pinball and solitaire and line sweeper.

That'd be good. That'd be good.

A bunch of old ladies sitting in there.

The only thing I think of with Microsoft sometimes is Blinks the Time Sweeper. So maybe you just have like you strap on an industrial shop bag and then you're just sucking up jewels or some shit.

I want a Pillars of Eternity universe world that is similar to the Avatar Land that I think is in Disney. And in this world, you have to deal with a bunch of people that are racist and use magic to talk to dead people.

Okay. I mean, I'd be a little bit more involved. So, yeah.

Yep.

I was thinking of like some things that Microsoft actually doesn't own anymore. I was like, you know, a Psychonauts land would be fantastic for a theme park. That's not them anymore. It could just be the office building in Psychonauts 2. That would be a sick area to jump through. The mystery spot or whatever.

All right. What would be the brand you guys would attach to like the big marquee roller coaster?

It would be Halo and you're in like a Pelican or something like that flying around. It would be like that one thing that we saw at Disneyland. I forget what it's called.

How about the Dark Ride, which, you know, it's kind of like Pirates of the Caribbean or something. Or the Star Wars, what's the.

What's the big Star Wars movie? Galagian.

Oh, gosh, I'm forgetting. Yeah, Rise of the Empire or something like that. The one where you... No, Smokers runs with the Millennium Falcon.

Rise of the Resistance. Gears, maybe. You live through E-Day or something.

One of those rides where you get a gun and you get to shoot lasers and stuff. Yeah, that'd be cool.

And then a big motion simulator ride. What would that one be?

Oh, maybe that's the Pelican. Oh, Forza. There you go. Forza would be a good.

good roller coaster.

It's a bunch of influencers yelling at you through speakers.

Or it's just like Transformers. If you do it like that, Transformers is a really good being. It's like sitting in a car ride. That'd be neat.

Have you guys played in Forza Horizon 4 the Halo mission in that game where you're in a war?

Oh my God.

I think so. It's one of my favorite experiences in video games, period, where you get in a... So your character walks up to this place and you're like, oh yeah, you could do a Halo thing. your character changes into Master Chief, like they walk off screen and Master Chief walks back and Chief gets into a warthog and it's, you know, it's still Forza, but it's like, you know, you're driving in, I forget exactly where it takes place, but like the UK countryside in Horizon 4 and they like map the path for you and like Cortana's in your ear and it feels like a warthog and everything like that. I would love to see that recreated in an amusement park. Like that specific crossover, I think would be very cool.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Well, Microsoft, there you go. We've just provided you a whole land of things to build. Don't do any of those. No, no, do all of them. Alex in Bendigo, Australia. Hey, dooders. Pinhead comes to you with a very generous offer to become a Cenobite. What outfits do you choose? Now, you all can't pick leather chaps, so best leave them to Bacalar. All the best, Alex in Bendigo, Australia.

What do you guys know about Hellraiser? I've seen the first movie. I've seen the first one. I know that I know that it's about, you know, accessing new level levels of physical pleasure through pain. Uh, and yeah. And then that they are all dressed up in kind of BDS, BDSM wear and they're kind of, you know, pierced in fun places.

So I feel like part of wearing a Cenobite costume is like also some of your body has undergone transformation.

Okay. So that is my, instead of any clothes or any leather, uh, It is just like a gown made out of, I guess, would it be thousands, tens of thousands of piercings? Just my entire body, pierced top to bottom. You're like in mystique makeup, but it's piercings. Yes. It almost looks like scales. Yes, exactly.

Yuck. That's really good.

I'd make a fucking great Cenobite. I think I'd be in.

A full leather suit, except exposed are my nipples, and I have way too many nipples. like on my back and.

Arms are they like all like like located in the same place and there's just a bunch of them and they're different sizes and shapes.

All over the place different sizes shapes and levels of hair.

Yeah okay fuck yeah I'm gonna I'm not gonna participate.

We understood the assignment yeah you picked the email and I realized I could have not included this but hey go check out Jason Finelli's review and quick look of Hellraiser Revival now on the.

Website I think that game looks pretty fun yeah.

Please never have me censor a penis in a game again or have to do that.

I mean, look, you got to do what you got to do.

Danzo damages by the by the owners of this website.

I had to motion track a dick.

I tried to motion track the dick. It went wrong.

Cam writes in. Yo, go play Boom Street. But all three of you for all a blight club. I'm very drunk, but proud this email has few typos. Love you, Cam. Okay. Boom Street?

What is Boom Street? Boom Street. Sounds like a boy band.

Boom Street.

The Wii game?

Maybe?

Is it a Boom Block spinoff?

Oh, what the?

Hang on.

Is Boom Street the European name for Fortune whatever?

Yeah, that's what it looks like. It has the same font.

Fortune Street? Is it just Fortune Street?

It's just Fortune Street, yeah. I would like to play real Fortune Street, something we still have never done. We played the fake kid version of it.

Yeah, and that sucked ass.

Yeah, it was bad. We got to do real Fortune Street.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Not enough bad Wii games for Bike Club yet.

I mean, Mike's our Wii expert, and right now he's busy with something, but don't worry. I definitely was thinking about some Wii games. I got a Wii U game right here.

Duke Mike loves the Wii.

Devil's third.

Kayla played a Wii game that one time. She played that Gingerbread Man game.

Yeah.

Right.

We all know Mike likes playing with his Wii. All right. Max writes in, hey, dudes, my music teacher, parentheses keyboard, once told me he considered the fade out a lazy cop out. What's the thing in games you consider a lazy cop out? Or something within your chosen profession, writing, editing, filming, podcasting, streaming, et cetera, you consider a lazy cop out. Have a great weekend. With love, Max.

Wait.

Yeah.

I need to be mad at this person for a second. Yeah. I'm a music teacher. Everything needs to resolve. Oh, I need to resolve.

This shit because that's how music should be.

It's a formula. It's their teacher.

It's their teacher. I'm talking to the teacher.

I'm talking to the teacher.

Isn't that just music theory? Like, not just this teacher. I guess you're making fun of all of them. All right, I got it.

Fuck jazz, I guess.

Yeah also like.

You got two podcast editors on this show what else am i supposed to do at the end of a podcast what are you talking about yeah.

Yeah i you can't really do much in audio i don't know you wanted to have a riser or.

Some shit in reference to a song i get it though i'm just joshing you but like yeah come on teach.

Uh as a uh as someone who edited a lot and wrote a lot i definitely have my pet peeves of uh kind of starting with a history lesson, something Dan always does every single time with one of his reviews. Every single time. To the point where it's like, oh, I don't think he knows how to do it any other way. I think he has to do this to start the review process.

And now we're pointing it out to listeners and they're all gonna see it.

They're gonna notice it now yeah for sure uh but it is yeah i was a people i'm like i was reading this first review my hey don't start with a history lesson and i started reading the rest of them like oh okay um that's.

Because he's like classically trained like magazine reviewer of like you gotta pump these things out right so yeah.

These are lessons i learned from magazine editors where like dan shu and them damian lynn were.

Like don't do that we did way too much this in the 90s and 2000s don't do.

Yes, well, they couldn't because, right, they had 150 words in their tiny little box in UGM, so it was a little different. You know, the cliches, mixed bag, all the stuff that if you've listened to any editors talk, that stuff I notice and kind of gets to me a little bit. And I'm guilty of a million of them as well. Visceral. Yeah, I mean, right, just overusing words, something I definitely am guilty of as well. But yeah, I will notice that when I'm reading stuff. And those are the pet peeves.

With video editing, I feel like, you know, Sean, you can relate to this. And similar to, like, editing podcasts, it's just, like, tools of the trade. Like, sometimes you just need to fade to black or just, like, a hard cut into something.

Yeah.

They're narrative language or narrative tricks that we've all, like, internalized over our entire lives.

Yeah.

Get the job done.

Like, something that I appreciate that most Star Wars games, if not all of them, carry over from the actual movies is, like, the soft wipe. That they will do to transition to different planets. I'll just sucker for it.

I don't have a lazy cop out. Off the top of my head. In relation to video editing.

I've been watching.

I've just been buying some stuff. For the new place. I've watched some reviews here and there. I've noticed with more mainstream YouTube. They're overdoing things. The meta is. More cameras equals better. That way when you have an aside. To tell the audience. Normally. If you have a side, you will bring up a B roll of what you're talking about and just cut in. Yeah, you'll do some like, you know, editing trick. But now the meta is to look at a different camera as if you're like saying, hey, get a load of this thing.

But they'll have like five cameras.

I'm like, why are you doing that?

Why do you have a camera way off there in the corner that you're slowly zooming in on yourself with?

Interesting.

Don't do that. It's distracting. It does not add to the production value at all.

It distracts from the useful truth of, yes, slowly zooming in on your point of emphasis. That that works. But if you're doing a million other things alongside that, that loses it loses its effectiveness.

Yeah, I like the more old school style that like people who have been on the platform for a very long time, like I saw an MKBHD video the other day where it's just like he's still doing it the old way, talking into a camera, just a red camera. So it's really nice resolution and quality. And then he'll cut to some B-roll when he wants to talk about something.

maybe like a quick, you know, pan in when he wants to make a point. I'm like, that's, that's the, the reason people have been on YouTube for the past, like 15 years or whatever, and super successful is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You know, just like upgrade your camera, upgrade your microphone.

That's it.

I think, uh, it's not necessarily a cop out, but maybe it's a pet peeve is, Hey, I love captions and captions are big, big thing on short form video. Um, shouts out to will, and then shouts out to Sean for, uh, proofreading the captions. Um, But I think the part where I have friction with some creators is adding like little emojis or whatever to their captions. Like they'll say like, hey, this laptop, blah, blah, blah. And then like a laptop emoji will pop up next to or like to the side of the word laptop. I just want to read, guys.

And the screen is already busy with some of these people reviewing things.

Yeah.

Chuck, anything? Any cop-outs?

Yeah, I have a programmer one, but I think this is like applicable to any professional working with other people. So I like managed teams of developers for years. And there are certain kinds of people where you assign them a task and that task might say, change this word to be this word instead. And they will just go in, see a nail, hit the nail with a hammer and then move on from the task. It's the developers that don't stop and go, if I do this, what happens to the rest of this application? Or if I do this, is the user going to be confused? They don't ask the second or third question about what that task entails or the effects of that task. That pisses me the fuck off. And the really good developers are systems thinkers

where they will think about the impacts and the ripple effects of anything they do in a code base. That's all.

Okay. Okay. Uh, next email comes from Kimo from New Mexico. Hey bombers. What's the best chicken McNugget shape? I think it's the boot. No question. Love you.

Kimo.

I'm excited about the books. It's a, it reminds me of the, the PB Jife of like that extra little surface area gone there and just scoop it out.

Yeah.

I was thinking like Christmas stocking, you know, it's a treat. There's something, there's going to be something good in there, baby.

Yeah yeah god maybe i want some nuggies now spicy nugs right now are very good oh i didn't even think about spicy nugs.

I want a swing instead you know i mean it's not the same if you can't like exactly look i ain't ever getting nuggets because i got popeyes like why would I ever get chicken at a McDonald's, at a Burger King?

Hell, even Taco Bell. My Taco Bell has really good nuggets. I know some people, like, their Taco Bells are terrible. I get it with the nuggets. Mine has dynamite nuggets, so they're really good.

I'm still just gonna go Popeyes.

Yeah. I, um... I tried the red beans and rice for the first time at Popeye's. I'd never gone it before. I like it a lot.

You do?

Oh my.

That's interesting. My mom swears by it too. I'm like, it's too smoky. It's too smoky.

I can't do that. Okay. Okay. That's fair.

Gotta be artificial smoke too. So, you know, they just squirted some stuff in the batch.

I'm fine with that.

I'm fine with that. It's like I saw them making my sweet chili wings the other day. And then, you know, it's just wings that they like drizzle a sauce over and toss in the container. But I'm like, doesn't matter. That sauce is real.

Good, man.

It's a good sauce. uh i did not write this uh emailers name down apologies but they someone wrote in why hasn't anyone made a minions game yet it's a global phenomenon put some respect on their name nintendo has the blueprint the perfect minions game is just a pikmin game sent from my iphone yeah.

Uh well they have they're just all on mobile yeah fair because that's that's where which is just one of those you.

Know yeah uh ABC writes in, hey, OGB crew, over the past decade or so, I put on y'all's dulcet voices to help me fall asleep. On a recent cross-country road trip, I put the podcast on to help me pass the time. I noticed my eyes got heavier over time. It was harder to stay awake at the wheel. I now realize that my body associates the podcast with getting some rest. What is the worst Pavlovian conditioning you've done to yourself? Thank you for the lovely show. Mike from SoCal, parentheses, always be clothing. Shouts out to you, ABC.

I mean, we talked about it before, Jan, of this is not exactly the same thing, but it's definitely an autonomous bodily response of anytime I feel the need to clear my throat or cough, I am reaching for a mute button that isn't there. Yes.

Yeah, it's fucked up. Yeah, it's rough.

I do that little movement of just moving my arm out, getting ready to do it, and then I catch myself going, oh no, I'm cooked.

Yeah, I can't think of any other ones off the top of my head.

I have a very similar one. It's ABC where just like certain YouTubers now I associate with sleepy times because I'll watch their videos before bed. You know, like the Sean Johnson extended ones, some of John's old DF Retros over at Digital Foundry, like the longer ones. I've just always rotated between all of those on the TV in my bedroom to like help me fall asleep. It's just like, you know, soothing voice. So a little bit of gameplay B-roll put on like the lowest brightness. It's a nice way to No, have something on in the background while I'm drifting off to sleep. I like that little bit of noise. I'm a city kid, you know? So there are certain YouTubers where I'm like, oh, God, I got to snap out of this because they got a new

video that I want to watch. I can't be falling asleep in the middle of it, man.

All right, gang. I'm just going to quickly scan through the inbox here. If there were a couple more that I missed. Spencer from Houston writes in, local brewery here has something like 20 to 30 pinball machines. and every time we go, I'll spend an hour or so playing. I always have a blast, but have no idea what I'm doing, and I'm pretty terrible. During pinball week, I really enjoyed watching Jurf's streams and seriously learned a ton.

When he said that most people are just frantically trying to keep the ball in play, I was like, oh, hey, that's me. It blew my mind when he caught the ball with a flipper and talked about slowing down the game. Last weekend, my wife and I went to that brewery to try and actually learn to play. Coincidentally, they were having a pinball tournament that night. The organizer greeted us, We said we were total noobs and didn't want to bother them. He told us to pick a machine, and he'd walk us through the different modes, strategies, and give us some tips. We spent a few hours on the Pokemon machine and had a great night. They had a ton of really standout machines, Godzilla, Jaws, Deadpool, etc., and

even the new Fallout machine, to name a few. Eureka Heights Brewery, if y'all are curious. Anyways, thanks to Drift for all the pinball action and for inspiring us to have this really awesome pinball date night. Spencer from Houston. Awesome. Yeah, yeah.

I definitely had that experience to PAX. I've talked about that before. I've made a video of like going to one of my first PAXs and it's just like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here. And there was a pinball champion guy who like just gave a live lesson in the lobby, like in the hallway with a pinball machine. And I videotaped it. Yeah. He showed, he's like, look, you can time it. So you get the flipper to kind of catch the ball and it like will slide down and rest right here. And now, now look, you could take your time to look around at the play field. I'm like, oh man.

Okay.

And that was the thing that sort of unlocked that, that game for me all the, all those years ago. And, really has helped, uh, actually get more enjoyment out of it. Cause you feel like you have more control, which changes things in pinball for sure.

Who knows? It could have been, uh, Jack danger doing it. Uh, Jack danger was a great guest. It could have been him. It was, um, uh, all right. Two more emails and then we'll hit up, uh, the GB discord for some Q and a cues. Uh, thank you everyone for sending your emails into the show.

Thanks everybody.

Really appreciate it. Uh, let's see. Nick writes in, the subject line, original Minotti slash grub fanboy. Hello, Bombcast. I've had this in my brain for a while, and I didn't know what to do with it, so I'm dumping it here on an all-email week. When Mike first started contributing to Giant Bomb and revealed the name Tolkoto, it triggered a memory, but it couldn't quite place it. It was like seeing an actor and not remembering what you've seen them in before. Weeks later, I signed on to Steam, and to my surprise, saw the name pop up. Turns out, I'm friends with Tolkato on Steam. I was mostly a console player for a long time, so Steam has never been my platform for playing with friends. Thus, I only

have a handful of Steam friends. I was a bit confused, so I looked into how this would have happened, and eventually the pieces came together. Before Giant Bomb, I was a big fan of the One Up Yours podcast. In one episode, Garnet called out a small independent podcast called Squadron of Shame. I decided to give them a listen and became a fan. I followed them for a while and even wrote in a fan letter. I have a terrible memory, so I didn't specifically remember Mike or grub, but I do recall listening to some episodes of the exploding barrel podcast. I must've heard those two back, back then without even realizing it. Anyway, I apologize for this rambling story. It was just such a strange feeling as

the memories unfolded that I wanted to share on the plus side. I guess I get to be a hipster and claim. I liked Mike and grub before it was mainstream. Love you guys, Nick.

Uh, yeah. One of that community is, uh, that was, there's something special there. And it was, uh, that was, yeah, back then when we were kind of all learning what podcasts were, when one of yours happened. And then the squadron of shame was sort of like a group on one up of people being like, we are going to tackle our, our, our piles of shame is what we would call, uh, backlogs back then. And, you know, it was our pile of shame. And, uh, they would do an episode each week where they would just choose a game and then a different kind of crew would rotate in and play it. And I think I was on the Deus Ex episode and, and maybe a couple of others, but I didn't do a ton. But it was definitely like hanging around with that group. And I'm still friends.

We're in a discord together today. I was, I was telling, telling Jan, I had a friend on, on one up that I, you know, I hung out with at PAX and then she reached out again because we didn't, I did that episode with Dan Rabb and he posted in some Filipino American group on LinkedIn and, And it was like, now we're talking about 1UP again and all this stuff.

And it's just like, yeah, that group of fans that was really into 1UP Yours and the 1UP show and all that stuff has had a real outsized effect on the industry. Like, I can't kind of go anywhere without running into someone who I used to just be hanging out in forums or posting comments on their blog on 1UP.

And yeah, Squadron of Shame was definitely a big part of that. And I was a fan of Exploding Barrel Podcast. That's how I discovered Mike Minotti. And I was like, man, this guy's really good at this. We should do a show with him one day. And now here we are.

Yeah, the one-up show theme song, still a banger on regular rotation that I have on.

I sing it all the time.

Yeah, it makes me feel good inside. Speaking about the one-up show specifically and one-up yours, it kind of blew my mind when I joined GB. And then right across the hall was Richard Lee, also working at GameSpot. And I was like, yo, you were like the G. You were an OG of this industry, specifically with video dudes.

And also, you interviewed me for an internship at 1UP and didn't select me. So I had a little bit of a vendetta for quite a while. And then getting to know Richard. Shouts out to Richard Lee, man. One of my favorite fucking people in this industry.

He is very cool. I'm a big fan of the guy. So cool.

Like an OG also with like the FGC as well. Yeah. Shouts out to Richard. Hope you're doing well, big dog. Okay. Last email I have from the email inbox over here comes from Ben. From a cruise ship. Yo ho, I'm on a cruise ship with one hour of Wi-Fi to use across the entire week, trying to decide if I should ration it to 10 minutes every morning or do it right away and blow through all day, day one doom scrolling. What would you spend one hour of Wi-Fi on if you had to make it last a week?

P.S.

Jed, if you read this because I use a non-insignificant amount of Wi-Fi minutes to compose this message, don't read this.

Part out loud.

Oh, shit. Ben from the cruise ship.

That is, I think the move is doom scroll right away. So you use it all up and it's gone. And then that'll make the detox even better.

Do they limit you for Wi-Fi on a cruise ship?

It might depend on the cruise ship. I mean, to me, that's like a premium thing. To me, that sounds like almost like, it almost sounds like this is the point of the cruise, right? Where it's like, hey, we are going to make sure you can't be online too much. yeah and they won't even give you the option to like buy more so yeah i wonder if that's the i don't.

Know if it's anything like airplanes though i imagine it's just money hungry like they could support this bandwidth it's just like you know they want uh decongest the network and also make some money in the process.

Yeah yeah i i think it's a little bit of that too i.

Wonder is it truly just time-based because it's time-based i don't know how fast is it download a bunch of podcasts and like youtube videos and stuff that's what i would do like Get some entertainment for later, baby, especially audio.

Wi-Fi minutes? Minutes.

Yeah, I would hope it's like megabytes or whatever, but yeah.

Yeah, maybe Ben has a misunderstanding of time and megabits, perhaps. Who knows? But Ben, I agree with Grubb. Burn through it all and then enjoy your time on the cruise. How often are you on a cruise?

If your phone's going to be useless, you could just lock it away. Imagine walking around for a whole week without having your phone anywhere nearby. I'll get that one point, like about midway through or late in the day on Saturday, I'll get to that point where it's like, oh, I actually don't know where my phone is. That's great. But by the time I'm waking up on Sunday, I'm like, all right, I got to get ready for the week and start thinking about some stuff. So I got to go find this thing. So I get like, a couple hours each week where I don't know where my phone is.

And that's great. If I could do that for a whole week, that would be spectacular.

That is exactly why I would download the podcast though. Like imagine just listening to your favorite show while just like you're on the sunbathing deck, just like staring out the endless ocean and whatever.

I think that'd be really neat. I, I, I, I agree, but also, uh, I, so I don't remember her name, but the person that just won the Nobel prize for poetry, I think, uh, they had trouble getting ahold of her. They didn't know where she was. Apparently, like a half an hour before they announced that she won the prize, they finally called her and they're like, where were you?

She's like, I was in Iceland listening to the wind. Hell yeah. Well, that fucking owns. And I want that for me real bad. I kind of want to go somewhere and just listen to the wind. And so I'm in that mood right now.

Yeah, my phone died. for two hours last week, and I had a little bit of anxiety. It was like, oh, people aren't going to be able to reach me. I won't be able to call anyone. But those two hours, bliss. Yeah. I was like, oh, man, cool. I don't have to talk to anyone right now. It was great. And then I got a hot dog. All right. Thank you, everybody, for sending your questions to the Bombcast email address. And that email address is bombcastatgiantbomb.com. Thank you so much for sending your emails in. Chuck had... asked the premium folks in the GB Discord, which you should be a part of.

It's a fun place to hang out. I'm constantly lurking and writing in my little notebook as to who to eventually ban.

Right.

So, yeah.

Do you want me to read these? Yeah, yeah, if you want to.

Sure.

Let's not read all of them.

No, no, no, of course not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just start with the very important one, though. Jan, hit us with a denim update. Also, happy birthday, Janiel, and that's by Always Be Corky.

Thank you, ABC. Uh, listen, gang, I have not been a black jeans person for quite a couple of years now, a long time. Um, and I'm thinking about, and I, I tried on a pair of black jeans cause I had to go to an event that required all black clothing. I was like, Oh, I think I like this. Why did I stop doing this? And then I thought, well, if I'm already getting into black jeans, why don't I get it back into the salvage denim, but with black jeans? Um, So that's my update. I'm exploring different colors of jeans.

Any fading on the black jeans or just straight black?

Straight black and then natural fades as we progress through time.

Is there such thing as white denim or is that just completely faded denim? I'm a complete neophyte.

Probably dyed, right?

I think it'd have to be dyed or like heavily bleached.

Yeah, I've seen white jeans before, so.

Sure, I think that's what I'm, I've seen it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Who are you, John Vignocchi?

I googled white denim, and apparently it's the name of a band. I'm not going to continue to search this. I give up.

I found some jeans that say Broadway Beige is the color.

Broadway Beige.

But it looks white. I'm white and beige, technically, so congratulations. Weezman asks, and he says, even better if he's not available to answer himself, what's a Will game?

Napoleon has to be there.

Yeah, he seemed to roll into that transport fever game. Yeah, like, he's definitely a dad game gamer.

He loves strategy games. He likes a 4X. I think he likes RTSs a good amount.

Yeah, big into, like, traditional PC stuff.

Yes. Yeah.

What we're saying is he's a huge dork.

He's a fucking nerd. Nothing scary.

I love all the same stuff as him, too. So, yeah, it's fun having someone else on the team that's, like, big into that space. Yep.

I'm always like, Oh man, I wish I could like, when he showed me transport fever, I'm like, man, this is the game I'd be playing if I had all the time in the world right now.

Yep. Um, let's see. Dr. Ryan says question for the all Q and a Bob cast for grub. You figure out why they bought that zoo yet.

I mean, I try not to think about it and it brings up a lot of moral and ethical questions and I just don't think I'm ready to answer. So no, no, I don't know why they bought that too.

All right. Sick. Jake says after zero company and galactic racer being bangers and other, what other off the wall genre would you want to see star Wars be used in?

I think you need to, it needs to be a genre where you can lean on having like weird side characters or funny little dudes. Cause bitty blaze, bitty blaze favorite fucking little fucker this year.

Yeah. Uh, give me a Dexter Jetster restaurant simulator.

Yeah.

I mean, run a little shop in Coruscant. Or maybe you have to do a stand on Jakku, and then when you get enough money, then you can eventually buy a restaurant somewhere else, like one of the mid-rim worlds, and then finally get to Coruscant. Yeah, that could be the move.

Give me It Takes Two or Split Fiction, but with two Enzelens, so two little Babu Fricks.

Babu Frick, yeah.

Playing off of the little freaks, sorry to go a little against the question again, but I do really want a good Star Wars fighting game. Cause like, I want to see what like Netherrealm would do with like some weirdos in that franchise. And like, some off-the-wall movesets just like what like uh y'all know uh pharah tor from uh mortal combat x like the big hulking dude with like a little kid on his back i want to see like a you know star wars equivalents to stuff like that just like really off-the-wall movesets and whatnot i think that would be.

Really cool i want a uh i want a 2d metroidvania the jedi phone or games are somewhat well at least the first one's quite a bit of a metroidvania but I want a 2D Metroidvania where you play as IG-88, that droid assassin.

Oh, hell yeah.

And like he can, so he can like get his upgrades over time and like, yeah, they just makes a ton of sense for him. And I can imagine that playing like Shadow Complex or something like that. Oh, that'd be sick. Like he's just trying to like, steal some plans from a rebel base or something uh and then like they they like capture them and like like reprogram and then like the second half of the game like you're going into an imperial facility or something like that yeah cool.

Game make a metroidvania that actually plays like metroid that isn't named maximum purge like there's too few of those and that's that's what i like in those games.

That would rule super mario odyssey but with uh grogu.

Are you throwing Grogu?

Yeah.

I don't know.

We'll figure it out.

All right.

I'm going to combine a couple of questions here. They're about giant bomb video and also decomps. PSN Enigma 512 says AI generated decomps seem to be everywhere now. How are you all balancing all of the AI generated decomps? I think they mean, how are you filtering, choosing, picking? And then a similar question by Tampy. You've been covering recomps and mods quite a bit. in the news, and on Giant Bomb Video. Is there any interest in covering or even playing some of the other fan content that exists in older games? And we just talked about that with Legend of Law. Was that the name of it?

Legend of Law. Hero of Law. Hero of Law. Like Hero of Time. Yes. Fan translations, ROM hacks, and archipelago multi-world randomizers come to mind. Do any specific ones catch your eye that you want to do soon? So two-part question. How do you pick and choose and deal with that? Because it's kind of a mess and then What other stuff do you want?

I got a handy tip. I learned the other day for the first part. Make a GitHub account if you don't have one already. And then the easiest way to do this is, unfortunately, to go to some slop project that you are aware of. Go to the contributors list to find Claude, because that's usually what's going to be.

It's going to be Claude code. If you're assigned into GitHub, you can block users. And when you go to a GitHub project with a user you have blocked that has contributed to it, there's actually a banner at the top of the project that says like, warning, a user you have blocked has contributed to this project.

Okay, good to know.

So if you block Claude, that's a really easy way for you to get like a nice, easy to see pop up of, hey, Claude was used in this. And then if you want to nope out right away, you can. Or if you want to see, all right, let's see what happened here. And then you can go in the contributions list and it's like, Oh, 70%. This is just Claude code.

Yeah.

I'm no pound now. Cause I don't trust this program. So that's an easy way to see that.

Okay.

Yeah that's generally the way i'm gonna feel like not generally it's like there's so much work done by real people in the fan game space in the mod space that's the stuff i'm interested in so i'll be trying to focus on that wherever possible uh i bet some stuff will slip through but for the most part there's plenty of stuff that we do know is made by humans that's what we would focus on and then uh what was the second part of the question.

Chuck What other kinds of content like video are you looking to dig into? Yes.

All that like fan translations, all that stuff. In fact, people have been messaging me on, on discord or, or on a blue sky and stuff like that. Giving me ideas. I've been making, making a list right now. I'm thinking for the Halloween special, I'm bouncing back and forth between a couple of things, but there is that earthbound Halloween edition.

And it would be, it's about, It's about three hours. That's a bit too long for one of the streams, but we can get to the really good stuff. And I'm like, well, we'll just have like a game rental night. We'll just go rent this game and maybe have Mike play through that. We can all sit there and comment on it and I'll give them ideas about what to do.

And that one is a Toby Fox game. Toby Fox made that before he made, what is his first game called? Undertale. Thank you. It has a version of Megalomania in there. It's yeah. And I'm like, oh, that sounds like a real good time. And that's a little bit different than something we've done before. But fan translations are definitely also very likely going to be something we have on there.

There's a lot of those for like the frog for whom the bell tolls is one I've wanted to play for a long time. Captain Video is one I've wanted to play for a long time. Yeah, these are definitely or Captain Rainbow, excuse me, is one I've wanted to play for a long time. So, yeah, we will try all kinds of different stuff. If it's not from the official companies, but is made by humans and riffed on in an interesting way, that's all a possibility.

Sorry to go back.

Oh, go ahead, Sean.

If you want a good place for recommendations of those things, I always recommend people follow Wes Fenlon's read-only memo. It's a bi-weekly newsletter that he puts out, and he doesn't like AI code either, so he tries to avoid those things, or if it's relevant to the news, he explains what was done on that, but he tries to highlight... human-made decomps and recomps, and then each week has a fan translation section and new ROM hacks that are blowing up and stuff like that. It's a good read and a good way to source the stuff that commenters are probably.

Looking for there.

Sorry to go back, but I think they should make a Star Wars horror game.

Yeah, it's not a bad idea.

Question from Akratix. Question for everyone. What's your gaming blind spot? Like, what genre or popular game that you somehow just missed, regardless of interest or time in the release of the game slash genre. For example, I have a huge blind spot for Flight Sims. Never really dove into it.

Sure.

Gave it a fair chance. This is very related, Grub, to that old podcast you used to do, right? Yep.

Yeah, definitely.

I also had a very similar podcast that we recorded like three dummy episodes for and it didn't go anywhere. But, yeah, that's just a fun idea, right? Like, where do I, what are my blind spots? And then dig into those.

I guess sim games in general.

Yeah.

That surprises me, Jan. It's not for me.

I want to do it myself. There's areas of PC games I missed. Yeah, there's areas of, you know, there's quite a few of like the early to mid PlayStation 2 games before I had a PlayStation 2 that I never went back to. Things like that.

One I've been thinking about because I want to play some of these games for spooky season. The Igavania Castlevania games. I have not played any of them. The GBA games, the PS games, any of them. Anything past Symphony I have not played. And so, Grub, what's the best one of those? I know you're a big fan of all those.

I mean, I have a personal favorite, and I have the one that I would recommend as probably the best one. My personal favorite is Circle of the Moon. That's the one that really made me go, oh, I love these games, and I get to play every year. There's a new one, and every year I'm playing them like a ritual. But Aria of Sorrow is probably the best.

Most people won't say Aria of Sorrow. That was going to be.

Talked about all the time.

Yeah.

I mean, they're all great. I mean, Order of Ecclesia kind of mixes up the formula a little bit by the time they did that one.

That's like the sixth one.

That one's definitely worth playing. The thing is, they're all worthwhile. They're all really, really good.

Okay, typically I, like, because I'm such a big Metroid fan that, like, for me, that structure of game I always associate with ranged combat. And so, like, I haven't always clicked with, like, Symphony of the Night is a game I really respect, but I don't love melee combat in that style of game as much. So I kind of just never got into them, and that's why I don't like a lot of indie Metroidvanias and stuff. But I want to give more of them a try, because some.

Of them are quick and... You can get a handgun in Ariasarrow.

It's a little different than Samus Blast and stuff, but yeah.

I don't think so. It's exactly the same.

Sean, did I talk to you about the Sega Saturn version of Symphony of the Night? He plays Maria. Oh, right. She uses magic as a ranged weapon and can charge... her magic to shoot bigger fireballs and stuff. I didn't realize it was like that. You have to, you have to enter like fighting combo style stuff to do her spells that can actually like bosses and everything. I think you should give it a try. I should, I should give that a try.

Honestly.

Cause like that was the version that everyone just said for a long time, stay away from it.

Cause sure.

It has bonus content, but other than that, it's just empirically worse. But now, now they've improved it to the point that it's like on par with the PS one version. Technically like, uh, again, I want to talk about like, uh, rom hackers and fan game creators in the retro scene they've like fixed symphony of night on the saturn and now you also get the all the bonus content so the saturn version of symphony of night is technically a definitive one at this point.

I really like it and it has like specific tracks that are only on that version of the game like remixes of stuff like bloody tears and everything Maria has her own funky dance party versions of some of the tracks. It's fucking awesome.

Oh, that's where those come from. Yeah, I've heard those when I've been editing stuff. I was like, I want a specific song. Okay, cool. Let's do one more. Does that sound good?

Yeah. Cool Dick Denver says, What is the final boss in a video game that you found disappointing or just bad? I'm asking this because Chuck just beat the final boss in Half-Life 1. And I always thought that fight was the weakest part of that game. Wow. What a coincidence. Psylux. Yeah, man.

Honestly, like the.

Last portion of that fight was actually pretty decent.

But like, yeah, it starts off weaker. Yes, for sure.

It was, it's very clear dance out here. So I just talk about this freely as someone who likes it. Um, that game you can find the exact point where things went to being like okay you're either gonna love or you're hated to just like it fell apart because we needed to get that out the door and it unfortunately is the ending portion and the final boss.

Yep that's definitely disappointing i know mike would say uh the final boss fight of breath of the wild which i you know i i get to a certain he doesn't like that i think so yeah oh yeah it doesn't look like it yeah I think the part where you're riding around on the horse, I think he's like, ah, it's kind of more spectacle than substance and stuff like that.

It's not wrong, yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's where I'm like, you're not wrong. It just never really phased me in any way. I'm like, yeah, no, the journey was the experience here. And that is really true in Breath of the Wild, where it's like you are going to have a lessened boss fight because you unlocked all these giants that can help you in the battle and stuff like that. So, yeah.

You know, from this year, a boss fight I think was extraordinarily mid was the Pragmata. boss fight not the thing at the very end the cinematic one i mean like that sure.

No you're completely right i've heard it i haven't had time to do hard mode i've heard it's better on hard mode but yeah that final boss before the final sequence is not even like a bad fight it's like a good idea it's just like man it was so easy yeah that was really overwhelming yeah also i just don't like the okay it's the final boss time to fight you but better it's like okay so you're just sometimes it works well.

I mean, that works, I guess maybe not as a final boss fight, but I love that concept in FromSoftGames, Chuck, where the boss you're fighting has all the same moves that you do. And whether it's like Wolf, the big wolf guy or whatever, where you're fighting him, he's like, oh, this is just a slightly bigger version of you. But I like even better in FromSoftGames where it's, No, this guy's the same size as you, has all the same things, and it's just an awesome boss fight. But that's from people that really know what they're doing. It's a little bit different.

FromSoft is built different with some of that stuff. Like the way PvP is like almost in the DNA of how they construct their boss fights and encounters. Still, I tried to do that and it just did not work.

Oh, no. Yeah, the inverse of this question. Like Lady Maria, I think about that boss fight a lot, actually. I know it's not a last boss fight, but it's like one of the best ones for me. I don't know. Sometimes the last boss in a Resident Evil game is just not fun. Sometimes. Yeah. Requiem was okay.

Requiem was okay. I thought that one was mostly pretty fun.

That's a good example, though, I think of, yeah, where it's just like they didn't really know what to do. So you get big monster, you shoot a lot. Like Resident Evil 4 has that problem as well. I actually, I don't remember what the final boss is like in the original, but at least the remake, which I played recently, I'm just like, oh, this is underwhelming.

Okay. Any last minute cues slipping through the cracks?

You know what? Toshi asks, remove all restrictions, time, space, money, distance, etc. What would each of your dream giant bomb event or series be? Shouts out to Toshi.

Yeah, so the dream for me from the beginning is one that I just, I don't know how we do it. It is to play through uh, a game of eco, which is one of them, you know, might be my, it's my second favorite game of all time. I think it's in my top three. Eco is this educational game about, uh, the impact that humans can have on ecological environments, but also, uh, Economic Systems Eco is, you know, it has multiple meanings in the title there. You play together on a server with a group of people. And the idea is you all need to specialize into various skills so that you can work together to build the tools to stop an asteroid from hitting your planet and destroying it. And that means that there's one person who's really good at logging,

like getting the wood, but they might not be good at processing the wood. So they need to go work with the person who's expecting that direction. And then that processed wood, the person can make the processed wood, but maybe they're not good at actually building with the processed wood. And that's like the beginning. And eventually you're doing metallurgy and all these other more complicated things. And it happens in real time over 30 days. You can like set it, but I think the standard is over 30 days. So, In real time, the asteroids are just getting closer and closer and closer. And if you're not playing, you're not kind of upgrading, not keeping up. So it kind of feels like almost a job you have to do. And

that's one of the key things about the game is it feels like labor. It's not like Minecraft where you could put 256 pieces of dirt in your pocket. You have to get a wheelbarrow and actually fill that up. And it takes up physical space. So when you bring it up, you have to put it somewhere and deal with the ramifications of that. It creates all these super interesting interlocking problems and systems. of people having to work together.

And then you have arguments about the best way to handle everything. And I don't know how to like take that and present it to an audience. Cause it, it would be something where it's like, people might be playing all the time and all these different hours. Is it something where we just film everything and edit it down?

That's so much work. So if we had the solution to all of those problems, that's definitely something that I would tackle, but I don't know how to do it.

Uh, dream series is, is if we didn't have to worry about time and space and money, I would like to do a D & D campaign. It doesn't have to be Dungeons & Dragons specifically. It could be any setting. And I think definitely would want to pick and choose who would be on. Not everyone on the team would or should be on. Just for everyone's preferences and being comfortable.

But ideally, I'd like to have... I feel like Will would be very fun on a tabletop show. I feel like Vinny would be fantastic because Vinny is such a wild card. Bailey would be very fun, and Bailey has experience doing that. Chuck, you could be DM, I guess.

My book's back here.

I guess you know a thing or two. I don't know. Uh, Mikey, I think would have a lot of fun just like dissolving into a character. Uh, and I think that'd be really cool. Also, I don't know. We have like nice sound design on it or something like, um, uh, and like art made for each of the individual characters that we build. I guess it's not out of the realm of possibility, but it just like grub said with the eco series, it would just take a lot of work to do. Okay.

I have to figure out some questions.

Prepping campaigns for Dungeon Masters is, it definitely is a lot of work. Like I had a Friday group we did every Friday for like five years. And we finally this year kind of pausing long-term because it's just whoever's DMing, you either have to know a module really, really well. So I've got some modules back here. You have to read through it all ahead of time, be really familiar, ready to improvise if someone decides to shoot an NPC that you were going to rely on for some story later, right?

Or if you're going to homebrew something, you can't half-ass that or do it entirely on the fly because they'll start seeing the edges and see through it, right? So yeah, it takes a lot of investment and players have to buy in. But if you can get all that stuff together, it is such a fantastic experience. Will was lobbying for one-pagers.

So like TTRPGs, the rules can be distilled just down to one page that everyone can read and understand.

Hmm.

Because it removes a lot of that prep work and a lot of that foreknowledge. And you can kind of just organically play through something in a session, right? So yeah, I'm there with you, Jan. I think that'd be really fun.

Small scale. This will happen as long as he wants to do it. But we've joked about it a little bit. But it will happen. Jan, I want to walk through my favorite video game with you. We'll do Mega Jan Legends at some point.

I would love to do that.

Yeah.

I just want to show it off. Because you say you've never played it before. I like showing it off to people. I would love to walk you through it. Maybe endurance run style or something at some point. But as always is the case with shows that we do together, it's a little hard to find time for both of us.

You guys are both getting new places soon, right? You guys just go stay with each other for a little bit. Yeah, but then how is anything going to function on the website, Grubb? our stream's gonna go.

Out chuck can do everything yeah she's multi multi-talented he's got it yeah.

Chuck looks i've been i've been pulling 12 hour days for the last couple weeks and it sucked no it's it's gonna be worthwhile um pie.

In the sky though i do have a pie in the sky could just to answer the question more directly no money restrictions no time restrictions we can just do this and nobody can say no we have no reason to say no Jan, you and Will do great jobs with all the different travel stuff that we do. I would love it if we just threw everything out the window and all eight of us do the giant bomb world tour and we just go around the world, travel log it, and have a gigantic video afterwards.

Yeah, that'd be great.

That'd be really cool. I'd settle for Japan with everybody.

Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be really fun. Big in Japan.

Uh, my, my one that I would want for us, if it's for giant bomb for the eight of us, uh, and definitely some like friends of the website too, or people that worked here in the last, you know, however many years, um, a land party. Yeah.

That's something we should definitely, it's not doable, right?

If we wanted to bring our PC PCs, like it's.

I mean, we have a place that makes PCs that we go hang out at sometimes.

Oh yeah. That'd be so fun. And just like, pop into whatever game people felt like. I used to, we did this like as recently as like 2019 and the COVID and things, but we would like get 15 people together and everyone would get a turn, like picking a game to make everybody else play. And I'd be like, okay, Jedi outcast too. I'm going to murder all of you playing capture the flag now. And you have to put up with that. Like it was so much fun.

Yeah.

That'd be great. All right.

Okay. Thank you, everyone on the GB Discord for sending those cues along and to that last-minute call-out from Chuck. Thank you, Chuck, for sending that out. And thank you, everyone, for sending emails. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining me on this pre-recorded bombcast. Folks, thank you for listening.

Yes. No, one more thing.

Yes.

Happy birthday, buddy.

Happy birthday, Jan. Happy birthday, Jan.

I know it's coming up real soon. Thank you, guys.

Thank you, guys.

Yeah, what do you want for your birthday, buddy? You want a chocolate cake?

What do you need? You want a baseball bat?

I'd love a baseball bat, sure. I want everyone to tune in to the Giant Bombathon this October 15th and 16th. Two 12-hour days of streaming! Folks, we had a fantastic time last year. A lot of fun things happened last year. And I already know and I can anticipate a lot of great times happening this week. Take a day off.

What are you doing? Go cash in that PTO. What are you doing?

Have us on a second screen.

It's great.

And, you know, we love and appreciate all of y'all. I am definitely confident in saying that we'll have some stuff to give away. You know, some fun things are planned. So, yeah, go buy a premium subscription for a friend, your mom, maybe your dog. And, you know, Grubb said this the other day on one of the many streams we do. But, hey, go reach out to a homie that maybe is a lapsed Giant Bomb fan and show them what we're doing because we're doing a lot of stuff. We're doing a lot of stuff over here. And it's all really, really good stuff. Gang, thank you so much for hanging out with me on this Friday, Tuesday. Folks at home, we'll see you next week for another episode of the Giant Bombcast.

Until then, he's been Sean, he's been Chuck, he's been Jeff. Shouts out to Bacalar, shouts out to Mike, Dan, and Will.

I've been Jan.

We'll see you next week for another episode. Until then, goodbye!

Giant Bombcast 962: EMAIL EXTRAVAGANZA

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