Retro Warriors 503 - Bomberman '94

This is Jim a one-time winner is episode 503. The number feels so enormous. 500 in three of these. Also we just did a half-hour pre-show.

On nothing. On nothing useful. No, I mean, on awesome stuff that you want to hear. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You should definitely subscribe and get the uncut. Here, talk about nothing. Anyway, as we're host, just to make your eyes I'm joined by BibleCUBE and Chris Saturn. Hi, Justin.

Hi, Saturn. It feels like you're trying to barrel through the pre-show just because of how long the pre-show was. No, no. This is great.

I do have a housekeeping. No, I mean, I've decided something. I've decided something. Yeah.

Because I've been listening and reading a lot of news lately. Oh, I'm sorry. I know. And I try to stay involved in current events and politics and what's going on.

I try to understand things. I think everyone here on staff, we're all big into staying abreast of things. And I was like, man, it's just so much negativity going around. And it's tough and it can be infectious.

And I'm going to say, I'm going to, this is my commitment. I'm going to be only positive during every news segment we do. This is my. Why are you laughing?

Don't laugh. I'm going to do it. You see some of the news. Ah, geez.

It's going to be great. It's going to be great. I'm going to test it out. I'll do this episode.

I'm just going to do this. Anyway, all layoffs this week. I want to deliver. Happy exciting news.

Going to be great. I'll find the silver lining. Sorry. Now I do try to be relatively positive in general.

Because I have suffered from depression for most of my life. And there have absolutely been times when I am in a dark spot and just haven't somebody smile at me or say something positive has picked me up out of that day a little bit. Even if it's not cured, obviously. But but it's a little bit better that day.

And so I always try to be that person that smiles or says something positive for somebody else. Depression's like recycling, you know? Every little bit counts. You might not feel like it does, but it does.

It also just ends up in a landfill in China, eventually. Yeah, it's just dumped in the ocean. All through all our depression. I think the long pre-show has fucked us up.

We're in like a mood of some sort. Yeah, yeah, there's that. We did 500. What do you want?

We did enough good episodes. Let's do some bad ones. We've got to go to the now. It's fine.

I think we've made that joke every episode since 500. So my week, I started doing some console gaming. I went and I dusted off my Xbox Series X. And I was going to play some Forza Horizon 4.

My daughter was like, can we play that car game? And I was like, yes, we can. And I turned it on. And it's not on Game Pass anymore.

Yeah, because it was delisted. We talked about it on the show a while back here. We've talked about a lot of things in 502 previous episodes. I'll remember them all.

OK. So I go, it's not there. And I'm like, all right, well, I bought it. I'm sure I bought it.

And what I bought was all the DLC for it. That was a mistake. Yeah, never bought the game. And so I'm like, shit, I have like 60, 70 hours in Forza Horizon 4.

It's one of my favorite games of the generation. I absolutely adore the game and did not like Forza Horizon 5 nearly as much. And I'm heartbroken. And so I ended up having to go buy the game on a gray market key website for $20.

And I also have to rebuy all the DLC, even though I know I bought the DLC packs for it, which kind of makes sense. It's very weird. Weird licensing stuff. And I was just feeling really disenfranchised.

Because I didn't like my Xbox has been plugged up. I hadn't touched it in months. And I think what I was excited about was that feeling when you're like, oh, I'm going to go dig out my whatever console and re-experience that. It's been a minute.

And that excitement of taking that old console out and hooking it up and having all these old experiences again, just evaporated before my eyes as I hooked it up and realized why the game. I couldn't play that game. And I don't own most of these experiences. And even if I did, a lot of them, especially on Xbox, only existed digitally.

Or as disks that require downloads or online connections or whatever, or as just codes in a box. There's still plenty of physical Xbox games that are full-game. Sure. But the big ones, the ones I really care about, like Halo Master Chief Collection, I don't think I forgot a physical.

I don't care at least. I don't know that Halo Infinite got a physical game. I think I might have got a code in a box. I didn't have the game on it.

Oh, see, that's a problem for me, Saturn. A bow just came out. And there is no physical release. They'll sell you a box and a steel book, but there's no disk even in it.

It's like, what is it? I don't care at all about any of these Microsoft first-party releases. Most of my physical Xbox games are indie games, and they're awful on disk. But I like first-party Xbox releases.

So I'm feeling really disenfranchised. I ended up also playing whatever the newest Sniper Elite, whatever it's called is. And it was on Game Pass and it's Sniper Elite. It was a good time.

So I go back to my Switch, where I have a large physical collection. And I'm playing some Switch games. And I'm like, this is great. I picked up Pikmin 4 over a year ago.

I've been sitting on my shelf in the shrink, and I opened it up and put in a few hours on that. And man, first of all, awesome Pikmin game. Super duper fun. I was like, where did they even go after Pikmin 3, which was so good?

And they figured it out. It's great. It's a little over-tutorialized. Like Nintendo stuff tends to be.

But man, really fun Pikmin game. I also recently got into the Mail the Marvel versus Capcom fighting collection. So I was playing Marvel versus Capcom 2. Because my entire life, I've been determined to try to understand how that fucking game works.

And I was like, I feel dumb. I literally, I'm like, what is happening? What is even happening? I can't, it's like, I don't understand what I don't understand.

My first thing that I went to when I picked that collection up was Marvel Super Heroes versus Street Fighter, which is one of my favorites. And so I immediately jumped to the Japanese version, because that's a version I played more of, because I've gotten on my Saturn. And I was so excited to see that Normaro was there. I had heard they had to cut him for licensing.

Yeah, yeah. Because they are. Previously, hadn't they for? In a previous release.

Yeah, the Marvel versus Capcom Origins collection. On TS3 next one. But this one, he was there. I was so excited.

I got to do my hyperstrong miracle treasure in my ultra variety of private memories. It's so nice. So I'm playing my switch. And I'm like, this is great.

This makes me feel good that, because I buy a lot of switch games. But I've got to, at least a couple of dozen, make 20, 30 digital games. Definitely. 120 physical games on my switch.

Oh, I thought you were saying digital. I was like, oh, god, that's a lot. I barely bought anything. Digital.

And so I was like, this is what I wanted from my Xbox was. I can just go sit down and play some games. Whether I'm in the net's also been up and down lately, it's just been making me think a lot about, like, what do I actually own? The internet shuts off, a service shuts off, whatever.

What do I actually own in my house? Right. And it got me looking into Xbox stuff, it got me realizing that for all their faults, Sony is a lot better about releasing physical versions of games that have the game on a disc in the box. Well, it's also because the people who demand physical games the most are more likely to buy a PlayStation than an Xbox, which has led to that, where a lot of these, like, limited print companies and everything, they only release PlayStation versions.

It also seems, I don't know what weird licensing stuff Xbox had for a little bit. But I have to feel like there were some Xbox One and Series X licensing related issues that led to lots of stuff coming out on PS4 that didn't get physicals on Xbox for some reason. A lot of it was just that Xbox One and Series X sold so much worse than the PlayStation. That's true.

All this to say that my wife got a bonus and it was Valentine's Day and I bought a PlayStation 5. I know 5 years into the generation, so I'm much more early adopter. It's Saturn. I got the PS5 slim with the disc.

And I was immediately shocked. Because again, I'm not buying physical Xbox games because a lot of the Xbox games I like are first party and they just aren't available physically. But also, I buy a lot of speaking games. Because you can buy a physical copy, it's just not a real copy.

Like, it gets more to rise than 4 right now for $15 physical, but it's mostly not on the disc. Right. If the disc is not the game, then there's no difference between having the disc or a digital version of it. Except for even my feet.

Or if it's that's true. Or if it's download required, like 10 years from now when the shit's shut down and I can't download, it's a bit useless. Yeah, it's just trash. It's just trash later.

It's just a collectible. And I was immediately shocked to learn that PS4 and PS5 games are fucking cheap. I mean, I bought the PlayStation and then I spent like $160 on like five big, heavy hitting PS4 and PS5 games. New in the shrink wrap.

And so I kind of was like, man, I'm granted PS5 is an expensive system. I mean, it's expensive. It's a series X unless you're counting the pro or really anything else Sony does or any of the add-ons or the portal or the special headphones or any of the shit, right? At least you can just use Bluetooth headphones on a place.

I was so excited that I just, I use Arctis 7 headphones. I'm wearing them now. I use them all over my house. I'm like four pairs.

I could just plug them into my PlayStation and they just work. What the fuck is Xbox doing over there? Just make this shit work. It's funny to hear you finding all this stuff when I've been using PlayStation for this long time.

For years, yeah. No, yeah. None of this is new to me. I've never been a PlayStation person.

I've enjoyed my PlayStation that I got, but PS3 was, I loved my PlayStation 3. My least favorite PlayStation. My PS1 and 2, I had a PS1, like the little one. And I had a PS2 slim when that came out.

I didn't play them primarily. PS3, I bought a PS3 slim, so even that I came too late. And I adored that system. And my PS4 felt like a disappointment in comparison.

One, it didn't play on my PS3 games, which is a problem. Yeah. Stupid. And also, the PS4 was just slow as shit.

It just was, oh, God, I had that problem. I mean, it would take me over a day to download shit sometimes. Jeez. Oh, well, yeah, the network kind of is bad.

But I didn't ever really download full games. I usually got to stop all the time. Because I'd use it visible all the time, so I just used the disk. So I got to PS5.

I'm very much enjoying the system. I very much misquick resume from my Xbox. I'm blown away that Sony doesn't have some. I think Microsoft has some kind of patent on it.

That's my guess. Yeah. I really do like the controller. I know I used a dual sense at your house, but it was for a couple of minutes.

And I didn't really get to spend time with it and play with all the features as I use controller. You showed me the fancy trick, what they call them, the triggers, what they call them. The adaptive triggers. And I was like, that's cool.

And I didn't get it. And my wife had the same experience. Because I was like, come over here and touch this trigger. And then now touch it.

She's like, I don't get it. And then in the middle there, she's like, oh. Very. The first time that really got my attention, well, aside from Astro, was using your bow in Horizon.

Yeah. Yeah. That's nice. So I started picking up.

Basically what I'm doing now is I'm like, shit. I kind of missed Xbox One and PS4 a little bit. In addition to not loving my PS4, that was also right about the time I had a baby. Yeah.

It's true. It's been that many years. Because I got married. And after I got back from my honeymoon, I bought my PS4.

And then a year later, we had a kid. Yeah. It's been almost 10 years since you had a kid. Yeah.

And so a lot of the Xbox One PS4 stuff, I really just flat out missed it. And so I'm like, man, I need to catch up on this stuff. Because Xbox One PS4 is cheap right now for anyone that doesn't know or anyone that's like, hey, I should get stuff for the future. Now's the time to pick up those libraries.

Because like, megaton hits are like $9, $10, $15. So I'm just kind of playing catch up. And I'm just so shocked at the prices. Yeah.

So low. No switch tracks. And there's no digital tags. I picked up Yakuza Zero, Kawami One, Kawami Two, Three, Four, Five, Remastered Collection, and Six.

For $90. Physical? Yes. Yeah, that's about what I think.

All together. All of them. Are you kidding me? Yeah.

This is part of the reason why I have kept with the PlayStation, even if it's not my favorite console. And I don't like the way Sony does a lot of stuff. I keep getting them because the games are there. And they're cheap.

And the games are more often than not on the disc. And so I've just kind of been like, shit, man, I need to catch up on PS4 and PS5 and Xbox One and Series X generation games that I want to have on my shelf in five, 10 years that I want to have copies of. And PS4 and Xbox One is really what got me back into modern gaming because I was so disappointed at the PS3 360 era. Yeah.

And so it was nice to get to experience some games that felt like they're directing towards me again. And I felt like I kind of had the opposite trajectory. Not for the same reason. I was just like, I've already had a kid.

So that early generation was kind of out of it. And I was also heavily invested in the Wii U at the time. The winning console. Yeah, I hope.

Yeah. So there's some great games on Wii U that are also on TV. There are, I was about to say, there's almost none that aren't on Switch or coming to Switch, especially in Blade Chronicles X coming to Switch. Anyway, I'll also say, I'm enjoying the hardware.

I really like the controller a lot more than I thought I would. I love the audio options. Yeah. For example, I plug my headset in and it just outputs audio to my headset.

I plug headphones into my controller and it just outputs the game to my headphones. My Xbox, I had Andrew, I was playing a game with Andrew on Xbox Live. And when you plug in a headset to an Xbox controller, it plays on your TV and your controller. Yeah, that's true.

And then you have to mute the TV. And then every time I would accidentally, like I was having controller connectivity issues, and my controller would cut out. And then everything would go to the TV and it would be Andrew yelling some dick joke in my house on my surround sound at 11 o'clock at night. Nice.

That was just so frustrated. Yeah. But I'm the only one that does that as well. There was a brief period of time when I first moved into the last place I was saying where I didn't have a TV setup in my bedroom yet.

So I was using my HDMI computer monitor for my PS4. And it doesn't have any speakers. So I was just plugging a little teeny tiny Bluetooth speaker into the headphone jack of my 4 controller and using that to play games. And it worked.

It worked fine. I do like the controller a lot. My only complain is it's a little slippery. Oh, that is.

I don't have slippery issues with most controllers. Yeah, it's a little smooth. I'd like some more texture on it. Some grippies.

I also use silicone grippies on most of my controllers. So I could get one for that. I'm a little shocked at how small the slim is. Like I've seen PS5.

It's like I've seen PS5. And every time I see one in person, I'm like, I think it's enormous. The slim is like it's small. It's pretty small system.

And also I played all the way through Asterous Playroom. My daughter played a ton of it too. Outstandingly fun game. Oh, yeah.

Just not. Not as robot. We haven't even fired that up yet. I'm like saving it.

After how good Asterous Playroom was. I'm like, I'm going to wait. So I have like a Saturday. Did you get all the bots in Asterous Playroom?

I did not like everything. I unlocked a good chunk of stuff. They did add some stuff to it just before Asterbot came out. It's kind of a transition between the two.

Yeah. There were like some hidden secret references to some PlayStation games. I've got some screenshots and stuff from it. I loved all the references.

Not like it's it's this is what frustrates me about so many. We're just going to do long, early part of the show, because I guess this isn't PS5 review mode now. They had so many fun references to so many classic PlayStation franchises. And then you go in the store.

And so much of it is just literally not available on PS5. Yeah. You can't play any PS3 games. It's just not available.

Huge chunks of the PSP library are nonexistent. Like a lot of it just isn't there. Between Asterous Playroom and Astrobot, there's references to all these obscure weird PS1 and PS2 and PSP games that I enjoyed. But when I look up the discourse online, it's a combination of why can't I play this on anything?

And what even is this? What is this weird old thing they're referencing? It's frustrating to see that much love. And then it's like, is that available?

No, no, it's not. It's not. You can't do that. I do like playing around in the actual like Playroom area where you get to jump around on the old consoles and stuff.

That's just that's a good time. I also anyway, it spurred me to take out my PS3 because I've again, I loved my PS3. And so I've got my PS3 and my five hooked up. And so between those two and my PS1 classic and my deck that plays PS2 games, because there's like four PS2 games I give a shit about, I've basically got everything on lock.

See my PS3 is basically a PS2 with HDMI out because there's tons of PS2 games I love and there's like a PS3 game that I care about. God, I love the PS3. Here's what I understand. Where the fuck is Fat Princess?

That's a shame. Where the fuck is that game? Let me tell you, you can still buy it on PSP. Fat Princess was one of my most played PS3 and PSP games.

Fucking adore that game. Where is it? Where is it, Sony? You referenced it in Astro's Playroom.

Where's the game? I'm going to be in positive. Be in positive. Really positive.

Maybe it's coming soon. No, it's not. Maybe it'll be a surprise. As the Playroom is almost five years old, Justin.

Shut up. Shut up. Anyway, it's what I found interesting. And this will be the end I swear.

I'll quit talking like you talk for a minute. What I found interesting was the disparity. How different Xbox felt from PlayStation 5 in this generation? And I don't know if it's just me or that I came to both later.

Like PS4 and Xbox One didn't feel as different to me in so many ways. SPS5 and Series X feel to me, which I didn't expect. These days I would ask me that they feel very homogenous. I don't know if it's a by virtue of playing different games or after different titles.

It could be a lot of things. But just features wise and usability wise and lineup wise, it feels pretty different. I mean, we were just talking straight software. Yes.

80% of everything is on Xbox PlayStation PC and then switch a bit of running. What's your main game? I rarely think about the difference whatsoever. They feel the same to me once I'm in game.

I kind of think about a lot just because I'm using a lot of little features on my PS5 than anything I would use. Here's what I know I said at Shut Up. This is probably my favorite feature of the PS5. There's a microphone mute button on the controller.

And if you hold that button, it also mutes the television. And I use the mute button on my TV, I don't know, 20 times a day. Maybe because my wife has ADHD. And so if there's noise going on and she's trying to speak to me, it like fries her brain.

She can't not pay attention to the noise. And so anytime she comes in the room to talk to me or like I'm getting up to do something because I have a big 5.1 surround sound, I mute my game because I don't want it bothering her or whatever. And being able to, all right, I'm going to get up and go pee. I don't have to find the TV remote or anything.

I just hold the button on my controller, set it down. Everything's muted. I can even come back. It's been the killer, not a feature.

I would ever even on paper be like, oh, that's amazing. And I discovered it on accident. And I was like, oh my god, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened. I think I spoke up the DualSense and our controllers episode.

Oh, yeah, definitely. You definitely did. You definitely did. Except for battery.

The battery does suck. I've noticed I think it's dependent heavily on game. I mean, it makes sense. It depends on how many other features it uses.

So short that I was like, is this defective? And now that I'm playing games. It's the game. It's the game.

It's great. That's great. That's great. Every time.

What are you even doing, Saturn? Hi, Saturn. Hello, you're on the show too. Hi.

Actually, I'm sitting here holding my DualSense controller right now just because I was trying to get a gage based on what you were saying. And I like the texture on it. I don't think I said that anyway. The white part, the white part is slippery part.

Oh, the rear white part is textured. I don't like that. The front part is not textured. I can see what you're saying.

That's a little slippy. My hands are always so dry that it doesn't matter. It'll get a little slippy. It's fair on me.

Not like problematic, but just enough where I'm like, if I were to nitpick, that's a nitpick. So I'm still tripping through the Pixel ReMaster again on my Xbox. I got into f6 now. And it's still good.

I just got through the Opera scene. I forgot. That's still good? What?

I know it's crazy. I'd forgotten that it was a G2D until the scene actually started because when the Opera started, I just kind of looked down and waited until I had to input with it and was reading something. And then I glanced up and saw those a G2D. I was like, oh, yeah, that's really neat.

That's cool. But yeah, so I'm going through that. I'm doing the thing where I'm trying to get all of the things to have a definitive, complete save file on my Xbox. And that means getting all of the rages with Gao, which, man, it takes forever.

It is a, because it's not just the actual process of grinding through and getting them all in the belt. You have to have gotten all of the correct formations in the rest of the game to have unlocked them on the belt, which means no matter where you are, no matter what area you're in, you've got to have a checklist going of, did I get the right formations here to get everything later? Fuck that. And so it's a bit of a challenge.

I enjoy that kind of checklist mentality when I'm playing a game. So it's fine. But also I got some flash carts. So when at the beginning of the year, when I was worried that there may be some pterosaur political things that could affect prices in the world, there's definitely some concerns there.

I decided at the beginning of January, I'd go ahead and order some flash carts off of AliExpress, just in case. Because it's the thing I've been thinking about doing for a while, I figured now's the time, I thought that I'm glad I did because I've already gone into price. And so I got my two flash carts. I got one for Super NES and one for TurboGrafx.

And between the two of them, Grand Total, I paid $80. And of that, 74 of it was for the Super NES one. Now you're going to say shipping. No.

The shipping was like $2. OK. It was like nothing. Anyway, so I got these.

And the TurboGrafx one works great. Does everything that I expected it to be able to do, which is play every cue card game. And it came bundled with an SD card with every cue card game. And even nicer.

It was all preloaded, pre-formatted. But the folder structure was god awful. And so I had to pull the SD card out, put it in my computer, rearrange everything, put it the way that I want it to be. And now it is all back on there.

I place fine. The only thing I can't do is CD-ROM games. But it does have the system card as one of the ROMs on there. So I can just load my CD-ROM games, which is also burn.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can just load. OK, if I need to. Not a big deal there.

But it is nice to have them all in my Turbo at all times, without having to ever change the cartridge. And also to have some of those obscure games that I've never been able to afford or find. So that's nice. That's really nice.

Excellent. There is a hot key you can use to go back to its menu to the game. It's nice. And it does per game save RAM.

And also, you can set favorites and stuff. But anyway, also with both of them, actually, because I bought them both from the same seller. They came with little cards that said, do not update the firmware or your flashcard will stop working. That's the opposite of the purpose of firmware.

Right. So these are clearly knockoffs of official EverDrive flashcards. Right. But whatever knockoff hardware they're using is not fully compatible with the firmware.

But they do work. The SuperNias one I was really impressed with, because most people say to go with the FX-PAC Pro for SuperNias, if you want full compatibility with all the different weird chips that there are for the SuperNias. And this is a knockoff of that. And the official FX-PAC Pro is $250,300 on that.

Yeah, it's high. And this one was $75. And it has worked with everything I've tried on it. It works with the fan translation of Star Ocean.

It works with Street Fighter Alpha 2. It works with Super Mario RPG with Yoshi's Island and Doom. And all the different weird chip games I've thought to try on there. I worked with the Star Fox 2 ROM that was ripped off of the SuperNias Classic.

And all of it's worked fine. It also has the per game save RAM. And it's got the cheat function built in and the favorites folder and everything. And it also came with an SD card that had the entire SuperNias library on there.

Including the fan translation of Star Ocean. I didn't even have to load it. It was already there. That was very handy of them to include these totally legally ripped on the side of getting emulation devices off of all the Express.

They usually come with all the pirated chips because they don't care. I still formatted that memory card and loaded it with my own curated SuperNias list, because that's too many games for me. I do that too, but I'll back up the ROMs I have and go through them later. Because sometimes they'll have weird-ass versions of stuff or weird hacks that I've never seen.

Their translation folder was only like eight games. And one of them was a game I never would have thought to put on there, which was Fire Emblem. But I had no idea what it was because its name was in Chinese, not Japanese. And so I was like, I don't know what this is.

But I'm going to try it. And it was when the music started. I was like, oh, that's Fire Emblem. Yeah, that is.

It's nice. They both work well. And my SuperNias is already both my Turbo and my SuperNias are modded. So they both do RGB out.

And so I've got them both on that PVM that I got from you. And it's a nice experience. It's nice to sit there and just play Super Nintendo games on my Super Nintendo with my authentic Bluetooth Super Nintendo controller. So you're telling me, you can just put a game in.

And it just plays the game. And does it not update the game? Or does it update the game? Or does it update the game?

I can back with some server to, you know. But you got to log into the online search. Nothing, it's weird. I can't even play it on my X band, Justin.

That's the fucking point. All right, let's do the news. Yes, sir. The positive upbeat news.

Totally positive. New PSP custom from where I was a console to connect to WPA2 secure and wireless networks for the first time. This is huge. Yes.

Because for anyone that doesn't know, if you have a PSP, it probably won't connect to your router because they use modern encryption methods. And it was made in the long, long ago. And DS doesn't even work. Because DS doesn't even recognize WPA1.

You have to use the other WEP encryption for some of the PSP homebrew hacking from where CUN continues to be extremely robust. Absolutely. Very, very happy about that. The author of the Nintendo DS emulator, Drastic, has voluntarily removed his emulator from Google Play.

As previously planned, the emulator will be moving to an open source model soon. Excellent. More upbeat news. Love to see it.

Open source DS emulation. Yeah, he had said that he was going to stop selling it and go open source as soon as the actions were taken against user and et cetera. And he did immediately fall through with making it free. And now he has followed through with taking it off of the Play Store in general that he will allow anyone else who wants to release open source APK files of it to do so, which is nice.

Xbox sales are falling to new lows with only 2.7 million units sold in 2024. This makes no sense to me because everything is an Xbox. That's true. If you count blenders, the sales numbers are higher than 2.7 million.

You think blenders are selling that hot in 2025? No, but I think they're probably now. Yeah. I've heard more blenders sold than Xboxes.

Oh, no, that hurts. It hurts. Look, how are you going to make your power juice out of Xbox? I can't.

As someone who owns an Xbox and just recently got very frustrated with my Xbox because I just didn't use it for a few months and then I felt like I had a box that didn't do anything because I didn't know anything. I don't know. Maybe there's something there. I don't know.

I don't know. I'm just putting it out there. Still being positive. New sales figures show that 49% of new consoles went to households earning at least $100,000 per year.

I'm guessing this is US only. And also, do we know the previous numbers? So this beat the previous high, which was last year, which was 48%. But the average when you go back 10 years or further was closer to 25% or less.

So I feel like the point they're trying to make here is that less households are buying dedicated game consoles and the ones that are usually higher income households with the disposable income. And it's also older people as well. The average age of eight new console owner was creeping into the 40s for the first time ever. Whereas previously, it was people in their 20s.

So I can't say any of this data shocks me. No. And especially like these days where we all already have to buy so many, you basically have to own a computer on a smartphone. You have to.

You don't have to own a computer. A lot of people own a computer. See, so the computer ownership is going down. I don't know, man.

However, the households that have computers have more computers than they've ever had before. It's just, I don't know. I feel we're buying a lot of electronics as a society. And I could see a thing that all it does is play video games.

Maybe, pause by the way, side. And a lot of younger audiences are moving towards PC gaming because you can stream it totally. And you can play Five Nights at Freddy's. And also mobile gaming.

Yeah, Five Nights at Freddy's at retro game? Yeah, that retro game. It's like 15 years ago. It's 10 years old, I think.

Is it only 10? But they've got that movie that just came out or is it about to come out? They are still pumping out one or two sequels a year. So fans are making new games for the game and it's a very advanced e-reader.

Excellent. I love this. It's dumb and weird but cool. I mean, scan your dot codes.

Anyone who never had to scan an e-reader games be glad that you didn't own an e-reader because it just still is. It's not awesome. I had gotten an e-reader out release and I bought a shitload of packs of e-reader games. And I got them all at release and I never bought any again because I had an e-reader.

And that first time you turn on the e-reader and it just in that creepy robot voice goes skysm.dotcode. And then you scan your first game and it says fail. And then it makes you scan it again again again again again. failed and then 30 minutes later you finally able to play ice climber.

Yeah, you're like finally an NES ROM. Yeah, it's just immediate regret. Square Enix is removing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles from sale in iOS. After they are unable to fix a bug related to monetization, they know they made it, right?

No, it's impossible, Justin. Did they know that they made this? They made it very clear there was nothing they could do, Justin. How fucking stupid possible.

We're being positive. It's good. It's good that a thing that doesn't work is being taken away. So I'll tell you what doesn't work in it.

Oh, God. It's the people who paid for the game or it's DLC cannot access any of the paid functionality of the game. So there's robbing people and so they decided they're just going to stop making it available and refund those people, right? They're just going to stop making it available and give them their money back there.

This is robbery. No, they're just going to stop making it available. Just God damn it. It used to be available.

So they did sell you a thing. So they're not going to give you your money back, but it's not available anymore. So they're just going to take it away. Fucking Square Enix.

Why? You like this? You're being positive, Justin. Square Enix.

I wish you weren't like this. I don't fuck. Next item. Yes, sir.

We'll be ending the Mind and Tino Gold Points program in March. Existing points can be redeemed for up to one year. Mm. It's so cool that we can get a year to redeem them.

This is great. Awesome thing. So for people who buy their games digitally, you will immediately stop getting your gold points in March, which means no more future discounts on digital games. And then notably, that's just before the big switch to conference in April.

Yes. Also for people who buy physical any games that are produced after that March period will not get gold points at all any prior games that are still eligible. Because keep in mind, even if you buy a physical game, it only redeems gold points for six months after the games release. So if you buy it a year after the game came out, you get no gold points for your purchase.

But if you still have some games that are eligible, you can redeem them throughout that year. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.

It wasn't the most impactful program ever, but it still sucks. No, but it was nice. It was nice. It was a little thing.

Yeah. Reports are stating that limited run games as NES cartridges can damage NES consoles. Yeah, can start fires, apparently. I'm being positive.

So I'm very glad that. Fuck. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. They're doing a recall on those games. There you go. I'm glad that they're fixing the issue after some minor fires.

They're calling it. They're promising what the fix is. They're claiming that they may fix the issue after starting some small home fires. We don't know.

No, definitely there have been any home fires. I think the only one proven was in a testing environment. Oh, good. Good.

Good. Good. Something. Yeah.

Valve has released the client and server source code for Team Fortress 2 to encourage mods. I like this. That's good news. We love seeing this.

Do we know what licenses are under the GPO? I don't know if it's... I think it was GPO, but I don't remember, because I don't want to say. I don't want to say.

This was part of their big 25th anniversary of Half Life 2 thing. This was released. And they did say they've actually, as part of their announcement, they asked the new mod makers to please not do anything that will hurt the Steam workshop monetization because those things are made by the community. And they don't want people to work into it and then not be able to sell it just because somebody made a mod that effectively pirates the workshop stuff.

So they're politely asking that the community not steal from each other as a result of Valve allowing everyone to steal from them. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see how that goes.

Yeah. Microsoft unveils Muse, a new AI model for game development. Hooray. This is a very positive thing I like games and they will make games with this.

They will. Yeah. Also, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella confirmed they've made basically no money on AI, which a native person might wonder why they're unfailing new AI technologies. They have no money off of it.

And also why do they keep shoving it in everyone's faces? These are all great questions that one might ask, but we're being positive. I'm not. Okay.

Well, good. Here's a positive thing. Samurai Pizza Cats is getting a new game. And as a huge Samurai Pizza Cats fan.

Oh, you know what? I know we both are. I'm very excited to see this. I don't know.