Ladies and gentlemen welcome to Richard Williams at 709. Whoo. As always, I'm your host Justin Baker and as always I'm joined by Bible human Chris Saturn. Hi Justin.
Truly fit for purpose. Yeah, well, some days. Some days fit for purpose. Fit for some purposes.
Some days you need all your Oreos gone. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. For purpose.
They will not disappear. Not only generally in a broad sense. I, you know, for a little while there I was like I'd lost so much weight I can reward myself by buying some brownies at the grocery store and then I'll eat the entire box of brownies at once. You foolish.
I don't do that anymore. I still walk by the brownies section at the grocery store. I'm like man those were good. I miss those.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My treats lately are graham crackers.
They're just enough of a cookie that my brain's like yes we had a cookie but it's not, you know, 90 million calories. My, for my lunch at work I'll package my lunch and bring it there and I always bring myself one treat in addition but it's all like factored into my caloric take for the day so I'm allowed to have that. Yeah. And lately my treat I found was you know those Hello Panda cookies from Japan.
They've recently released a Hello Panda cookie that is pretzel. So it's a pretzel but it's filled with a Hello Panda cream. Mmm. This sounds dangerous.
That's so good. But they're like pre packaged in a portion that I'm allowed to have. Well, that's. Passkeeping.
Guy's not here this recording session. I think this is supposed to be his recording session. So believe it is. So I'm going to mention that he's going to be two episodes from now.
We will probably do a guy episode. Yeah. Five eleven he'll hopefully be here. Yeah.
My week. I have continued down the path of hard modding, soft modding, adding hardware additions onto my existing consoles that have been languishing away in a closet. Everything basically six generation forward. I'm trying to get in working order because everything before that basically emulates on anything so accurately that who cares.
But everything kind of PS2 game cube Xbox and forward sometimes can be trickier. Sometimes you need a little more horsepower or sometimes they need standalone emulators and they don't stuff into retro arts very conveniently or whatever. I have weird plugins for shaders. Yes.
So everything six gen and I've had my modding game cube for a while. So it's already done. It's got a mod chip in. It's got SD card plays games.
It's right. It's wonderful. My Wii's been modded for years. I updated it.
Fixed some CIO issues I had on it and got it all up to snuff and doing cool shit. Also the disk drive in it died. So just in time I guess. And I had sent my Xbox my OG Xbox out to get recapped and fully modded with HDMI and mod chip.
And while I was waiting on it to come back I decided to get my PS2 in order. Which I think I might have started talking about last episode possibly. But my PS2 is now fully modded out. I got a network adapter for it and I connected I got it the network adapter and they have a different daughter board that you can put inside of the official network adapter that fits that turns into a SATA adapter.
Because they actually adaptor on it for the hard drive ID. It's just a little daughter board. You just unplug. Yeah, so it's kind of fiddle it all pieces back together.
But it's no solder. You just slap together and all of a sudden you've got a official working network adapter with a SATA connector. And then I went down the rabbit hole of PS2 soft modding. I've had my free make a boot so I can play burned games for a long time.
But I wanted to get games put on my hard drive. And so I did the full PS2 soft mod. And here's the problem with mods like this is that PS2 soft modding has been a thing since about like O6 ish. So there are two decades of discussion software and best practices spread across forums, Reddit, chat rooms and people's random blogs.
And some of the information is extremely dated and useless. Some of it is dated but has always been the best practice even over the last 20 years. And some of it is rare that anybody updates with this is the definitive as of this year everything you should do. Yeah, some of it is new but it is not as good as old stuff because the person writing the new thing wasn't aware of the old thing from 15 years ago.
And some of it is developers that have started in fighting and cutting each other out of each other's products. So features have gone away that were previously there. It's a nightmare. But I eventually found a person online who so late in the PS2 lifespan there was a I guess a hard drive firmware that was released in Japan.
I'm guessing they sold hard drives with this firmware on it. I don't know much about it. But it was called PSBBN. And it is a kind of a modern Internet enabled firmware that was only on Japanese PS2s.
And it allowed you to do what? Like a proto PSN. Yeah, like a proto PSN. And it allowed you to go online and look at upcoming games and trailers.
And I don't know if you could download stuff like games or not. But it was just a really nice slick Internet enabled interface. And someone online has English translated it and made it compatible with these legacy PS2 software tools so that not only do you get to experience a late era Japanese PSBBN PS2 with a cool web enabled interface back when that was an exciting thing. Right.
But it also works with all of your backups and loads them off your hard drive and put some alphabetical order with nice color and stuff. The problem is it's slow as shit because as you can imagine using a PS2 as what is basically like a web enabled front end is just slow. That's like how when I have my mode in my Sega Saturn, if I turn on box art, it suddenly becomes the slowest slide show ever. Yeah, it's kind of like that.
It's like I've got a couple hundred backups on there of all my PS2 games. And it's about 120 PS2 games, so I understand. So scrolling the list, you can go through maybe 30, 40 at a time. You got to wait like maybe a second for it to load the next chunk.
It's not super fast, especially compared to legacy PS2 soft mining stuff where it's just like here's a text list of your games selected. Cool. Goodbye. But loading games onto the hard drive because PS2 uses a weird APA format that Windows can't read.
So now you're using 2006 hard drive software to interface with this thing on your computer. Or you're transferring things over the network. Yeah, which is insanely slow. And this thing works even in the documentation that it works like an iPod.
So you keep a PS2 folder somewhere and you add and remove stuff to it. And then when you want to take your hard drive out, you plug it up, you run this script and it syncs it. So anything not on the PC comes off the PS2 and vice versa. And it has been great.
Right. Because yes, it's slow. It's probably twice as slow as loading up a game on just regular OPL. But it's really clean and nice.
And I value that more than the speed because theoretically if I'm digging into a PS2 game, I'm going to be there for at least 20, 30 minutes. So I got a minute to spare to get the game loaded. Like I'm not that impatient with shit. That's fair.
All that to say, I got all working. I've got all set on my TV and I've been playing some PS2 games. I went back. My test game had been Gradius 5 because one, it's a CD based game and CD based games must be converted to ISO's from the cube in format to work in this software.
Or to work on software to PS2 in general. Although again, some legacy stuff says you don't have to, but in my experience you do. So it was my test game. So anytime I would make a change, because we're talking 20, 30 hours of me fussing with this.
Probably grand total. Every time I would make a change or reformat a driver, try to do it a different way. As I was fighting toward the end goal that eventually became, I want to do PSB in because I didn't know it existed. Because again, 20 years of software to think through.
It was my test game. So Play Much Gradius 5 was reminded of how mean that game is. What a mean game. I love that game.
It's fun. It's a really fun game. But god that second level is so fucking mean. Oh yeah, it's tough.
Nice. I had been playing a bunch of Soul Calibur II as well. I haven't returned since it came out. And the first version of Soul Calibur II.
Is it? Yeah, the Xbox versions are both better. I did not know that. I mean, I know you know you got your one exclusive character.
So you usually, PS2 got the lamest one with high-achie. Yeah, and also if I remember right, the PS2 version was the only one that didn't support Progressive Scan? No, it had Progressive Scan. Oh, it does.
Because I tried to enable it in the shitty upscaler I'm using to get dumped. But something weird with its performance or something. Now to enable Progressive, you have to hold triangle and cross while you boot it up. Right, yeah, that's how most PS2 Progressive Scan games work.
And if I remember right, Star Ocean, you had to hold triangle and X and then after it booted up it came to a separate menu that would then ask if you wanted Progressive Scan to be in widescreen or not widescreen. And then Valkyrie Profile, you had to hold triangle and X and then it would come to a second menu that would ask you on a widescreen or not widescreen. And then a third menu that would ask if you want 480p or 1080i. Right.
Yeah. The only two options. Yes. So then playing Soul Calibur II, I forgot how much I really liked a weapon master mode in that.
It just kind of turns into a weird dungeon crawl which I so appreciate. Like, um, such a fun mode. I kind of wish fighting games still had stuff like this. Right.
You know, that is- One of the new Mortal Kombat's have something like that? Maybe. I just don't like Mortal Kombat. I don't like Mortal Kombat's done some cool stuff.
I just don't, I've never been an MK guy. I want, I want a Master Street Fighter. That's all I want. Give me that.
Give me that Capcom. Give me that. Also, I didn't play 6. I kept waiting for the Definitive Edition of 5 and then they kind of, I felt ripped off because they're like, here's the fancy whatever edition I bought it wasn't Definitive and then I was annoyed and then I was like, I'm gonna wait until Definitive is in the name of the game and it's I don't think it's ever happened.
Also, I'm playing Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. This was a game I have a lot of fond memories of and it was the game that I had a save file for so I was using it to make sure memory cards and stuff were working and whatever software I was in then and also it kind of, it really kind of makes the PS2 chug a little bit. And so I wanted something that was gonna kind of push it some depending on whatever it was software. So these are kind of my three testing cases.
Yeah. So I ended up playing a bunch of those. I forgot. And Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, first of all, the pop-in is so bad.
Yeah. But then also, the game has this orange hue to it. Mm-hmm. Because for people that don't know the PS2 is just filter.
The two, the emotion engine and the PS2 could do fancy fog shit. Yeah. And I guess they used that in San Andreas. So it would do this really, it would fit sunset in San Andreas and you're running around, the somebody hit just right in some weather environments and you would get extremely orange hues.
The game was so orange that I was like, oh no, my PS2 needs a recap or something. It's broken. This game is like highlighter orange, slathered over top of it. And I'm googling PS2 orange, wind playing games that I can't figure out.
And finally I find someone who's talking about, they're like, hey, how do I add the orange back to the GTA San Andreas remaster about the remaster, whatever collection? And there's no orange in it. And I'm like, yeah. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, this is on purpose?
Yeah. They purposefully do this. People are like, oh, yeah, I have so much to sell for when my game was the highlighter orange. Yeah.
Yes. I saw a review of a mod package for that that was talking about how they added the orange back. It's like I get what they're going for. It's like a smoggy LA kind of thing, but it's so bright orange and it mutes all of their colors out that it looks broken.
Yep. But enjoying that. I read that the Xbox versions are better about it. One because I think they just run better, but I think they either tone it down or maybe removed it in some ways.
Oh, it's just because the fog effects on the Xbox aren't too implement. Yeah. It's similar to the Silent Hill 2 port on Xbox. I've heard about that.
Yeah. How it's not as good because the fog isn't as good. They couldn't quite get the fog to look as nice just because the PS2's emotion engine just happens to do fog really, really well. Yeah.
Not a lot else comparatively, but it does fog really super good. Makes it good for obscuring the pop in some games. It's weird the things that the game industry fixates on at different times. But that's what I've been doing.
I get my PS2 up to stuff. I think I'm finally doing a couple of games on it. I try to keep it to just PS2 specific stuff. And so the multi-plat games I think I'm going to run on Xbox.
So of my six generation stuff, GameCube and PS2 are going to be mostly exclusive to their consoles and then Xbox will be all the multi-plat shit because for the most part, multi-plat stuff on Xbox seems to run better. When I went into that generation, I was all in on PS2 just because of how much the PS1 catered to my interest specifically. Sure. Yeah.
I was able to do it at the start of that generation by the end of that generation as I got a better TV and better cables and was just generally more aware of what was better on which platform. PS2 became my least favorite platform. So I would always target GameCube or Xbox first and only if I couldn't get something on GameCube and Xbox, I guess I would settle for the PS2 version. I will say I didn't know how hard it is to get a good image out of a PS2.
It's hard even with upscalers because so many games are interlaced and getting good interlaced out of the PS2, most of the interlaces using Bob and Weave which makes it look flickery, which CRTs are kind of flickery, but if you're on a flat screen, something flickery looks like and it's very weird. And so apparently PS2 is very hard to get a good upscaled image out of them without a high end upscaler. That's why I've just settled to using my PS3 for it. I'm like, it's good enough.
I'm not fancy launch PS3. The background's compatible. I only bought it a couple of years ago. I only bought it a couple of years ago.
Fancy launch PS3. Must have got a second job. I'm not going to fight with GameStop forever. Yeah, I'd rather just not been.
What have you been doing? So, like a month ago, I got that new video card, right? Yes. And I fought with it forever to try to get it to work and just keep crashing my computer over and over and over and over and over again.
It was a nightmare. It just kept crashing. And finally, I got in touch with Power Color, the company that makes the video card. And they were like, well, you need to go into your BIOS and make sure that you're set to either Gen4 or Gen5 PCI Express or it will have some issues.
And I go into my BIOS and it only offers Gen1, two or three. Oh, no. And I'm like, well, I can't. That's not an option.
They're like, did your BIOS maybe? They're like, well, update your BIOS. And I was like, I can't because Lenovo has not issued an update for this BIOS in years. And I was like, well, what kind of motherboard is it?
And I said, I'm the specs of the motherboard. And they're like, I've never heard of this. I'm like, what came with this model Lenovo Legion desktop. And then the guy responds with, oh, Lenovo makes pre-made computers now?
That's neat. What did you think they made? What else have they made? He thought they just made a ThinkPad merchandise.
They made computers. So I'm like looking into this. And it turns out that a lot of these Gen5 PCI Express video cards, while they are technically compatible with older generation PCI Express slots, they have problems. And specifically this board and this card were going to have problems permanently.
And I was like, I should just return it. And then I started doing math. And then I got my bonus at work. And I was like, fuck it, I'm going to get it in computer.
No, no, no, no. So I bought a new case motherboard processor in memory because you have to get new memory in your motherboard. And so I got a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which apparently is the top of the top of the line CPU you can get for video games right now. There's technically two models higher that AMD offers, but the cost per performance is not in line.
It's not worth it because they're way too expensive. Right. You get diminishing returns at a point. Exactly.
And I got a crazy good card. I'm super impressed with it so far. Nice motherboard. It's a gigabyte X870, but it's the gaming life, I six edition.
And I got a case, which the case is the most impressive part to me. Holy shit, this case is amazing. I have bought a new PC case, like I actually purchased it from like scratch instead of just receiving it from something in 20 years. Oh man, they're great.
Now they're like sounding panels, everything stumps. Amazing. They got channels in the back for your wire management. Nothing requires a tool to get into anywhere on this case.
Everything is either pop off or thumb screws. The front, the back and the bottom are all just pop off and you can just like take them on the side, the glass panel, you just pop it off, just like sockets in. Mine's like 10 years old. It's even got like magnet.
They finally embraced magnets on computers now like magnet on meshes. It's got a lot of that. Yeah. Oh, there's so nice.
So nice. I was looking up what model is. It's a landly land cool 207. Oh, yeah.
The landly ones are real good. Those are good cases. Yeah. That's not only a new modern case, but also a real good brand.
Oh, yeah. I always known the landly was a good brand. Like even back in the early 2000s when I got my last case, all my friends were like, oh, you have to get that brand. It's the best brand.
And I was like, oh, yeah. Or I could get this shitty case that I found it for Saturday for $20 because it has a Pac-Man Shape power button. Yeah. Yeah.
You can. Which I did that. That was my case for years. Anyway, it was cool because the power button was Pac-Man Shape and then the access light and the reset button were shaped like pellets that he was eating.
It was so good. Anyway, so dumb. Anyway, so I got this really nice case now. Got everything set up.
It's a super nice setup. Get it home. Plug it all up. Yeah.
And just the routing in this case just super impressed me because you see no cables. You feel like such a dweeb because you're like, okay, I got my new computer case. But they really are getting a good nice computer case because they're built a computer building a computer and a shitty computer case is a fate worse than death. It's so useful though.
Awful. I just assumed that was what everyone dealt with and just we had these expert. No, they're great now. People.
I didn't know you didn't know. No idea. The things are gone so nice. I've got a rear mount or sorry, a front mounted power supply in this case.
Oh, yeah. Nice. So it's a little teeny tiny extension cable inside that runs from the power supply to the back so you can plug it in the back. The reason for that is it has these fans mounted like dead square in the center of the case that just point directly at the video card.
Very nice. It's great. It's weird. It's hell anyway.
So I get all this home. Plug it all up and it doesn't power on. Yeah. Well, every computer, because I just built Andrew's dad a new computer and we put it all together and hit the power button.
Nothing happening is like what happened? I was like, they never turn on the first time. Right. You got to fuck with it for an hour.
It's like it has to absorb an hour of the technicians soul before it's able to power on first. So I don't even close them up. You put on the shit there and you hit the button. You go, of course it didn't work.
And I knew better than to set it up where it was going to be or anything. Right. I just plugged it all in and powered it up. Nothing.
And I had the same results with that server that I made last month. So I was expecting that. But I powered up and it's got the little warning lights to tell you what could potentially be your problem. And it was given a light for the RAM.
And I was like, okay, well, I read in the manual that these new AMD boards require up to 10 minutes for it to give the memory or give the RAM a memory before it will power on. So I'll give it it's 10 minutes. So I just go do other things. I'm playing some video games and just letting it do its thing.
And I come back like 20, 30 minutes later and it's still right there. I'm like, oh, this isn't good. So I powered off and I powered back on and it does the same thing. And then it shuts itself off after a minute.
Oh, that's not good. And also, this is the first time I'd ever built one of these all-in-one radiators instead of just a fan for the CPU. I still never got the radiator out because it's not, you know. And I was like, oh, maybe that was a problem.
So I take that off and I reseep the radiator and I'm powered up and it still just powers off then. I'm like, fuck, well, one of these things is a problem. And it's only giving me a warning about the RAM. So maybe it's the RAM and I was about to just take out the RAM.
And it was morning at this point, because I've been messing with this overnight because I work over it. And so it was getting close to the time the store I bought it all from would be opening because I bought it all at micro center rather than buying it all online. Because I was like, this way, I could just return things to the store and immediately have it working. And also, I thought it was cheaper.
So I was like, fuck it, I'll take it back to micro center. But instead of just taking the RAM, I'm just going to bring a whole fucking thing and see if they can plug it in because they have a tech bench, maybe they can have some sample RAM. They can just plug in and tell me if I'm stupid or not. And so I bring the whole computer and I take it to their tech bench, which already feels like I'm admitting defeat.
Right. This is some old man shit. This is your, you, you are the tech bench. You don't want to be that guy.
I've worked tech bench for best. I worked tech bench for certain. It's like your grandpa take his car to the shop. My grandpa, your 70, you can't be changing your own oiling.
We can't even lay on the ground for two and a half hours. And he's like, no, I can't. Yeah. I get it.
Feel like I'm admitting defeat. I take it to their tech bench and I'm like, Hey, I just built all this. Everything is components that I bought here yesterday. Yeah.
And I can't get it to power on. And so I'm like, it's usually not the D-RAM when it's that light, but we'll take a look. And he opens up the panel. He's like, this is the best case we had.
He's just like, I know it's good. Then we heard out about the case for a minute. And he's like, I see your problem. This is a simple problem.
You know, if you didn't know about it, I can see how this would be a problem. Your memory, your memory is in the wrong slots. You're supposed to put it in slots two and four. Yes.
And you have a lot one and three. Don't don't. Yeah, you don't do the first slot anymore. Do know the other slots?
No, I was like, but it is in slots two and four. I checked that. No, it's not this is this is one and three you just have the wrong thoughts and then and then he plays out his little pocket flashlight thing And he points and I was like no that is two and four all right They're probably just not seated right so he receives my RAM he powers it up and does the same thing and he's like All right. Yeah, it's not your RAM.
It's like well. Do you know what component it might be? He's like no I'm gonna have to do a diagnostic man. Do you want to pay for a diagnostic?
I'm like Just bought it. That's absolutely admitting defeat Fuck it I will pay for your diagnostic if you will just tell me what the problem is and and I can just come back into this fix He's like yeah, I'll do that. I can yeah, I get that because at this point. It's 10 in the morning.
I'm exhausted I want to go to bed sure and I'm like, I'll just leave it with you you swap it out. I pick it up later He's like great cool. I work for that night anyway. I didn't want to be up all day.
Yeah, and then work all night And so I learned that their type of inch text instead of calling you like all the text benches that I worked at I just get a texture I get a text during the day and he's like hey It's bad CPU. We just need to replace it. Do you want us to replace it? I said yeah replace the CPU.
It's fine cool And then I had to get work and I assumed that the next day when I would wake up it would be ready But it was the next day would have been a Sunday and they wouldn't be awake when I'd be or wouldn't be open when I was awake So I didn't care so I was like I'll pick it up my next day off you guys just place the CPU it'll be great and then the Day the last day that I work which was Monday before my weekend I hadn't got the text back from them yet. I'm like what's going on? So I I call them because I don't know if they can receive response texts at the blue and so I called them I'm like hey guys. I never got a response when that CPU is replaced right?
Yeah, they're like well No, it'll be like three weeks. Oh my god Like what do you mean? It'll be three weeks you just have to go over the shelf pick one up and put it in there and he's like Oh, you wanted us to use one off the shelf. All right, but what yeah The day before in the shit and he was like, oh, sorry that didn't get saved in the notes They didn't know that you body here my bad.
I'll go grab one off the shelf I'll swap it out. You'll be good. Yeah, cool great So he does that and then I get the text message like 40 minutes later saying hey It's already for you to pick it up like great. I'm I work.
I'll get it tomorrow Yeah, so I go up there the next day when I wake up pick up the computer and he's like alright I'll be $600. I'm sorry what what and he was like yeah, the CPU is a $500 CPU It's not on sale so yeah, it's yeah between the diagnostic and the CPU is gonna be six bucks Like no, no, you're supposed to exchange the bad one because I bought it here Oh, they didn't put that in the nose. I'm like what the fuckers. What do you guys have notes?
No? No, they just text each other don't you get right? So yeah, I paid my 60 or 70 bucks for the diagnostic. I got it all home everything's fine and it works.
Yeah, it works It's fantastic fantastic computer Then I'm installing all my shit on install Linux to try out Vfio Which is the thing that lets you run Windows in a VM but let it have full access to your video card And that way you don't ever have to boot into Windows You can just run it through a VM player games that are Windows games that don't work in the next in the VM It shows up full-screen through a VNC window effectively And there's no perceptible lag or major performance hit no because of VNC because it is VNCing through looking less into the VM There is no perceptible lag. We're kind of deciding problem is I have an AMD video card and my onboard video card It's also AMD which means they both use the same driver and it really confuses the fuck out of the Fio All right, so I cannot use it It just will not like Windows cannot grab the real video card without also trying to grab the integrative video card Linux has no video card doesn't know what to do in it kernel panics. Well, just wait for kernel updates the wisdom of the ages Wait for kernel update. Yeah, basically.
So I can't do that just yet So I'm playing the games that are compatible in Linux the games are not compatible on playing dual-boot Windows Which is fine, I guess yeah, and so I start playing with all that and it all works So I open it back up to put the rest of my hard drives in from my main computer So now I have all seven of my hard drives in it so my fucking lunatic And then I plug it all back up and it doesn't power And now it's given the VGA light oh no and I was already having problems this video card to my computer Before sounds like I know what if it really is a problem with the video card and I'm sitting there fucking with that I put a different video card in power to fine knows a video card and so I put a different video card in power to fine But my good new video card back in does not power up like oh fuck and it's the morning It's almost time for them to open up so my god damn it I'm gonna drive back to fucking micro center which people don't live in my in Dallas micro center is in the fucking armpit of Dallas Yeah, I think my joke was it's like going to an unlabeled gin bar in an alley like it just suck It's the worst place to get to oh yeah It's it's at the intersection of the two worst highways in Dallas that are both toll roads now Yeah, and like around a fucking corner as you can see the damn thing. It's a you're on top of it. It's the worst So I get I get to the micro center again. They're like hey, why don't you hear the other night?
I'm like, huh? Okay, I can't I can't get the power on again after I put my hard drives in and they're like let's take a look and The guy tries it and he's like oh yeah, this is not hard Let's give him the bj light let me test this video card in another computer And so they have this test machine that they just test video cards on so he pops it and I was like works We're confined and he's like I only put it back in years and he just rips it out of there without powering off I'm like oh god, he's like fine don't worry about it. We do this. It's the test machine it deserves it Yeah, I'm like you know I worked tech bench long enough to know that we have that machine yeah And he puts back in this one power on I said I don't I can't get it to snap I can't get the little pj express lock to snap.
I don't think it fits in your case man I'm like it worked yesterday. It has to fit. This is a good piece of it And then another guy comes over like yeah doesn't fit in this case I'm like no no it worked yesterday and then their boss comes over and she's like yeah your anti-sag bracket is blocking You need to move that like what the fuck is it? Oh is that the little latch that like holds it up?
And she's like yeah, it's in the way and so she just moves it down plugs the video card in and then moves back up and everything's fine Yeah, just got to move the anti-sag and time takes card out the other guys were like oh Those food the fact that we need anti-sag brackets built into our cases anyway speaks to the stupidity of the industry It's all stupid. I can't get into this dumb digression. Yeah, so anyway all we're gonna find out everything is great It's a fantastic setup. I did want to real quickly mention I'm getting 120 to 180 frames a second on most of my games I'm gonna break that monitor get some VRR up in there.
So when I was picking it up that time I was just chit chatting while they were trying to figure it out. Did you make a lottery and not tell me? Are you saying I was going? No, I did get like a $7,000 bonus at work though.
Oh, hey, all right. There you go Right, so all this is covered by a bonus. I'm good So I'm sitting there chit chatting with a guy and I'm like, you know As long as I can get a solid 60 all these games. I don't care.
He's like you're gonna be able to get more than 60 out of this I mean, oh, yeah, as long as your monitor is VR. You're gonna be fine. I'm like no my monitor is 4k 60 even It's nothing. He's like well.
Have you seen the monitor? We have on sale this week. It's uh, it's a 27 inch 4k 160 VRR and it's only 200 bucks. I guess I have to buy a monitor while I'm here.
It's great. Isn't it great? Tell me it's great They're great. I can't tell the difference.
Oh shut up shut up So anyway, so I got this really nice 160 Hertz 4k VRR Aser monitor. It's really nice and also while I was back there looking at the monitors I had this shitty targets monitor. That's 23 inch that was free with any purchase of over whatever amount I was like, I just bought all this stuff the other day. Does this count?
He's like gonna free your monitor so he threw in the shitty targets monitor Which is great news because I learned that in Linux I can't use HDMI 2.1 with my video card because The HDMI forum and AMD and Linux are all fighting about what is or isn't open source And so anytime I use my old monitor through HDMI on Linux It's just garbage and this one sports display ports. It plugs right in. It works great Honestly, this this shitty targets brand monitor, you know targets the laptop bag company right they also make a TSA compliant locks for you Yeah, apparently they make this one model of monitor that has a built-in webcam USB C input for display link display port out so that you can daisy chain it to other monitors without using another input on your Video card and it's got a full USB hub with ethernet built into it. How weird and it was free.
It was fine I tested a bunch of games on here. Doom Eternal is getting 300 frames a second For spoken is getting about 90 to 100 frames a second But with VR I can't tell at all looks fine except for the dial game is so trash I wish I could just mute all the characters permanently I'm 16 I'm getting about 60 frames a second I hope to is around 60 as well controls like 90 death stranding is about 140 vampire survivors is getting about 280 frames a second even It's going crazy. It's good. It's good computer.
I'm liking it. I'm hoping it lasts me six to ten years That's my goal. We in my house. We recently got my wife and new computer because of Potential future market instability.
That was what convinced me to do this now Yeah, get it while it's getting good. Yep. I just got a bonus the world's on fire I might as well get a computer now to hope what you hear nice nice Let's do the news we tease for two episodes We're gonna talk about the switch to and then we're gonna talk about the switch to so all of the non switch to news has been pushed In next week's episode because of how we record so we're just gonna talk about a switch to direct that came out Give kind of some thoughts on it and then jump into our topic at hand I was kind of we've had about a week to stew on it at this point. We have between when it happened and when we're recording I'm gonna say upfront Just because I would people want to know when they're asking us.
I'm not planning on getting one at launch Yeah, my whole thing that I set up front was hey I own a lot of switch one games and if you tell me that out of the gate all my switch one games will have a performance boost And you give me the details of what that performance boost is gonna be like and I can rely on that It's worth investing however much money for me and they said that most switch one games should maybe get a boost probably sort of and then That was it for me. So until I have concrete details on that It's not worth the money for me. Just throw it out there up front before people sit here and listen to us talk for 20 minutes about it First up it launches June 5th worldwide allegedly that seems so soon. That's so soon I'll give it a lot of time for pre-wars news screen tech 4k HDR 120 variable refresh rate on TV Presumably upscaled via dock, but we don't really have to go on that 1080p 120 VRR and handheld which is a hell of a panel not an OLED but still 1080p 120 VRR is a good panel.
We don't know how many games actually hit right but it is VRR So it'll be able to fudge a lot of it Mario Kart world was revealed which is basically Forza Horizon Mario Kart, which is a very exciting idea to me That's that's very exciting new Donkey Kong game Donkey Kong Bonanza is is really cool It's just a 3D Donkey Kong adventure game to structural environments uses old style Donkey Kong pre rare Donkey Kong I like that they spelled Bonanza like Bonanza. Yes, new Hyrule Warriors with the one more thing at the end was Kirby Air Ride 2 Yes, which fucking weird came out of nowhere It's been 20 years since the last air ride and it wasn't even all that beloved of a game to begin with Some switch to games are getting upgraded versions that you can either pay to upgrade your switch one version digitally or buy the Uncarth upgraded already upgraded switch to version breath of the wild yeah breath of wild tears the kingdom Which I believe those are included in Nintendo switch online plus plus if you got that the rest of me I believe you have to pay for that great or just buy that I think the Pokemon one was free with okay. Yeah, yeah Kirby the front line Metroid Prime 4 Super Mario Party Pokemon Legends There's a new exclusive from soft game called the dust bloods which seems to be either multiplayer only or heavily multiplayer oriented They're porting Elden Ring Hades 2 will be a timed console exclusive Which you can already play it on PC so you know right if you want to have been out for a while and anyway access Faun fancy 7 remake intergrade version a cyberpunk Street Fighter 6 a few other ports Bravely default the first one is getting an upgraded port. Yeah, because it's zero.
Yeah, cuz it's zero is also getting an enhanced remake The welcome to her tutorial game. This is what we all seem to be their pack in game Well cost ten dollars and afterward Reggie basically tweeted out talking shit about Nintendo not wanting to include Wii Sports as a pack in Yeah, yeah Had to fight to get them to include Wii Sports because he felt like it would help sell the console and the implication is he is saying that to To really drive home. Maybe they should have included this with the console. Yeah Retail price is at least in the States for now $449 for console 499 with Mario Kart Many games cost between 70 to 80 dollars.
So Mario Kart world is an 80 dollar MSRP Don't you conanza is a $70 MSRP? So Nintendo seems to be wanting to move the MSRP needle up from 70 to 80 Yeah, they did say that it's gonna be very well pricing per game that games can be as low as 30 40 bucks and as high as so 40 bucks, but I'm like how much was their skyward sword remake? $60 what about their advance wars remake? I think that was 50 or 60.
What about their Pikmin 3 remake? I have $60. What about their Twilight Princess remake? That was on Wii U and it was $60.
That's weird. That's a weird thing Isn't it Saturn? What a strange thing it seems like it can be variable, but it also can most of the time not be it can be Variable for other companies technically everything can be variable. Yeah, can be variable doesn't mean it That's like saying I get up to 60 Megs down on my internet one is within the scope of up to 60 Some game carts will just be an activation key for digital download the key is the physical cart So if you were to give a cart to someone else they could then download the game which slightly better than all digital But also it means that the game is not on the cart.
So I don't really give a shit I don't want that yeah I mean there's no permanence to it, but at least there is some ownership which I guess that's better than neither Perman's nor ownership there is a region locked Japanese exclusive version that won't be available in other languages presumably to kind of Insulate the Japanese market make available for them the console itself is not region locked It's just that it is a really language locked. Oh, how it'll still play games from whatever region yeah But it cannot display other than Japanese language the reason for this is because of the drastic market differences between Japan and other regions They wanted to be able to sell a console that was close to the amount of your paycheck as it would be in other regions But then that would be way too cheap and they don't want people to scalp it and then sell it another you know The console is doing what they refer to as a partial emulation to play switch one games, which seems Stupid the only reason I can think they would want to go this route instead of picking something as a compatible instruction set is to Stop hackers and piracy. That's the only reason I can come up with why they wouldn't pick something that's a little more one-to-one or just include a switch one Co-processor yeah or in video really did something weird with the ticker too, which I can't imagine is the case But I don't know about the tech to comment. Yeah, a game cube games coming to Nintendo switch exclusively on switch to even though that switch one could definitely run a game You game yeah, um switch to game cube controllers also available to you know subscribers, which is cool Video chat with background filtering via Nvidia AI, which is also exclusive to Nintendo switch online subscribers It's kind of like we've been calling it Nintendo discord.
It's like they made their own Nintendo version discord and put it in the console Which cool for people who don't know discord. It's basically Nintendo yeah, it's Nintendo zoom. Yeah It's a Nintendo mumble um And then pretty immediately after all of these announcements the rather high seeming price tag the increased digital game or the increased game prices the Game key cart thing all this stuff North American pre-orders were delayed due to economic uncertainty President Bowser says the price is not based on tariffs, which why would we believe that but here's the thing I'm convinced that Nintendo is never going to mention the word tariff But absolutely it's based on what else would it be based on? Apparently it was based on what they thought the terrorists were going to be which is not what the tariffs are being Yeah, controllers will not have Hall of Fx sticks, which I think is a huge miss Bowser original switch controllers never had any drift problems, right?
Right. It wasn't a class action lawsuit or anything Bowser says they have a console for people who can't afford the switch to and it's the switch one pulling a full Sony on us Yeah, or a Microsoft because They've all played this game in one generation or another I'll say this and it's all I'm gonna say on it. I think in the long run I'll probably pick up a switch to once the details and updates and title updates from my switch one games guarantee that my switch one games will get the Boost that I want them to have yeah, but until then I don't see a software library that's warranty 500 plus dollars to me right now I see I see Mario Kart world which looks super exciting in Donkey Kong bonanza Which looks pretty cool and then all the rest of that I've kind of got elsewhere Yeah, the only games that they showed that I was really excited about were Mario Kart and Rayleigh default Like Donkey Kong looks like it'd probably be fun. I don't know that I'm $70 worth of fun out of it Yeah, I'm pretty don't like if it was on sale for 40 bucks.
I totally would buy it right but yeah You know I'm just it's not exciting. I was what I wanted to come out and say was every switch one game across the board is gonna get a performance boost It's gonna be a noticeable performance boost also. Here's some cool switch to stuff That's that's all I really wanted if they had if they had shown the exact same thing they showed last week, but also a new Zelda or Mario game I probably would have been all in you know I you know that switch one directly did with Tomodachi live and new Tamagotchi game and stuff That was more exciting to me than this was there was more software that was exciting to me than that So I've already forgotten most of the software from that one. How could you say new Tomodachi like this is huge news?
I can't wait to put you in my Tomodachi village and watch you do stupid shit And I'll just stand there and look at it and be like yeah, that's what you get said Which brings us to a topic hand very late in the show Basically at the end of the show where has to start the topic which is swinking in yay For synopsis side of wrote finally a jrpg with enough characters That's my thing about sweet coden and it remains probably the best thing about the game I was developed by kct published by konami known in japan as gensow swetgen Came out on playstation in japan in december of 95 in north america december of 96 and palthurator is a year later in april of 97 really several months later april 97 Um, it came to pc march 1998 it was ported to the saturday in 1998 There's a psp remaster we can in two came out in 2006 That was japan exclusive as was the satin version of the pc port And most recently the version we played for the show the hd remaster which included swetgen and two which came out on everything Worldwide on the sixth of march of this year 2025 Um, I never played this game outside of kind of some false simulation starts until this this show Um, but I did work with a guy game stop that loved them and he talked about how they were the best rpgs and they went Toe to toe with the likes of final fantasy seven and dragon quest eight and and all this other shit can fuck off because swetgen is the best rpg ever made And I went to his apartment one time and I remember him taking a box out of his closet to show me his coveted most expensive game He owned and it was swetgen to which was really expensive at the time it was like it was like 170 dollars or something Which at the time for ps1 games were free. Yeah, I mean we're talking This is early odds of ps1 games were trash you found in the gutter except for sleep in two Yeah, I use fom fancy seven or fom fancy tactics to prop up and adore for a while that's a no because that one was expensive for a while too That was a joke back then but But yeah, it was an expensive one that was my experience until I sat down and played it for the show was that a guy promising me This was the best rpg ever made and nothing else was even close. Yeah, yeah I got a similar pitch from somebody for the series. Um, I picked up early in the pst era Um, I got sweethood around the same time I was working at eb and somebody happened to trade in both of them and the copy of sweethood and two they traded in was still sealed Oh, wow He had not ever bothered to open it and he had no idea that either of them were considered good or valuable Yeah, and I was like you can get a lot more for this man You can you can sell this on ebay for a lot and he was like, no, it's fine I just I just really want to pick up the new man Oh god, and so uh, I think we ended up giving him like 35 for the second one and like 10 for the first one She's a christ and then I immediately turned around and bought both of them for of course.
Yeah, 80 bucks total Um, but uh, I sat down played through both of them back to back really enjoyed them. Um, I My friend who sold them on me. Uh, he he sold them well to me, but didn't oversell them So I ended up really enjoying them. I thought there were a nice throwback to an earlier time and I enjoyed it Minor spoilers for my opinions on the game.
I think I was oversold Oversold a bill of goods. This would happen. I enjoy them. I think they're they're uh, both enjoyable As far as like throwback rpgs on a ps1 speed me through the development of so we could And also for people that are used to our rpg episodes this one only gets one episode the game is barely over 10 hours long Yeah, uh, so it's kind of hard to really cram two episodes.
Although now that we're in the episode I think we could have yeah, but uh here we are too little too like tell me about the development of sweetin too So we could end one pardon me. Yeah, sweetin one. Um, so uh, just a quick background Uh before we get to it as far as the inspiration of naming all that uh, so the game is loosely loosely loosely Uh barely based on a 500 year old chinese novel sometimes translated as water margin, but the ujapanese translated name is sweet coden Um, the novel the guy that wrote that was allegedly the teacher of the guy that wrote romans with three kingdoms people Yeah, supposedly that but nobody really knows who wrote it and sometimes It's way older. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, uh, the novel is about 108 outlaws who work together to rebel against the then chinese government Uh and other games based on or inspired by the same novel have also been called sweet coden in japan including Uh co-a's pcn s game known in the west as man at kings of angel china So sometimes when you look for games called sweet coden, you'll end up with that one which is not the same at all Not this one Japanese releases of sweet coden are called ginsos sweet coden Which helps differentiate it from other games also called sweet coden but here in the west we just call this one sweet coden And then we don't call anything else we can yeah, um and the uh kanami localizer Harry and hada didn't realize that the japanese name sweet coden was based on that chinese novel So he just kept the japanese name rather than localizing it which he says he's okay with because he thinks the name sweet coden is cool And he's fine. Okay. I don't disagree with it.
Yeah, um, so as far as uh this game The series creator was yoshaka mariama who joined kanami in 92 right after he got out of college Uh sometime in 93 he was added to a secret team kanami which was working on the development of their own console to compete with nintendo Sege and hudson oh god the alternate reality we could have lived right Uh, so the one of the games for development for the console Which at this time had somehow become maybe a handheld and serve a console They weren't sure a lot of weird things economy at the time was an original rpg Uh that was uh focused on raising multiple characters across 60 different playable classes Um, by the way, none of the games for the console ever got very far in development before the console was canceled According to mariama all work on the games was completely man and there's nothing playable that you could really have just a kind of an idea Yeah, um, so when the console was scrapped mariama was tasked with making game for the playstation Um and since uh enix's grand quest six was still targeting super famicom and squares final fantasy seven was still a ways away Konami management asked the playstation development teams to focus on pushing out as many rpgs as they could as quickly as possible before either Enix or square touch the playstation And so mariama and his team chose to make a game that would serve as a prequel to that game that he had kind of been working on on that canceled Console, yeah, um and so uh they started working on the game that would have been should become sweethood And when kenami management saw the early work on the game they're like oh shit. This is it This is the good one and they canceled all the other games and development on playstation We're like oh you guys need to work on just this one game now And so it just kind of merged all the teams together Mariama decided drag quest five is the big influence on the game Specifically on the game's balance. He said that he had never worked on rpg before he had no idea how rpgs were balanced or how their gameplay work You don't say but he somehow got a chance to look at the source code for drag and quest five Oh shit, uh and when he saw that and he saw how enemy scaling and all that stuff worked he was he used that to design how so he couldn't was balanced Uh, he also cited earth balance feature of having low level enemies flee from the player outside of battle as his inspiration for the mechanic involving sparing or bribing enemies Which is a mechanic that constantly forgetting this because I'm Once he reached a high enough level and it's it's there I have so much to say about mechanic because it doesn't fucking work. So mechanic doesn't work.
It's broken in the game I never knew because I don't use it because he's here's here's a I will talk about it But I don't want to get to talk about we'll get to it. Yeah, we'll get that um Also while pitching the games mechanics of recruiting and building up a massive roster of characters economy's management mariamma used the example of the Chinese novel water Margin Just kind of point out how you would have this massive army right economy's management Completely misinterpreted that and we're so excited that he was making a game based on water margin that they named the project So he coded and he didn't want to correct them because they were his managers So he just went with it. This is the most Japanese thing I've ever heard of my life Uh, yes, yeah. Oh, that's exciting to you.
Yes, sir. That's exactly what we're doing. No, we'll I'll go wake everyone up right now and have them immediately begin Doing all of this stuff that you mistakenly believe yes, sir. Yeah, so now there's exactly 108 characters sure great Yeah, we're gonna do 30 about 108.
Yeah, no just like a noble. Yes, sir. No, I don't need to go home tonight What's up the cots um The reason this episode is not gonna be very is only one episode is because the story in this game is pretty basic Um the nature of having to recruit 108 characters Yeah, it means that you don't really get that deep in a lot of the little side stories and threads that pop up Um and the story gets better about this as I go over it where it learns how to juggle It's 108 characters and also having more depth to them. Yeah, but it hasn't yet and so the story is pretty bare bones on paper Yeah, so sad once you take us through the story and uh, it will not take long now So we start with our unnamed protagonist who is named to tear mcgullen the novelization So i'm just gonna call him tear going down i named my guy tear as well I do I did the google thing where you're like default names so we could then because it didn't volunteer it So what's funny is you can transfer your your say data from each sweet code game into the next one So that there is some continuity and uh when you transfer your data on the ps1 anyway, not in the remaster But from uh, so we couldn't want to so we couldn't do you can later meet your character And it's supposed to keep his name, but the translation fucked it up And so it just takes the first letter of his name and uh, so normally if you don't name him it just calls him mcgull Yeah, so if you didn't transfer in data from so he couldn't want to just call him mcgull Uh, but if you do transfer data it grabs the first letter and just pins it to mcgull So in so we couldn't do my character is always tick dul Anyway, so uh you have tear mcgull he's the son of taiomik dul Who's a prestigious general and the scarlet moon imperial army Uh and until doing research on this I had no idea they were the scarlet moon I was about to say I don't remember the name of the army ever coming up, but yeah, they're just called the empire empire The empire yeah, they're the scarlet empire Darth Vader tm mcgull they're all the same empire same thing right.
Yeah. Yeah, same thing the same as the final 96 empire Um, so uh taiom taiomik dul is called away to lead his troops in the north and tear and his retainers are all recruited into the imperial army In the first mission tier and his friends see that the empire's army might be a bit corrupt and just a little bit They encounter an enemy that they can't defeat and tears friend Ted Ability that no one knows he possesses thanks to a mysterious rune right and at this point time you're traveling around with again Yes, just the people that live in tiamat gull's house. You've got Cleo You've got a gremio who's like you're like butler. Yeah, yeah, or um, he might just be obsessed with you I'm not sure what grime is never it's never really clear.
It's like grimo is there to like protect you but not really a bodyguard But I don't I don't really know what's an axe. Yeah, and you got what's his name that exists only on tri you yeah, huh? Um, so yeah, yeah So and then Ted uses the ability and then Ted's tears commander then reports back the emperor about tat's ability And then Ted is attacked by imperial forces in an attempt to collect his rune and he barely escapes So this life makes it back tears house where the rest of the crew is Uh pawn runs away to rat out Ted's location of the empire right loyal to the end Yeah, uh imperial troops show up and kill Ted and with his dying breath Ted passes his rune onto tier Tier and his friends escape and then with the help of random dude They meet named vicar get out of town and join the rebellion In victory as far as I can tell it's just like a thief just a guy running around town stealing shit He gets a little more development in the sequel but not a ton more Okay, uh, they they talk about his background with the neck lord, which is the dumbest named villain I'm so glad you brought up the neck lord as in necro lord. Yes They call him the neck lord like necromancer and lord smoosh together in the most uncomfortable way possible I just like to think he has a really impressive neck because victor has a subplot where he gets this like living like uh elrich style sword Yeah, so here's this is this is a thing about the game is because it's so short and so character dense And all the characters for two the two it's credit are differentiable from one another They don't have like a little quick like they do a pretty good job of showing but not telling you know You know you kind of get these ideas of like you can't pick up on these their distinction is more quirks than legit story Yes, it's very much like it reads like an anime tropes Wikipedia But it's just enough to so that you can meet a character and be like I get what they're about Yeah, and it's that cuto's to them for that right but one of the things that happens is all the time little subplots will crop up And you're like oh, this is where I go on a 10 hour side mission to do oh wait the game's only 10 hours long Yeah, and one of them is victor finding a cursed talking living evil sword Yeah, to defeat the necklord.
Yeah, who you forget about until the very end and then it pops up and is like hey I can talk still like oh my god. I forgot about that shit. Yeah, it's so weird. He can still talk in sweet code too good I'm glad I hope I hope he talks a lot more in sweet code into no ah shit So victor shows up recruit you into the rebellion and brings you to Odessa who's a leader of the rebellion sure and the rebellion rebellion Tastier and his friends with They they don't want to join so we're loyal to the empire It's trying to kill us spend so much time because here's this is also one of those games where it gives you dialogue options all the time In no matter what you pick it's always the same so it's actually kind of more annoying than anything Yes, there's a lot of but that must set you if you pick the one that it doesn't want you just have to do dialogue I'm just super annoying.
Yeah, but there's so many dialogue options of tier being like no I can't join the rebels for hours and you're like you've killed like 50 imperial troops like you are you are In the rep really want to or not you have rebelled so you might as well join them So you join them and your first mission with rebellion is to help escort Odessa to some Thing I don't remember what you try to give plans to weapon maker some shit Yeah, and then when you come back you find out that the empires invaded the rebellion base And you try to fight them off but Odessa has killed in her last moments She's like no tier you must take over the rebellion. You're the new leader the guy I just met yeah, none of the other people in my employ use specifically and I'm a big fan of abstraction especially in JRPG I appreciate that a town is not really just six people even if you only ever see six people there You have to just assume that it is a town of thousands or tens of thousands But the six people you see are the only relevant ones And so I appreciate that level of abstraction every game has this game is like the like Just in Trying to remember the word distill Abstraction it's so abstract Yeah, because because I have to assume that she has spent more time with tier than the five minutes I have in the game to want to give him full control But the game doesn't show any of that no and also Odessa's like you can't reveal that I've died because it'll destroy the real demoralize every Yeah, the rebellion the rebellion which is four people that we've met so far but it's assuming much larger Right because the game's always like oh our forces and you go into battle and there's like 3000 people on the list But then you're like I'm I have nine guys. We talked about these other people from but my point is um It's like less than an hour later that it's revealed that Odessa is dead and yeah, I didn't really keep that Secret base. I think the abstraction layers that supposed to have been months or years between those things But it's just you don't really feel like you don't really experience any of it The game doesn't do a great job of conveying how long it has been.
Yeah, um, so so you take the lead of the rebellion You're you're wanted by the the Scarlet Moon Empire And Odessa tells you go find Matthew and he will help you and you go find him you find out he's her brother He's a military strategist and and he reluctantly joins everybody is reluctant about everything in this game and then immediately joins you and is Right and begins murdering thousands of people right So uh, Matthew is your strategist and he for the rest of the game It's basically just Matthew leads the army and then just says it's okay And you say yes, and then you do exactly what he said the leader ever there were billion right? um, so uh Matthew Comes up with all these plans you defeat the five generals you defeat the empire Along the course you learn that the empire was being manipulated by an angel switch named windy Who has been trying to get the soul leader rune that Ted held for generations because Ted is like hundreds of years old now 300 years old yeah, he's a 400 year old dragon that just happens to look like a young boy Um, and so the team confronts the empire emperor and windy She summons a service to defend herself you defeat the server is the empire realizes he made a mistake And he just grabs windy and plunges the two of them off of a building and that's how you killed the 100 year old witch Is just by falling off a building Can I say something? Yes, sir I don't think this is a jrpg Saturn Because you don't fight god No, you're just quite a serverist I think it's required that you fight god to be considered a jrpg is that not a genre staple Am I mistaken? Well, the thing is sweet kon is just the first chapter in a long series of rights Do as long as you eventually fight god, well, it just keeps building up and building up I don't think they ever got to the end Um, also there's dragons and vampires and shit, that's it Yeah, the bulk of the game is you going around fighting these five generals one of which is your father Um, and it amounts to what almost feels like sort of dragon quests like go to this town What is this town's problem?
Oh, we're gonna solve their problem, but everything's solved extremely quickly Yeah, and all that like some of the general Yeah, somebody's like oh we need this such and such and you're like oh here comes the side quest and they go I have it right here and you're like oh I got you don't need me to go get anything. No, do you want to fight the general now? I guess is he here? Yes, okay, uh, you must save our town.
How do I do that? Just walk that way? Okay, go over there and then you'll need a thing. Oh, where I find the thing.
I got it here So you can have it. It's just have it. Where are they? Oh, I'm right here.
Okay. Cool. Can I have this thing? Sure?
Okay. There you go Like this really and sometimes it'll be like we might like like you remember the doors that we met hours ago We need to recruit their help. Oh, okay. I'll go do that.
Oh, we already called them there here. Yeah, they're here Which on the one hand it's nice because sometimes the side quests get to be too much But also it's like you're like what am I supposed to do? What am I doing here? Um, the button also the you know and this is kind of getting into gameplay a little bit But there aren't I wouldn't say this game really has dungeons no Um, it has a couple of like small mazes.
Yeah, but they're very many None of the none of the in air quotes dungeons even remotely approach the complexity of even like the first final fantasy Yeah, it's all pretty straightforward. It's it's it's it's and even there's a couple of puzzles But they're so easy that you're like is this a joke are they fucking with me right now? There's that one roulette wheel. Yeah, that's not really easy hard.
That's just randomly rolled Yes, there are there's a couple puzzles where it's like randomly move forward and you're like, oh Very much Looking back. You can tell that it feels like a game that they were trying to shit out real quick before An extra square could put something out. Um, so I just want to say that like between the story being so rapid fire Between there being like even like the end of the game or is the end of the game are the in-game dungeon It's like walk linearly up these staircases. You know, is that it?
Well, no halfway out. There's a room over there and there's a chest in it with some money Oh, okay, that's money that you can never spend again because you've already passed Yeah, um, so it definitely feels like a uh, it's like the game is trying to hurry to be over It's like no, no, we gotta be done. It's like it's like the game that needs to be home for dinner and you're like shit We really want to finish the story, man But I do think it's the the the brevity is the only reason the game does end up working. We'll talk more about that Let's talk presentation real fast.
Um, it's early ps1 game. I think it looks pretty good I played the original game a little bit enough to see what the graphics are like I do say a little bit better than than the average super news game But not quite as good as the very very late gen super news games I will give them credit some of the enemy designs are really cool. Yeah, um, I never saw any of the enemy's names because I auto battled through the whole game But like so like one enemy is just a big naked gold man. Oh, yeah, and that's the whole I love that guy Any floats it for no reason big naked gold floating.
Maybe it's a statue is he man I don't know but it's there's some just really cool interesting kind of abstract monster designs. I think it really cool I always was really impressed by the way that all the enemies and characters all interact effectively at the exact same moment in battle After you enter your commands and hit go they all like jump in each other and do all the things at once Yeah, because it's a for people that don't it's a six person party system It's the battle is pretty big in the realm of early JRPGs. Right. Um, the music is basically flute tracks greatest hits I hope you like flute tracks because you're gonna be here in the one that's like do do do do do do do do all the time Yeah, uh lots of flute tracks music also flute tracks really I think what they hired one one one flutist And they're gonna make a sound flautist.
Lots of sweet thing of flautos, which are like tortillas Um, but I digress a lot of flute tracks. If you like flute tracks. This is your fucking game. Yes Uh, it's it's you know, it's one of those games that um wants to excite you with it's a variety not with its fidelity Um, it's it's a decent looking game except for the remaster It looks like the fucking dog shit.
They make the game look bad. That's okay. It's not okay. It's not okay It look it you said it arcing the maker game.
It does it looks bad Uh, it's it's the kept the sprites for everyone and then they'd be like this very like did they AI upscale all the assets or something? It doesn't look as good as AI upscaling. It looks really good. It looks like they got some generic ass art pack It's missing a lot of character.
Um, a lot of the areas in the game are really three four times bigger than they need to be with nothing in them and so this very like Baron boring art style on the remaster makes everything just look kind of empty and flash game. It's very strange. Yeah, very strange. Um, Let's talk neat potatoes.
We got gameplay. Yes Uh, this is kind of your standard random encounter jrpg Uh, where you go to the town you talk to some npcs They tell you about a key character you go speak to and then they have some kind of problem that usually is solved by something They already had in their pocket then you have to kill a guy. That's kind of yeah That's kind of it. Um, the inventory system is basically the inventory system from earthbound Uh, and which is itself the inventory system from dragon quest to yeah, and it fucking sucks here, especially a remastered Um, there's no shared party bag.
No, let's take back a thing earthbound had a party bag. No, it did it not Oh, I must be misremembering you um, so there's no party bag and I'm so frustrated with this you You don't have a party bag which they do have in the remaster so you couldn't do but not in this You're dealing with up to 108 characters that you were swapping out all the time because the story is good about making you change up your party Which I like but that means you're constantly swapping characters in and out you need to re equip them and a lot of them can be used in combat So 78 of them all have their own inventory you have to manage so you get 78 inventories And if you're in an inventory like let's say you go to equip somebody and you all this person has not a hat Let me go to let me go to equip. Maybe I have a hat. All right.
Well, they don't have a hat in their inventory to equip Does someone else have a hat? All right, so let me go to the inventory tab go to the first character of my six My half dozen I have do they have a hat in their inventory great? They do have a hat can that person equip it? I don't know do you know how you find out you go to the item you pick transfer you transfer to the other person you back out to the Main menu you go to equip you go down to that person you select equip and then you select like Like you can just go to equip you go to equip on the character you want to equip you go to hat And then when they don't have a hat you hit left or right and it goes over to the other person's inventory It'll show you what's in their inventory and then when you find the one you want you just select it and auto moves it to that person's inventory I've never in my life been so angry with you.
Why would you not tell me this? Why would the game not tell me this? You just hit left or right? I just didn't equip people I literally had people with no equipment out of the end of the game.
It was like fucking no fucking do it This is a game I just bought the best equipment for literally all 78 characters And then just sold everything else Uh, either way the inventory is still extremely tedious and bothersome And there is no way to have healing items and you run out of space for everybody. It's a pain I will give them credit they stack healing items. So buying one healing item is six healing items. Yeah Why would you not tell me Saturn?
Why would you not tell me this a better way to open the game never told me you realize that I just hit left or right. Why would I really? There's no on screen indicator. I try this there's little arrows pointing left and right Well, I didn't see them I tried to read the manual but I'm on ps5 and the manual is formatted like it's for a phone screen on my 65 inch television 15 feet away with no zoom And so I can't read it just walking up to it with your reading glasses on I would have to Um, you don't buy new weapons for characters you upgrade them at blacksmiths Which is a cool idea and simplifies the amount of equipment management you have to do for all these characters But the upgrade there's no as far as I can tell there's no way to upgrade from level like whatever they are to the max level Which by the end of the game each one individual yes very annoying Yeah, and only certain blacksmiths can upgrade to certain levels too.
So you have to find the right blacksmith Yeah, you can attach elements via rune pieces to weapons Which never seem to make much difference for my characters. I don't know if I was doing the wrong ones or what but If you find an enemy that has a specific weakness, it's great But also you can find enemies that have specific strengths and then your weapon is useless for the rest of that battle And since your your characters are kind of swapped in and out kind of against your will in the story some of the time There's a chance that you could end up screwing yourself Yep, if you're in an area where you you have enemies that are strong to a certain thing and they force you to take a character that has something that is Not advantageous. Um runes replace the magic system. They are very tedious and annoying It's not like a materia.
You have to go to a rune smith to attach runes to a character characters can't use any rune They can only use certain runes and there's really no way to tell which ones they are without trying to attach them Most of the runes are universal, but there are some characters who can only use certain runes There are some characters that can't even unequip their current runes because they have a permanently set rune So there's really it like it feels like there's no rhyme or reason to it It just feels unnecessarily restrictive. It does and it makes it to where you don't want to interact with it You find something that someone can equip you slap it on and you don't worry about it I'm just leave it for the rest of the game magic ends up being kind of like healing magic is useful You want to have one person like yeah, you put a water rune on Cleo and then she heals for the rest of the game And then you just forget about upgraded water rune. I don't know what it's called It's like the running water rune or whatever but it's basically just the healing room but one step up so that it's base level is the heal everybody That was great. I will give him credit.
They kind of do the Final Fantasy 1 spell slot style magic thing Or instead of mp it's like you can cast this many times which makes it so much easier to plan in the dungeon Um your main character tier mcdo has the best rune in the game. Yeah, so because like halfway through the game you get an ability that's just instant kill all enemies And you can do it but it doesn't work out bosses, but you can do it several times Yeah, and the encounter rate is surprisingly not too high So there are times where I go through a whole dungeon and just instant kill every encounter Yep, and then fight the boss and go home. Yeah, although there's also they have escape talisman that you can use to escape dungeons It only worked in one dungeon. I ever tried it.
It's all the other dungeons useful dungeons. It's just we it's so weird. Yeah Um combat we talked about this. It's six characters Um it has rows and characters have reached so you can't put short reach characters in the back They can't reach enemies and stuff which adds a little bit of Strategicy except for again when the game forces you to take certain characters and other characters you have didn't really fit So now all of a sudden two of your characters can't attack so you have to teleport back to your base and fix some shit re-range it um and and um There is an auto combat option which which I use in literally every battle in the game up into the final boss the game is pretty simple.
I think because of the Lack of depth again the rune system is much like this game. It's a mile wide and an inch deep Um and it's one of those things where there's just not a lot of complexity that they can fly It's a mile wide. It might be like eight feet wide and an inch deep What it feels like to me from a design space perspective is like hey We can't add that much complexity because We don't really know what the hell you are and aren't gonna have and there's a million fucking combinations just by virtue of being a bajillion characters Yep, you know and so it's this thing where you know, there's this sort of gerp tree trope where you're like, all right We're going into the frog dungeon. We need to all be frogs and have frog related spells equipped to do frog things Yeah, and I like that.
I think that's cool. These like themed dungeons. This game is just like you're gonna have some people We might make one of them be victor and that's all they rely on you having yeah and also the the experience system Uh makes it to where basically anytime you fight a current enemy you're going to immediately level up to current level So if you have somebody who's way behind and you're forced to drag them along It seems like it's gonna be terrifying until you're two battles in and they're the same level as everyone else Right, uh or they get insta killed from battles in the realm. It's a level up to the end But now you gotta make sure they survive that first battle there is I want to talk about the running thing So if you're kind of you can bribe higher level enemies to get out of a battle which I never did once Um also if you're a higher level than the enemies you can let them go Which just lets you auto into the battle Which I started doing because I ran into some weird situations I think it was from level disparity or something, but there were some enemy loadouts that you'd run into and it's like six of This character that's just an hp sponge and it's like this is gonna kill my whole party like I can't I can't win this But I could a couple of dungeons are a little unbalanced But I could allow them to flee because technically I was higher level than like one of them So this terrible encounter that I'm like, oh, you know the like late game.
This is three marmorb ros battle You're like, I just gonna let them flee And I was just yeah, and it's it's just It meant I had less encounters that felt tedious, which was nice But also it kind of seemed like it didn't work the way they wanted it to Yeah, I always forget that that's even an option So I just auto battled everything and would just spam healing items afterwards Yeah, um, I will say that the combat in general is just it's kind of tedious having six characters Because sometimes you're like, all right, I just want Cleo to heal and everybody else is gonna attack But sometimes you'll have characters like what's your name? Valeria who they have a rune they can use infinitely that deals like 5x damage So she's in your party, which she should make she's really strong You don't ever want to auto attack because she's gonna deal way less damage Right And so you do this thing where it's like I really want to auto attack But I need to go through six different menus of selecting attack and then Valeria does rune falcon rune Yeah, right The later games in the series give you like a tactic option where you're in addition to auto You can just auto do whatever you want it to do it feels very needed here Yeah, um, but auto battle it just it just does the fight option in it there is speed up I don't think original had that where you can double time speed up your battles But it also speeds up the music which is not ideal Yeah, if you like speed flute tracks The other half of the game is this is the recruitment of the characters And the base building so you get a base of operation And as you progress throughout the game the base unlocks things like the ability to have a tavern You can sleep at the ability to have a shop or an item storage zone or a room master or a gambling spot to earn some money All within your base as you recruit these characters and do these functions and that's a great idea Except some of the things they lock behind the base are stupid It's things you should have available all of the time like fast travel like fast travel or rune smiths I didn't get the room lady until a ways into the game and not every town has a rune smith And I kept forgetting which town had a fucking room smith So I have to teleport to three different towns to find one just to equip someone with a fucking lightning rune Yeah, and it reached a point where again, I just wouldn't do it because I'm like and in 30 minutes They're gonna make me take my party anyways, okay That's why I just equipped everybody with a set rune as soon as I get them I'd be like I had your room forever. We'll figure this out Um stuff like blacksmiths getting the blacksmiths in your base feels really vital There's a guy that lets you change your window decorations Sound options are locked into the thing like I love this big screen Yeah, like I love the idea of it and some of it feels so cool Like when you when you finally unlock the tavern you can sleep out for free Oh, thank god because the tavern charge you charges you per person in your party What you're gonna lock that the second you get your base Yeah, I didn't know that I got to get it later because I didn't know that lady was there Um But it like it's a cool idea But it also means that again in a design space you don't really know what people aren't gonna have a lot in their base Unless they're following a guy or being super diligent but it's possible to play this game in such a way that it would become Insanely difficult depending on what you just do Fired characters and don't find everybody else very good enough with just an incredibly difficult challenge Yeah, it's not like the base is like four or five floors and it's really tedious and takes a long time to ascend One guy unlocks an elevator. You're like that should have fucking been there You can get him right off the bat too This is the game literally knowing that they made it tedious on purpose to put an elevator guy in there But here's the thing the elevator is its own multiple sub screens and menus So it's not faster if you're going to the first couple floors Nope You're just going up or down one or two floors it might be faster to walk So it's a cool idea Also, there's an option to run but you have to hold the button and there's no time to hide Another thing that could end a fucking config screen for the remaster Yeah, apparently that's one of the things they said they're gonna work on along with not speeding up the music and sound effects When you think after 30 years Konami can add a run toggle to swiek it in you think they can hang up Maybe they can do it in an update mate.
They're working on it. They're working on it. Yeah, great Cranked out fucking Silent Hill, but you can't run toggle. All right, great.
You're working on it. Hey, you know what? I'll go to Konami. I'll have it done in a weekend.
All right. Well, that's fair. Yeah. Um, so again, the base building is it's Really cool, but it feels kind of unrealized.
Yeah, um, by the end of the game early likes my base I thought a lot of satisfaction of having built up this cool base with all these cool people and stuff and it's neat But it's like it doesn't make you feel like you have some ownership over it. It does and you feel emotions about your base Yeah, um, there's the one guy who just tells you how many people you've recruited There's also many games there's army battles which all of the big fights in the game are basically army battles You find the big bad guy and then you're gonna fight them eventually, but you also do an army battle with them The arm battles are kind of like a rock paper scissor thing and depending on who you've recruited you can get special abilities The thing is one of the first special abilities you get Allows you to predict the enemies move. Yeah, the thief And if you can predict the enemies move in rock paper scissors, then you just win that's all just winning Yeah, it's great But the thing is with the thieves it fails most of the time But then ladies and ninjas and they can predict they always accuracy What I love is sometimes when you fail with a thief They'll be like I did it and all they did was steal money and you're like, yeah, fucking that had one fucking job dude I don't need 2000 podge. I need you to tell me what they're gonna attack Yeah, that first thief guy is the most useless and then late in the game They suddenly force him into your party for a while and I've never used him at that point ever So I'm like saying fucker.
He died immediately and then just like they're dead on the floor a bunch of petals Like all right, I guess I'll fucking fix him up. Yeah, um, I thought about it. They're fun enough mini game Um, and usually it always feels tilted in your favor Yeah, the army battles in the later games are a little more fleshed out to where they actually feels like a tactical experience So just rock paper scissors, but it's no need to have a here. It was a neat addition.
Sure. I thought they were cool I enjoyed them. I'll say that I enjoyed it a couple of my head to repeat Um because sometimes the enemy will be using tactics and it's not clear where in the rock paper scissors paradigm that attack fits Yeah, which is kind of frustrating and there are also battles you're supposed to lose in this game Right and also the The army battles there is a chance that if you choose poorly and the enemy gets the upper hand It can permanently kill one of your party members. Yeah, I lost one guy in the game because of that Oh, yeah, I I always safe scum it.
I'll reset Which is Another person just got injured and they were fine, but it's just the idea that you can like randomly lose a character you didn't commit to anything is I think just bad design flat out and granted a story characters won't die If I report the story they won't die, but the other incidentals that you recruit can die You also have duels. There's only like three or four of these in the game Yeah, they're used in a couple of key moments like when you fight your father, you do you know doing to twice once as pawn and once as tier The duels are also kind of rock paper scissors, but you're supposed to anticipate the enemies move based on the dialogue They say which is a really cool idea Um, the problem is like some of them Like the fight with to I had to do I think four times Because he kept using some kind of something that like Even though I was choosing the correct response ahead dialogue trees open on my phone i'm choosing correct response He was still dealing more damage than I could and Especially that first time you're playing as pawn if you have not been leveling up the pawn Even if you choose correctly, he's going to do more damage than you Yeah, and I had that same thing going on with my tier fight and I had to repeat it But when you when you repeat it you also have to repeat the army battle right because it bounces you back because the remaster doesn't include any kind of autosave function Okay, it's the stupidest autosave anytime safe anytime you enter a screen with a safe point It autosaves it autosaves, which guess what you don't need when you're on a screen with a safe point Saturn. You want to guess an autosave? Yeah I don't need one then I'm at a safe point.
What are you fucking doing? It's the worst possible implementation of autosave I've ever seen so I think it's I think it's the safe system part of the safe records whatever screen you're on And they were too lazy to make a new safe system that would record other screens You know There are some true mini games. There's a dice mini game, which is kind of fun There's a interesting take on memory, which is this kind of like exploding memory where it flips out It's kind of like a fellow in memory put together, which I thought was pretty fun. Um Uh, you know, there's a hot spring you can deck out with shit, which I didn't do but you know, it's cool Um, it's just a lot of little things.
There's a lot of stuff and it's interesting playing this because we had covered by you in chronicle not long ago Um, and I didn't like it and you didn't like it. Yeah, kind of bounced off I didn't just like it. I just bounced off it. Yeah, and playing this which is very much the game that I use in chronicle is riffing off of this and The sequels presumably as well.
Um It feels like two two two two extremes, right? So we can just like there's almost not enough of anything here to be much But because it's not a very long experience. Yeah, but because it's not a very long experience It's not that offensive if this game was 20 hours long. I would hate it.
I'd be like this is a piece of fucking shit But because it's only like I think I collected like 13 hours Um, I'm like, ah, there are some tedious parts, but I wasn't doing the tedious shit for 35 hours So whatever and there's some little fun things sprinkled in between I even feels like the exact opposite of the spectrum of what if the army battles took you 45 minutes to complete What if the duels were extremely intensive? What if what if the story was extremely in-depth and everything was protracted and drug out and long and stretched out and everything took four times as long? Which like if you love sweetening it's your favorite game ever I could see you being like, yes, that's what I want because I fucking love this game And it's only 10 hours long if you're good at it's probably like eight hours long. I could see that but for someone like going a guide You can easily finish this game in eight to ten hours But for some like me who's like, ah, I don't you know, these are good ideas I want to see them a little more fleshed out, but I don't want to I don't think this needs to be in 150 hour RPG Then I like it was weird landing on these two games on the opposite ends of the spectrum where they exist and being like, I don't know if it belongs here I don't know if it belongs there.
I think it belongs somewhere in the middle, which is what I hope so we can in two is somewhere in the middle Two three maybe four kind of in the middle ground there where it's it ends up being a much better experience before Yeah, so it's it's interesting to sweet to see the spiritual successor swing so far in the other direction Yeah, from this one. I think part of it is that the spiritual successor was back on Kickstarter with all these stretch goals Yeah, I had a shoehorn in incentivized to add as much shit as possible. Yeah, I get it Um, let's talk reception. I will say this is pretty well known as a beloved game.