Retro Warriors 539 - Once Upon a Katamari

I'm gonna work on Roger W is that's a 539. As always, my host, Justin Baker, and as always, I'm joined by Bible human Chris Saturn. Hi, Justin. Hi, Saturn.

How are you today? Oh, I'm just fine. We don't have any housekeeping. We're recording a day early, but no one will know that.

It's a secret. Yeah, because you're certainly not gonna say it while recording. Because I'm gonna be out at a convention for the next few days, so that'll be- That's never stressful for you, so you're angry. Well, thankfully, I'm on the new medication and I'm anxious to go, but I feel like it's a normal level of like going to a town I've never been in to a convention I've not been to.

Like, I have diarrhea and I think I'm having a heart attack, you know? So that's a change. That's a positive change. That's nice.

Yeah, this time you have diarrhea and think I'm having a heart attack. So it's one of those things. It's a very weird to have it looming like this and not be really anxious. I did have that thing today where I was mentally checked out of the day where I'm like, vacation starts tomorrow.

I'm fucked today. Yeah. But I think that's pretty normal. It seems to me most people have that kind of thing.

That's fair. My week. I'm approaching nearly 60 hours of Battlefield six. Oh, my God.

I didn't realize that. Have you won all the wars? I've won some of them. Oh, good.

I am playing very nearly exclusively online with other human beings like actual online competitive multi-player, which I've never done. Are you okay? I am. Yeah.

I've been finding ways to enjoy it. They did introduce a mode that makes half of the team's bots. So sometimes if I get my face kicked in too hard on a regular match, I'll go play a couple half bot matches and they're a little easier and kind of goof off. But I'm kind of hit my stride with it.

EA continues to completely just fuck shit up. Can't fix the UI. Doesn't know what the fuck they're doing. Takes stuff away, gives the stuff back, increases challenges, decreases challenges.

No, they're just all fucking know what they're doing. It just, it seems like two different people, what it feels like is two people used to run the company and then they got divorced and now they have to share custody. So every two or three days, all of the decisions that they're making completely change. It's almost like they didn't fucking play and for anyone to play the game, I don't know what's going on.

But I'm in my stride with it again. I like the battlefield games. My problem with shooter games is, I like some space and some time and some distance and battlefield is real big giant arenas that you play in. They're gigantic.

So you get some time of running around and doing some stuff before you just get, you know, mowed down by level bajillion people. But as I was playing it, I was getting, I was playing that in this week's game, which is Katamari. And the thumbsticks on my dual sense were like, rubbing my thumbs raw. And it's just that combination of like, Katamari, you're just on the sticks and nonstop, pushing them in different directions, which, you know, I can be all tiring on the thumbs.

And then battlefield being like an online competitive thing. And then on top of that, I was getting annoyed in battlefield because I keep having to take my thumb off of the right joystick to touch buttons to do stuff. And I was like, man, I wish that dual sense had those back paddles that like other controllers have. It'd be so nice.

And then lo and behold, I got an ad or not an ad, but it was one of my RSS feeds. It was like, oh, the dual sense edge is on sale. So I bought the dual sense edge. Yeah, yeah, that was bad.

First of all, you can swap it. It comes with domed sticks, which is what I also use on my fancy Xbox Elite controller. I vastly prefer domed sticks to the ones- It's just a mess sticks. Just shut up.

Shut up. I like the domed sticks. I also, I was, I think it comes with an extra tall one. So I could switch my right stick to an extra tall one for shooters, which has been nice.

I like how the sticks go on. They just like snap on and off. So they feel a little more secure than Xbox ones. Only two back paddles, which is annoying.

But setting up how, like all, you know, my different profiles was really easy. And then it's got these function buttons. So you can switch profiles on the fly, which is really useful because I do different layouts for different classes in like Battlefield, or if I'm playing a different game, I'll maps. Like when I was playing Dragon Quest, and I mapped like, confirmed to one of the back paddles, just it was easier for grinding or whatever.

But it's nice. It's a nice controller. I don't know that it's quite worth the full cost of entry at $199. Yeah.

But it is nice. I'm currently on the hunt for a good, I put silicone covers on my controllers because I'm very sweaty. And when your hand is sweaty and it rubs on that seam where the two halves of your controller meet, you get like hand gunked down in that little crack there. That's so gross.

I know it's nasty, but I can't help it. And I'm sweaty. Oh, wash my hands and everything. I think it's just literally the act of two, three hours of my hands, sweaty, rubbing back and forth, you know?

And I'm struggling to find one that will also fit my charging cradle that I use for the controller because the battery life is worse on the DualSense edge. How markedly worse? How is that possible? Not a little worse.

Oh my God. It's the last 30 minutes. I played, I don't know, I bought a charging cradle that sits next to my couch. So I really have a charging cradle.

I don't know, but I've been noticing that it used to be a different charging cradle than the standard DualSense. No, same as the same charging cradle. So it's the same something, whatever. Yeah.

Because I've just got the official, whatever little two controller chargey thing is. Yeah, that's what I've got. And I was playing to Dan, and I didn't play very long. And my battery wasn't giving me the low battery warning, but when I hit the home button to turn my PlayStation off, I noticed it was like in the bottom third.

And I was like, what the fuck? I just played Battlefield for like an hour. Like what is happening? I like for paddles, they use a lot of battery.

I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, I've been enjoying the DualSense. I do like the fast switching of profiles.

It's really nice because it's got a nice pop up. And you can name them and stuff. Because when I do profiles on other controllers, like the 8-bit does and stuff, they're like, it's like one, two, and three. And I forget which one is which and stuff.

And with this, I can name it. So I have one named Battlefield 6 Sniper. And it's the one I use when I'm using a sniper rifle. And then another one that's like a confirm.

And so I know it's the confirm button on the paddles. And so that's really convenient. It makes it so I actually use the different profiles. But beyond that, it's just a nice extra heavy PlayStation 5 controller with noticeably worse battery life.

Part of that's good. Yeah. I did also. I feel kind of weird about this.

Someone sent me some stuff. And I don't want to say their name on the show. Because I know people are crazy. And I don't want anyone else to hit this person up for free stuff.

But someone messaged me and was like, hey, do you want my copy of Kid Dracula and Game Boy? And I was like, that's a $200 Game Boy game. You can get $200. Go sell it.

And they're like, look, I'm going to take it to Goodwill, or you can have it. Those are your options. And I was like, well, don't do that. Don't take it to Goodwill.

Obviously, I'll take it, but I'll destroy it. But that's what's free money. And they're like, I don't want to do all that shit. I like to show.

I like what you guys do. I'm just going to send it to you. And they send me. You just recently sell my copy of it too.

I think so. Yeah. I wanted to buy it for me. But I'm just can't justify that much money for Kid Dracula.

And they very kindly, yeah. And if they would like me to give them a name shout out on the show, I just don't want people like PMing them. Like, hey, you got any free Game Boy shit for me? I don't want that.

So thank you to that person. I've now got the Crown Jewel of my OG Game Boy collection, which is now Kid Dracula. And it's fantastic shape. I opened it up and cleaned it and cleaned off all the oxidation and everything.

It's legit. And it's so nice. It's fun. Very exciting.

Very exciting. I played a few minutes of it. Just make sure it worked. But I'm able to sit down with my Game Boy last couple days.

But it's now on my short list for stuff to sit down and play. They also sent a copy of Wario Land 2 Game Boy, not the Game Boy Color, not the Black one, the great card one, which I did not have either. So thank you to that person for those. Kid Dracula is one of the few Game Boy games that I actually have the memory of playing it in the car by the street lights as we were on the item.

That's one of those few. Yeah. What have you been doing, sir? I also have a little bit of controller talk, but it's less positive.

So this is, I've had for a while the A-Dolt, which is great. I love it. Not the new Ultimate, but the previous Ultimate. The first General.

I got a couple of those. I think it was a revision of the first General Ultimate. It was the 2.4 gigahertz one, not the Bluetooth one. Yeah.

I've got a Bluetooth and a 2.4 gigahertz. They're my two PC controllers. Yeah, I use it as my PC controller. And it's great.

It's a great controller. But I was playing some of Grady's Origins a week or two ago. And the default mapping on that has, I think, the right trigger as the both fire and missile at the same time, auto-fire button. And you could remap it or whatever, but I happen to have it on right trigger.

And I just got tired of holding it. And also, I'm always terrified that my triggers are going to get gummy if I hold them too much. And I was like, you know, this controller has these back paddles that I never use for anything. I should just program that for it.

Sure. And I was like, well, I'm not going to run it up. And they've got their app for mobile devices that will let you program it. And so I download the app and I'm sitting there fighting with it.

And it won't register the controller. So I finally look it up and the app is only for the ultimate too, not the original ultimate. I was like, well, how the fuck you program the ultimate? And they're like, you have to use the PC app for it.

Mm-hmm. You do. And it is a Windows PC app. And I wasn't in Windows at the time.

And I was like, well, surely there's some way to do it online. So I'm sitting there fighting and now there's not a way. So you have to boot into Windows. So I reboot into Windows and then Windows one update.

And I reboot into Windows again. And I went to update again. So I reboot into Windows again. And at this point, it's installed an entirely new version of Windows 11 from what it was running previously.

And so I then finally get to the ultimate software. And it's like, well, you're from where was that a date you have to update that to. And that also requires Windows. They do not have a Linux firmware update, which fine.

I'm already in Windows. Just fucking update it online. Well, no, I think they do it in the app now. But it uses a separate app.

Is it separate? OK. So a separate app. So I download the separate firmware update app.

I do it for a more update. And then I program the controller to use the back paddles. And then I reboot into Linux to actually play my fucking game, just to realize that I programmed it to the wrong paddles. Because when you're looking through their programmer thing, it's like, it's a little much.

Well, let's you set every single button. It's got a list of all the buttons. The last six buttons that you can program are left bumper, right bumper, left trigger, right trigger, right paddle, left paddle. And I didn't catch that.

I didn't catch the little reversal there. So yeah, then I had to reboot back into Windows. Actually, no, I didn't even reboot back into Windows. I opened up a Windows virtual machine, told it to disassociate the USB device for my host machine, give it to the virtual machine, and then run the program from within the virtual machine.

Let me reprogram it, close the virtual machine, everything was fine. Yeah, this is why I never reprogramed my ABA door. I did once to make it so that it was Xbox layout and so PlayStation layout, and then that was it. Well, mine was Xbox layout.

Yeah, well, one of mine is, and then the other one wasn't. So I got Xbox buttons for it and then changed it. But it's just a pain where you're like, I just want to quickly, while I'm playing this game, kind of remap some stuff, I don't want to sit down with computer and then pull up the software. It's cool that they have the software.

It's nice, very customizable. But it's just kind of tedious when you're like, I just want to change a button and gradios. And I could have just used the fucking menu option in gradios to remap the button. But I didn't have anything set to the paddles.

And I was like, well, maybe I want the paddles. So I should go ahead and do that. But that got me looking at the ultimate too, just because it has that stupid app. So I would have just been able to program it from the app while I was there.

And then I could have rebooted and everything. And so I sat there and spent like half an hour to an hour looking at what the differences are between the two. And I was real close to just pulling the trigger and buying the ultimate too. When I stopped and was like, I've got this controller for over a year.

And I just now thought to program the fucking paddles. I'm going to go more than another year before I bother to program the additional shoulder buttons on this thing. What am I doing with my life? I'm just going to use this controller that is literally right in front of me that I enjoy that works for at least another six months before I inevitably buy the ultimate too.

But until then, I'm just going to enjoy this controller for what it is. It is a nice controller. Anyway, also Dragon Quest 1 and 2 HD2D came out. Yes, I've played about four or five hours of DQ1.

And then I put it down for other things for now. I'm going to circle back to it. Sure. So I have finished Dragon Quest 1 on it and started Dragon Quest 2 on it.

I don't want to go super in-depth in case we do an episode on this on the future. Yeah, there's been a may or may not do. Talk of it, yeah. Yeah.

But I will say it's a good remaster. It feels more like the, it feels like enough of an upgrade like the Resident Evil upgrade felt over the PS1 version of Resident Evil. Like it's a reimagining of the game with new content and redesigned everything. It just happens to be themed after the original.

More than it is a remake of the original. It does have a whole bunch of quality life improvements that are nice. I think the bosses are too into poorly. They're a little too difficult.

Like eventually I overcame them, but only after retrying over and over and over and over again. Like there were times where I was dying like 10 or 15 times to a boss and it felt like I only won due to luck. There are some new mechanics that I probably didn't use enough, but they also are not just explained well within the game. So that might have been why I have since learned that there were alternate methods.

So there's some new abilities that you gain about the halfway point and the game tells you you can use them when you are under half HP or through some other method that you might be able to find if you. But it never tells you what that other method is. And since then I've learned from the internet that people have found these other methods and they're also a little wonky. You're not going to accidentally stumble upon it.

I don't think unless you really are just playing with everything. But my problem is the way that it tells you to use these abilities is to get below half health. And a lot of these bosses in the late game were doing nearly half my damage in one turn. Yeah.

So I can't just sit under half health or I'm going to die. You die. Yeah. Yeah.

So I did not get to play with these new abilities and I did not play around enough to have figured out the alternate method to use them in Dragon Quest 1. I'm starting Dragon Quest 2 now. I bet it's going to be similar based on what those abilities were. I have a feeling that I'm going to encounter them again in Dragon Quest 2.

And if it is the same method to use them, then I'll at least know now. My only real gripe is that the story is a little more linear than in the original with less optional stuff. Whereas for anybody who enjoyed the original version of Dragon Quest 1, it is a very, very simple game with very, very simple mechanics. And if you enjoy Dragon Quest 1 for how simple it is, this is not that.

This is bringing in 40 years of Deripig design philosophy and cramming it into the shell of Dragon Quest 1. So if you really... It is, but at the same time, it also in 2025, and again, this is my stuff's per limit. I'm five hours there.

But it also feels like it's like this weird combo meal of like, it's like icy hot, right? It's hot and too cold, but it's like it's very modern feeling, but also really simple feeling. And it kind of, it's like it feels like it can't decide. What do you hit the halfway point that decides on the modern feeling?

Oh, does it? Okay. Yeah, it decides. My assessment so far is I wish they would either go full like Final Fantasy 7 remake with it or kind of back off a little bit.

Okay. All right. I'm excited then. So, uh, I feel without spoiling anything that it is trying to better tie this whole trilogy together.

And I'm starting to get some hints in my early hours of Dragon Quest 2 that it might be wanting to tie this trilogy into the broader series as a whole. And get the whole series some sort of cohesion, aside from thematic cohesion that it's always right. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, artistic, thematic and musical.

Yeah, yeah, which is this something people have been demanding a coherent Dragon Quest timeline? I don't think so, but I don't think so. But I'm kind of hinted at it. So I think they're just kind of playing with that with that hint from 11 and just expanding on it.

One other gripe that I'll give, which is probably doesn't affect 99% of people here are going to play this. But starting with Dragon Quest 8 and forward, they've reused enemies in the series a lot. Like prior to that, there were some enemies that were reused. There were slimes and drag keys and things like that.

It would appear in most every game. But from 8 forward, they really heavily started grabbing old series enemies and reusing them a lot. So the point to where now in Dragon Quest 11, it just felt like there was one or two new enemies and everything else was reused. And in these remakes, they're throwing in enemies from one, two, and three throughout both games, all over the place, which is fine, I guess.

But it feels like it takes away some of the identity that those games had. Yeah. Because prior to Dragon Quest, each Dragon Quest had its own unique monster set. And that kind of feels like it's thrown out the window here and that bugs me as an old-time player.

But for people who started in 8, they probably won't even notice that this has happened and it's not a problem. So. Square Enix seems really keen on like it, especially it's kind of the same deal with the Pixel remasters where they lose a little bit of everything. Yeah, it's all it's now smushed into this one product and it's like, what made it so cool was how different it all was.

Yeah, they'll have their own identity in somewhere around it. I get what you want to do with that way. It's cheaper, it's more efficient, it's faster, and it gives you a better brand to put on the market. And it lets you crank them out faster.

There you go. Yeah. I don't know. I'm right now, I feel like it sounds like we're being really negative.

No, I'm really enjoying it. It's been my sort of simple comfort food after like a three-hour session of like Battlefield 6 with Andrew getting one up in tanks. And then I'm just going to go like swing a sword at some slimes and simple and fun and easy. And I did finish the first one at about 20 hours, which is a lot for Dragon Quest 1 these days.

But aside from the bosses being difficult, I really enjoyed my whole time with it. I just had those little niggling gripes here and there, but it's still an excellent remaster. Let's do some news. Okay.

First up, an officially licensed Mortal Kombat Artbook uses shitty AI upscaling for photos from the classic games. It's really shitty too. Yeah, it looks real bad. Like it was not that thing where I'm scaling.

Yeah, it's not that thing where like, oh Photoshop experts looked at it and they just like, no, you look at it, you're like, what the fuck is this shit? Yeah, what the fuck is going on with Sub-Zero's Mask there? That's like growing out of the eyeball? What is this?

Yeah. Yeah. Halo, campaign evolved, which is the stupidest name has been announced. It is coming out on modern platforms, not the Switch.

It's coming to PlayStation 5. It is a second remaster of the first Halo game after the one that was in the Master Chief question. And there's a lot of question of like, we don't really need this because Master Chief question exists, but I like- But it doesn't exist on PlayStation. This is true.

I think I'm going to buy it on PlayStation just to have Halo on PlayStation because it's so weird to me. That's fair. That's the same reason that I bought Chuchu Rocket the day that I got my Game Boy. Yeah, because it's Sega on Game Boy.

Sega on Nintendo. It's so weird to me. Right. Also, I like the first Halo and it's got like online co-op and stuff.

Like I'm sure I'll play through it, but no multiplayer is weird and the name is weird. And I don't- I'm not sure I'm in love with the look of it. It's very like lens flare, everything's shiny, reflective, and what's the thing? Getting around the outside edge, like motion blur.

It's a little too cinematic, I guess. The engine is a Halo Infinite, aren't they? I don't- it doesn't- it looks different than Infinite. I don't know.

I don't know. We don't have a ton of information at this time, sure. But if it's still the first Halo, I'm sure I'll enjoy it because I like the first Halo. And I would like to play co-op.

At least it's keeping the co-op, even if it's not going to have the- That's true. That's true. Yeah. I did see like- I don't want to call out a specific Alex, I remember which one it was, but somehow it was like Halo multiplayer didn't start until Halo 2.

So it's not really that disappointing that they don't include it. I'm like, tell me you weren't there without telling me like- Yeah. No, Halo 1 multiplayer, even before the PC version was definitely a huge thing. Yeah.

I got invited to so many Halo parties back when Halo 1 first came out. Great. Halo 2 exploded- Right. It's ahead online in Halo 2.

Right. But it was definitely a thing. Yeah. 25 demos and prototypes of the then-new 3DS hardware from E3 2010 have been preserved.

Just me- Exciting. Exciting to see them preserving that. Nintendo. And preserve it for the record.

Right. Yeah. And now- Preservationists. Preserve it.

Yes. Uh, Edia is bringing the Battle Arena Toshinden Trilogy to modern platforms. Saturn, I know you're so excited. I, um- I, you know, I like the Game Boy Toshinden and that was really fun.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. It's not in this collection.

But uh- When they came out, I really wanted to like Toshinden and just so that I could be opposed to Tekken. And then- and then I played them and I was like, no, I guess I just don't like 3D fighting games in general. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh- Retroide has announced the Pocket G2 and Pocket 6. Couple nice new looking emulation devices from the market. I think they're both around either 2 or 2.50 something like that if I remember right. Uh- and they look nice.

And they got buttons and screens and you can play old games on them. Oh, weird. That's nice to see. Can you play Doom on them?

Um- sure they play Doom. In many- various forms of Doom. Yeah. Uh- leaked internal Slack messages show EA employees aren't happy that they're being mandated to use AI.

What? Yeah. EA responds that they will maintain quote a thoughtful steady approach to AI while insisting to investors that they're full steam ahead. Because they're duplicitous livers.

I don't- again, I'm experiencing this in product form. It's like two different people are running the company and they don't know what the other person's doing. I don't know what's happening. Yeah, I uh- we were just talking on the pre-show about companies forcing employees to use AI.

And it's stupid. Yeah. Stupid. Square Enix announces a new Chrono Trigger or Kestrel arrangement album.

Oh. Um- I'm so glad that you knew exactly when to pause on that. I tried to write that exactly so that you could put that part in there. We got- look, we can't have clickbait.

We got to have something somewhere. We got- I'm happy to hear this anyway. Yeah, cool. Yeah, neat.

Uh- It would be nicer if they could just release Chrono Trigger on modern platforms, society and PC. That'd be nice. A fan-made mod for Rockstar's bully as online multiplayer. I like to bully when it came out.

I feel like that's kind of- I don't know where to go. I think you got a remaster or something. I feel like it just- I feel like Rockstar keeps trying to make the thing. It's just never really- What's the three master on Xbox 360?

I think so, yeah. So like 20 years ago? Shut up, shut up satter! Amazon laid off a bunch of people in the Amazon gaming division and has announced the end of life for their MMORPG New World A-Turnem.

The Amazon gaming division seems to have merged with Amazon Luna, taking the Luna name, which I think will also shortly be shut down because- Yeah, I feel like- Who the fuck even remembers Luna? Um, I'll tell you who remembers Luna, the Stadia subreddit. They are all in on Luna because that is their last hope for streaming-only gaming. I don't ever want to be the person that tells anyone how to enjoy sleeping.

I mean, I'm not Chris Rennullen. Like this is not my bag and Joyce of however you want, but like, I wouldn't be upset if streaming-only gaming just died on the vine. Yeah, never- Yeah, never- So I had a- So I got an email from Amazon saying that now Luna basic is included with all prime memberships. So I went to go look at it and one, Luna basic is useless.

I don't want that. I'm not going to use it. Two, the only library that shows that I have in it is my own gog library of games that I purchased. I'm like, well then why don't I just download them and play them on my computer?

Yeah. Good job. Yeah. Uh, Pongol announced a new free Vampire Spire as DLC crossover with Balotro named Antichamber.

I've already been playing it. Oh, it's very good. Nice. Oh, it's fun.

I haven't- I haven't- I haven't- I messed with it yet. They add in trading cards. So like as you're going around, you'll pick up- you'll get a selection of like three different trading cards that are trading cards of characters in the game that give you different little boosts. And so it's really cute.

And you get to play as the little Balotro guy. What's his name? Jimbo. Jimbo, yeah, you get to play as Jimbo.

It's fun. It's cute. It's Vampire Spire's new level school. It's all just cute and fun and excited.

The last time that I played Vampire Spire's was at work one night and I forgot that other people were still in the room with me while I was playing it. And I'm just sitting there in the corner playing Vampire Spire's because it's slow night. Nothing's going on. And one of my coworkers looks up and says, you having a rave over there?

I didn't realize that the light of Vampire Spire was blinking off of the wall behind me the whole time. I was like, yeah, yeah, I am. Yeah. Oh man, that's so good.

Balotro and Vampire Spire's might go down as like games of the decade for me. Oh yeah, I'd see them cross- Fantastic. Uh, Gog has continued to add a lot to the good old game's preservation program, including Spore and Tomb Raider 2013, that good old game from forever ago Saturn. Yeah, from 2020.

What did you write a game that came out two years after Skyrim and the same year as GTA 5 is no good old. You know what 2013 was a fucking while ago, so. Yeah, it's 12 years ago. Maybe the problem isn't that it's a good old game.

The problem is that they're still trying to sell a Skyrim and GTA 5 over and over again. Yeah, maybe these companies could just fucking innovate instead of doing nothing. What? I know it's shocking.

Justin, they've only had 12 years. They need more time. What could they possibly be doing other than just investing heavily in AI, I'm sure. Yeah.

Peter Monning says his upcoming Masters of Albion will make up for decades of over promising on things. And I, I, we did a whole episode of people on you. Yeah. Listen to it.

If you had told me, he would top all of his bullshit lies with one sentence. I would have been like, there's nothing he could possibly say. Literally nothing. What could he possibly say?

Yeah, that is a, that is a good one. I, I, oh man. Peter Mullen, you never change. Boy, who cries wolf swears he saw the wolf this time.

But you know what? And that story, there was a wolf. So maybe, maybe, you know what, I'll mess with Peter Mullen. Maybe he's finally seen the wolf.

Cult Classic PS1, Import Milano's Odd Job Collection is getting an official Western release across all modern platforms this December. I have no fucking idea what this is. It's kind of a mini game collection, like a proto-warrior where you kind of think any fan translation team who had done the fan translation has been brought on for the official release, which I am a fan of that. I like this idea of fan translators getting their work properly.

Getting their dues, yeah. It's nice. And finally, LRG held their non E3 event months late to coincide with their 10th anniversary. Do you watch it?

I didn't watch it. No, it's so embarrassing. Oh my god, it was so embarrassing. What?

Now I want to watch it. I want to go check it out. No, no, no. Stuff they're coming out with collections for Aerotheracrobat, Choniki, and Ernest Evans.

Physical releases of Unimosha 2, Remaster, Capcom, Arcade Stadium, and Xenotilt. Emulated Re-releases of Little Samson, Sigma Star Saga DX, and Slam City. Oh, and Price Fighter, others last to receive CD games. I did see God, I saw the dumbest.

It was Push Square. It was Push Square. They're in like my RSS feeds or whatever. And it's like, for people that don't know, it's the PlayStation inside.

And then there's an Xbox One on the Nintendo, so you just grab all of them and you get all of it. And their headline was like, 30-year Nintendo exclusive coming to PlayStation. And it was Little Samson. Like, you're not fucking wrong, but what are you doing, man?

Other stuff like a new Jansamap Bob, Brawler, Toxic Crusader, his team and T-Tact will take down, and also the new ABG and 8-bit game is getting released by them, including an actual NES cartridge, which is cool. Which they had a video of, angry video game or biting his own cartridge. He really needs to give it up on the hair. His hairline has receded so far, so I'm like, man, you just gotta give it up.

Yeah, I finally gave it up. So far back. I think you look very distinguished with your giving up haircut. So, you know, I think it's doing you a favor.

Yeah, I always told myself that it was clear. I was just going to start shaving it. And then one time I looked at the mirrors, like, oh my god, it's been clear for a while, hasn't it? And so, I decided it was time.

We all think we'll know the second it happens and we don't. No, I did absolutely not. No. Which brings us to our topic hand.

Which is, once upon a Katamari. Oh, it's a retro game, right? Yeah, you can't tell us what's retro. We make the show.

It's our show. Yeah. You know, playing it, I was like, yeah, this counts as retro. Like, they haven't changed enough.

It's just, you know, spoilers for the rest of the episode. It's just Katamari again. Yeah. But we were both excited about it.

This is a full-size new Katamari game coming out in 2025 at a budget price. And I feel like this is all something that's done with the original. But, sure. Inflation has happened.

Inflation accounted for. It's not bad. Yeah. And I think we should be celebrating these kind of like double A tier releases that are releasing at normal prices.

Indeed. It does still have $20 of music-based DLC, which is fucking nonsensical. Yeah. I don't understand.

Why would I pay you $20 for old Katamari songs? Are you? I don't. I did.

It's sadder. Sadder. Sadder. Bad.

I bought the deluxe edition. Oh, no. Fucking with it. Yeah.

Endgame, who I do not recognize. Oh, we'll get to that. Published by Bandai Namco, it came out on Switch, PS5, the Xboxes, and PCV-A-Steam, worldwide release was 24th of October 2025. Initial thoughts, I was a little nervous.

Yeah. I'm not dipped into Katamari's Deep as you have. I played the first one through for the show. I played a little bit of the sequel.

And I've kind of played, I think I played the PSP one when it came out for a little bit. I just kind of dabbled here and there. And my assessment was always like, eh, it was never as good as the first time. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Or I guess a better way to phrase it is. It was never more compelling than the original. It felt like they were bolting on shit that I don't know that I need this to enjoy Katamari.

Yeah. You know. And so I went into this, excited to see kind of a double-A budget-priced game. And excited to see something with actual unlockables and cosmetics and stuff that are all in the game.

You don't have to pay money for them. There's no cash jobs. There's no through boxes. Right.

And I kind of bought it on principle on just on that. I wanted to support that. And I'm glad I did. Yeah.

That was that was that was how I went into it. Yeah. I played all the games in the series at this point. I played through all about the PS3 one, which I kind of fell off of.

And I would agree with you that each release kind of felt like what are we doing here? You're not really bringing anything new to the table and the few things you're trying to bring are not great. So yeah, I kind of fell off that I understand why they took such a long break after the 360 and PS3 games just because they were kind of meh. And yeah, like you, I'm pretty happy to have seen what they did come up with, which we'll get to.

But I do want to say that if I didn't know that Katamari was made by Japanese people, I think that it were a collection of offensive stereotypes of Japanese culture. And it may still be that. I can see that. Yeah.

But that's that's my. The first thing I think of having played again all over again, I'm just like, this feels like if this weren't coming from Japan, I'd be very concerned about this. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Step us through what development information we have because it's still a new game. Oh, well, thanks for listening to the show.

See you next week. Bye. So it was announced in July of this year, July 2025, then intended to be right. But Bayden and Emko hasn't really revealed much info about the development or anything at this point.

Couldn't find any real interviews or anything. However, I did look up this developer, Ren Game. I recognize them now based on these notes. I'm excited.

OK, so this is mostly an outsourcing studio. They've worked with Bandai Namco on quite a few things. The Katamari remasters, both reroll and the We Heart Katamari reroll. They also did the Clanoa collection.

They did some sort of online games. But there are other non-Bandai Namco stuff, mostly licensed stuff, but also a couple of original games called quote, yeah, you want quote those games, right? So here you go. Now let's see you clear them and it's sequel.

Yeah, you want quote those games, right? So here you go. Now let's see you clear them too. I see this title around because it goes on sale a lot and on my deals RSS feed.

Yeah. Wario 64 will post it and it just says that. It's the title of it. And I'm like, why is he yelling at everyone to buy these games?

And then I'm like, oh, it's the name of the game. You click on the blue sky post and every comment is like, stop yelling at us. I have no idea the games are fucking about, but the title is ever. Yeah, there's also a new third one.

I'm trying to find what the name of it is. But it's basically those games extreme is the name of it. Oh, it's the new one is listen up. We tried to make quote those games quote even more extreme.

Some things have to be learned the hard way. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. I am curious, but this is straight off Wikipedia. Quote, the series is a parody of mobile game advertisements that often depict fake mini games that are usually not representative of the actual game once downloaded.

So I like this is a fun premise. Yeah, I like the premise. I don't like the video. Although on Wikipedia, it lists the developer as monkey craft.

Because if you go to Ren Games website, they mostly just hype up these games as they. So maybe it was a rename or I don't know. I don't know. Ren Games.

Yeah, we did all weird stuff. Yeah, they've also done some outsourcing stuff for SNK as well. They seem to be mostly outsourcing and licensed game studio. Yeah, let's talk presentation.

Yes. This is Katamari again. It's in 4K HD, which is nice. Oh, it does look nice.

It's a good looking, a white screen. I do appreciate they preserved the PS2 art style. Yeah, they didn't try to make it high poly or anything. It's all just derpy.

Yes. My favorite thing is they keep so in the game, whenever you go up a tier, there will be like a loading screen. Yeah. And it's really just there.

I'm thinking behind the scenes, it just kind of resizes some of the items, like the teeny tiny items, because you only have so many objects that are interactable at a time. But it still pops up with that same loading screen. But it's instantly done, like the second it pops up every time. I guess they just wanted to keep the flow the same on every platform and maybe on PCs with mechanical hard drives or on a switch or something.

It might still have a load time there. And they just didn't want to re-optimize it for the other systems. The new music is great. I love some of the new tracks.

I was going to say the opposite, actually. Really? I found most of the new music to be fine. But I didn't find it getting caught in my head like the old soundtrack.

Oh, man. I like a lot of this new music. I do want to talk in presentation before we get to gameplay, because presentation is also my biggest complaint with this game, in that it is indeed too traditional in that regard. So to get into a level, you have to talk to a person, go to a confirm screen, confirm, load up into the air, talk to the king for a long time.

King of cosmos. You hold the skip button. Right. Well, you can skip it.

But then even when you're skipping, it's still like- You still have to skip through all these transitions. Talk, skip, confirm, talk, skip. And then you go to the level and you can skip the level intro. And it's just- They kept it all.

Yeah. And on the PS2, it made sense because you're hiding load times. You've got different shit going on. It's just slower.

This one, I'm like, I want to fucking roll the catamari. Yeah. Get this shit out of my face. That's fair.

And some of the levels are only like a minute and a half long. And then after you finish the level, you're going to talk to the king again. And then you get an unskippable section of him being like, oh, let's put this up in the cosmos and then doing the animation of it. And sometimes it feels like I spent more time getting it out of the level than I did playing the level.

That's fair. Yeah. That did become my biggest issue by the end of it. It was just sitting through that animation, yeah.

When I was having to replay the same level over and over again and going through those same motions each time. Yeah. Into my head, I was like, do I just have like internet vampires, fibers, brain rock, or like everything's like flashing screens and 700 miles an hour or like an hour slow down for a minute? And then just need to have that right going on over there.

Yeah. After a minute, I was like, no, it's not me. It's the games who are wrong. I wish they had made it a little snappier, a little faster.

I get that they're trying to preserve the flow of the game. Maybe give an option to skip that stuff after you've already finished a level or something. Yeah. It makes me think about like an animal crossing.

There's a character named Blathers who blathers on and he works at the museum. You have to go to the museum all the time to donate stuff to the museum. And he won't shut the fuck up. And Nintendo has come out and said something like, the dialogue is a character in the game too.