Retro Warriors 557 - Taito

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to where it is up to 557. As always, I'm your host, Justin Baker, and as always, I'm joined by Bible human Chris Saturn. Hi, Justin. Hi, Saturn.

Our pre-show and pre-pre-show and all of that today was so long because of technical issues and everything that I have already had, like three sodas. And I'm going to have to try to not pee in the middle of the show. That's what I'm getting at. You know, you could have just, you can go at any time.

Nope. No, can't. All right. Well, that's probably a short show, because it's a very short succinct topic, right?

I'm sure it's fine. Definitely. That's fine. I wouldn't even worry about it if I really don't have a bunch of news or anything.

It'll be fine. As far as housekeeping, we have a Matrix server. Please come chat with us in it. Discord is dead to us.

That's it. Link in the show description. Please check it. You don't have to rush the show.

Too late. I am. My week. I've been doing Linux for a week.

So on the back of... How's the laptop working? It's still working out well. It's working great.

So yeah, I bought that laptop from you. I think it's working great. I'm very much enjoying it. And then you had given it to me with Mint, because you knew Mint was my preferred Linux distrill.

And then I came home and I was like, man, I'm really enjoying having Linux on a relatively modern computer, because my other Linux machine is like a 2014 computer. And I was like, it's nice. There's this battery and it's performing until I love it. And I was like, I'm already kind of in the technical mode from setting up all this Matrix stuff and server stuff and learning all this and playing around Linux on the new machine.

I was like, I'm going to take a crack at Linux on my main computer, my gaming computer. And I tried it about a year, maybe a year and a half ago, something like that. And it was not good. And I ended up in some Linux support Discord.

And they were basically like, hey, your stuff is too new and there's not really good kernel support. You're just going to need to give it some time. And so that's what I've done. I gave it some time, which top normally every computer I've ever bought my life, I buy like mid-tier couple year old hardware because it's way cheaper.

This is the first time I ever did like cutting edge, you know. And I want to be doing it again because I couldn't put Linux on. Anyway, I put Linux on this time and it works. It works fine.

I've got all cutting edge stuff and I put Linux on it. It was immediately fine. But that's right. You have cutting edge like AMD stuff.

Right. That's true. Yeah, it's all AMD stuff. I've cutting edge Intel and Nvidia stuff.

You should not do that now. I should not do that now. I got Linux on it and I was running mint on it and it worked. There were just some issues and some jank and I have kind of a demanding setup as far as like display managers go because I have a triple monitor setup in two different orientations with three different refresh rates and three different resolutions and two of them are VRR.

That's very similar to mine only. I only have two monitors and they're connected via Thunderbolt to an Nvidia. So yeah, yeah. Anyway, while I was getting mint set up, I noticed that my laptop had a crack in the top case.

I don't know how but I pay for Lenovo's warranty in credit where credit's due Lenovo was like the only company I pay for extended warranty for because you just call them on the phone and four days later they send a guy to your house to fix it. Yep. It's fucking fantastic because I don't know. That was that laptop you bought for me.

It's Lenovo warranty expired like four months ago. No, it's not. It had the four year extended everything accident everything but it did. Yeah.

And I've had come out two or three times to fix stuff on this thing. So I'm glad I paid for it. But because I don't have to go anywhere ship anything off or anything it's great. So I had just put mint on it.

And I was it was all in the same day. I'm like, I'm gonna put Linux on it. I'll call and get him to come out and fix the crack and this computer will be all good to go. Yeah.

And I literally just wrapped wiped windows. I call him and they go, all right, cool. Well, since I'm out, but can you run a diagnostic force and I go, no, I'm in Linux. I can't open your Lenovo software.

I don't have it. You have a bootable BIOS. Oh, we got to that. But he goes, well, we're gonna need we're gonna need windows for this.

I don't have windows. He goes, well, you're gonna have to get windows so that we can run a diagnostic before I can send a technician out or I can't make a work order. And I said, you're gonna make me wipe my operating system and install a different one onto my hard drive to run a diagnostic for a crack piece of plastic. And he goes, hold on.

And so anyway, he ended up telling me about the bootable one. I was like, why don't you just open with that? Just tell me that dude. When someone says I'm running Linux, that's the sign to be like, all right, we have a UEFI bootable, you know, just you can run a diagnostic.

Please do that email to him. And so they came out, they fixed it. And then I ended up putting fedora on it. So I was just having some wailing isn't ready on mint and X11 was giving me issues and I put fedora on it.

And fedora. I haven't run fedora since fedora 1.0. Like when it first came out in the early 2000s and everyone's like, oh my god, red hat's making a consumer Linux. Well, red hat already had a consumer Linux.

They just rebranded it. Yeah, but you know, they made a big deal about it at the time. It was like, who fedoras for the community, you know, well, fedora was the community developed one whereas red hat was the red hat developed one. Right.

But nobody wanted red hat because it's corporate shit, but then fedora, it was special separate. So I haven't used it since then. And man, it is nice. Oh yeah.

I end up in a tablet. I end up in fedora on this machine and everything works great on my gaming works great. Everything is awesome. I ended up wiping that Lenovo I got from you and putting fedora on it.

And then I got a Lenovo used off eBay for my wife and fedora on it. And so yeah, just been doing lots of Linux and getting computers set up and honestly, I don't know, it feels like a weird kind of doomsday prepping. You know what I mean? It feels like we're currently experiencing a corporate run doomsday.

So I understand that. Like sort of like a crunching of the tech sphere. So like I've gotten off of all the social medias. We're hosting our own matrix server.

I've got my Plex hosted at home with my network attached storage. We're all my it's my pictures back up to I've got Linux on all my machines. Like it's I feel like I as much as is reasonable for someone that still engages with the world have kind of used this opportunity that was kicked off by the discord thing to kind of ejector seat out of the corporate mainstream tech world a little bit. And it feels so good.

Yeah. The relief I feel. Yeah, it's so nice. Oh my God.

Like the way kicked off the windows thing is you shared some article about some rumors going around which I think it ended up being fake. Right. Well, they've denied it, but they didn't they didn't say this fake. They just denied the exact raising of it.

Right. They're going to make windows subscription based and stuff and and you know it was that and then that same day I'd open the wrong notepad and open regular notepad and had to close a pop up for copilot and notepad and I was like, I can't fucking take this anymore. Yeah. I'm done.

I'm out of here. Yep. And so that's what I've been doing just tons of computer work. But I think as of kind of today, I'm really kind of set up.

I think I'm just sort of set up and I can just coast and it feels weird not having several hour long computer related projects every day. So you did get the X one carbon for Courtney? I did. We picked up an old with the same years the one I got from you.

I got 20. Yeah. That's one carbon and she's like, she's enjoying it. She's enjoying Linux.

She enjoys how customizable it can be like, hey, you open her computer and it's a lease of Frank painting. It's just rainbow explosions on everything. I have a she loves that when I got that that X 13 that you have now the week before or after I got it, I had gotten issued my new computer at my last job that was that same generation X one carbon. So I was using both of those at once for a while there and man, they're both just nice machines.

I do think I like the the X 13 a little more than the carbon. There's just a couple little touches here and there that make it more usable for me. But they're both very good machines. I'm going to join them both quite a bit.

I did accidentally get her the non touch carbon. So she's a little upset about that. But I do like the feel of the the carbons case slightly more than the X 13. But otherwise, yeah, I'm like, this is done.

But headphone jack on the left side is a huge feature for me. And for the for some reason, I saw carbon, they put it on the right side. I'm like, why would you do this? That's my mouse side and my headphones, my good headphones have a big.

It's just, I hate it and I stick out in my mouse hand and then. Yeah. But yeah, I've been doing the Linux for two weeks, just nonstop. I think I clocked the other day.

The other day, I was thinking about it and I was like, I've reinstalled operating systems five times on three different machines in a week. Until I finally figured out that I wanted to land on Fedora. Yeah, man, I started to do arch. And I was just like, man, I just don't have.

I just don't want to do it all myself. I just don't want to. But you don't have to go. I like arch.

I ran it for years. Well, go ahead. Well, with arch and sol and all that stuff, it basically just does it all for you now. I guess that's true.

Yeah. I think what I was looking for in what Fedora workstation provided for me, which I know we're just talking about Linux on the show now. But what it provided for me was, and this is the thing I ran into on Mint, is I would jump around desktop environments and a lot of them are built to accommodate multiple different desktop environments. Yeah.

And I was kind of looking for something that was more purpose built for the software that it had, it's more stripped down. In my, with the thing I run, which granted arch can very much be in someone's capable hands is, but for me, I end up installing tons of extra shit, jumping around a bunch, not sure when I want to go. And then I end up on the far side with like millions of orphan packages and half of a desktop environment and it's using the wrong file manager. And I'm like, oh, fuck me.

And, and Fedora was very, like, it doesn't even have an email client. Like you install it and it's got like eight pieces of software in it. So it's very clean. I like a lot.

So I get to kind of slowly build up from a really good base. Yeah. Because I think that's where I fuck up with like arching into is I'm not good about building my good base first, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. I, I, I jumped around a bunch before I landed on arch. And if I were to move from arch, I think Fedora is likely where I would go. Um, but I, I, I, I like arch just because of how absolutely minimal the base install is.

Yeah. I just got to add everything on top of that. And I had spent so long jumping around that I figured out exactly what packages I wanted to add on it. So I ended up where I wanted to be.

Oh, yeah. If you're like, I know exactly what I want. This is my core than this is the way to go. So I'm so far out of the game.

Cause I've been on devian systems like LTS long term, devian systems, old mint for so long that I didn't even know something happened with no. I didn't even know that there was debate. I was like, it just looked like old windows, right? And I was like, no, it's different now.

Oh man. Yeah. Before, before my steam deck, the last time I'd used a KDE was when it was all like super blue and crystalline looking, you know, all bubble letters, right? Yeah.

Um, so a lot of it was just like, I don't know what I want and what's available. So Fedora was nice. Cause it's like, Hey, here's just some kind of sane, relatively not cutting edge, but you know, new packages. Until I started jumping around between this or last year, the last time I had used KDE was Fedora five when that was called the fault interface for Fedora.

And, and it was, it was a while ago. I will say, and then we'll talk about Linux. I swear for the people like, what the fuck is happening? But for the 10 other Linux geeks out there, like, yeah, yeah, Linux.

I don't know who the fuck designed the new gnome. Oh, yeah. But they're in 80. It was a long time ago.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure they've ever used a computer. Now, once you put your, you can, what I love is it's extensible. Once you've had it all the extensions, you want, you can really make it whatever you want.

But the default like, what the fuck were they thinking? Here's what I'll say in their defense. All right. I installed Fedora on my surface because I use my surface as my ear reader.

And the new current gnome as a tablet interface is fantastic. Oh, I imagine it seems very touch forward. It's so nice because with all the touch gestures and everything, I don't even use the keyboard on it. It's amazing.

It is just a, it feels better on my touch interface than Android did on my old tablet. It's so great. What, what I didn't, I logged in for the first time in the new gnome and I was like, all right, we're my desktop icons and I googled and then we're just like, this should be clean. And like, so it's just a big square of nothing then that's a good fucking efficient use of space.

And then I was like, all right, I had element and steam and stuff running and then you minimize them to go to your tray and I go, well, where's my system tray? What's running in the background? And I look online and they're like, well, things that are running in the background should do it this way. And I'm like, tell me you're an engineer without telling me like I know it should be that way, but no software does do it that way.

So can we do something that actually, you know, is functional? Yeah, once I add a Arc-Manue Dash to panel, that's when I start to feel like I'm. Yeah, those are my two Arc-Manue Dash to panel. I got one that has my system tray.

My, here's my favorite. And then I swear, we'll talk about one. So for anybody running the new, there's an extension called RunCat because I like having system monitors in my tray and it's a cat and it's at zero percent. It lays their sleeping.

But as your CPU ramps up, it starts running faster and faster and faster. It's the best extension. So if you have no, get RunCat. It's the queue's calling it right now.

It's 13% slowly running. Anyway, so what non-unextensive you've been doing? So I still plug in away at RunCat, I haven't gotten a little bit further in the game and it's still really good. It's just a really good conversion of it.

I have started to notice some of the things that are that were removed and missing from the original, but I don't think they're really detracting from it very much. My biggest issue is just how easy they have made it. It is laughably easy. It feels like a game that really wants to play itself and is excited that a player has come along to watch it.

It just wants to perform for you. Yes, it really wants to be a Dragon Quest and be like, look at me being Dragon Quest over here. Oh, you wanted to play? No, no, no, don't worry about that.

Let me take care of it for you, which is weird and I'm not 100% on board with it, but it's fine. That's fine. I've only decided to try to use an LLM AI for something. I've been having an issue with my laptop for about a month now where it was failing anytime I would go to sleep.

It would just crash, crash. I would have to hard power it to get it to come back. I finally decided, you know what, people are using this LLM bullshit for some reason. There's got to be a function for it.

I don't remember if it was you or somebody who had mentioned that you had been using one for troubleshooting. I think you'd mentioned you'd use it for troubleshooting when you were setting up the Matrix server. Oh, no. Matrix really helped me with all that.

Oh, thank goodness. But I didn't trust an LLM for that. But it was when I was working on Mint, Mint doesn't have something like Arch-Wiki, which is incredibly useful. It's all just hundreds and hundreds of forums to sit through.

So I was using LLM troubleshooting Mint because it was much better than me digging through the forums. I mean, like here's what they're saying. Yeah, somebody had mentioned something and I had seen Claude mentioned in the news and I was like, all right, I'll give this a shot. I will give you an opportunity to impress me, Claude.

Let's see what you can do. And so first it immediately asked me to log in. I didn't like that. But it let me log in with Google and I already have a Google account.

I was like, fuck it, whatever. You can have this. And so I asked it about the problem I was having and it was like, okay, let's take a look at your system delogs and see if we can figure out what's causing it to crash. I had already looked through them but I wasn't able to find anything.

So I fed it the command that it wanted and it came back and it said, okay, it looks like it's a problem with your MPU, your AI processor. It may not have full Linux support yet. Let's turn that off. And I had previously run across a forum post that said the same thing.

So I was like, it might be that, like I found some forum posts that were like, it could be the MPU, it could be the GPU. There's something causing a problem. And it said the same thing. So I was like, all right.

I run the command that it tells me to run to basically Blacklist my MPU and which I'm not using anyway. It's fine. I don't care. Whatever.

And I reboot and it's still having the problem. It's like, all right. So we've eliminated that possibility. It could be the GPU.

And I was like, that's what I thought it could be that too. And so it tells me some commands that might give my GPU a different sleep state. So I try that. No dice.

It still doesn't work. And I'm like, well, this is the same place that I was before the AI. So at least it's not breaking anything. Right.

It's not yet to destroy your system. Right. So I tell it this and I'm like, all right, so I guess it's not going to find it and I said, okay, well, let's try to turn on verbose logging for system D because your system D is not set up for that. I was like, oh, I didn't realize that.

So I turn on verbose logging and then I try to see if it'll crash and then it immediately crashes, but it shows the verbose log on my screen. I'm like, oh, okay. So at least while it's crashed, I can see a log now. I don't know what the fucking you this means, but I can see it.

You got something. So I took a picture of it and I gave that picture to Claude and it said, okay, I see the problem. Is your wireless card. Your wireless card is not waking up from sleep and it's causing the entire system to crash.

Here's some things to try. I try them. No change. I'm like, you know, I replaced this wireless card when I first got computer.

I put in the wireless card that I had and see if that fixes it immediately fix it. 100% fine. So I'll give Claude credit for finding this problem and tell me what it was. It didn't give me a correct solution, but it did find the problem and I was able to find the solution.

Yeah, it got you, you know, it got you a step somewhere, which to be fair, this is what LLMs are literally purpose built exactly, combing large amounts of information to help human beings not have to comb large amounts of their purpose. Yeah. So I, of course, they're good at that. Yeah.

They don't, they're, they're not good at being your girlfriend. No. And they're, they're also not good at answering all of your questions on the internet. Yeah.

And doing your job. Please, please. And so once that worked, I was like, well, let's see if it can troubleshoot something on my server, because my server has been hanging out, my proximal server has been hanging out every now and then I had it troubleshoot that and it possibly has found the solution there too, which was I had a bad SATA cable. There you go.

I'll say this because I do, like I said, I've used it for Linux troubleshooting before. Yeah. A lot of it is just that there are huge amounts of in depth discussion about Linux online. Yeah.

I've noticed this is my conspiracy theory brain going on, but search engines, brain, they're full of AI slot, but I think they're just intentionally obfuscating things because I used to be able to find solutions to things online and I can not now. Yeah. The search engines just feel like they've gotten worse over the last 10 years and maybe it is because of all the slop on the internet just clapping. There's a lot of slop.

Sure. The results, but like all of them have gotten worse. There's always been a lot of trash on the internet. True.

But there's more than ever before now. I know, but it's just, I just feel like if anyone could figure it out, the people making the LLMs could do it. I think part of what the problem is is trash websites have narrowed in on search engine optimization for so long that now all of the search engines are just feeding you trash optimized content. Oh, my God.

His joint the call mid-show. He's messaging me now. All right. We need to get to the news.

Oh, one other thing. Oh, go ahead. So since I had good results with that one thing on AI, I had been kind of playing with one of my spare laptops trying to get Linux from scratch working and I kept running across an error. And so I thought that I would ask the AI if it could fix Linux from scratch because that's the most obtuse thing that it could possibly fix, right?

But I didn't want to log into my Google account on this computer in order to try cloud on there. So I was like, well, what AI will not force me to log in and I'm trying to couple of them. I come across Google Jim and I will let me ask you questions without logging in. So I'm like, let's see if Google Jim and I can fix this.

And so I feed it the error message I'm getting while compiling something while trying to make Linux from scratch. And Google Jim and I responds with a classic beginner failure when using Linux from scratch. Let me tell you, this particular failure is a known problem. If you would read chapter six, part three of the Linux from scratch manual, the chapter you are on, you would have seen that there are some expected failures in this test.

And I'm like, I did read it. This isn't one of those expected failures. And then it's like, what you should do is try to run the make command to compile your problem anyway and ignore this failure. So I run it and then it fails until I copy paste that into Google Jim and I says, ah, a beginner failure.

And so what I learned is one, Google Jim and I is useless. And two, it was properly trained on Linux forums because it's both condescending and on hell. Right. Did it tell you it runs arch?

Yeah, I'll say of the LLM's cloud is the one that that seems kind of more purpose built for computer e tasks. That's good. Yeah. Although I don't like that when you go to the website, they're like, use it for anything.

Please don't use for anything. Please don't do that. No, stop, stop doing that. But I did appreciate that it recreated the classic Linux forum experience of being.

Yeah, I wanted to have the Linux from scratch experience. The true one. Did you read the manual? Like, what did you just say to me?

Computer, right? Did I read the manual? Yes, it will unplug you. Man, if I could unplug Google Jim, I'd be so happy.

Yeah, me too. I'd be very happy. Now let's do the new KAA. First up, Eurogamer, parent company, gamer network, a division of IGN, which is itself a division of Zipped Davis, which still exists.

I don't know how it was. I has announced layoffs across editorial and writing staff. We saw that one come in, but it sucks because Eurogamer is still a pretty good website. Pokemon Direct confirmed a new Pokemon game and Pokemon Home support for the emulated releases of FireRed and LeafGreen.

Also new Pokemon Jukebox toy is on the mind and Tindoor featuring music from the original Game Boy games, which is so cute. And also, what the fuck? What am I going to do with this crap? Right?

Yeah. But it's so cute and I want it because it looks like a little Game Boy. And it's cute. They're releasing a lot of 30th anniversary merch right now, which God, that makes me feel so old because I was there.

Yeah. Yeah. Lots of cute stuff coming out. US Customs destroyed one of the 50 existing copies of my Suki Hime trial edition, a Japan-only adult visual novel developed by the creators of Fate Flash Stay Night.

Did you see the pictures of what customs did to it? No, I read the story. I didn't see the pictures. It's like they ripped the floppy disk into pieces and then they ripped the actual data disk inside of the floppy disk into pieces.

Why? You know, they're searching for a legal code or something. There's no good reason for what they're in the computer. Right.

It's infuriating. Depressing. But I'm not shedding tears over this adult visual novel, but just the fact that- Preservation's sake. Exactly.

It's sad. Microsoft and Blaze have announced Activision Collection 2 for EverCade, which has pre- Playfall 2, which is the only important Activision game on it, which we've all been waiting for. So patient, right along with Saturn. Also new Rare themed Super Pocket compatible with EverCade cards will come pre-packaged with Banjo Kazooie, which is just- Do you remember in the mall, in the early 2000s, you'd walk by and it'd be like a Sega Genesis with a Super Nintendo controller playing an Atari game and it would have a 10,000 in one cartridge and you'd be like, that is some jank crap.

When I worked at E.B. there was a cart right outside of our store that sold an N64 controller with a built-in famiclone that had a Genesis controller that attached to it as a player too. So we've got full circle now where we're getting these weird- again, EverCades are nice. I have on the handhelds.

They're nice machines for what they are and what they're trying to be. So no shade, but it feels so wrong to see Banjo Kazooie running on this weird off-brand Game Boy looking thing. Yeah, with a D-pad, right? And it makes me think of those small key husks.

Yeah, it's got a D-pad. How are you gonna play Banjo? Right. Maybe I'm not good enough of the game.

I'm missing something, but it seems like a bad thing. You would think that game actually has proper analog controls for analog movement too. I don't know. But Twitch has added advertisements that will wait for you to finish watching them if you try to click away from the window because this is the hell we live in.

Fucking tech companies watching Black Mirror for inspiration. YouTube is also reportedly implementing a feature with unskippable ads. What I want to know is someone- I mean, we need to be playing Black Mirror Bingo because this isn't the first time. It has happened so many times.

You know, the advertising companies, they have- I don't remember what the term specifically is, but it's something like over saturation where they feel like an ad has hit the market so much that people stop watching it. At what point do we just hit that for all of advertising as a concept where we are just so burnt out by it that we no longer notice it at all and it loses all of its effectiveness? I don't know who these people are that aren't living ad blocker, pie-hole lifestyles and how they stand. I know people that don't even run ad blockers in their browser.

I don't know how you live that way. I don't know either. You know, more power to you, but that ain't me. I've talked about before how my daughter has no natural defenses to advertise.

We watch a lot of broadcast TV because we're trying to get us off the streaming stuff and all that. We watch a lot of Plex2, but we watch a broadcast TV because I want to support that. And so she watches this cartoon channel every morning and she's watching- there's this commercial for like a senior clinic like an AARP sponsored seniors only clinic. Yeah.

And then the commercial has this guy dancing and they had a new version of it today that was just some lady talking and my daughter's sitting on the couch and she's like, oh, I miss the old old people hospital commercial. I was like, oh my God. Maybe by the time that she asked me from the other room like, yeah, can we buy gold? Like, those gold commercials.

Nice. Did you buy her some gold? No, okay. No.

Uh, microslop has banned the word microslop from its discord. It's also locked down their discord server, a mid backlash to the microslop. Yeah. That's a right moment right there.

I'm okay with the community bullying Microsoft. Yeah, me too. I think they deserve it and I'm happy that it's occurring. I agree.

Yeah. Hidden Palace has found and released a prototype of the unreleased Xbox 360 Highlander game in development at I-DOS. You're just a touch too young to understand how big highlighter was in the 80s. I was we were talking about in the discord the other day.

I was like, that movie's so bad and it was such a big fucking deal. And it's a bad movie. My mom loves that entire series. She loves all of them.

Those are her favorites. It was a name. It really was. Oh yeah.

Like I had some appreciation for the first two movies. Like the first one was fine. The second one was goofy but fine. Um, the series completely went off the rails after that, but my mom loves all of them.

She thinks they are fucking high cinema pristine movies. She ranks them right next to Terminator. I have a secret for you about Highlander. It went off the rails instantly.

Right. Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not a good movie, but it's a fun movie. Is it the first?

I asked this in the discord and we, I don't think we figured it out, but is it the first time since it's our DOS we saw Sean Connery with a ponytail? Possibly. Yeah. I know several people who back in the 80s, uh, listed it right next to Terminator as far as quality of movie.

Uh, researchers from the cutting room floor, I found previously unknown sheet codes in an SNES baseball game that hadn't been found for 30 years. That's fun. Yeah. I want to say it was the second Griffin game and I think those were made by Rare.

So maybe one of the rare guys snuck in there and let them know about it. You know, I think the video game history foundation has taken down a copyright troll that has tried to remove reference to Japan only point and click game cookies bustle from the internet. Yeah. I don't know if you had quote here.

Yeah. That's, that's the, their description of the game. Okay. All right.

So they describe the game as quote, you play as a five year old girl from New Jersey who enters an international sports competition that becomes engulfed in civil war and intergalactic intrigue. Yeah. Uh, I don't know if you, I don't know if you read this article from the video game history foundation or not. No, I saw the article, but I didn't know the game.

So I didn't even, I didn't, um, some dude who apparently is in the US, uh, has been claiming copyright on this game. Nobody knows what happened to the actual publisher of it. Uh, they seem to have just fallen off the, the, the world completely. So nobody was able to figure out who actually owns this game or if it is even still owned by anybody.

Seemingly in the US form day company and that company has been claiming copyright anytime, any website, even references the name of the game for years now and, uh, the video game history foundations lawyers finally pushed back enough that, uh, kind of eliminated this guy's claims to it. Yeah. It's a weird story. I wasn't as excited about the story as I was excited about the fact that the video game history foundation got to actually put some legal muscle out there, which I don't think they should ever have to do and I'm sure stress before them.

Yeah. But it's nice to see them prove to people like that. They're like, Hey, we're not just going to lay down and take this. Like we do, you know, we're going to defend our, you know, what we think is, is right?

Right. So we're going to go clash and Mario tennis virtual boy and Mario versus Donkey Kong, GDA. We're at a tune Nintendo Switch online plus plus in advance of Martin day, which is what I will call it. I will not call it the other thing.

It is Martin day. The day we celebrate people named Martin. Yeah. That's a, that's a, the fancier version is Martin, a day.

That's when we just celebrate Charles Martin. We should call it that, you know, the person that Nintendo seems to have invested themselves from, right? I mean, they still have to do the voice and everything, which is so generous of them. Do they still do it?

Does it in the games? Not in the games, but like in public appearances and everything he can refer to himself as the, uh, uh, Mario Emeritus and do Mario stuff. They will allow him to just work that he did for them for decades. Yeah.

Sony has announced that we pulling back from publishing first party single player games on PC. We'll continue to publish multiplayer games on multiple platforms. I'll say I'm shocked. It took this long, but also I'm upset that it is happening.

So yeah, yeah. Another FF 11 server was locked due to overpopulation. I'm claiming credit for this one. I think we did this.

Yeah. Almost 25 years after the game released, we have a search and sponsor. We revived it. Yeah.

So we have a, uh, former L.R.G. owner, Josh Fairhurst uploaded a prototype, built up the Saturn port of FMB game price fighter to the internet archive, which I think you've been holding on to and been a little stingy with. Yeah. And also they just released that or they're about to release that price fighter rerelease on modern consoles.

So at least he is also making it available in our archive in addition to try to sell it. And finally, Sony has begun a large scale A.B. price test for games on the PlayStation store. I don't like this all.

Yeah. I don't like it at all either. And it's just going to get worse. Uh, for anyone that's not already buckling down for holiday, 26, yeah, get ready.

It's going to be fucked. Yeah. This has always been one of my concerns with everything moving digital only is this A.B. price testing, where some people have to pay more than other people for seemingly no reason.

I don't want it. I don't want that at all. Yeah. Uh, which brings us to our time.

Old stuff, which is, which is Taito. Yes. Everyone's favorite company that they know all about and don't forget about ever. What?

A lot of the time. Uh, how could you forget Taito? Uh, synopsis warning a huge battleship. Taito is approaching fast.

I, I'm not the biggest area span, but I always love that screen and Darius. That's like my favorite. Uh, by Graf it, I'm found at August 24th, 1953 by Michael Michi Kogan in Tokyo, Japan. I just find definitively if his name is pronounced Michael or Michail.

Uh, I don't know definitively. So guessing with that nickname, Micha is probably not the way I'm still going to pronounce it Michael throughout this just because I'm a dumb American. That's what we do. It would be more embarrassing if we tried anything else.

Exactly. We'll just take the minimum amount of embarrassment and try to move back. Um, as far as first encounters, I, I'm struggling to think probably bubble bubble. Yeah.

Cause Taito to me sort of is bubble bubble. Um, well, bub and bob were their mascots for a while. True, true. Uh, Space Invaders was way before me.

I didn't come to Darius to well after the fact. Kind of thing about the like big Taito properties. Um, I think bubble bubble would probably have been it for me. As fair as it was, as they were kind of what they were the bubble bubble people to me.

Um, and still kind of are a little bit, although I've come around on Darius, some of the newer Darius is, um, especially that one on PC a couple of years ago that had way too much DLC. Yeah. But if you got it all on sale for like $20, it was just the deal of the century. Right.

I think I thought that was a long my PS4 too. Yeah. Yeah. That was a, that was a good one.

Um, it wasn't cosmic collection was the arcade games. What's that called? Yeah. Derry's first chronicles, uh, which was just a port of a PSP game actually.

Right. But they added, I don't think the PSP game had all the extra shit. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That was all added. They even added fan season to it.

Yeah. Nice. Which is what makes it the best. Um, anyway, yeah.

Saturn first encounters. Probably Space Invaders on Atari. Uh, if not that, then maybe Phoenix on Atari, which is my preferred classic Taito Shmoop. Um, and then after that was definitely bubble bubble.

I played a obscene amount of bubble bubble on them. Yes. I didn't, it occurs to me. I didn't say this.

I didn't own bubble bubble. Yeah. My grandma and my dad's side had an NES at her house and the games she had were Life Force, Metal Gear and bubble bubble. I mean, that's all the games.

This would have been like late nineties. Uh, so they would have been, you know, in air quotes, old games by then. Yeah. I'm assuming she picked it up at a pawn shop or something, just have something from the grandkids game over.

Um, it's a stuff way back in the corner. So yeah, that might, she had that. I never even owned, I still don't own bubble bubble. Uh, never owned it.

Uh, I just played it at my grandma's house. My played at grandma's house games were, uh, Frogger and Donkey Kong because she had those. I'm sorry and we didn't. I like a good Frogger.

Yeah. My grandpa, my dad's side was just a laundry bucket of old toys that we would just kind of rummage around in that mostly snowed real bad like cigarettes. That was most of my dad's parents would not have any toys or anything in their home. They refused to have anything toy like or game like in their home aside from playing cards.

Um, so if we wanted to play anything over there, we would get judged for it. But my mom's side, they had the Atari, they had the Commodore. Uh, yeah. If we were playing Frogger or Donkey Kong on the Atari, then my grandpa would be playing Casino Crap's on his Commodore.

No, it's his favorite game. Um, so, uh, we can get a pre-hissering founding. I do want to thank you, Saturn. You pretty much, uh, yet again did this episode entirely by yourself.

That's fine. Fuck man. I think this was the, was this recording cycle? My kid had the flu or was that last?

I think that was the cycle. I think she had, I think she had gotten sick like a day or so before we started recording. Yeah. Cause when we recorded, I was like, I hope I don't get sick.

She's not feeling good. And yeah, so that, that, I was trying to think, like, am I ahead of the time? Go. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. She was in bed for a week down sick from school. Uh, that, that, that kind of eight next week is spring break.

Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about Taito, uh, kind of pre history and founding and where they came from. Yeah.

Yeah. So, uh, we start with Michael Kogan. He was born in Odessa, Ukraine, which is a, uh, a classic Japanese city. So we all know.

Yeah. Uh, he, he was a, uh, Ukrainian Jew in the, in, in Ukraine. Uh, but they, they fled Ukraine to China because of the Russian Revolution in the 1920s. Uh, a common topic on our show.

We often talk about it all the time. Everyone remembers that. It comes up constantly. Um, so they, they went to China and then, uh, he went to Tokyo to attend school, uh, and when he was old enough for, for school.

Um, and, uh, and he finished the, was, uh, school of economics in Tokyo, then he returned Shanghai to help his father because his father was running a small business in Shanghai. Um, and that's where he founded his first business, a company called Taitang. Uh, and he'd dealt in imported goods, wigs and canned milk. The, the, the, the, the, the trifecta as their known.

Yeah. We're constantly talking about imported goods, wigs and canned milk. Yeah. That's a, when we say retro warriors, we're talking about retro wigs and retro canned milk.

I don't even buy non-canned milk anymore. Honestly, that's just not shelf stable enough. Right. Yeah.

I wonder if it was like regular milk or powdered milk. Surely they had bottled milk at the time. Anyway. It could be evaporated milk, right?

Dense milk or, you know, if it's condensed milk, then how come when I add water to it, it doesn't turn back into regular milk. That's a good point. Doesn't really seem like a scoot. They got something else in it.

Yeah. Anyway. Um, so, uh, after World War Two, Kogun went back to Japan and he founded a new company, which was the Tai-Toe Trading Company, uh, apparently the Tai-Toe is just the Japanese rendering of the name Taitang, which was what his company was in Shanghai. Um, also, uh, Tai-Toe was not founded in the Tai-Toe region of Japan, nor was this name from the Tai-Toe region of Japan.

I did not realize that until I was looking at it. Oh, I just assumed it was named after that region. Wow. That seems like a normal thing to assume.

Yes. Had nothing to do with that. Um, however, being a young man starting a company in Japan in that era, you needed to have a Japanese man with you. You could just be a foreigner starting a company and have any credibility whatsoever.

And, and, uh, certainly there are more likes about it these days. Right. Yeah. But even even today, there's still some, uh, uh, struggles that I've read from, you know, foreigners living in Japan, um, in regards to businesses and buying property.

They're, they're, they're, they're very protective of stuff like that. Oh, yeah. And, and especially just after the war in that era, it would be even more so. Um, so he, he wanted somebody to help him out there.

So he brought on his lawyer and carotie instructor pause for reaction. Uh, what a fucking resume. Right. Uh, this is my lawyer, chef and carotie instructor.

And I was reading about this guy, uh, a guy, uh, Akian, Nakanishi, uh, who is his lawyer and carotie instructor also apparently previously worked in the newspaper business. This guy gets around. Journalist lawyer, carotie instructor. Why can't he do right?

I want, I want to know more about this guy. Yeah. That's what I was trying to find out. I found very little about this guy, except where he was, he was his former lawyer, carotie instructor and a newspaperman.

Awesome. Anyway, I'll go team up with a canned milk salesman to make the, okay. Exactly. That's basically the story so far.

Um, so yeah. So, uh, Nakiananishi helps, uh, Kogan as his co-executive founding company. Yeah. Um, and here we're not even in video games yet.

We're still in just what is Taito and what are they? They're a vodka company of the natural, the natural progression from wigs and canned milk. Yes. Basically it's the same industry.

So it's a lateral. Yeah. Um, so yeah, uh, they first, they start selling vodka. They team up with a local distillery to, to help them make their vodka.

And then they started selling peanut vending machines. I have no idea where this guy is going, but I like it. Was, was peanut vending machines a thing? I mean, obviously once they sold them, they had, you know, vending machines even when I was a little kid, you would put a quarter in and you'd spin the dial and it would spit peanuts at you.