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Episode 1 - Hello! and Perfect Tides
4.3k Plays9 months ago
PushingUpRoses and Matt Aukamp introduce you to their brand new podcast: Save Your Game! We talk about how we got into adventure games, some of our favorites, and Quest For Glory V: Dragon Fire. Then, we dig in deep on 2022's Perfect Tides.
Email us: [email protected]
Games Discussed:
- Swanky Maximino
- Kings Quest III: To Heir is Human
- Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
- Kings Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder
- Secret of Monkey Island
- Curse of Monkey Island
- Dust: Tale of the Wired West
- Toonstruck
- Escape from Monkey Island
- Sanitarium
- Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire
- Perfect Tides
- Adventures of Willy Beamish
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Transcript
Introduction and Theme of the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
i love i love that song that's from grim um and i use it all what's this now all the time it's from grim fandango what's yeah what's that it's called the are you trolling me are you asking me what grim fandango is are you asking me what the song is called
00:00:18
Speaker
I just cannot be on this podcast. You're saying these words grim Fandango. I've just never heard of this. It's called swanky Max Amino. If you if you ever listen to it on your own played that game.
00:00:35
Speaker
Swanky Max Amino. No, that was one of those Apogee games that you'd play on your computer in 1992. You were Swanky Max Amino, and you'd jump around a bunch of alien space stations, and you'd be shooting monsters from 70s Halloween monster films. Are we recording?
Announcement of 'Save Your Game' Podcast
00:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, we're recording.
00:01:02
Speaker
Well, that's our fucking cold open swanky maxi... Cue the theme music, roses! Everyone, pushing up roses here and I'm here with my very special co-host, Matt Aucamp. Hi, Matt. Hi.
00:01:31
Speaker
Hi, I'm Matt Aucamp. I'm the very special co-host. Very special. I don't know if I should have preempted it like that because you're always going to be my co-host, but you're always special too. Yeah, but I'll
Significance and Diversity of Adventure Games
00:01:42
Speaker
always be special and the listener should know that. Because the listeners will know you really well. I guarantee more people are coming to this podcast because they know who you are. They know who I am. I don't know. So me and Matt have something special for you all.
00:02:00
Speaker
And that is a new adventure game podcast. And what is it called Matt? It's called save your game. I almost thought you forgot it first. I'm like, Oh God. It's also like, it's also a public service announcement.
00:02:16
Speaker
That's true. You don't even have to listen to the podcast to be like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I should do that. And then grab your steam deck or whatever and be like, oh yeah, I forgot. Did I save that or did I just leave it running all night and it's still on the pause screen? Because that's what I do. You're on year 99 of Stardew Valley. Today
Golden Age of Adventure Games - Did it End?
00:02:35
Speaker
on this first
00:02:37
Speaker
first episode, we just want to tell you a little bit about who we are, and why we like adventure games and what our favorite adventure games are. And then in our second segment, we will talk about a recent adventure game that we both played a new new ish, I guess I'll say, modern indie adventure game, which we would love to champion more of. Yeah, absolutely. You know, we're not going to be the first
00:03:08
Speaker
make sure that we're doing something unique, right? So this first episode, we're gonna be talking a lot about the classics, I think. Because we're gonna talk about where we came from, why we're into this stuff in the first place. But I think there can be a thing when you're into sort of a genre that has such retro ties and aesthetics.
00:03:30
Speaker
podcast to talk about adventure games.
Personal Introductions to Adventure Games
00:03:35
Speaker
there can be a problem where we just talk about the same, you know, 20 games over and over and over for I guess 30 years now.
00:03:46
Speaker
Yep. Hey, you know what we should talk about? Colossal cave adventure. I'm just kidding. I mean, maybe someday we'll talk about it. I don't know, but yeah, that does become a problem with adventure games. I think it's because it is pretty niche, even though there are many, many adventure games that have come out, you know, since the what, early eighties, let's say, mainstream. We do tend to focus on the same ones.
00:04:15
Speaker
And we still, I think, we make what I think is a mistake of thinking that those early, whatever, I think it's, Sierra had what, 30 some games? And LucasArts had, I think, 11. And we make this mistake of thinking that those were the Golden Age, those were the pinnacle. But I think far more quality adventure games come out
00:04:45
Speaker
today. Oh yeah. Then back then.
00:04:48
Speaker
Some of my favorite adventure games have come out in the last 10 years, I wanna say. And that's not to say I don't love the classics I grew up on them. It's a little weird to still refer to like, Kings Quest III is my favorite adventure game. That's no one's favorite adventure game, that's only me. Yeah, well then let's, rather than dancing around it, yeah, let's dive in and talk about, who are you? Me? Who are you pushing up roses?
00:05:18
Speaker
I do some stuff. Okay. I do some stuff on the internet. You know, I used to have a... Well, I still have a channel. My channel's not dead, you guys. I have a channel that I used to talk about adventure games on. I still do every now and then, but it has since pivoted to murder mystery, horror, MST3K, riffing, and things of that nature. But I do still like to talk about adventure games. Every now and then, I still play them. I still talk to Mad about them.
00:05:45
Speaker
in emphatic ways. And I am also an artist. No further explanation necessary. A podcast artist.
00:05:57
Speaker
A podcast artist. Yeah, check this out. You know what I can do on here? I can do this. Art. That truly is art. Is art. Got to be talented. I don't care what anyone says. Podcasting is, podcasts is art.
00:06:16
Speaker
Podcast is art. Podcast is art, roses. Can I get that on a bumper sticker, please? Podcast is art. I think my explanation of myself is
Home of the Underdogs and Its Influence
00:06:27
Speaker
pretty good. Who are you, Matt? I think so, too. I'm just a guy. You know, I have a podcast that is very different than this one and, you know, releases
00:06:47
Speaker
I guess now, if you're to average it out, is at a rate of like one episode a year. Wow. How do you put out quality content so consistently, Matt?
00:07:00
Speaker
It's about the origins of archaic folk music. It's called Every Folk Song. Feel free to check it out. And I had a podcast that this thing I think also is still kicking around on the internet, but it's dead now. I forced two of my comedian friends to watch all of the Pokemon movies back to back with me and talk about them. It's called The Very Worst.
00:07:27
Speaker
Why would you do such a thing? Well, because podcast is art and art requires suffer. Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. To be an artist, you must suffer. So I've been in this podcasting game for quite a bit.
00:07:44
Speaker
And as far as adventure games, I write for, I used to write for the website Adventure Gamers. I used to write reviews for there, that, there, for that place. And now I write for Adventure
Challenges of Sierra Games
00:07:57
Speaker
Game Hotspot. Nice. So those are my adventure game and podcasting bona fides. But Matt, how do we know each other? Oh yeah, do we want to talk about that?
00:08:13
Speaker
So, I thought you were just been like, what, wait, how, how, how? Sounds like you had to think about it. Yeah, where did I, hold on, I just woke up with these headphones on and this microphone in front of me. And I was like, hey, Adventure Games? No, we are both on the panel for the Adventure
Quest for Glory Series
00:08:37
Speaker
Game Hall of Fame.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, so we met via a meeting, and we were like, adventure games? And that's how that happened. That's how you make friends. You know, I think everybody in that meeting was generally like, adventure games? But there was something about the way me and you said it. We were like, we're on the same wavelength here. Yeah, like, wait a minute. Did we just become best friends? That's how that went. What are some of your favorites?
00:09:11
Speaker
You're so good at this,
Impact of 'Sanitarium'
00:09:12
Speaker
Matt. I'm so glad you're my co-host. Like I said, I've been in podcasting for a long time. Don't worry, I'm going to edit it so good. Okay, this is great. So good. So, roses. Hang on, hang on. I'm so glad that sound effect is on there.
00:09:35
Speaker
Please comment below. I don't know where we're posting this podcast, but what other sound effects would you like for our podcast is art experience? Please let me know. So yeah, my foray into adventure games, when I was very, very young, I was like four or five, my aunt had a Tandy computer, very American. That was the computer that came from Radio Shack. That was Radio Shack's computer.
00:10:00
Speaker
and she had king's quest three and i was so i don't know i was just very intrigued by it if anyone's ever played the king's quest games they're very cozy looking you know they look kind of fantasy kind of fairy tale and you know you play as you're playing a third person so i'm playing as gwidian who i used to call gilligan because i couldn't i was like what is this weird name so we call him gilligan yeah yeah because what is that gwidian so call him gilligan
00:10:26
Speaker
And I remember, you know, exploring this this setting as him and I found a cup. It's just a random cup on the table. I'm like, I don't know. What do I do? What do I do with this? And my aunt was helping me type and I'm like, can we take it?
Notable Adventure Games and Personal Impact
00:10:42
Speaker
Can we take the cup? And so we did. And I got a point and it was like love at first sight. I'm like, I love this. This is my favorite thing ever. I want to play all these games. I love getting a point.
00:10:54
Speaker
I love getting a single, like seriously, it was a single point. Do you still have, like, do you still play King's Quest III ever?
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, I do. I actually do. So it's it's certainly more than for me, just a nostalgia game from my past, I do pick it up. And I do play it every now and then. It's one of the adventure game reviews that's on my channel. I loved reviewing it, as you can imagine. It's no longer what I would say my favorite adventure game. But it holds a special place in my heart, obviously, I would say my top
00:11:30
Speaker
I got like a top three. I got Grim Fandango, the Dagger of Hamun-Ra, which people will be like, oh God. And where did it go? I just had it. It was just there. Oh, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, that's up
Origin of the Podcast - Meeting through Hall of Fame
00:11:44
Speaker
there too. I never played Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. I have played the other two. Did you ever play the King's Quest III Redux? I didn't like it.
00:11:54
Speaker
Not because it's not good, because I am picky. So in case we have any non-hardcore adventure game fans here. So these games were made a long time ago and they look it and they sound it and they feel it. But this studio AGD Interactive in the 2000s
00:12:23
Speaker
started remaking really,
Deep Dive into 'Perfect Tides'
00:12:25
Speaker
really faithful versions of King's Quests one, two, and three. I think that's where they stopped, right? I think so. I don't think they ever did four. And so they remade them sort of in the style of like a retro style, but sort of the style of the later King's Quest games. The point to point and click.
00:12:47
Speaker
Yes. Right? Yeah, they're not parsers. Correct. Yeah, because the original ones were parsers, which means you had to type in everything you wanted to do. You had to type, like Rose was saying, you have to type in take up. And sometimes you just don't know what the right thing is. Yeah.
00:13:09
Speaker
especially in a timed sequence, which happened sometimes back then, like a dragon would be coming at you and you'd be like, get sword, take sword, move sword, pick up sword, use swords, throw sword, throw water, run. You'd just be typing things so fast. Reason with dragon, talk to dragon. And so many times the game would just be like, I don't know what get means. I don't understand.
00:13:37
Speaker
soured because you mistyped sword. If I look back, like they were picky, but actually upon replaying them in modern times, I'm like, they did have a pretty good like vernacular in them. They got a lot of what I was trying to say, unless it was like something super picky or unless I was really, really messing it up. I played those games a little later. So. Oh, is it time for my origin story?
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, so you didn't, I grew up first on Adventure Games in my adolescence, and then, or pre-adolescence, sorry. Pre-adolescence was Sierra Games, and then after I got into LucasArts, what was your interest? How did that go? Yeah, so I had the opposite. So I started with LucasArts. I had, I think, a gateway computer. Fun, as did everyone. They were very inexpensive computers.
00:14:33
Speaker
So my dad was a computer programmer and all his friends were computer nerds. So he set up our computer and then he would just bring home tons of pirated software. And yeah. Statute of limitations is up on this, I'm pretty sure.
00:14:51
Speaker
But I remember like clicking through all these like poorly formatted file names and seeing one that was just called Monkey and being like, oh, I like monkeys and clicking on that. And you know, this beautiful like blue and purple island rises out of the, rises out of the screen and this amazing music plays behind it, this like sort of
00:15:18
Speaker
pseudo-Caribbean music. Yeah, very piratey. And then this silly, adorable little blonde boy comes out and he's like, I want to be a pirate. And I was like, it was the secret of Monkey Island. And I was absolutely in love. I was like, I'm an adorable little blonde boy.
00:15:42
Speaker
I would love to go on a pirate adventure. I really related to Guybrush Threepwood because he was silly and he was incompetent and he was game for anything. Those are the traits of Guybrush Threepwood.
00:16:01
Speaker
I need to make an amendment here now that you've said that crud. So in my top three, this is going to change every two seconds, by the way. Right. I would say that curse of Monkey Island is up there with one of my favorite games of all time. I just I needed to amend that. I felt guilty upon not saying it. Now I feel better. I played Monkey Island just over and over and over. Just the first time.
00:16:24
Speaker
No, like I couldn't make it anywhere in the game and I didn't understand that it was different than a normal game, like you can't lose. So rather than just banging my head against it, I'd be like, I can't figure out what to do, I'm just gonna start over. So, you know, it was years before I got off of Melee Island,
00:16:52
Speaker
and because yeah i was six years old i think when i first played this game yeah and yeah it was years before i got off melee island and even longer before i beat the game and then i was like i need more of these games and i found out there was a sequel uh lechuck's revenge and then curse of monkey island came out and curse of monkey island
00:17:15
Speaker
was so good. I thought it was so funny and so charming. And it was hitting just every button I needed at that point in my life. As, you know, just like a nerdy outcast semi indoor kid. And- It was like the perfect point and click. And I don't say that lightly. I really do think that. Right. And for its time, like those graphics were unbelievable.
00:17:44
Speaker
I think they hold up too. I think that game looks gorgeous. It still looks modern to me. Right. It's one of those games that because they went with a cartoon, and I find this with a lot of early adventure games, the ones that went with a cartoony art style really hold up versus the ones that were trying to
00:18:03
Speaker
push bounds. Like 3D games look terrible. So yeah, so after I played Curse of Monkey Island, I was like, I want to play every single one of these that exists. And so I would, you know, every time I could get my parents to take me to the mall, I'd buy a new computer game. And so I ended up
00:18:22
Speaker
playing all the LucasArts games and then some random ones that I bought at a store and one of them ended up being Circle of Blood, which was the American name of Broken Sword 1.
00:18:36
Speaker
Oh, yeah. You know what, Broken Sword? I didn't grow up on those. I tried to play it in adulthood and I lost my patience and I know they're good games. I really should get back to that. You know what we should we should kind of bring up because I think this is this is really important is we had our first like loves of adventure games because we found a game that we liked and then that kind of snowballed into other things. But a really big proponent for me was Home of the Underdogs.
00:19:06
Speaker
Which was a website Where you could I don't know if I don't think it's still up there might be it might be archived or something It's not active, but it was kind of like GOG before GOG except illegal where you could go Statute of limitations is up on this Nobody nobody call
Exploration of 'Perfect Tides' Endings
00:19:26
Speaker
the cops on roses or my dad Okay, look I downloaded quest for glory. I'm sorry. I bought it later. I made up for it
00:19:36
Speaker
So I forgot about Home of the Underdogs. I'll let you continue explaining it, but I forgot about it until you brought it up while we were discussing starting this podcast. Yeah, it just came right back up into my brain. It was something that
00:19:52
Speaker
early on the internet, it was hard to install games at that time. It was actually much easier to go and find these older games on like an aggregate website and just download them. And I did that. And Home of the Underdogs, I want to make it clear, it wasn't just adventure games. There were categories. The categories were fun. Like I always went to the the grand adventure category. That was one of them.
00:20:18
Speaker
Because those were like the King's Quest and the fantasy things. And there might have been one specifically even for point and click. So I went there. And one of the first games I found on there was Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. And I was just enamored with that game. I think it's one of the most underrated adventure games out there. Unfortunately, it is not available for purchase. You can't download it. It's not out there yet.
00:20:47
Speaker
You know, get it by any means that you feel comfortable getting it with. But I think it's so worth playing. But if you do it now, the statute of limitations is not up and we will call the cops on you. Remind me, did you play that game or not?
00:21:03
Speaker
I have not played Callahan's cross-time, so maybe we'll tackle that in a future episode of this podcast. I just adore, I'm getting a feeling right now as I talk about it, because it just got me through as such. Do you need to play the dagger music?
00:21:21
Speaker
Oh yeah, oh my god, let's play some. So as AS, as I talk about this, let's just... Let's keep getting a feeling. So anyway... I was alone in my bedroom, bored one night.
00:21:36
Speaker
Sorry, that stuff should be reserved for my murder mystery stuff.
Podcast Reflection and Future Direction
00:21:40
Speaker
But yeah, that game got me through such tough times. I played it as a younger teenager after I lost my dad. I lost my dad when I was 14. And I just needed stuff to do.
00:21:52
Speaker
stuff to soothe me. And just getting into adventure games really, really did that. And I would spend hours on Callahan's and this was at a time where I did have the internet, but walkthroughs weren't as detailed, I guess, as they are now. It was just kind of, it was just some guy on like an Angelfire website being like, click on this thing. I'm like, it's not working.
00:22:14
Speaker
So I would have to just fumble my way through Callahan's. And the funny thing is on Home of the Underdogs, downloads need to be pretty small. So a lot of those games didn't come with voice. So I never knew that this game had voice until later. And when I found it, I like, I lost my shit. I was so excited. So I remember Home of the Underdogs because like,
00:22:42
Speaker
like you, that's where I went to get a bunch of adventure games. If I couldn't find it there, there were other means. I can't remember the names of any of the sites, but a lot of them would give you a virus. So I remember, you know, after I got through all the LucasArts games, I went to try the Sierra games. But I think I grew up as like a comic book kid and there was that
00:23:06
Speaker
really contrived rivalry in comic books between Marvel and DC. But for whatever reason, I really bought into that as a kid. Like I was a Marvel kid and fuck DC. And so then when I...
00:23:23
Speaker
started playing Sierra games, I was like, no, I'm a LucasArts guy and fuck Sierra. Not knowing that nobody does that, nobody else was picking sides like that. Yeah, nobody's doing this. There are people that have a preference. Yeah, but everyone else is like, yeah, they're both good. And I'm like, no, you got to choose a side.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, I was just drawn to, I think because of Home of the Underdogs, I was just drawn to any adventure game that I could find that looked grand adventure or whatever the category was that they put that in. I think one of the things that helped along my choosing aside was that Sierra games are so hard.
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, they're ridiculous. And you die over and over and over and you have to create a million save files. And even then you might create a million save files from the beginning of the game all the way to the end of the game and you might find
00:24:31
Speaker
that all of them are useless because the thing you missed was before your first save file. Like there's something at the end of the game that you needed to pick up at the beginning of the game and never use until the last five minutes. And if you didn't do that, you got to load that first save and do it all over again. Or just if you've really messed up, which I have, you have to just start over. I've had to do that. I've had it where
00:24:56
Speaker
Like, I have saved games, but there was just an instance, and it was in King's Quest V, because of course it is, where I just really messed up. Like, I didn't throw the boot at the cat. I just really ate the pie like I ate. You don't eat food in adventure games, people. You don't eat food in adventure. Your character doesn't need nutrition. They're a pixel.
00:25:19
Speaker
They don't even go to the bathroom, so don't even worry about it. We're being serious. If you get food as an inventory item in an adventure game, do not eat it. Do not eat it.
00:25:32
Speaker
The things you're talking about in King's Quest V, King's Quest V is notorious for this. And if you're a listener who doesn't know King's Quest V, there is a sequence, and I guess spoilers, but who gives a shit? There's a sequence in which you walk into a room and a cat is chasing a mouse.
00:25:57
Speaker
And if you just pause for a second and you're like, oh, what's happening here? The cat gets the mouse and kills the mouse.
00:26:06
Speaker
And that's it. And that's it. And you're like, that was weird. Yeah, that was weird, right? Right. If you have the foresight and you're quick enough to throw a, what is it? If you throw this stick, well, it's either, or I always throw the boot. I know this is the, this is the thing. If you throw this, you think of it really quick and you're like, I gotta throw something like that cat save that mouse. You throw the stick.
00:26:30
Speaker
Well then it stops the cat and the mouse is fine. Either way, whether you throw the stick or you let the mouse die, there'll come a point later on in the game where either you're trapped, you're kidnapped and trapped and tied up in a basement and you find yourself just like, there's nothing I can do. You're like clicking everywhere. You're trying everything possible and you're like, why can't, I can't do anything. Cause you need the stick. First of all,
00:27:00
Speaker
If you save the mouse, the mouse will just come untie you. It'll be like, thanks. You're like, what the hell? How was I supposed to do that? But then it's like, there's another point where you need a stick. And if you throw it at the cat, then you don't have a stick. And now there's nothing you can do to progress. And you do find a boot and it's not guaranteed that you'll find a boot before you meet the cat.
00:27:23
Speaker
Right, you can do these things out of order for sure. So if you already have the boot and you choose to throw the boot instead of the stick and you have the foresight to think, oh, maybe I'll need that mouse later. The thing is, there's just as much chance
00:27:44
Speaker
that the cattle get mad at you and then not help you later. Like, how on earth would you even guess? Yeah, no, I don't even I don't know if I just had a better brain, a more sponge like brain when I was young. But I got that King's got five was one of the first talkie games I got. It came with my sound blaster pack. And I don't know how I got pretty far in it. I just I just trial by fire. I guess I just kept chipping away at it.
00:28:12
Speaker
Um, I'm one of those people who like wasn't annoyed by Cedric the owl. So I, I found it very fun and very entertaining for like my first, my first hockey game. Let's, let's, let's hear your best Cedric the owl. Oh my God. Uh, watch out a poisonous snake. Thank you. Thank you. That's a lot gentler. That's a lot gentler than I would have thought. You want to hear mine? I'm not going to do a heavy Cedric.
00:28:41
Speaker
All right, let me back up from the mic for this one. Okay. Graham, watch out! It's a poise and a snake! It's pretty good. I mean, it's very emphatic. I don't remember Cedric being that emphatic. That's all in my mind. He is screaming at me the entire time. He's just screeching in my ears.
00:29:03
Speaker
So there's also a puzzle in King's, this is the thing I wanted to say. There's also a thing in King's quest where I think you get a croissant and you get a pie and you need to give somebody food at some point. It's a leg of lamb. If you give the pie, you get past the puzzle and you're fine. And then later you find yourself like attacked by a monster and nothing in your inventory will work. Yeah, the Yeti.
00:29:33
Speaker
if you instead fed the thing, the leg of lamb, then later you can throw a pie at the Yeti. And it's just like so utterly absurd. So I think these things made me so mad as a kid. It was really easy to be like, I'm not playing Sierra games. I hate these. Yeah, understood. They really are difficult. Except that I know that you and I both have a Sierra game that we are like wild about.
00:30:02
Speaker
Do you know what I'm talking about? So I played all these games again in my 20s. Okay, but we still have one that we love. And I played through all of them and I loved them and I'm trying to, I'm like stalling for time trying to imagine which game specifically you're referencing. We talked about it in depth.
00:30:23
Speaker
Okay, I'm gonna count to three. We're both gonna say it. Okay, so I'm gonna say one, two, three, and then say it, okay? This is what I'm gonna say is gonna be wrong, and it's gonna be so embarrassing, and our listeners are going to send you letters being like, get a different co-host. What if it's right? Get a different special boy.
00:30:46
Speaker
All right, I'm gonna do it. I have faith in you. Okay, ready? One, two, three. Quest for Glory 5. Oh my god, that is so, I was about to say Phantasmagoria. I'm hearing mumbling something, I'm like, it's not right, whatever it is. No, no, no, Quest for Glory, oh my god. So that is one of the games that I picked up at a software store. Was it a Babbages? Was it a Babbages? Yeah.
00:31:15
Speaker
I don't know why I'm calling this a software store. It's gotta be, there had to be a different name for it. It's like a best buy? Now I can't remember. It might've even just been like a game stop. You know how they used to have like one rack of PC games? And Quest for Glory, I didn't know the lineage of Quest for Glory. I thought it was like other video games where you play number five
00:31:43
Speaker
It's just like a brand new entry, might have completely new characters, has no connection to the previous games.
00:31:54
Speaker
That's not the case with Quest for Glory 5. I mean, as I played through it, I did get mine out of babbages. I convinced my parents to buy it for me. And as I played it, I did realize that these are not, they're not like Final Fantasy. They are connected. And there are characters being like, nice to see you again. I'm like, what? What now? And then later I had to go back and play all the other Quest stories. But Quest for Glory 5 has such
00:32:23
Speaker
a special place in my heart. It is broken. It is absurd. It's mildly offensive. I love that game. I don't know what it is.
00:32:34
Speaker
When you say broken, you mean broken. There are paths that you can take in that game that just don't work. If you choose to, I think it's like there's something with Frankenstein's castle. And for a long time, I think until a fan patch was made, if you chose the smart route, like the brains rather than brawn route to get through this Frankenstein's castle puzzle,
00:33:04
Speaker
things just didn't happen. It's also broken combat wise. You would basically pull a lever and nothing would occur. Oh, I remember that. Oh my God. And the only solution, it wasn't like you just go back a little bit and come back and it'll work or just restart your game and it'll work. The only solution is to restart your entire game and hope that that weird, errant line of code doesn't happen again.
00:33:32
Speaker
I almost forgot about that. Yeah, that makes it especially broken. I was even just thinking of the broken combat system, the broken mechanics, speed and timing. It's all not great. Yeah, the combat is always either impossible or hilariously easy.
00:33:52
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I played that game like a crazy person, though. Same. Even in modern times. I would still go through. I would play each class. I would go through every storyline. I love playing the thief. I like getting the Blackbird. And I love romancing everyone.
00:34:11
Speaker
Oh, my God. For like a horny, like 11 year old Matt Aucamp trying to playing that game and having the like exotic dancer come on to my character. Oh, my God. Oh, boy. Like I, I needed to rest after that sequence.
00:34:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Quest for Glory 5. So I guess let's set up Quest for Glory a little bit. Yeah, Quest for Glory is a series of games that started a little after all the other Sierra games. So Sierra Games was known for having games that said Quest. So King's Quest was their fantasy game. Space Quest was their sci-fi game. Police Quest was about stupid. I mean, great. I mean, awesome.
00:35:02
Speaker
dumb cops. And literally racism is baked into the police quest games. So like, honestly, there are times where it's like, there's a bunch of, you're pulling a bunch of cars over and if, and you get to make the decision whether to like give these people a ticket, search their cars, let them go, like that kind of thing. And
00:35:27
Speaker
You just, and there was no, there wasn't much of an indicator whether these people were like secretly bad guys or not. But I'm pretty sure now, somebody might correct me, I might be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure the one guy you couldn't let go, like you were supposed to let the rich asshole go, the rich white asshole. And then you were not supposed to let the black man go.
00:35:51
Speaker
You would like get in trouble if you did. Yeah. So so they had all these quest games and one of them was Quest for Glory and Quest for Glory was made by this couple. God, what are their names? You better edit this out. I'm not editing this out. They are called Lori. Not Lori and Corey Cole.
00:36:15
Speaker
Oh my God, with no health. I was like trying to Google so fast. Sweating. So yeah, there's a couple of Lauren Corricol who are just like two corny ass game designers who love to make puns and love to. They sure do. They're just silly, silly people. They clearly like got into writing by playing D&D with their friends. Oh yeah. And the games are a cross between
00:36:43
Speaker
role-playing games where you have a character, you pick a class, you level up their skills, and you level up their skills in such wild ways, like if you wanna level up climbing, you just stand by a tree for an entire day and you click on the tree over and over and your guy climbs the tree and climbs back down and climbs the tree and climbs down. I did it, I leveled up. You can level up strength by like. Like punching. Just like punching a wall or whatever, like it's so absurd.
00:37:14
Speaker
And then it's like interspersed with point and click puzzles. Right. Like more traditional adventure game puzzles. And the combo is very intriguing to me. Yeah. You know, I really I like that at the time, even though it is like RPG light. You know what I mean? It's yeah, you're raising stats. But like you said, it's very easy to do that. It's kind of clunky. The combat there is a combat system. That's a little clunky.
00:37:43
Speaker
It gets a lot more RPG heavy in Quest for Glory 5, the one we were talking about. It sure did make an attempt. Even then it's RPG light, but it's heavy for an adventure game. So I just wanted to explain Quest for Glory real quick in case. I do recommend those games.
00:38:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think they're great. I'm sure there's some problematic stuff in them too, but. I would say don't be afraid to use maybe a guide, would you agree? Oh yeah, there's no way you're gonna get through especially some of the early games without a guide. You could probably do one, you almost certainly couldn't do two without a guide. Definitely not, definitely not.
00:38:30
Speaker
And you can maybe clunk your way through Quest for Glory 5, because I did. I just like fumbled my way through it. And four, if you save your game enough, you can get through four. I think I made it through four without a guide. I think you can. And that's not to say you would do the best or have like the best score and the best things, but I think you can get there.
00:38:51
Speaker
In Forest Grade, it's got a spooky aesthetic for all of my little spooky goths out there. That's the vampiric one there. It's the funniest name. It's the funniest name for something like dark and brooding. It's Shadows of Darkness. That was like the name of my short story when I was like 10 years old. I'm a goth. Here's my story. You know when you have darkness and then it casts a shadow?
00:39:22
Speaker
It's like that. It's like that, guys. It's perfect. It's on point. Yeah, and I think the quest for glory games are meant so that you don't hit those dead ends like we were talking about with King's Quest. I think two has a couple dead ends, but I'm pretty sure the other four don't. You can just die a lot or miss cool stuff.
00:39:43
Speaker
Like you can miss special weapons or spells or things like that that make the game more fun, but you can't, I don't think you can get into an unwinnable state. If there is, it's much less so than the other, than the other quest games.
00:40:03
Speaker
And I think the big thing is you'll get to the end. You just might not have a lot of people celebrating you at the end. Like there's always a scene at the end of every quest for glory games where all the characters you encountered and helped like are in a room and they're all cheering you on. And like, if you play bad, there'll be like three people.
00:40:24
Speaker
It's the same thing in a King's Quest 6. You can do kind of a speed run on King's Quest 6, and you can choose a shorter route to get through that game. But if you do that, the whole point is Alexander's getting married to his princess. Nobody will be at your wedding. There will be a person.
00:40:44
Speaker
It is so sad. And everybody you help in King's Quest 6, it's so satisfying. Everybody's so appreciative and you feel like you're making a real change in that world. That would just be the worst. It's bad. Yeah. I played it just for the hell of it. I'm like, oh, I didn't save Kasima's parents. My parents think I'm dead, probably. What's going on here?
00:41:11
Speaker
So you wanted to talk about one more game before we move on to our next segment.
00:41:17
Speaker
One more game that definitely had an impact on, I guess, my love for adventure games, and that's Sanitarium. I found it at a Best Buy when I was very young. I only found it in the jewel case. I now have the inbox. Somebody got it for me in box. But I found it and I had never played a game like that before. This was my first time playing, I guess what you would call,
00:41:43
Speaker
a spooky game, more of a thriller type of a game. It has dark undertones to it. It might not be scary to some people, but it is on the darker side. It was not a comedic adventure game. And at the time, a lot of adventure games had a comedic thing going on. It was meant to be scary. Yeah, it was meant to have this aesthetic. And I guess I'd never played anything like it. I really love the format of playing through these chapters. Have you played Sanitarium?
00:42:10
Speaker
I have, I just played it I think last year, early last year. As a person who didn't have nostalgia for it, what did you think? It's a little rough. It's a little rough. There are segments of it because the thing about sanitarium is you are a person who is not sure if he's losing his mind or experiencing something supernatural.
00:42:36
Speaker
you will go through these, they're almost like, it's like levels. It's like an adventure game with levels in it. And each level- I just call them chapters. Because you're not like leveling up, you're just going through different chapters. Good point, you're right. So you would, you'll go through like a chapter, you're a different person.
00:42:58
Speaker
in each chapter, you go back to being yourself in between the chapters, but you become like a different being in a completely different setting. Like you're a little girl in a house is one of them. Yes, that's one of my favorite chapters. And you're like a pharaoh in ancient Egypt or something? Yep, Aztec stuff, yeah. Oh, ancient Aztec. Ancient Aztec stuff, yeah. And like a comic book character.
00:43:28
Speaker
and like an alien god, I think. Oh, yes. That's about as good as the description is. I think we could give that the alien thing. That was a weird. I didn't like that level.
00:43:40
Speaker
I mean, that's what I'm saying is like some of these are way better than others. That's true that I will agree with that for sure. And I think I even say that say as much in my review, but I just had never seen something that was so aesthetically for me. You know what I mean? Like I had just lost my dad. I was kind of in and going through this.
00:44:01
Speaker
period where I was figuring out like my own style and the things that I like. And now I know exactly who I am. And it's great. But at the time, I was like, I don't know. And that just kind of hit on everything I liked this this poor angsty, depressed little roses. And now she gets her like cathartic adventure game.
00:44:20
Speaker
And I typically don't even like it's isometric. I typically don't like that. But I do like it in Sanitarium. And yeah, a lot of my love for it is is nostalgia. But I would say it was also an inspiration to pick up other non Sierra and non Lucas art adventure games at the time. Right? Yeah.
00:44:42
Speaker
Um, yeah, before we wrap this up, I want to I want to drop some honorable mentions here of games, adventure games that I played as a kid and also really stuck with me. One is Dust, A Tale of the Wired West. It was a an FMV cowboy game that had a little bit of action to it, but it was mostly an adventure game.
00:45:08
Speaker
and you're, you know, wandering around a town and there's Native American magic floating around the town because of course, and- What was it written by Stephen King? You're just like a cowboy trying to put things right.
00:45:26
Speaker
and Toonstruck, which is a game that stars Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future, and has like this mel-blank style animation, and you are an FMV-captured, yeah, Christopher Lloyd walking around this cartoon land. Yeah, like Roger Rabbit.
00:45:49
Speaker
Yeah, and then the game that killed adventure games for nearly 10 years. Wait, don't don't say it, don't you dare say it. It's one of the last one of the last ones that I played, one of the last adventure games I played before I like moved on and then came back a while ago. Is it Grim Fandango? No, it's but very close. It's close to oh, well, Phantasmagoria? No.
00:46:19
Speaker
No. Escape from Monkey Island. Oh, okay. That is- The fourth Monkey Island game with horrible 3D and there are some apologists for Escape from Monkey Island out there. You're wrong in there, Rong. It's a horrible game. I just replayed it last year. It is so
00:46:43
Speaker
The writing is bad, the puzzles are bad. There's this sequence called monkey combat that doesn't make any sense in game and it doesn't make any sense mechanically. There are times you just can't win. It depends who goes first and if the computer makes a mistake. You can be perfect and you still lose. Okay, but counterpoint, I love that game.
00:47:12
Speaker
That's it. That's a good counterpoint. Yeah. Do you want to move toward the next segment? We'll argue about that later at a later time. Probably off stream. You have to talk about our friendship real quick. Yes. Let's start our next segment. Do we want to give them a little break? Would you like me to cue some music or do you want to just plow right through it?
00:47:37
Speaker
I think we should cue some music. We've already gone long enough, maybe, yeah, we need a little break. The sexy music, right? I thought it was the... Oh man, are we leaving this? I thought it was the Grim Fandango music. Oh no, we're leaving all this in. All right, cueing music.
00:48:31
Speaker
So, real quick story, I went to go get a drink, noticed that I had drank it all, and then came back without a drink. And that was my break. How was your break? I coughed. Good. A little bit, and I drank a little bit of whiskey. What? I had a little bit of whiskey next to me, and I decided to have some of it.
00:48:53
Speaker
Okay. And that was my break. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad. Glad we're all back. Let's smoothly go into our segment segment. And this is where we hope to, like I stated earlier, champion some indie adventure games, hopefully more modern-ish games. And Matt and I decided to talk about the game Perfect Tides. Matt, would you like to begin?
00:49:19
Speaker
Okay. Perfect tides. Yeah. Uh, it was a game that was released in, uh, 2022 by, uh, Meredith gran, who was a, like a webcomic person before that. Yeah. And I didn't even know that I thought that was so cool when I figured that out. Yeah. Me neither. I didn't know it when I started the game. Um, I haven't read her webcomics yet, but they are.
00:49:41
Speaker
They are on my list because this game is so good. It takes place, it's like a period piece. It takes place in the year 2000. You are a young girl named Mara. You're 15, just about to turn 16. You live on a small island that, do you know the name of the island? Perfect hides.
00:50:09
Speaker
The name of the island's perfect tides? I'm pretty sure. Okay, I believe you. That detail did not stick in my memory that that was the name of their island. What a uncreative name for an island.
00:50:28
Speaker
on Meredith Grand's part. This is not on you Meredith, this is not on you. No, no, no, I'm sure there's plenty of, I'm sure that's realistic. I'm sure there's plenty of people who built a town on an island and then didn't know what to name the island. So yeah, so you live on it, like you live on an island where you have to take a ferry to and from the mainland every day to go to school and to get your groceries and such.
00:50:56
Speaker
which is a cool setting, but the thing that is gripping about Perfect Tides is it's just this really honest and relatable encapsulation of, you know, the entire coming of age experience. Yeah, especially in 2000. Right. The idea of going from 15 to 16 and all that entails and we'll get into it. But
00:51:26
Speaker
On top of that, this picture of what it was like to live as a kid in the year 2000, and how much of your life centered around AOL Instant Messenger. Yeah, AOL. Total request live, baby. That was my life. There is a total request live reference in it.
00:51:49
Speaker
It's just this really good, really sweet, really honest, I say sweet, but also disturbing and scary and funny. It's just like, remember your teenage years and how they were scary and disturbing and funny and sweet and stupid. This game really captures all of that.
00:52:14
Speaker
Yeah, and when I think you're the one who told me about it, and I'm like, oh, I got to play this game. I don't know. Somebody told me about it. It might have been you. But what got me was, oh, it's about a 15-year-old who just lost her dad who spends a lot of time online. It's me. It's me. You know, dyes her hair, weird colors, has a strained relationship with her family. Like, yep, yep. Shots fired, Meredith Grandge.
00:52:44
Speaker
Yeah, I really related to, at some point she starts getting into like the punk scene. More from the social side than the music side. I loved the music as a kid, but I really related to that. I was a punk kid. I was like, there's a character in this game who has a blue mohawk and like a studded leather jacket.
00:53:11
Speaker
Yeah, and that did remind me of you. I'm like, Oh, that's a little man. I didn't. I didn't wear glasses back there. I was supposed to, but I thought they looked bad on me. We were all there. Trust me. Now we're all blind. Also, yeah. And also this guy is like a little too horny. And I was like, yeah, OK. This is like a horny, awkward.
00:53:39
Speaker
rebellious but not really for any specific reason punk rock kid with a mohawk that's exactly me that was exactly me in the year 2000 no it's really perfect and i like that you described it as honest because i think
00:53:57
Speaker
Because it is about a teenager, even though it is extremely emotional and sad, this character that you play can get annoying. They can get emotionally vampiric almost, just zap the energy out of everything. That character is even called out for it by one of her in-game character friends.
00:54:18
Speaker
And I think honest is a good way to put it because it can get cringy. You're kind of looking at this at the outside and being like, what is this girl's damage? You know, like she. Right. She wants to be loved. She wants somebody to love her, but only on only the way she wants to be, you know, on her exact terms, on her exact terms. And this I could really relate to as well. It tells kind of a little story about how she has an online love interest.
00:54:45
Speaker
only through instant messenger only through AOL or aim and and a fan fiction community in a fan fiction community. That's right. And so like I that's kind of like what I would do online. It wasn't fan fiction. It was AOL role play. So I would have these friends that we'd all go to a chat room. We'd all real time role play. And yeah, I had a romantic interest that I would know only
00:55:11
Speaker
through text. And at the time, it was very difficult to get pictures. I didn't know what he looked like, you know, like there were not, you'd have to scan a picture, you know, put it online and take up a jillion years. And, and part of that part of my life is so interesting, because
00:55:28
Speaker
Meredith writes this very accurately. The character kind of forgets about this online person that she has a connection with because she meets someone in real life. And it's just this interesting thing, this interesting transition from being online all the time to being offline. It's so interesting the way the game opens up. She's taking the fairy back from school with her childhood best friend.
00:55:58
Speaker
who she's sort of growing apart from, like that friend is becoming sort of more popular. Yeah, she's more social. While Mara is becoming more isolated and nerdy. And the very first conversation she has in the game is
00:56:19
Speaker
her friend Lily just had sex for the first time. And it captures this thing that happens when you're around that age, when people start having sex where you're like, you're impressed and you're jealous, but you're also like,
00:56:39
Speaker
appalled a little bit and like you feel almost betrayed like These people are stepping from one world the world of childhood into this completely other world. Yeah, and You're you don't know if you're ready to let them you don't know if you don't know if you want to let them and you don't know if you're ready to go there either and
00:57:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like I even just playing it as an adult. I'm like, these characters are 15. What was I doing when I was 15? I mean, yeah, I was. That's when those interests came to light. I couldn't imagine like having a friend that had sex at 15, though. So like playing it. OK, all right. What are you trying to say, Matt?
00:57:25
Speaker
I know, I guess I had a little bit of a wilder 15 than you. Oh my God. Listen, I was a high school dropout. I had other things that I needed to be doing. Like nothing. That's an example. I waited until I was an adult. I was 18. Thank you very much. I am the moral one here. There's a funny thing about losing your virginity as a young teen is
00:57:56
Speaker
If you break up with that partner and then you go looking for other partners, nobody else is there yet. So you just, now you understand how cool sex is, but now for like a year or two, you're just sort of stranded in a sexless world. And you're like trying really hard not to like push anybody that direction, but you're like, God, I want to do more sex and no one will do sex.
00:58:24
Speaker
But yeah, Mara is both like, seemingly impressed, but also distraught that her friends I think I think she feels that she's going to be even more distant from her now because they're in two totally different worlds. The game is really smart about this in other ways, too. And these are some of the disturbing things. One of the very next character you meet
00:58:50
Speaker
is another old friend and is telling you about that old child myth that goes around through teenagers about the stranger. I don't know if it's necessarily a myth. It's just one of those weird sex things that kids talk about. Where if you make your hand go numb and then it'll feel like another person, yeah.
00:59:16
Speaker
And, but before he tells her this, he's clearly much older and he says, wait, how old are you? And she goes 16 and she's like, well, I'm 15, I'll be 16 in a few months. And she's clearly uncomfortable, but also trying not to be.
00:59:34
Speaker
trying to be like, oh, no, that's normal for people to talk about sex with each other. I'm 15. But you can tell she's kind of being drug into this next phase of adulthood. And there's some more disturbing examples of that later. I think I was texting you throughout playing it right. I'm like, well, this is rough. It's very rough.
01:00:03
Speaker
Yeah, this is the point where she goes home and you find out she's missing her dad. She's got a brother who refuses to get a job because he's making money selling gold on Ultima online. That's so of the time. And she gets into some fight with her family and it's that sort of thing where, like you're saying, she's,
01:00:33
Speaker
kind of be in a jerk. And there's so many, like you were saying earlier, there's so many places where she's just acting in a way or saying things that you do not want the character you're playing to say or do.
01:00:47
Speaker
she becomes a little unlikable, but also relatable, you know, which is why I think honest is the best way to put it because yeah, I remember being a teen and having those very valid, you know, emotional feelings and she's grieving too, because she lost her dad, whether she knows it or not. You know what I mean? Like, yes.
01:01:08
Speaker
That's a very young age to go through grief. I was the same age. And so she is grieving whether she knows it or not. And I don't think she quite knows how to cope with it. So it comes out and kind of like I want romantic interests or I'm going to start this shit up with my brother. I don't know. The brother character is interesting to me. I was ready to really hate him. Yeah, the brother character is interesting. And this is actually this is a place where I think so this game
01:01:38
Speaker
artistically is very similar to, there's an old game by, is it by Dynamics? Yes, Dynamics. The Adventures of Willy Beamish. Yeah, published by Sierra.
01:01:51
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it's this really stupid, it's wonderful, but it's this really stupid game. And you're this little boy who, it's also sort of a coming of age story, only the big events in it are like you're saving the town from an evil business conspiracy. From capitalism.
01:02:11
Speaker
And you're winning a frog, you're running $2,500 in a frog jumping race so that you can enter a Nintendo competition. I forget what, Nintari competition. Aesthetically, they look very similar. I was getting the Willie Beamish vibe. And also they're both way more adult than you would think. I think even especially Willie Beamish has some more, it depends on your definition of disturbing, honestly.
01:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think Willie Beamish has more troubling things, right? Like there's definitely more, there's more sexism in the Willie Beamish. There's some sadistic parts, like it's, it's a bit much. But in, um...
01:02:55
Speaker
I think Perfect Tides is definitely the more mature of the two. Yes. Both. Yeah. I mean, in more ways than one. Right. Like I think it has more mature themes, but also it's more mature. Yes. Yes. For sure. But they are both. Yeah. They're aesthetically similar and both that coming of age, dealing with family.
01:03:16
Speaker
You know, you have your friends. But yeah, I guess Perfect Hides is definitely more centered on Mara's growth and pain, you know?
01:03:27
Speaker
And the reason I bring this up is there's a character in Willy Beamish that is very similar to a character in Perfect Tides, which is in Perfect Tides you have an older brother who's kind of a jerk and becomes an obstacle at one point when he takes your internet away. And you have an older sister in Willy Beamish who's kind of a jerk and becomes an awful,
01:03:53
Speaker
obstacle at some point where she takes your, and this is a weird thing, she takes your Nintari key away. Yeah, it's a console that has a key for a reason unknown. Well, you got to start it up. Yeah. Start the engine on the Nintari. But yeah, so your brother's like a kind of a complicated figure. He's also clearly grieving and also doesn't know the best way to express it.
01:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, and the game definitely touches on everyone's grief. You know, the mom is kind of, what did you say, blasé about things? You know, her brother is clearly acting up. She doesn't, the mom doesn't have the energy to really deal with him. Mara is just kind of a, she's feisty, she gets aggressive when she acts up. And then her brother just, yeah, they're all grieving in different ways. Now, did you grow all the vegetables?
01:04:49
Speaker
I did not. I don't know how I missed it. One of my vegetables was not grown in time for something. But I did get most of these puzzles correct because I wanted to have the experience of getting good things, getting good scenes and good endings and all that. So that's another sweet.
01:05:15
Speaker
similarity to Willy Beamish where there's a lot there's certain puzzles there's multiple ways to achieve them and there's things that you can just absolutely miss because Perfect Tides doesn't have like a real time structure but it
01:05:30
Speaker
is organized into chunks of time. So if you don't do everything in that chunk of time, you just lose that thing. It's like the Laura Bo games. It's not real time. It is like triggered time. Like you did this thing. Now this thing will happen. Whether you did another thing or not, you know, it's good. The time is going to move. You have to make sure you've done everything that you can before you do the trigger.
01:05:53
Speaker
And you don't always know what that trigger's gonna be, so you might just miss stuff. But you can still get to the end of the game, but I think we'll talk about that shortly. So the game progresses, you're going back and forth between school and home, and then you pass through different seasons.
01:06:15
Speaker
You make friends with some punk rock kids at school. Oh, and we glazed over it. So that first day, most days are ended by you sitting on your computer and typing. Going on the community boards, talking to people on aim. Right, and you make an online boyfriend that Sarah was talking about.
01:06:40
Speaker
his name is, this becomes a thing, I guess we won't spoil it, but his name is Staggle, so she imagines him as a stag.
01:06:50
Speaker
Yeah. Cause again, you don't know what they look like. You're not fucking scanning in pictures and wasting your time. It's just not, it's just not a thing. So you just kind of have an, you know, imagine what your online boyfriend might look like. So I had an online girlfriend. It was earlier than this. I was, I found her in an AOL chat room. Um,
01:07:14
Speaker
Greenie001, if you're out there. Come on. Return to me. Return to me. Come on. Get out of here. Return to me, Greenie. We could have been a great love. We could have been the greatest love story of all time. Greenie001.
01:07:33
Speaker
And the screen name I shared with my screen name I shared with my everybody who lived at my dad's house Oh No, I had I was the only one with a computer I had my own just AOL set up and I used every single screen name for roleplay characters Wow Great. Yep. I loved it
01:07:56
Speaker
So, yeah, and eventually you in the game sort of make a boyfriend in real life of sorts. And this is what you were alluding to, Sarah, this idea that once she makes, when she starts making real friends, her online friends suddenly just sort of disappear from her thoughts. Yeah, I think it's because she,
01:08:24
Speaker
She had more control online, and then she transitioned offline. Everything she did online was degraded almost. She's like, ugh, what was I even doing on these message boards? How did this guy even think I was his girlfriend? That's not it.
01:08:47
Speaker
she feels like she's being treated terribly prior to this, that she's being treated terribly by her mom, by her brother, by her friends. And yet, you know, she kind of turns into the bully herself on this online thing. Because that's where she has control, right? Like she doesn't really feel that control in person. But hey, she can be the bully online. And so yeah, those friends and that boyfriend, they just kind of fade away as she deals with like new friends and a new boyfriend.
01:09:16
Speaker
who I wanna say are not exactly like bad influences. You know what I mean? Like they are punks, they do smoke. They all smoke because in 2000, if you're a teenager, you're probably smoking. That's just the way of it.
01:09:33
Speaker
shitty things throughout the game, but they're not like they're not like violent or they never pushed sex up, you know, sex on Mara. They're a little bit more realistic, in my opinion, than other teenagers in media. I agree. There is one scene that leaves. There's one scene that's a little ambiguous.
01:09:57
Speaker
that could make them more nefarious. And I think it is the most unrealistic scene in the game also. Oh, okay, I know what you're talking about. I don't want to spoil, but I do know what you're talking about. And yeah, that I think I would agree that there is an unrealistic part. There's a couple more scenes where people sort of inject sexuality into Mara's life, unbidden. Yeah. There's a borderline
01:10:27
Speaker
And we'll just say this, there's a bunch of, there's the sexual harassment that teenagers do, right? Where they think that they're being funny, they think you're in on the joke, and it does a really good job of depicting it from Mara's point of view, when some boys are messing with her, and they think they're just playing around. And she's clearly upset and disturbed
01:10:57
Speaker
by what they're doing. And then there's another scene that happens with a boy her own age that I think begins to border on assault. Yeah, it would have went that. Yeah, that's what it would have went there if she hadn't ran away. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's a scene with an adult much later that we're not going to get into. Right. Yeah, it's it's actually very good at so interesting because
01:11:27
Speaker
I that is what my teens were like, strangely enough. And it's horrifying now to look at that, you know, to have these characters talk, they're so young and have to talk about these things so casually and nonchalantly. And as an adult, I'm like, Oh, God, I must protect these teenagers. Like, I can't let anything happen.
01:11:49
Speaker
Tamara, because that would be horrifying while keeping it pretty realistic. And I would say that nothing, nothing too traumatic. It doesn't get pushed is what I'm trying to say here. I'm not trying to say she doesn't go through traumatic things, but it doesn't ever get pushed to the point of like violent things. Correct. It sort of walks up to that edge, but she has
01:12:17
Speaker
She's at least given enough agency in all these situations that she can leave, which is, which is nice for us as consumers of the piece of art, because I did not wanna see the opposite of that.
01:12:36
Speaker
No, either. I was like, no. Yeah. And I don't even like having seen what I saw. Right. Like it was just so uncomfortable. And it's interesting you say you want to protect them. But I remember being that age and I remember situations similar to this. Right. I remember people were had different levels of comfort around sex at that age. And some
01:12:58
Speaker
thought it was funny and some thought it was cool and some thought it was still too advanced. And you consequently would run into this stuff all the time. It was just a bunch of, it's just a bunch of idiots trying to figure out what to do with these feelings. And sometimes that is, that manifests into, you know,
01:13:25
Speaker
kids fumbling around in their bedroom and sometimes it manifests with just like one of your dickhead friends taking his penis out and waving it in front of everybody. I'm thinking that's a joke. Yeah, that's what joke is. This is comedy. Penis waving is art. Artists suffer, penis wave is art.
01:13:49
Speaker
And I will suffer if that happens Jesus And yeah, and so it really captures that feeling it really captures that like this is just this is disturbing but
01:14:04
Speaker
I remember going through it around those ages and feeling, yeah, again, that conflicted feeling of like, oh, I guess this is what, now that we're grown up, this is how we do jokes. Now that we're, quote, grown up, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you're feeling uncomfortable, but you also don't.
01:14:26
Speaker
You don't want to be uncomfortable, so you're sort of pretending you're not. It's real. And I also think it's interesting playing not the most likable character. It is almost the, not the exact opposite, but like,
01:14:41
Speaker
Let's consider Guybrush Threepwood. You like playing as that character. That character's funny. Even though he is bumbling and wrong a lot, he's funny. And you don't feel guilty playing as Guybrush. It's a lighthearted experience. And I think most adventure games are like that. I can't think of many where you're just very complex and borderline unlikable. And Mara has those moments as kind of an over-emotional teenager. Gabriel Knight kind of sucks.
01:15:14
Speaker
He's another product of his time. I feel like I was never quite cringing. I get what you're saying. He has his unlikable moments. I think the difference is Mara's moments made me cringe as a cringing. Gabriel Knight was definitely a penis waver when he was a teenager. He's definitely a penis waver.
01:15:40
Speaker
Maybe into his adulthood, you know? He's very... That guy, though. Played by the amazing Tim Curry, by the way. I love the Gabriel Knight games, but yeah, that guy's a bit of a creep. I'm kind of a dick. Yeah, so... Yeah, I don't think we want to get too much deeper into the story because, like you said, we don't want to spoil it.
01:16:04
Speaker
But these are the themes that it deals with and it deals with them so well and it'll break your heart. There is one other thing I want to talk about, which is, um, which I think is the game's biggest flaw, which is the multiple endings. Yeah.
01:16:21
Speaker
I agree and I think that also I would tie that into that's the design flaw in some of the puzzles then. Because if you, you know, you can only get these good endings if you meet exactly the requirements to do so. And these puzzles are hard. I'm not gonna lie Meredith Meredith puzzles were hard. These puzzles were hard. Well, I grew up on Sierra games Meredith.
01:16:47
Speaker
Getting through the game is a little tough. There are definitely points where you're just gonna be a little stuck. But the bigger thing is making sure you do all the small extra things because you need to do a certain percentage of them to get the quote unquote good ending or the golden ending or whatever. Now, there's two endings.
01:17:17
Speaker
The bad ending is kind of nothing. It's kind of a non-ending.
01:17:20
Speaker
Right, yeah, I remember I had played to get the good ending, so I'm like just, and I couldn't actually find, because nobody wants this ending. Like true story, I couldn't even find a bad ending unless I really combed through the internet, because you don't want this ending. I ended up finding one on YouTube, and it's very, it's similar to the beginning of the good ending, but then it just stops. And if I had gotten that ending,
01:17:51
Speaker
when I played this game, I think I would have, I don't think I would be that stoked on it. I think I would be disappointed with the game, to be honest. I mean, that makes sense. It's telling a story. It is weaving this beautiful narrative. And I'm actually working on a video right now about how an ending of a movie just annihilated the whole thing. And I think that that happens with the bad ending. Agreed. The game is amazing with the good ending.
01:18:21
Speaker
And the good ending is pretty metaphorical, but it is so impactful, and it's the sort of thing where it has you sort of laughing and crying at the same time. It pumps you up while it makes you sort of well up in your chest. It's one of the best endings to a video game I've ever seen, and then that bad ending is,
01:18:49
Speaker
is so the opposite. So I think if you're gonna play perfect tides, I would save a lot. And maybe every time the seasons change, maybe go check a walkthrough and make sure you didn't miss anything.
01:19:13
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And because it is so narrative, I don't see a problem with even doing that. I did use a walkthrough for a lot of it, because I had planned on doing a more in-depth review. But I super enjoyed this game, regardless. And it's also very, it's very, how do I say this? Scene heavy? Like, there's gonna be, there are puzzles. This is a point and click adventure game. You can get stuck, you can lose, like we just said, but it's very scene heavy. There's a lot of dialogue.
01:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, the focus is the story. It's not there to sort of test your brain as much as it is to tell you a story. It's there to test your heart. And with that, I think maybe we end this segment, I guess. Okay, yeah, so I think, Roses. Yes. I think we did an episode.
01:20:09
Speaker
We did an episode, and it only took us like five months. Yeah, we're good. We were like, let's try to keep this under an hour. I don't know what running time you, because we're looking at the entire time we've been on this call. So I don't know what running time you listeners are looking at, but it's definitely over an hour. Yeah, it's pretty long. This is just what happens when we talk, to be honest. The thing about Matt and I is we will talk for five hours about adventure games.
01:20:40
Speaker
Yeah. That's just how it is. Yeah, no exaggeration. Yeah, we're not exaggerating. So, but we're gonna try to keep this thing a little more rained in. This, as the first episode, we wanted to give you guys an introduction to us and like where we're coming from here. I think in the future, we're going to divide things into a little bit more clean sort of segments. We want to, you know,
01:21:09
Speaker
introduce you guys to cool games we've been playing. We want to talk about the things that interest us. We're not really going to be an interview show, but we do wanna have guests on here and there. Probably, yeah, we would keep them confined to one of these little segments rather than that would be a whole episode. So don't worry, you'll get plenty of us.
01:21:34
Speaker
Aren't you excited? And another thing, we want to solicit questions from you guys. We would love to address them. I don't think that's something that we'll do every episode, but that's something that we are interested in doing in the future. So our email address, if you want to reach out to us, is
01:21:58
Speaker
Matt and Roses at gmail.com and just spelled like those words. M-A-T-T-A-N-D-R-O-S-E-S at gmail.com.
01:22:11
Speaker
I think it's brilliant. I came up with that one, guys. As Rosalisa said, she's done a lot of Q&As on her website, so probably personal questions might not quite make it to the show. But if you want to ask us stuff about adventure games, if you want to ask us for advice on maybe you need- Life. Maybe you need an adventure game to recommend to your dad. Maybe.
01:22:37
Speaker
I will answer that. Yeah, definitely. I will have those answers for you. Maybe you're stuck at an auto puzzle and code name Iceman. Then we can't help you. Use a walkthrough. But send us an email. Mattandrosusatgmail.com. And I think we're going to be back to you next week. This is
01:23:03
Speaker
we're recording this a bit before we publish. So I don't know what day of the week, whatever day of the week today is that this was published, expect us around the same time next week. Yeah, you guys will know better than us. Well, that was fun though. I hope you guys really enjoyed this first podcast and I'm looking forward to questions or just praise. Also feel free to praise us and send us praise at our email. Tell us how funny and cool we are.
01:23:33
Speaker
Tell Matt how special and goofy he is. Yeah, and strong. Physically very strong. Yeah, so strong, guys. We don't have a picture. We're not going to scan a picture. There's no pictures of me on the internet, but I'm physically very strong and fast and I'm a really good jumper.
01:23:54
Speaker
Super good jumper you guys so you guys you guys can find me online just like I'm everywhere I think I'm on all the social media things. It's and I'm always my name Matt. Oh camp a UK AMP Check out every folks on if you get a chance Learn something you might think it's cool or you might think it's boring and then don't listen to it anymore
01:24:18
Speaker
Just come back here and listen to this stuff instead. And just Google my name. Just Google Pushing Up Roses. You'll find me. Check out my channel if you want to watch old adventure game videos. I really do have a ton on my channel if you want to revisit some of those. I have opinions. Don't come for me. So should we come up with a quick outro phrase that we say every time? Like one to go out on? Yeah. Let's do Matt and Rosa signing out.
01:24:48
Speaker
Matt in Roses, signing out. Podcast is art. Artists suffer.