Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Earthbound & AAGPBL
15 Plays1 year ago
We are off to a great start! Spent 7 hours editing the audio and fighting with platforms to upload this. One day we will get this figured out! On today's episode we will learn about a great RPG, EarthBound! Followed by a short and sweet sampling of the history of the All American Girls Baseball League!
Send us love, hate, comments and critiques at ramblingrandos2013@gmail.com
Transcript
Technical Difficulties and Mic Issues
00:00:04
Speaker
Oh, okay, I guess it's not gonna play at all. That's cool. Oh, there we go.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hold on, I'm gonna replay it. It's not like me talking over it. One, two, three.
00:00:43
Speaker
Hello. I feel like I probably are going to have to move my mic next time we do that because most likely you picked all that up. No, actually, surprisingly, it did not because you can see you're all I don't know how mobile works, but ah on desktop, you can see when people are talking and when it picks up sound. So I think you're good. Fantastic.
Introduction and Delay Explanation
00:01:03
Speaker
Let's get started.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah, so hi, everybody. Welcome back. ah Thanks for you know being a part of this journey with us. It's it's very magical and and technologically challenged. ah Yeah. And waiting the two weeks it took for us to put out episode two.
00:01:21
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry, but that was mostly my fault. I got stuck in um Texas and then I got stuck in Oklahoma with some some military stuff. It was really annoying and stupid, but I'm back and now I'm full-time, full part-time college and dealing with all that. So I'm very last minute
Military Obligations and Travel Stories
00:01:40
Speaker
with my research. Hopefully it's not too bad. Two terrible places to get stuck.
00:01:45
Speaker
Yeah, especially Oklahoma's. If anyone from Oklahoma happens to listen to this, I'm sorry for your loss. Yeah, I've been there a couple of times once more recently to go gamble at a casino and the other to go to one of the worst bases I've ever been to at Fort Sill. Oh, I forgot Fort Sill was over there. and That's true. getho Yeah. Yeah.
Meet 'Rambling Randos' Hosts
00:02:09
Speaker
Uh, so this is your first episode and first time tuning in. My name's Jace. Uh, I am one of the hosts on this show and this is, this is the part you introduce yourself. Oh, I thought you were going to say the name of the show. Uh, I'm Russell and I'm the other host of the show. And together we are rambling randos. Uh, basically very fitting.
00:02:39
Speaker
yeah Yeah, because we will we will ramble a lot and clear our throats a lot. So don't just just be prepared for that. Yep. I was told from our last episode on some feedback from a couple of people that we rambled a lot and it was a little long. And I said, you are on the first episode.
Podcast Themes: Sports and Retro Games
00:02:56
Speaker
We're learning. Yeah. Well, ah we'll try to do better. At least I might look into edit some of that out because I'm still figuring out the editing process to have some slack or new.
00:03:08
Speaker
Honestly, OK, well, that's good feedback. And I guess if that's the case, I'll just say real quick, our podcast kind of revolves around interests that me and ah my buddy Russell like ah so far has just been sports and like retro video games. Maybe we'll stick with that. Maybe we might divert. Who knows?
00:03:28
Speaker
It just depends on ah what queer related topic I feel like talking about at the time. Recently, my inspiration has been a couple of different parts of ah some sports history, but I'm sure at some point it'll swing another way into different types of queer history or really it could be anything unrelated to queer history at all and be anything I feel like I want to talk about.
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, so this podcast may or may not do well.
Nostalgia for 'Earthbound'
00:03:56
Speaker
It's just, you know, I hope you enjoy it. And with that, with that, my topic this week, I'm going to be talking about an old Super Nintendo game called Earthbound, kind of ah keeping on the theme with the Super Nintendo classics. And then I don't know, Russell, I forgot what your topic was going to be.
00:04:15
Speaker
ah Today, I am going to be speaking about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from the 1940s and early 1950s. Oh, okay. That'll be interesting.
00:04:31
Speaker
um You went first last time. I don't know if I should go first this time. I actually have a lot to talk about with Earthbound because there was a lot more ah things to look at and research. Unlike Brain Lord. I think you should. OK, well, let's ah let's dive into it then. Without further ado. Without further ado.
00:05:01
Speaker
So. Earthbound, also formerly known as in Japan, Mother 2. We're gonna talk about, it's like pretty much my favorite game, one of them. I have a lot of them apparently. Boop, boop, ba-doop reading my notes here, sorry. All right, so anyway, Earthbound, just like Brain Lord, was, I found this game at Blockbuster, you know, shocker. Blockbuster was, you know, the go-to way back when for all video games.
00:05:28
Speaker
um I rented it and fell in love with it immediately like that game was amazing I'd literally get it and I'd go upstairs and play it on my parents TV cuz I had a bigger TV than I did Until they kicked me out when they would go to bed or they wanted the room or whatever. So Based on the game. Hopefully you're not googling it right now like you did Brain Lord last time Actually, I don't even know have you played earthbound at all.
00:05:53
Speaker
No, I only recognize one of the players from Super Smash Brothers. Yeah. That's the only place I recognize him from. I recognize the box art for the game as well, but I don't believe I ever actually myself played it. Great. So yeah, based on the name, what do you think the game is about?
00:06:17
Speaker
The name makes it sound like you're trying to leave Earth because you're bound to it. Honestly, like your party's goal is to get off of the planet, but that's based off of the English title, the Japanese title being Mother 2, not a clue.
00:06:38
Speaker
No, that's good. ah So you're not too far off with the English translation on the Japanese one. Like I said, it's mother to and then I forgot the rest. It's a gigi gigi g y i y g, which in the English is the gigas, which is like the boss of the game. But anyway, it's a giga strikes back. Right. Which kind of makes me think Star Wars, because it was kind of not really same time frame, but maybe it drew inspiration from it. I don't know.
00:07:06
Speaker
We'll talk about it. You'll be able to see, you know, some of the similarities for what you said versus what the game's actually about. But to start off, it's an RPG, right? Like this is an actual RPG, not like the Brain Lord episode where I talked about it was like a top down, like action thing, my Bob. um It might be considered a Japanese RPG, but Wiki itself classifies it as an RPG, just basic, nothing fancy.
00:07:32
Speaker
ah The game itself was released in Japan August 27th, 1994. So almost its birthday 20 or 30 year birthday, almost 30 years old, godly old. It was not actually released in America until the 1st of June, 1995. So almost a whole year later. So we'll talk about why it took forever to release in America a little bit later. um It was designed and directed by Shige Sato Itoi.
00:08:00
Speaker
with music by Hiroshi Kanazu, Keiichi Suzuki, and Hirokazu Tanaka. So we had like three different music directors which I'm not gonna lie I didn't bother to look them all up like I did the last one because I've already got so much info on this game. Earthbound is actually the second in the series which you know if you pay attention to the Japanese name Mother 2 you would have got the hint.
00:08:25
Speaker
But at the same time, they come up with interesting game titles and Mother 2 could have just been, they just want us with Mother 2 and say there is no Mother 1. No, no, we have two mothers. You know, it's fine. It's 1994 and that's all okay. Like I said, Earthbound is the second release technically, but Mother 1 was created for the Nintendo Entertainment System, NES, and we didn't actually see that game.
00:08:51
Speaker
until 14 June 2015. So about 25 years after being released in Japan. Yeah, reason, right? It's probably everything you can think of marketing issues, financial issues, and the approaching release of the Super Nintendo at that time. So America was like,
00:09:08
Speaker
me why would we take the time to make an another Nintendo game first when we've already got this nice Earthbound game that's coming out of Super Nintendo? It's fine. ah but but but but So Earthbound in general, it follows the adventures of everyone's favorite, like you said, Super Smash Brothers character, Ness, N-E-S-S. ah He is a 13-year-old boy, joining the world using PK or PSY.
00:09:34
Speaker
It's like psychic powers to collect eight melodies in order to save the future from an alien of pure evil, the Gigas, intending to sentence all of reality to the horror of eternal darkness. I would have never probably like that. That's very descriptive for what Wiki gave me. And I was like, huh, when I'm playing the game, I didn't really get like horror of eternal darkness themes. But, you know, it's cool.
00:09:57
Speaker
Yeah, they seem like they were pretty heavy on the darkness impending doom, but when you play the games, it's all light and bright and pretty and cutesy music. Well, the music's different and I'll get to that. So the game, you have four playable characters that you discover along your journey. It's kind of similar to Final Fantasy, which I know you love Final Fantasy. Love it. I absolutely love Final Fantasy as well. um There's Ness, the main character, like I mentioned, then you have Paula, you have Jeff and Donuts and Pooh. Yes, like poop without the pee. Pooh. All right. Ness, of course, he he doesn't really speak kind of like cloud if you played Final Fantasy seven or squall if you played Final Fantasy eight or link if you're a Legend of Zelda nerd, which I am 100 percent. Oh, he's the stoic main characters with little to say. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. And that's I don't have it. This is a kid. He's not very
00:10:57
Speaker
very stoic I would say. I can tell you based off of his character model he does not look like a preteen or young teen. He looks like a child. ah Yeah exactly my point like he's supposed to be 13 though so it is what it is. ah but but but So Ness is a young boy from the first town which is O-Net it's how I pronounce it and if I mispronounce any of this feel free to flame me through emails or comments or ratings I don't care. He loves baseball, shocker, at 13 and baseball's pretty big over in Japan and all those countries over there.
00:11:31
Speaker
And he possesses psychic abilities strong enough to affect cosmic events. Yeah, which interesting, but ah he's not really like when we talk about his abilities, you wouldn't really think cosmic events. But anyway, so, Ness, if you've never played the game or never played through a Smash for Brothers and you're just listening because you're on a long drive to the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma or Texas, he looks like a short little kid. ah He wears a red backwards ball cap like a baseball cap.
00:11:59
Speaker
And then he has a blue and white striped t-shirt. I recant my statement. It's blue and yellow, not blue and white. Like I said, I was going off memory. And he's got blue baseball shorts and, of course, some tennis shoes that are red. So, yeah, just your standard 13 year old, you know, nothing, you know, weird or different, even though he's got psychic powers that can affect the entire cosmos. Totally normal for a 13 year old.
00:12:22
Speaker
Yeah. yeah um pop up but but up but I do that a lot too, which I'm sure I'll hear about it later. I think it's my autistic stim. We'll find out. According to Wiki, remember how I said he has a strong enough to affect cosmic events. But according to Wiki, he is a healer and support character, a which is kind of odd if you ever played an RPG that your main character is generally not a healer or support character.
00:12:46
Speaker
Like, I don't know. When I played the game, I didn't really get those vibes either from that. Like, Ness was just overall a badass in my opinion. But cosmic events through healing and supporting, I guess. And like I said, he likes baseball. So his primary weapon is, you guessed it, a baseball bat shocker. Yep.
00:13:05
Speaker
I'll talk more about the weapons and things later as well. But, you know, you also get like yo-yos and like some other things ah that you can use instead of the baseball bat if you so choose. All right. So up next we have Paola. She's the second character you meet. um she You meet her in Tucson, right? So just but throw this out here. The first town was O-Net or One-Net. And then the second town is Tucson, seeing a pattern.
00:13:34
Speaker
Mm hmm. So Paula, she's um if you think early 1970s stay at home, what mom wife thing that cooks and cleans, that's kind of what Paula looks like. She's got blonde hair, blue eyes, lipstick, pink dress, skirt thing and red, red shoes as well. Definitely look just gives me overall 1970s vibes. It doesn't say her age. I'm assuming she's around the same age as Ness, but Yeah, um she also possesses psychic powers shocker and is also the first offensive character you get with her psychic power. She's like your mage in like most games, like your black mage. If you play Final Fantasy, her mother runs a preschool out of her home.
00:14:19
Speaker
Kind of weird, but all right. And she uses frying pans as her weapon. Of course she does. Yeah. Yeah. I'll let I'll let that one simmer for a little while for the listeners. The Mrs. Brady trope. Yeah. Or, you know, the peach tro ah trope too, because, you know, peach uses a frying pan.
00:14:37
Speaker
that was pretty much it i had on paul like the rest of the characters don't really go too in depth with their character development um third character you got jeff jeff is attending boarding school in the northern country of winters in the region of foggy land which is interesting, but okay, super original, you know, names. Jeff kind of looks like your run of the mill nerd gone spy. So like he's got a bowl cut blonde hair. He's got the glasses with like that hidden eye look, you know, when animated characters kind of push their glasses up and they have that reflection sheen where you can't see their eyes. His are always like that. He wears like a suit of like
00:15:17
Speaker
greenish colors or whatever, and then has the a jacket, pants, white t shirt, he doesn't button his jacket. And then he's got the yeah the brown shoes underneath his favorite weapon is a gun. So super, like I said, spy kind of thing theme going on. And he is the son of the famed professor, Dr. Ando nuts. Ando nuts? Yeah, it could be ando, ando UTS. Oh,
00:15:43
Speaker
Gmail and know no nugs. I thought you said and no no tea tea as in tango. oh and Yeah. Ando nuts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a prodigy. He can fix almost anything, which is kind of helpful because you go through and you get like little things and tickets you can recreate or do. He's not psychic as your first non psychic character. So he's more just a techno is and a nerd with a gun with a gun. Yeah. Yeah. With a gun. Yeah. So if he is the same age as Ness, can we talk about how It will not have a gun. Yeah. Oh, let's see. But he does. So he doesn't get an ability called spy just because so he can't use Psy, but he can use his ability spy. And it's basically like it finds stats and weaknesses and then he can use it to steal items. So he's kind of like your thief class almost, but technologically advanced, I guess. The last character you got is Poop. Like I said,
00:16:39
Speaker
poo without the P for poop poo interesting naming choice i don't know uh he's basically wearing a karate outfit it's a short sleeve karate outfit uh he's mostly bald on the top except he's got like not necessarily a top knot but like a little bit of hair that is it a ponytail that goes back and you would definitely guess that he's a martial artist because that's what he does he fights with his hands um he's also the oldest of the group again age wise i have no idea like he could be 20s. He could be like 15. I don't know. He could be 13 and a half. Oh, yeah, he could be 13 and a half. But yeah, I don't that the ages weren't really well known for the others. He resides in a distant land of dalam d a l a a m. And it's in the far east region of chomo or como, c h o m mo these are very unique names. I don't know where they come from, like the first like non original and very creative names.
00:17:36
Speaker
he's a powerful martial arts master in wiki states he's the strongest psychic character in the game but not the main character but not the main character no i know main character heal and support strongest character you also don't get to like way later in the game but is a martial artist so And so that's the four characters that you get on your journey, just like any, like I said, Final
Gameplay and Plot of 'Earthbound'
00:17:59
Speaker
Fantasy game. um You kind of discover them. You don't get them all right away, which is kind of fun. It keeps the game interesting. So the game itself, it opens up with Ness.
00:18:09
Speaker
the main character that's a healer in support class being awakened in his house by a meteor that has plummeted to earth near his home sounding very Donnie Darko yeah he goes to investigate it right as one does because it's like oh shit i want to go look at it as you should yeah yeah and when you go there it's like blocked off by a bunch of police they're like man no you can't get any closer blah blah blah and you're best friend, apparently, I did not get that vibe when I played this game. Pokey, P-O-K-E-Y, Pokey. He's this fat little blob of annoyance. um He shows up and you guys try to go in and the police guys are like, nah, dog, you got to leave. So they're like, all right, cool. but So then you go home and go to bed. Very, very exciting intro until Pokey
00:18:59
Speaker
I guess, calls or knocks on your door. I can't remember. And he's freaking out because he can't find his brother, Picky. original His parents were just so original. Yeah.
00:19:10
Speaker
So you've decided to be the good friend that you are. You're like, all right, fine. I'll get up. i'll go Let's go find your friend. And Picky is apparently sleeping behind a tree. So you you wake him up or whatever. And then some insect called BuzzBuzz shows up and basically tells you, hey, I'm from the future.
00:19:29
Speaker
Basically, the universal cosmic destroyer Gigas dominates the planet where I'm from. And just like in the true RPG fashion, you know once he tells you the intro, he sends you on a fantastical quest to seek out the record seek out and record melodies of eight sanctuaries and unite Ness's psychic powers with the Earth to gain the strength required to defeat him, him being Gigas. Right, because music soothes the savage beast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense. But also getting requests from a little bug called BuzzBuzz.
00:19:58
Speaker
Not sketch at all. It's weird. So then, yeah, from there, you just journey through the game. You do just that, right? Like you're out there leveling up, beating up people, figuring out what's going on and traveling the world while trying to save it at the same time as a 13 year old boy. The music is like I don't know if I mentioned this, but music is quite bizarre. It's definitely nothing like you've ever played before or heard before. But it's it's still like fun and like it keeps you going and it Keeps you motivated. Uh, the three main cities are onet Excuse me. I said three. There's definitely four. Sorry typo. Uh, it's onet tucson three and four side I catch the pattern. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great time as far as gameplay goes, right? So i've talked about the characters the intro the plot now we talk about the gameplay a little bit so your gameplay, right?
00:20:48
Speaker
You have a lot of classical RPG elements, right? You have a command window, you know, like if you hit start on your, on your little controller, little pops up and you can use that to check your sigh abilities. You can use talk to, which basically does exactly what it says. You go up to somebody, pull up your command window, click talk to.
00:21:06
Speaker
And now you're conversating with a random NPC, a non-player character for those that don't know what that means. Then you've got, look at your goods, which your goods are like your food or like some quest items, whatever. And then you've got the command for equip, which equip exactly what it sounds like. You equip things like your bats or your frying pans or your guns or nothing. If you're poo.
00:21:30
Speaker
And the game itself runs off of dollars. So like that's that's like the kind of nice change of pace if you were playing any role playing game back then or even if you play role playing games now, you don't really see the dollar very often in role playing games. No, not at all. um Boop, boop, boop, boop, lost my place. I'm really bad at that. Oh, right. So dollars, right. And it it shows up in that little command one or two. Like you got a command window, you've got like your money and then you have ah However many, like if you've got all four characters unlocked, you've got all four little placards with their HP and their PP power points for those that were wondering, not whatever you were probably thinking of at first. Almost like hit points or like action points or however. PP is used for like your psychic abilities. It's like your ability points. Mana meter, depending on what you're playing. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And the cool thing about like the HP and the PP, which I'll talk more about in, well, maybe not. I'm just gonna talk about it now. So when you're in a battle,
00:22:28
Speaker
It actually like kind of rolls back like a oh, what are those things? Can't think of the word, but it just like kind of ticks and like rolls through like the numbers when you get hit and lose and take damage. It's kind of neat. Didn't really haven haven't seen that mechanic in a lot of video games. And you can also so like all these windows, like if you have a text window, you know, I have like a little border on it. You can change the border style and the color, which I don't know why they don't include that in more like games nowadays. Like now you have to go download a mod if you're on a computer or whatever. But the color schemes for this game were like They're like ice cream colored themes like you get like mint chocolate, banana, peach, sorbet, like all these weird and it literally looked like the ice cream. It was all like bright and like pastel and just true Super Nintendo style colors. It's interesting that that's one of the things that they wanted to make customizable in the game. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm sure they only had so much space to do whatever they wanted with, you know, their
00:23:22
Speaker
512 kilobytes or whatever. Fighting also has its own window, right? So when you engage in a fight, what happens is you've got your two main enemies or three or sometimes five, like sometimes it just depends. And they're all like static images. The background All right, this is where it gets weird. I swear to God, the background has like all these moving like it's just swirling and like depending on what area you're in. There's no like discernible environment. It's just like colors and patterns. Like if you think back to like Windows Media Player on like early 2000s and you clicked on Visualizer and it did all the weird things in the background while you played music. So they just want to give you a stroke while you're playing in a early Pokemon style screen.
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah. Or, you know, a um psychedelic trip, you know, if you're on acid or something. As you could be as a kid playing on a Super Nintendo. Yeah, that's probably why most of us are the way we are nowadays. Good chance. When you when you fight, right, you've got your own commands. So you've got ah bash instead of attack because, you know, you bash people with a gun. I guess maybe he has a chance to shoot. I don't remember. But ah So bash is just you attack with your weapon your primary weapon you've got sigh if you've got psychic abilities So like your PK fire your PK heal Things of that nature you've got goods which that's your item menu right like potion or well in this game potions are food just like in Brain Lord I don't know when we made the switch from food to potions, but whatever um And then you've got defend which of course, you know skips your turn you defend take less damage and
00:24:55
Speaker
And then you have a special ability if you have one. So like I said, Jeff has spy. So that's when he could steal or see information about his opponent. And then, of course, you've got runaway, as always, if it's too hard for my personal. Yeah, dude, this game in the beginning is it's not forgiving at all. So like I use runaway a lot when it comes to combat. This is one of the early games where like you can actually see the enemies and you don't like just walking around all of a sudden battle starts. So not so much Final Fantasy more like you said earlier, Pokemon. i get Well, not even Pokemon because it's the same thing. But anyway, so the enemies, you'd see the little sprites on the screen and they're just be like wiggling or dancing or doing whatever they do with their hands. And once they see you, they like start slow and then they gradually get really fast until they get you. Running from them is difficult in the beginning because, you know, you don't have like a bike or like any kind of mobile thing to run away from.
00:25:52
Speaker
You just got to get creative and like zigzag or whatever. If you're not trying to engage in a fight. Now, is it a top down scroller like Pokemon one or is it a side scroller? Nope. It's a top down scroller. Okay. Good question. And then when you're in the fight, right. So text is displayed on screen. So it's kind of like Dungeons and Dragons. You got to use your imagination a little bit, but it's, they got like quirky texts, like Sometimes I can't remember specifics, but like it'll pop up in the little dialogue and it'll be like, you know, oh, this ah this rat is just dancing the night away and doesn't really care about your attack or something weird like that. It's it's fun. That's probably what made this game fun is it's passive aggressive and sarcastic and quirky little little texts and conversations that you have in the game. But yeah, so if you go to attack and you hit
00:26:40
Speaker
it'll basically tell you how much damage you did. And you'll see like the static image will like kind of fade and come back. And of course, a little side effect cues with it. If you get a critical, it's kind of cool. Because then like, it has a text that goes smash. And it like starts off with a little tiny s and like kind of the letters gradually get bigger across the little text box. It's cool. When you do side attacks,
00:27:01
Speaker
This is where it gets even more trippy and psychedelic. The screen has like little thin lines of geometric patterns for the associated like fire. It's just like a red line or whatever. ah Ice is like little blue triangles that kind of like come into play, maybe do a spin and then does its thing. Yeah. Sci attacks are probably the funnest part of the game.
00:27:22
Speaker
So that's that's combat in a nutshell. Some other game mechanics, right? So to save your game, as all games do, like this time you don't have this weird monster-looking statue like in Brain Lord. Shameless plug for a previous episode episode. You have a telephone, and you call your dad.
00:27:37
Speaker
as you should. Yeah. And you let him know, hey, this is what my journey and then he'll even go, hey, I saved your game, bud but but you should take a break. You've been playing a long time. So it's kind of one of the first games that like kind of monitor and like, hey, look, don't stay inside and play all the time, even though nobody listened to that anyway. Absolutely not. Early suggestion to go touch grass. Yeah. now Japan had it had it down to a science already. We were just kind of like, now we'll just go get our McDonald's and sit in the room and play video games all day. Drink your drink your Mountain Dew and eat your Doritos. Hell yeah.
00:28:05
Speaker
ah Let's see. And then so another game mechanic you have, you can get items actually delivered to you, right? So you can like call, it use your, your phone, call up a store and be like, I want these items. And there's a delivery service that you'll go walk around, put some around and then all of a sudden the game will stop. You can't move anywhere. Music will change a little bit. And this little dude comes flying across the screen next to you and goes, Hey, I got these items for you. Delivery. Here you go. See you later. And then he disappears and you can go back to your, your, whatever you're doing. So you're getting items, Hunger Games style.
00:28:35
Speaker
but but ah Yeah, kind of, except ah you're paying for it, sponsors aren't. fair Earthbound also introduced this other like status ailment that I've never seen in any other game. You get homesick, and it's only Ness that gets this. So when you get homesick, right like a little thing shows up on your your status page, and then like when you're in combat, Ness will like not take his attack or his turn, because he's like, Ness is thinking about home. Ness misses his mom, or whatever, like something along those lines. And the only way to cure that
00:29:06
Speaker
go find a telephone and call your mom. And you just got to talk to her. I'm just like, Hey, mom, I miss you. How are things? All right, cool. Bet. I feel better. See you later. So it's almost like when you're in Final Fantasy, when some of your characters get hit with like melancholy or whatever, but instead of having a potion to heal them of that, you have to go find a telephone. Yep. Pretty much.
00:29:27
Speaker
Can you swap them out of the party or do you play with all four party level members? You play with all of them. There are instances where, you know, your party splits or, you know, you get introduced to one. Like, I think for Pooh, you play as Pooh by himself for a little bit and then you link up. I think that's actually how all three of them work. You play by the character himself and then you link up and then it's you guys all three or four or two.
00:29:49
Speaker
But yeah, no party swapping. All right. So now we'll switch over to the weapons. All right. Like I said, Ness uses bats. Paula uses frying pans. Pooh doesn't use anything unless you get the Sword of Kings, which is a super rare drop. It's like one in two hundred and eighty or something for a specific monster. So good luck. And then Jeff uses guns. But anybody can use yo-yos or slingshots as the other alternate items, which I think it was pretty cool. But that's just me.
00:30:16
Speaker
Food is the way you restore HP, like I said earlier, and then enemies enemies kind of range and they get weird and the designs are just I love them. I think it's neat. ah So you have zombies like in the very beginning, you've got.
00:30:31
Speaker
pretty much a ah punk that rides a skateboard and attacks you with it. Cause you, you have to get into like a bar at some point in the very beginning of the game. And it's just like punky people and they just kind of try to attack you. And they're also really challenging cause you have like no money. You got no food and you're low level. So I ran or died a lot. It's a great time. Just had to wait for luck to be on your side.
00:30:52
Speaker
Those are all realistic skateboard punk tropes being beat up by a skateboard. I have been a part of a team of bullies on skateboards. Oh, did they actually hit you with the skateboard? No, we used to fuck with rollerbladers real hard. Oh, those are also enemies in the game. Oh, of course they are. Yeah.
00:31:11
Speaker
ah Yeah. And then from there, you also have like aliens, of course, like we talked about. You got the star men, which are part of the gigas kind of guy there. A lot of people, if you played Smash Brothers or you know, the Earthbound Starman are like the main what people think of when it comes to enemies. They're just like in a and also like they're in a giant hazmat suit, but there's no seams on the hazmat suit. It's like a white silvery color. And they've got like just where the hazmat suit has that ah where you look out of it at. It's all like black and they stand with their hands on their hips.
00:31:39
Speaker
They're also super hard to beat and like unless you're like really geared up and leveled out and whatnot. What else? You also have slimes. And those are fun characters. Yeah, they're enemies. Interesting. They are slime. I don't even know how to describe them. Just Google it. Kind of fun to look at. Overall, the point is right. The enemies are very diverse in the game. Love it. It's very quirky.
00:32:05
Speaker
So also want to talk about before I go into the boring stuff, which I probably should start with the boring stuff, but I've still figured out my flow here. You get to eventually visit Mr. Saturn's village. Mr. Saturn's village. If you played Smash Brothers, you know, you can get an item that just kind of looks quirky and weird.
00:32:22
Speaker
And it's Mr. Saturn and he has a whole village in this game. He's actually like a mascot for the game, if you will. And for those of you that don't know, Mr. Saturn pretty much looks like if you picture a mole, take off its arms, squish it down to like half size and then paint it a white flesh tone color, no hair. Then he's got bushy eyebrows, two dots for eyes, whiskers on the side and a floating bow tie. That is Mr. Saturn.
00:32:47
Speaker
Kind of sounds like, um, what's his name from Sonic? Dr. Whatever. But Nick. Yeah. Yeah. Except Saturn doesn't wear clothes. He's just a naked mole rat. Yep. We'll go with that. Yeah. That's what some team should be rolling up on. Yeah. So, and there's a whole village of them. They all look like that. All of them. They are genderless, so there's no gender norms there. But you still have a Mr. Saturn.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yep. Yep. There's there's no genders. One of them, actually, when you talk to him goes, I'm a girl, I'm a girl. But they are described as genderless. So interesting. Uh, yep. And the language they speak is Saturnian. Like, you know, because they're Mr. Saturn's chocolate. And it's like, yeah, it's an odd combination, like just random English letters thrown together. And it's like the writing style is very like I think it was described as one of the director's daughters.
00:33:39
Speaker
um the way she she wrote English. That's how they transcribe that into the game. So you can't read any of it because it's literally just gibberish and less random letters. But that's that's the best way I can describe what it looks like. Sounds like Simlish, but in text form. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we'll go with that.
00:33:57
Speaker
So yeah, that's mostly what I have as far as the game itself, like the gameplay designs and characters.
Development and Legacy of 'Earthbound'
00:34:04
Speaker
So now I'm going to transition into development. Like I said, way back about, I don't know, 40 minutes ago or so in the beginning of this, the development for the English timeframe was pretty long and the development of the game, even in Japan was long. It was in development for five years. Oh we go yeah. Yeah.
00:34:23
Speaker
So and it was also a joint effort, which was kind of interesting. So you have two companies, you got Ape Inc, which I haven't really talked about. I haven't looked up yet. But that's one company. Then you've got Hal Laboratory Inc, which I briefly mentioned Hal and Brain Lord. They're the ones that do like Bomberman and stuff. and Right. So they're, they're working on this together, which maybe that might have affected the five years. I don't know. It wasn't really experiment explained a whole lot. But uh,
00:34:47
Speaker
Often the game was considered doomed and they were worried it wouldn't release until a seasoned programmer. And he also happened to be the president of how Satoru Iwata. He joined the development team and smoothed everything out. So he was like the saving grace of Earthbound being coming out, which was thank God cause this game is awesome.
00:35:07
Speaker
It generally takes more of those seniors to step in and say, you guys are fucked up. Here's how we fix it. Yeah, pretty much. So basically, Ape ah Incorporated oversaw the data aspects and the title, which I don't really know what that means because how worked out the programming of the game. So I guess like the data aspects would be like the the art, the sprites, words, things like that, or how actually program didn't put it all together in the game that we know and love. Sounds like they probably did a majority of the I guess what would now be considered the rendering. Yeah, I go i'll go with that. The reason why ah it took about almost a year to come over to English is because the ah whole translation aspect of it, of course, it's, you know, 1994, we have people that are not like Japan is not as big of a culture in America. So not many people speak Japanese. So
00:35:58
Speaker
This home dude is named Clyde Mandolin. He was the one that sat there and localized the game for us. So thank you, Clyde. And they also cut a lot of things out, of course, change things up. So it made sense for us and all that. So that's kind of why it went from August of 94 to June 1st of 95. Why it took so long for us to get it. Well, Clyde was out here doing the Lord's work, obviously. ah Yeah. So then we got music. Right. So like I said earlier, we had three different composers. One of them I mentioned earlier, Suzuki.
00:36:28
Speaker
He cited John Lennon as being an influence influence for composing most of the music in the game for all three composers. I guess it has a Beatles vibe. I never really caught that. But the other side of this is a lot of the tracks in the game, they sampled pop music at the time, which also affected its release, or excuse me, it affected its re-release later down the line because of copyrights and things like that.
00:36:53
Speaker
obtaining the licenses and stuff. Yeah. And that's kind of why it took us so long to get like another earthbound or like you can now play it on the Nintendo switch as any as if you have a subscription with them. Right. So that mostly wraps it up. I just have some fun facts about the game that I'll use to close it out that are kind of fun and factual.
00:37:13
Speaker
I'd have hoped so. ah You can find a legitimate copy like a Super Nintendo cartridge, not like a pirated or like a recreation of the game. Find a legit copy on eBay anywhere from $300 to $500. Oh, we go.
00:37:29
Speaker
Yeah, this game, like so little backstory when Blockbuster was going out of business, they had Earthbound on sale or other. I don't think they're going to business. They were transitioning from like Super Nintendo games of trying to make space for like Nintendo 64, PlayStation and PlayStation 2, things like that. They had that game with the with the box and everything. And it was $80. I remember that. Oh, and I tried to convince my dad to buy it. He was going to. But then, like, I felt that I was like,
00:37:52
Speaker
Well, we'll wait and see. And then we went back like a week or two later. It was there. No box. Just the game. And I was like, no, let's hold off. I want a toy instead or something stupid because I was like 10 or 11. I don't know. Well, spoiler alert. I never got it because the next time we went back, it was gone. And I regret that decision to this day.
00:38:11
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that's easy to do. It's hard to, I feel like even in our young minds, I was the same way. All of the items I've kept from a child to a teenager, I maintain the boxes in the original packaging because my little spectrum brain figured it would be beneficial to have all that one day. So I get where your little spectrum brain was like, well, if it doesn't have the box, I don't just want the cartridge. Yeah, exactly.
00:38:36
Speaker
So yep, I no longer have the game. But yeah, you can now buy it for $300 to $500 depending on if you want the box or no box. And if you want to spend that kind of money. Sounds like you've got to look at whether but you want to spend three to five hundred dollars. I do not. I love the game. Not worth that. Because you can get it visually on the switch. Or I can just download the emulator for it, which I've done in the past.
00:38:55
Speaker
but and i don't I don't support you know illegal things. So Nintendo don't sue us. excellent Sponsor us. Don't sue us. Yeah, sponsor us. Don't sue us. So my next fun fact is our boy Clyde. Remember I told you he did the localization of EarthBound? Yes. All right. Well, he published a book ah about the localization and of all the differences.
00:39:15
Speaker
And this book is 400 pages long. oh cow it's I think it's about 40 bucks. You can go buy it. It looks interesting. It's got pictures. If you like pictures, I like pictures. That man step by step to his process of turning this game over. Dude, ah it's interesting. I wouldn't mind buying it just to like go through it. But that's a future when I'm rich and have plenty of money to spend, which I do not have right now. Who does? Our next fun fact is in 2018, there was another localizer, Marcus Lindblom, Lindblom, Lindblom found a floppy disk from his time working on Earthbound. And if you don't know if you're a young
00:39:52
Speaker
Gen Z or above. You don't know what a floppy disk is. Basically, it's the save icon that you see everywhere, except it was a real tangible item that you would insert into your computer. And that was pretty much our USB or thumb drives back in the day. Yeah, stacks and stacks of games on floppy disk. Oh, yeah. So he found one of those when he was working on Earthbound that had like all his files and all that. But apparently, at some point in time, he deleted the files on the floppy disk, but he still kept the floppy disk. Oh, so He sent it to VHF, Video Game History Foundation, which I did not know was a thing. I thought that was kind of cool. I might be going into there for a future episodes. Yeah, I didn't heard that either. They basically used forensic science, as they like to call it, forensic video game science or whatever, on the floppy disk. And they were able to recover all the files. So you got to see a lot of the source files for that game and things that didn't make it to the Japan or English version post-production.
00:40:50
Speaker
no There's like a 30 minute video on YouTube about the hidden secrets revealed, and you can also go on their website and check it out if you want to know more. Some of the hidden secrets I wrote down some of their interesting figure talk about them was in there's a woman in summers. That's the name of the town, by the way, because you got winners, summers, things like that. She makes them in the and the localization of the game. She makes a magic cake. You eat the cake. You get a vivid dream of poo. One of the characters you play in a distant land. And that's kind of how your introduction to poo comes from. But In the original game, there's no lady that makes cake. There's a lady that gives you a special oil massage on the beach and you fall asleep and you then you have the crazy dream.
00:41:29
Speaker
right so either you're taking an edible and going on a psychedelic journey or you're getting a ah borderline not kosher massage from a lady on a beach and going into a dream state very awkward situations either way yeah and just for a reminder you're 13 years old getting a oil massage a special oil massage from a lady on the beach quote unquote special yeah So that was obviously removed from the game or never made it in. um Another one was a lot of the characters were unnamed, so a lot of NPCs don't have names, which is kind of common back then.
00:42:04
Speaker
fun fact they did have names one specific one there's a mole which you'll have seen him if you played smash brothers he comes up with like a support character sometimes or he looks similar to the mole in animal crossing when you try to do something illegal or like unplug the game or something but he's just a little helpful mole in the first area onet and his name is actually holly huh Like there's a bunch more. Like I said, you can go on their website. They'll tell you all about the differences. But those are the two that stood out the most. I didn't want to go into too much detail with that. Our next fun fact is the advertisement slogan for Earthbound when it was first released had the slogan, this game stinks. Oh, and that's also probably why.
00:42:43
Speaker
uh, sales were not very good for the game back then. And I think I remember seeing the commercial or the advertisement for that, but I thought it was a great game. The next fun fact in the beginning of the game, remember how I talked about buzz buzz, the insect that sends you on your magical quest to collect melodies and you know, I do remember buzz buzz. All right.
00:42:59
Speaker
Well, Buzz Buzz, when he flies down in a beam of light, like basically he's coming down to see there's a beam of light, that beam of light can actually be controlled by a second player if you plug in another controller. Just the one time. Just the one time. Your little brother or sister can only control one character one time. Yeah, and it's not even a character. It's a beam of light. Right. Yep. Another fun fact is Kirby, the little pink fluff ball that sucks in things and spits them out. You know, he appears in the debug menu if you're into programming and stuff like that. The next fun fact I have is you have lots of sound effects for this game are recycled from Kirby's Dream Course. So a lot of aspects here. They had all the sourcing from somewhere. Yeah, I guess they get the random ideas, you know, because this game is super original.
00:43:43
Speaker
And that pretty much wraps up EarthBound. Shout out to motherforever.net, where I got a lot of my research from. They have a lot of nice little hidden gems. They talk about Mother 1, 2, and 3, which never made it to the US. And I've already all already words are hard already referenced Wiki multiple times, but I used Wikipedia a lot for this too.
00:44:05
Speaker
so Well, I think that's a fantastic source since I do the same thing. I have a similar issue as one of my other favorite podcast hosts where if it's not on the first page of the Google search, I'm not looking much further. Yeah, um I mean, that was great. It was good to learn about because I've always seen the you know the cover and i've I've seen it on my switch when I go into my SNES port that it has. And I think my preloaded SNES may actually come with EarthBound as well. I don't remember.
00:44:34
Speaker
ah But yeah, I didn't know that that's where Ness came from. I thought he was just one of those random Japanese characters. I didn't know they actually ported that Japanese game into English as well. That's pretty dope. Yeah, I remember playing the first Super Smash Brothers and I had heard whispers of Ness being an unlockable secret character. And I scoured the ends of the earth to figure it out. And when I unlocked him, I audibly squealed with excitement. And then he became my main character after that. Surprise, surprise. All right, so.
00:45:05
Speaker
through the great telling that you just did of EarthBound. First thing I want to do is just thank the three people that gave us a rating on Spotify. We appreciate our listeners, the few that we have as we're building our fan base that went on and gave us a rate. I didn't see whether or not there was any reviews, but regardless, we appreciate any feedback that we get from anybody. To all y'all out there that are participating, thank you.
00:45:31
Speaker
So for me today, what I want to talk about is the All American Girls Professional Baseball League.
All-American Girls League Origins
00:45:37
Speaker
ah all Words are failing me because words are hard like you said. Inspiration for this came from not too long ago. I was at my family's house and we were sitting on their back porch and they have a TV outside and we had just thrown a baseball game on while we were waiting for them to put our niece to sleep. and it just came to me out of nowhere just I need to talk about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Now a lot of people from our generation probably remember the movie A League of Their Own from 1992 and that is a fictionalized telling of you know that league during that time and it's not directly a queer topic but I think it's safe to say that even though it was the 1940s and 1950s there were obviously queer women on those teams
00:46:19
Speaker
But it wasn't as safe back then to be out. But there is also a show on Amazon Prime that came out in 2022 and that features a more accurate portrayal of the league and addresses the homosexuality within and has been discussed by some of the former players as well as the race relations of the time. So.
00:46:37
Speaker
As we get into it, with the United States entry into World War II, a bunch of major league baseball execs created a new professional league with women players to keep baseball in the public eye because the majority of the young men were off fighting in the war. And the AAGPBL was founded by Philip K. Wrigley, you know, the famous Wrigley family, you know, Wrigley Stadium.
00:47:00
Speaker
Branch Rickey and Paul V. Harper, they were afraid that with the war, professional baseball would eventually cease, even for a temporary amount of time, as well as there being some travel issues due to the gas restrictions that were in place during the war, because we had a lot of, you know, rationing and restrictions that were going on during the wartime, because we were trying to send all of our resources over to the soldiers fighting the war during the 40s, and probably the 50s as well with Korea.
00:47:24
Speaker
So the tryouts for the league were initially held at Wrigley Field in Chicago and the players were scouted from softball leagues around the country and over 200 women were invited to try out with about 60 being selected for the initial roster. um An unfortunate aspect about the league was it was informally segregated like the men's league. So there were no African American players, which while was a part of the culture at the time, I mean, honestly, it's just fucking stupid. Yeah, that's a big oof.
00:47:52
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of phenomenal sports players in really any, you know, sport that there is are non white players. They just generally more athletic in my brain, but that's fair. And another dumb aspect of the selection for the league was on top of being skilled in the game. The women were expected to fit the ideal look the marketers were looking for. So they had to be quote unquote wholesome and feminine. Stupid. Yeah.
00:48:17
Speaker
they also There was also a National Girls Baseball League that was created with six teams, um and that began in 1944, but it was much less publicized than the AAG PBL and ran until 1954. They drew crowds upwards of 500,000 fans per season, but the AAG PBL had an all-time high fan attendance in the 1948 season with over 900,000 fans.
Challenges and Impact of Women's League
00:48:42
Speaker
So it was it was generally fairly popular, which was great, especially during that time of women being expected to stay home and hold down the fort for the men. It was pretty great to see them popularize something and you know show that women were athletic as well. Yeah. First season of the league was played in a style of baseball and softball hybrid. I'm not going to go into too many details about it, but initially the ball was 12 inches in circumference.
00:49:07
Speaker
And the pitcher's mound was 40 feet from the home plate, which is closer than the regulation softball distance and much closer than baseball's 60 feet, 6 inches. And pitchers only threw the ball in an underhand windmill pitch, like you see in softball now. And the bases were 65 feet apart, which is 5 feet longer than softball, but 25 feet shorter than baseball.
00:49:29
Speaker
But, like regular baseball, each time team had nine players on the field at a time. um And over the time of the league existing, the rules changed more and more to being, in you know, kind with men's baseball as well as the ball size. And lastly, teams were generally managed by men who were former former major league players themselves, in part to demonstrate to the fans that the league was real and serious. Huh. That makes sense. God forbid you have a professional woman player leading a team, but again,
00:49:58
Speaker
40s and 50s. Yeah. Now the salaries for the players were actually above average for women at the time, ranging from 45 to $85 a week during the first years, but up to $125 a week in later years. I did see something about what that would be in today's money. I was about to ask that. I didn't write that down so we can actually Google that right now. Let's see 125 a week. Oh, that says 1800. We're not talking about 1800. Let's go to 1944.
00:50:28
Speaker
So $125 a week in 1944, which is just the year we're going with. It's not the year we're starting in is the same as $2,233 today. So that's a different point to change. You're looking at making close to 10 grand a month. That's not a, that's not a bad, holy cow not a bad yeah a weekly salary in my opinion. Not at all. No.
00:50:52
Speaker
The uniforms that they wore were made up of a belted short sleeve tunic dress. So essentially, you know, just a one piece top and bottom that flared into a skirt and the minimum allowed length of the skirt was six inches above the knee. But that was mostly ignored to allow for better running and fielding. Obviously, if it's too long, it's going to get in the way and you're not going to have as good of, you know, stride and it's going to make it harder, I believe, to slide into bases.
00:51:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the fact that they're playing with skirts anyway is ridiculous. Yeah, I can imagine that was just hellish. And they had a large circular logo on the front of the dress and on the front of their hats. And obviously, they wore the traditional style baseball caps of the time. So the training is what is interesting to me. During spring training, the women had to attend charm school because, you know, the 1950s. And in an effort to make the players as attractive as possible, each player received a beauty kit and instructions on how to use it.
00:51:49
Speaker
What the fuck? Yeah. So you have to make sure that you have your makeup on when you're on the field because you got to be pretty. That makes sense. Well, I mean, girls go to the gym with makeup on so.
00:52:00
Speaker
They do. They do. And I don't understand how they do it because I sweat like an animal. It is disgusting. Same. I can't imagine trying to be out in a field in the heat and the direct sunlight playing baseball with a full face of makeup on. And makeup by back then wasn't nearly as advanced as it is now. So I'm sure there was no waterproof anything and they were just probably dripping makeup. Yeah. Yeah. oh There was also codes of conduct that they had to follow, such as they were not allowed to smoke or drink in public, they were not allowed to have short hair, and not allowed to wear pants in public. You also had to be wearing lipstick at all times. But I've heard that ah heard that that was something that was instituted, like especially with our parents' generation. I've heard a lot of stories of people that will say, oh yeah, my mom always told me that I was looking a little pale and I needed to go put on some lipstick.
00:52:57
Speaker
ah so Oh, okay. Um, actually in 1944, there was a player by the name of Josephine D'Angelo that was actually fired for cutting her hair short. Oh. And there were fines for your first two offenses and a suspension on your third offense. So obviously the women's contracts were much stricter than the men's and the teams also had their own chaperones because you know, women can't be allowed to just be out alone as women. No, not at all. They'll buy too much stuff. yeah God forbid.
00:53:28
Speaker
Um, so now we've got over a lot of the differences and bullshit that the men, the men and women different from the men. We can talk about some of the teams and I'm not going to go super in depth into them, but there were 15 teams in the AA GPBL league. Their names were the Kenosha comma comets.
00:53:50
Speaker
The Racing Bells, and I hope I'm saying racing right, ah the Rockford Peaches, the South Bend Blue Sox, the Milwaukee Chicks, Minneapolis Millerettes, the Fort Wayne Daisies, the Grand Rapids Chicks, the Muskegon Lasses, the Piora Red Wings, Chicago Colleens, or Colleens,
00:54:12
Speaker
the Springfield Sallies, Kalamazoo Lasses, Battle Creek Bells, and Muskegon Bells. We're not getting too creative with these names. Wow. Not a whole lot of gender neutral anything in here except for now yeah not at all South Bend blue socks, it seems, or maybe the pure red wings. But obviously they wanted people to know these were women with the team name. Yeah. As if it wasn't obvious enough with their makeup and long hair and skirts. Yeah. And the fact that they had to go to charm school and such. Yeah. The fuck. Yeah.
00:54:47
Speaker
and women, you know, we we can't do anything on our own. We have to make sure that we are not masculinized and in any way, shape or form or it's uncouth. In the time of its existence, the league had 12 champion teams.
00:55:03
Speaker
um And the Rockford Peaches were the most successful team with four championships under their belt. And this is where we start to bring my story to a close because I did not dig super deep, having only used Wikipedia as my source. And there was a ton of information. And when I ended up getting all my research together,
00:55:22
Speaker
It was like 830 at night and I was in bed because I'm an old lady and I go to sleep by 930. But there were 65 original players from the league featured in the movie A League of Their Own. And they were actually, those original players, yeah, they were in the scenes in the end of the movie.
00:55:40
Speaker
where they were depicting the league's introduction into the baseball hall of fame in nineteen eighty eight and i think that was. Probably the greatest thing that came out of this league being um started was the impact that their short run as a league had on women's women sports in general and the fact that women in sports were able to create a place for people to come watch what's known as america sport.
00:56:02
Speaker
I still don't know why baseball is considered America's sport, but I'm on board with it. I love baseball and I think it's phenomenal. And just the fact that they could draw such a large large crowd while there was a massive world war being fought by our young men across the world and that they could show that women could be athletic and successful and make an impact in a male-dominated sport enough to be entered into a Hall of Fame is probably just the greatest thing in the world to me. Yeah.
00:56:29
Speaker
A lot of hall of fame is from what I understand are gendered. So I believe when it comes down to basketball hall of fame, baseball hall of fame, soccer, you know, all the general sports, they most likely are gendered. That's my assumption. And I should probably check that to make sure I'm not wrong. So let's see. Are there women in the basketball hall of fame? Oh, there are. Many women are in the basketball hall of fame. I stand corrected. Nice.
00:56:53
Speaker
So yeah, that concludes my short, brief, uh, discussion about the all American girls professional baseball league, which the other thing that bothers me is you're going to create a league of women playing a professional sport, but you're still going to call it the girls professional baseball league. They're not girls, they're women. Yeah. That's a, that's a good point. Like not only are we like feminizing, but we're also like making them sound like children. Like what the hell?
00:57:21
Speaker
Yeah, because you have, I mean, even the WNBA is, you know, the women's national basketball association. So why is this? Why doesn't this get to also be the women's major league baseball? I don't know. Who knows? 1950s was a wild time. You're killing me. Obviously, I wasn't alive back then. But yeah, well, yeah, I would hope not. But the stories I've heard from my parents that were alive during the 50s is it it sounds like it was a little insane. Yeah.
00:57:48
Speaker
I would, from what I've read and seen, yeah, I would agree. I think that obviously, you know, women's sports has come a long way, like we talked about last week with the WNBA gaining so much popularity most recent years and women aren't allowed to play baseball.
00:58:05
Speaker
I still don't get that. I'm sure someday somebody will explain it to me in a way that makes sense. But I think softball is still a great game and still fun to watch. And, you know, we have the Paralympics coming up soon now that the regular Olympics are over. So I'm excited to watch more female sports being played. Hell yeah. It's an exciting time. I'm hoping next week I'll have a subject that's not sports related so we can, you know, get on another topic and hopefully ah have some more stuff to talk about that's a lot longer than Probably 15 minutes that actually took yeah, that's all good. Yeah, i don't mean i don't
00:58:39
Speaker
I don't know much about any of this, so it's all new and learning to me. So it's fun. So I appreciate it. And hopefully for some listeners that just come for the video games, also learn a little bit more about
Reflections and Future Plans
00:58:48
Speaker
women's sports as well. So nothing wrong with that. No, I think, like I said, it's all, it's very random as our title suggests, but I feel like it's a good difference in subjects to where we're not just heavily hammering down double on one specific thing. So we get to bring in a broad spectrum of information that people can absorb. Yeah. Should they choose?
00:59:09
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And hopefully the audio is better this time because I was a huge noob and didn't use a microphone that I had last time. I actually had to look for it the other day. I started freaking out. I couldn't find it anywhere. It fell behind my dresser. Nice. Yeah. It was in between my dresser and the wall. oh That's a good place for it. Yeah. You know, it's safe. It's kind of like that. Uh, what's that mean? Men know exactly where their things are at all time. And it's showing that paperclip on the floor next to the desk leg. Yeah.
00:59:37
Speaker
Yeah. Generally on the same way, but that was because the last place I left it was on my dresser. That's where I should have started looking instead of freaking out when I couldn't find it. That'd be like that sometimes. It does. It absolutely does. Well, uh, with that being said, thanks listeners for tuning in. We will try to have another episode next weekend, uh, recorded and published whenever I have time between college and everything else that I'm doing. Yeah. Don't be freaked out if it turns into a biweekly thing for the first little bit until we figure out our flow. We are not professionals and with having full-time jobs.
01:00:14
Speaker
Sometimes things are a little slow. Yeah, that's that's a nice way to put it. but Yeah, we're also figuring all this out as we go. Like it's all learning experience. But if you would like to send us a message, ah we do have a Gmail setup. And that's thanks to our wonderful Russell for getting that going. That Gmail is rambling randos like the name no space 2013 at gmail dot.com.
01:00:37
Speaker
Feel free to critique, send us anything that you find interesting, or if there's something you want us to research and talk about, feel free to drop us a line. Yeah, send me any ideas that you think I may not have thought of yet, or maybe Jace hasn't thought of yet, and we'll start compiling a list of things to add to our already growing list of topics. and Yeah. Feel free to send critiques. You're not going to hurt my feelings. You have to have feelings to have your feelings hurt. Same. I do have feelings. I have too many feelings, but I still appreciate constructive criticism.
01:01:07
Speaker
We're also going to be working on creating social media for the podcast as well. ah My wife has wonderfully agreed to help manage our social media in her spare time.
01:01:19
Speaker
Hell yeah. You're having a full time job as well. But we'll we'll do our best to get everything rolling. I did notice when I went on Spotify that there were a couple other podcasts that had similar names to ours, but it doesn't seem like they lasted very long. So we're going to do our best to make sure we last longer. Yep. Yep. Yep. I noticed that, too. I think I think we got them. We're going to do our best. I think so, too, honestly. We'll get there. All right. Well, ah without further ado, I'm going to play our awesome outro.
01:01:48
Speaker
that is royalty free. And I hope you guys tune in next week. All right, later losers. See you.