Transcript
Speaker: Now is a good time for it.
Speaker: I think those of us who, you know, prayed at the altar of Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins, we don't have much if we don't have irony.
Speaker: So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: My irony lung, my favorite.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: You're just going to handle this one by yourself.
Speaker: You guys are good.
Speaker: I'm not, I'm just mad that I didn't come up with that.
Speaker: I'm frustrated that I didn't come up with that joke.
Speaker: And that's what that was.
Speaker: I was going to say, Phil, you can't go because me and Kevin, I don't think we have the, I don't even think we've absorbed the entire book between us.
Speaker: So we need, we need all hands on deck for this.
Speaker: We're just going to kind of get through this book.
Speaker: Please do.
Speaker: And, but I do have, I do have one, one thought.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You know what isn't ironic?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me as always is Phil.
Speaker: And today joining us is, you know him as Hot Cider from the internet.
Speaker: He's an internet boy.
Speaker: He's on there and he's doing internet things.
Speaker: And he's also the host of the Bullet Time Podcasts.
Speaker: Keep blasting people.
Speaker: Pew, pew, pew.
Speaker: Pew, pew, pew, pew.
Speaker: Pew, pew, pew.
Speaker: If you're a fan of the podcast Pixelate, you may also be listening to Bullets.
Speaker: I'm considering one half of Pixelate has been on it for a past year.
Speaker: I feel like our podcasts are inextricably linked.
Speaker: There's just no one getting around it.
Speaker: They're sister podcasts.
Speaker: They're like...
Speaker: Like Bionic Commando and Mega Man, they're both made onto... Yeah, like Bionic Commando and Mega Man, they're related to each other.
Speaker: They're related.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: Speaking of Bionic Commando, that's what we're talking about today.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: We're talking about Worlds of Power, Bionic Commando.
Speaker: Boop, boop.
Speaker: Which is OK, Phil, did you think that Bionic Commando was a sequel to Commando?
Speaker: Well, it was touted in the US as a sequel to Commando.
Speaker: I don't it was not the original plan.
Speaker: That's why Super Joe is in it.
Speaker: That was the name of the main character in the Commando NES game.
Speaker: But in Japan, I don't think that was the original intention.
Speaker: So if I'm allowed to pull out my notes... Go for it.
Speaker: My bullet type notes.
Speaker: So it's called Commando because the developer, or at least the designer of Bionic Commando, is Yokoro Fujiwara, who was basically...
Speaker: Capcom's Miyamoto like during the 80s because he was responsible for Commando in 85 then went on to do Ghosts and Goblins later in the year and then Kevin interestingly for you Sweet Home in 86 yep and then he became a producer yes he's the guy he's the producer of the original Resident Evil no shit Mega Man
Speaker: And Strider.
Speaker: He basically gave Kenji Yunefune and God, what's his name?
Speaker: The Resident Evil guy.
Speaker: The Resident Evil guy.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: He's still making.
Speaker: Not Hideki Kamuya, the other one.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Oh no.
Speaker: This podcast is off the rails already.
Speaker: Oh, we're off the rails already.
Speaker: It's the guy who made Evil Within.
Speaker: Fuck what's his name?
Speaker: And Resident Evil 4 and Vanquish.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That guy.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Then left Capcom and formed Wookiee Camp where he made the excellent PlayStation game Tomba or Tombi, depending where you are.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Very interesting guy.
Speaker: He eventually came back to Capcom to do Ghosts and Goblins Resurrection a couple of years ago, which is a really decent reimagining of it.
Speaker: It's still 2D, but they use the RE engine to make it look like medieval elections.
Speaker: The Reach for the Moon engine.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: The Japanese name for Bionic Commander, by the way, is Top Secret, like the Zucker Brothers film.
Speaker: And the NES, because it was originally an arcade game, the NES version is called Top Secret, colon, Hitler's Resurrection.
Speaker: Hitler's Resurrection.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's something that we'll have to talk about a little bit about this book.
Speaker: A little bit.
Speaker: And also this franchise.
Speaker: It's the bads in the American version, but I feel like it was straight up the Nazis in the Japanese version.
Speaker: I think that's what's amazing about the Japanese culture is that the Japanese actually fought with them.
Speaker: during World War II.
Speaker: And the West was like, dude, we don't want fucking Hitler in our video games.
Speaker: And the Japanese are like, hey, we fought with the guy.
Speaker: We're going to kill him in our video games.
Speaker: What could be more mea culpa than that?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And I also, it also is like, there's like this in Japanese NES games in particular, there's like this, um,
Speaker: openness to what would be controversial titles in the West that they just slap right the fuck on their games.
Speaker: So there's like, there's, so there's, so there's Bionic Command, like top secret, the resurrection of Hitler.
Speaker: But there's also, there's like, what is it?
Speaker: Castlevania is originally called something like,
Speaker: It's called Dracula's Castle in the... It might not be Castlevania.
Speaker: There's one where it's like killing Satan or something like some weird devil title.
Speaker: I know which big game you mean, but it's literally on the tip of my tongue.
Speaker: But yeah, I know there is one where it's literally in Japan.
Speaker: It is just called Satan Killer, but they brought it over here and they're just like... It's Double Dress.
Speaker: It's Bubble Bobble.
Speaker: Yeah, Bubble Bobble was originally Satan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Castlevania does have a funny thing.
Speaker: That wouldn't surprise me at all.
Speaker: Bubble Bobble had some evil shit in it.
Speaker: It was a twisted game.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Castlevania does have a funny thing because you were saying about like Japanese developers were very kind of.
Speaker: They didn't really shy away from anything.
Speaker: Castlevania has a lot of like they would fill the game full of crucifixes because obviously there would be a lot of Christian imagery in it.
Speaker: Yeah, and then a lot of like, you know, when they port those over, they'd be like, take those out.
Speaker: But my favorite one is, I think it's Castlevania 3.
Speaker: You beat a boss, and there is a gigantic shining crucifix in the Japanese version.
Speaker: Then the American version, the crucifix is still there, but they were just like, take the shine off, like, tone it down a little bit.
Speaker: Just kick it.
Speaker: Just calm it down, guys.
Speaker: This is a little much.
Speaker: Let's turn the notch down.
Speaker: It's always interesting to see what over here.
Speaker: I literally, last night, my wife and I went to our first rodeo.
Speaker: Ooh.
Speaker: Yeah, we went we went and watched some bull riding and it opened with a very fervent, very over the top, very sincere prayer.
Speaker: And I and, you know, it's like a we know where we are.
Speaker: B, these are people in South Carolina, buddy.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: And frankly, bull riding is not exactly billiards.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, so you know what?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: No atheists and foxholes.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: Whatever makes you happy.
Speaker: But it's so funny to see, because basically what it is, is with that kind of thing, the Japanese developers were mythologizing the religion.
Speaker: You know, treating it the way we might treat, you know, ancient Greek gods and we put them in our comics and our games and shit.
Speaker: And it's like, no, people actually worship that stuff.
Speaker: It's so rare, I think, for us on the West to get a look at how we look, especially Americans, I think, to get a way we look.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the thing is, is that it's hard to argue that it's sacrilegious because a part of it is just kind of like, you know, lost in translation, but also kind of like, they're just very hyper-posed stuff.
Speaker: And it's funny because as things have kind of blended together, you don't see that much anymore.
Speaker: Apart from like about 10 years ago, there was a game called like El Shaddai, The Rise of Metatron, which is purely like a anime reinterpretation of the Old Testament.
Speaker: But like as a...
Speaker: pretty action game made by like most of the Suda51s guys.
Speaker: It is a, like it is something.
Speaker: I have a, I have a copy of it.
Speaker: I never played it.
Speaker: I, I did a, Metatron is supposed to be the voice of God.
Speaker: The voice of God.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I did a video on the history of Christian video games years ago.
Speaker: Yeah, and I bought that game thinking maybe I would play that for research, and that never happened.
Speaker: But it's fascinating to look at.
Speaker: Now you put that in my head.
Speaker: Now I've got to do that.
Speaker: So, Phil, do you happen to know who wrote Bionic Commando?
Speaker: Because it sure as hell is an FX9.
Speaker: It is not our dear friend of the podcast.
Speaker: It's not our dear friend Seth Godin.
Speaker: He did not actually write this.
Speaker: He did not actually write any of these, but he bankrolled it as best as I can tell.
Speaker: This was written by J.B.
Speaker: Stamper, also known...
Speaker: Judith Bauer Stamper.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Who she did a lot of scholastic writing.
Speaker: That's basically her thing.
Speaker: She was a she was a, you know, writer for hire style writer, did a lot of kids horror, a lot of spooky short stories.
Speaker: She did some magic school bus stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A lot of what, you know, it's like the children's book version of genre fiction.
Speaker: So to be completely honest.
Speaker: Well, what's funny is I looked her up briefly and I saw, I was like, oh, she wrote kind of like proto-goosebumps stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's called like Tales for the Midnight Hour, which I imagine because this was in 89.
Speaker: Probably cashing in on, because, I mean, I wasn't born doing that here, but like Tales from the Crypt was probably like at its height around that time, I'm guessing.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: Well, the first Tales from the Midnight Hour came out in 1977, which, if you can believe this hot cider, is actually older than me and Kevin.
Speaker: I can't believe such a time existed.
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: It's only older than Phil by four years.
Speaker: By four years.
Speaker: But, yeah.
Speaker: You know, my wife told me the other day that she had assumed until I mentioned it briefly the other day that you were older than me, Kevin.
Speaker: She assumed I was older than you.
Speaker: Yeah, she thought you were the older brother.
Speaker: No, that's much like your actual younger brother.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Who people assumes is your older brother.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I said, it's the voice.
Speaker: He has the gravitas voice.
Speaker: You know, that's, that's what Kevin brings to the table.
Speaker: But yeah, I remember reading these.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: This, the original tales from the midnight hour.
Speaker: I remember, I looked her up, I saw that cover and I went, I got hit with nostalgia bat.
Speaker: I don't remember much about them, but I remember these books and it seems to me that she's the appropriate person to ask for, you know,
Speaker: this kind of thing.
Speaker: I was going to say she's a good fit for Will to Power.
Speaker: I don't know if she's such a good fit for this particular franchise.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe not Bionic Amando specifically.
Speaker: Maybe Castlevania would have been.
Speaker: Castlevania or the Shadowgate one.
Speaker: Goonies 2.
Speaker: Goonies 2.
Speaker: Dude.
Speaker: Goonies 2.
Speaker: I would have loved if there was a Worlds of Power Goonies 2.
Speaker: Is there a Worlds of Power Goonies 2?
Speaker: I doubt it.
Speaker: They would have had to get extra permission.
Speaker: That's an extra level of licensing right there.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, let's jump into this weird book.
Speaker: So it's Bionic Commando, the game Bionic Commando.
Speaker: We're talking about it for a little bit.
Speaker: You know, it's you play as a guy who has a bionic arm and you're just swinging and you're going to rescue soup.
Speaker: You can't jump.
Speaker: You can only swing around.
Speaker: And so
Speaker: Which, you know what?
Speaker: That's more realistic than most others.
Speaker: Have you ever, like, jumped a lot?
Speaker: Like, jumping is not easy to do on a regular basis.
Speaker: And we just take it for granted in games.
Speaker: We're like, yeah, Mario fucking jumping all the time.
Speaker: That's why he's Super Mario, not just Mario.
Speaker: That's why he's Super Mario.
Speaker: Because he is able to get that fat ass off the ground.
Speaker: I took...
Speaker: I took the stairs two at a time last night on the way into the arena and thought I was going to have a stroke.
Speaker: So I don't think jumping on any level of regularity is in the books for me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he's like, he has a Spider-Man, Spider-Man-esque mechanic of swinging around.
Speaker: You know, he makes you, to borrow a quote from every review of Spider-Man PS4, it makes you feel like Spider-Man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's Bionic Commando.
Speaker: You're fighting against the bads and... Yep, that's what they're called.
Speaker: They're called B-A-D-D.
Speaker: That's what they're called.
Speaker: They're the bads.
Speaker: They're not the Nazis.
Speaker: Don't compare them to the Nazis because they're not them.
Speaker: They're led by Generalissimo Kilts.
Speaker: who is putting his arm up but a full fist nothing else he doesn't he's not hitler absolutely and neither is master d neither is master d he is a he is a lowly scientist yeah master d is a lowly scientist he used to work for the naz also not the naz nazis yes
Speaker: Anyway, the book starts off with The Pit of Peril, which is just a prologue.
Speaker: Can I ask a quick question about this?
Speaker: So you have read other FX9 Wars of Power books.
Speaker: Do they do this in the other books?
Speaker: Every time.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It's the idea.
Speaker: It's just like, oh, I mean, if I'm a child and I just got to read like, you know, the front page is like, name of the book, who wrote it?
Speaker: Oh, I'm going to be bored as hell.
Speaker: Just put a random paragraph.
Speaker: It's a little taste.
Speaker: Little taste to get the kids hooked.
Speaker: We used to have, I don't know if you guys had this over across the pond, James, but we used to have these scholastic book fairs.
Speaker: Did you remember the book fair, Phil?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: There would be a day where there would be a bunch of books set out in the library and you'd just walk around and read, buy it.
Speaker: It's like having kids buy books.
Speaker: Your parents would give you some money to
Speaker: Yeah, so we would have a book fair, and I think the idea was that a lot of the Scholastic books had these little teaser sections in the beginning so that you could just flip it open and be like, oh, okay, this sounds cool.
Speaker: And be like, no, that sounds dumb, or whatever.
Speaker: I think we had something like this previously, but in the UK, and I think in some parts of Europe, we do have Will Book Day.
Speaker: Which is like a thing where for kids, they give you a World Book Day voucher that you can exchange against a, like a kind of a very light kind of 100 to 80 page book.
Speaker: And a lot of them are scholastic ones.
Speaker: So I think that was probably, yeah.
Speaker: It's probably related.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it is a related thing.
Speaker: Because I think I got a lot of like kind of smaller novella ghost bumps for doing that.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Scholastic.
Speaker: So yeah, Scholastic, they had their methods in getting themselves onto your shelf.
Speaker: But yeah, all the other Worlds of Power books open with a scene.
Speaker: What's funny is it's not the exact same scene.
Speaker: It's usually rewritten to be a little bit tighter, a little bit more exciting.
Speaker: They change it.
Speaker: It's definitely different.
Speaker: We've noticed that since the beginning.
Speaker: It's always a little different.
Speaker: It's so funny.
Speaker: So chapter one starts with Jack Markson is Jack Markson, which is just a late eighties, early nineties.
Speaker: Like it's just like, I couldn't figure, think of a name.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know whether I am jumping ahead here, but for both Kevin and Phil, how long did it take you to realize that Jack Markson is Rad Spencer from the original game?
Speaker: Oh, it took it.
Speaker: I only knew because Kevin had mentioned he had read the first chapter and described it a little to me.
Speaker: But no, I'm with you.
Speaker: I was like, I was like, I would have, I would have been a little lost as well.
Speaker: And that's the thing is like, yeah.
Speaker: It's not the first time that this has happened.
Speaker: I was going to say, is that also another World of Power thing of they don't know what the main guy is called?
Speaker: So we read the Metal Gear book with Jesse Garacia.
Speaker: And one of the big things was that, you know, Solid Snake had this random ass name in it.
Speaker: It was like...
Speaker: I can't even remember what it was.
Speaker: It was just, are you looking it up, Phil?
Speaker: I'm looking it up.
Speaker: Because it's like, who the hell is this guy?
Speaker: This isn't Solid Snake.
Speaker: Solid Snake doesn't really.
Speaker: It is perfect because it is that kind of name.
Speaker: Agent Justin Halley.
Speaker: Justin Halley.
Speaker: That's Solid Snake.
Speaker: Solid Snake.
Speaker: Justin Halley.
Speaker: I'm Justin Halley.
Speaker: I'm Justin Halley.
Speaker: And Justin Halley is a furry.
Speaker: That's one of the only things I remember from that episode, but it's a good episode.
Speaker: So Jack Markson is hanging out.
Speaker: He's hanging out in a hotel.
Speaker: He's eating pizza with Super Joe.
Speaker: In Buenos Aires, we should mention.
Speaker: In Buenos Aires.
Speaker: A famous hotspot for... Pizza.
Speaker: For pizza and also war criminals during a potential world war.
Speaker: But we're not going to get... I mean... They're not who you think you are.
Speaker: Okay, that's true.
Speaker: I mean...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're fighting the Naz in Argentina.
Speaker: In Argentina?
Speaker: In Argentina.
Speaker: They're fighting the Naz in Argentina.
Speaker: That was like the first thing I like pulled out.
Speaker: It was like, hmm.
Speaker: Judith Brow has done her research.
Speaker: She knew what she was doing.
Speaker: She knew what she was doing.
Speaker: She read Boys from Brazil.
Speaker: They just got back from the Boys from Brazil.
Speaker: That's the mission before this.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: No, she knew what was happening.
Speaker: All those plans.
Speaker: So he's eating pizza and he's laughing and he's flirting with Super Joe.
Speaker: Oh my God, it's so gay.
Speaker: It's just.
Speaker: We're not saying gay in a pejorative sense.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: We are 100%.
Speaker: We are saying it is literally gay.
Speaker: I thought, of course he's having pizza with Super Joe because Super Joe's his boyfriend.
Speaker: Like, that's how it felt.
Speaker: Super Joe brought in four hot... They are described as four boxes of hot pizza.
Speaker: So they're eating two pizzas between them.
Speaker: And they are recollecting about the time that they were in a prison in Bangkok.
Speaker: It's very... Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: It's like, I guess she wrote this and was like, the kids are never going to pick up on any of this.
Speaker: So they're eating their pizza and they stopped the Naz and the Naz couldn't build the albatross.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: They stopped the Naz and Master D.
Speaker: They found a guy.
Speaker: They found a guy and they got some information out of him.
Speaker: And it sounds... From what it sounded like, was that Albatross... They weren't lucky enough to get the Albatross plans, but they know that Albatross is a thing.
Speaker: That was what I figured out for the insurer.
Speaker: And then, yeah, they were recollecting about what a wonderful time they were having.
Speaker: They were...
Speaker: And Joe left without stopping eating.
Speaker: It's a lovely time.
Speaker: Was another line that I managed to, I grabbed a snapshot of.
Speaker: He's got the pizza in his mouth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then, holy shit, the bad attack the hotel room.
Speaker: They're under fire.
Speaker: There's the bad.
Speaker: And it's Generalissimo Kilt himself.
Speaker: And ninjas.
Speaker: Just so many ninjas.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The famous trope of having ninja enemies in Bionic Commando.
Speaker: The famous trope of ninjas in Bionic Commando.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: That was the thing.
Speaker: Working as well for the Nars.
Speaker: as we can as an ass that's a famous thing famous and and and by the way uh jack is not going to use his gun because he's a man of honor of course great
Speaker: This is another, by the way, this is another example.
Speaker: We noticed this in Ninja Gaiden.
Speaker: He didn't have a knife in his hand in the cover art for that.
Speaker: And they've actually also taken away the Bionic Commando's gun.
Speaker: So there's his gun on the game cover.
Speaker: Here's the game cover.
Speaker: And on the book cover, there's nothing there.
Speaker: They ET'd him.
Speaker: Yeah, brother.
Speaker: He's just holding up his fists.
Speaker: I mean, we're only a couple of days removed from MLK's birthday.
Speaker: He's just showing support.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that's fine.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I'm with it.
Speaker: So he fights.
Speaker: They fight waves after wave of ninja.
Speaker: Super Joe is captured and Jack falls out of a window.
Speaker: Um... But what also happens before he... Well, not to correct you, he decides to jump out the window, because that's his only means of escape, but before he does, they do plunge their sharp-pronged shurikens.
Speaker: Into his arm.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He is off the window.
Speaker: He landed in a pool.
Speaker: We're in chapter two now.
Speaker: And he wakes up and his arm has been replaced by a bionic arm.
Speaker: And his regular arm was just, I mean, the shurikens and landing in the pool.
Speaker: That was just too much for his arm.
Speaker: Too much.
Speaker: They had to cut it off.
Speaker: They had to cut the damn arm off.
Speaker: We wish that we could have asked your permission first, but time was of the essence.
Speaker: We wish we could have.
Speaker: Time was of the essence.
Speaker: We had to put this damn arm on.
Speaker: It's like a Deus Ex, you know, human revolution.
Speaker: They just decided, well, you were dying and we have this cool arm that we wanted to test out.
Speaker: So like, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: You know, if it worked, if it was good enough for Robocop, it's good enough for you.
Speaker: Metal Gear Solid 5 starts exactly the same way.
Speaker: Kojima read this book and said, I want the same intro in my game.
Speaker: I mean, he knew what he was doing.
Speaker: Where Snake and Master Miller eat hot boxes of pizza and then eat his sasam.
Speaker: This game really does have some real Metal Gear energy to some of the scenes.
Speaker: I was going to say, there is some parts of this book where it did kind of feel like... It did feel very Metal Gear-y, which is interesting considering...
Speaker: the game that they did after Rearms, what that kind of rifts on, but I guess we can get into that a little bit later.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he has, the arm has like a lot of abilities, including it can do grapple.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Way more than the game.
Speaker: Oh, way more, way more.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: So in the, in the game, the only thing it has is the grapple.
Speaker: Yes, you got a grapple.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: In this, it has it has most importantly, the thing that he uses probably almost as much as the goddamn grapple is the the hot finger, the hot finger, the hot, the hot finger.
Speaker: Where's that branding hot cider?
Speaker: Hot cider with a hot finger.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's got a hot, he's got a hot finger.
Speaker: And he also has an electromagnetic field that forces people to tell the truth.
Speaker: Hot finger and a lecture finger and a truth telling finger.
Speaker: He's got a lot of fingers on this.
Speaker: He's very inspector gadget in regards to that's exactly the note I wrote inspector gadget.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: No, it's funny because on one hand, the more I thought of, I was like, I was like, this is so, why did they do this?
Speaker: What's the point of this?
Speaker: And it won't be the first time that I asked that question.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But I started to think about it in terms of like, well, when you think about it,
Speaker: How interesting can you make 110 pages of, he swang, and he swang some more, and he felt like Spider-Man.
Speaker: Which is very relevant for this book in regards to, there are chapters of this book where you completely glaze over, because it's like, he ran into the room, and the room was doing this, and then he did this, and it's like...
Speaker: but yeah the magic the magic finger stuff was very kind of like it made me think of like jane like probably judith bauer watched like some james bond films because it was very james bond writing in regards to he gets to a bit where he will like he'll be put in a situation which can only use like something that can melt a door and then like the script writers will write that in and then make sure to go back to get to say to q okay give him the item that lets him melt it all
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Just completely single use abilities.
Speaker: Single use tools.
Speaker: Q is going to give you a thing that makes cats run around like crazy.
Speaker: Well, that's awfully specific.
Speaker: It's like, well, you'll use it.
Speaker: Trust me.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: So Jack is going to go into the bad territory.
Speaker: He's talking to the captain and the captain's like, you're going into the bad territory and you're going to fight the bad.
Speaker: You're going to save Super Joe.
Speaker: You're going to save Super Joe, but Super Joe's probably going to die and you're probably going to die.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we only find that out because he uses his... The truth-telling.
Speaker: By the way, you have a truth-telling finger.
Speaker: And he goes, does it work on you?
Speaker: And he goes, well, test it in C. Pulls out the truth-telling finger and he goes, how successful am I going to be on this mission?
Speaker: He's like, you're probably going to die.
Speaker: Yeah, probably going to die.
Speaker: You answered the joke.
Speaker: Yeah, one of my chances, Slim, the captain answered, it's a suicide mission.
Speaker: It's a suicide mission.
Speaker: Chapter three.
Speaker: Chapter three.
Speaker: And chapter three, he spends weeks...
Speaker: He spends four weeks training his hot finger.
Speaker: And the captain tells, and then he has another conversation with the captain.
Speaker: The captain tells him he's replaceable, but the arm is not.
Speaker: So if you're going to die, if you're going to die, die in a way that like saves the arm.
Speaker: So we can come and get it.
Speaker: But he also says, you can still back out, Jack.
Speaker: And then he goes, no, I'm ready for the mission.
Speaker: I'm ready to go.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm ready.
Speaker: So Jack is on a he gets on a supersonic jet.
Speaker: He goes to the Pacific and he gets on a helicopter and he flies his helicopter to stage one.
Speaker: Stage one.
Speaker: Stage one.
Speaker: They're just, this is what like all these cities and towns in Buenos Aires are called.
Speaker: Stage one.
Speaker: Stage 16.
Speaker: Yeah, that's, it's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: It's stage one.
Speaker: And he, chapter four now, Jack is infiltrating stage one and he's, he's,
Speaker: ducking his way around troopers and he gets his and they're like, oh, my God, he's moving too fast.
Speaker: And he gets into the comms room when he talks to M.A.
Speaker: one, who is a double agent who tells him, he's like, you got to go over here.
Speaker: You got to go through that door and you just got to run and move.
Speaker: And it's pretty much the same conversation you have in the game with this guy.
Speaker: It's like ignore the ignore the enemy.
Speaker: Just go.
Speaker: And then he switches over to the eavesdrop setting and he listens to a message on the bad channel.
Speaker: And they make it like there is a there's a conversation where it's like, Commander, watch out for the the elevator.
Speaker: And then the other guy goes, we have you now.
Speaker: And I'm like,
Speaker: In the game, it never made any sense, that scene.
Speaker: The author manages to make it somewhat make more sense in the book.
Speaker: She actually writes in a... So he runs around, he's ducking and dodging and diving through the... And he gets on an elevator at one point, and the elevator explodes.
Speaker: And that was what the guys were referring to, is that...
Speaker: that they rig the elevator or explode when he got on it because we have you now, Jack.
Speaker: And he begins falling down the elevator shaft and chapter four ends with schmuck bait of him forgetting how to use his arm.
Speaker: I was going to say, I made a note of that.
Speaker: Then something worse happened.
Speaker: He forgot how to work the grappling hook on his bionic arm.
Speaker: So, Phil, you said you were...
Speaker: Phil, do you remember what schmuck bait is, right?
Speaker: Schmuck bait?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not offhand.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So this is a term I remember learning from Chris Auer.
Speaker: This is the term in writer's rooms for when you end an episode on a cliffhanger, but it's the main character, or no, you end an act in a TV show on a cliffhanger and resolve it immediately after the commercial break.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I do remember that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Good name.
Speaker: I always think of, I think it's like the American version of MasterChef, a sudden, and it's like, after the break, and it like, cuts to a guy, and it's like, this food is awful.
Speaker: And you like smash his plate on the floor.
Speaker: They cut afterwards, and they go, this food is awful.
Speaker: Smash.
Speaker: Awfully good.
Speaker: And now no one's going to be able to eat this after me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What the fuck just happened?
Speaker: Can I ask another quick question?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: About these World of Shack Powerpugs.
Speaker: Every few section, like chapter four has ended with game hints.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's all of the worlds of power books have the upside down game hints.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The game hints.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Some of them are not even accurate though.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: No, I was going to say some of these seem like wildly off, but some of them are not helpful in the slightest.
Speaker: That's part of the hook, I guess, for like, hey, buy this book based on a game that you recognize and it also has hints.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I think they should do that with, like, I think, like, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian should also have, like, hints, like, at the end of sections.
Speaker: It's just like...
Speaker: White wine stains can help get red wine stains out of carfers.
Speaker: If we're talking blood meridian, I think they should end every chapter with, if you're going to keep reading, we will recommend half a bottle of Glenlivet to soften the blow.
Speaker: Use baking soda to get hard to remove stains out of pants.
Speaker: Are you crying a lot?
Speaker: Use Visine because you're dehydrating your eyes.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Phil, how was the most recent Cormac McCarthy book?
Speaker: You read it, right?
Speaker: Yeah, it was very tedious.
Speaker: Very tedious?
Speaker: It was very interesting.
Speaker: I would read it.
Speaker: And it would be really interesting because Cormac McCarthy is a brilliant writer.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And then he'd go off on some tangent about something that wasn't clear what the hell we're talking about.
Speaker: And it would go on for 20, 30, 40 pages.
Speaker: And in my head, I would go, okay, old man, get the fuck on with it.
Speaker: And it's like Cormac McCarthy.
Speaker: It's like Cormac McCarthy was listening to me and he'd go, you're right.
Speaker: And I get like another 30, 40 pages of the most engaging, horrifying, beautiful shit.
Speaker: So he'd be like, I couldn't put it down, but I wanted to a lot of the time.
Speaker: So it needed some tightening up.
Speaker: Oh, hi, Jonsi.
Speaker: Oh, Kitty.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: They're going to be bothering me until I feed them.
Speaker: Kevin, could you imagine being on a podcast where you go off on like 30, 40, 40 minute challenges that have nothing to do with it?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: That's because that's because we run a very tight ship here and we never allow ourselves to be distracted from the task at hand.
Speaker: Ever.
Speaker: Are both the cats in the room?
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: I'm going to, you guys just give me five minutes.
Speaker: I'm going to feed them.
Speaker: Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker: They're going to be insufferable.
Speaker: Because I saw Ripley like kind of walking around in circles behind you.
Speaker: They're going to, yeah, they're going to, Jonesy, when he is hungry, he will get right here and he'll just like look at me and just be like, hello, food.
Speaker: Here we are.
Speaker: Hello, friend.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Father.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I'll be right back.
Speaker: You guys keep going.
Speaker: Go feed them.
Speaker: Come on, you idiots.
Speaker: All right, so Phil has gotten up to feed his cats.
Speaker: They're very hungry, and we're left with an empty frame.
Speaker: Just Phil's microphone hanging there.
Speaker: I'm appreciating looking at his shelf of books and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, he's got a lot of books back there, and then he's got a lot of artwork hanging up.
Speaker: He's got straight ahead, you see a drawing of the Flatwoods monster, which is a- Oh, is that what that is?
Speaker: I was more- Yeah.
Speaker: The only thing I could- Well, apart from the question about Bluff and Mario, the thing I could recognize is what's next to it, which is the Max, I think.
Speaker: I think it is.
Speaker: Yeah, from the MTV, well, based on the comic book, but from the 90s MTV liquid television series, The Max.
Speaker: The max, and that's with two X's.
Speaker: The two X's.
Speaker: You got a secret of mana poster up there.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: An illustration of a, is that, I guess, a praying mantis?
Speaker: He loves praying mantis.
Speaker: Phil used to raise praying mantises.
Speaker: Did he really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that was, he's a bug guy.
Speaker: You can ask him pretty much anything about bugs, and he'll have an answer.
Speaker: If he was a Pokemon trainer that you would encounter on the trail, he would be Bugmaster Phil.
Speaker: He would have insect Pokemon.
Speaker: Caterpies and Beegels and stuff like that.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: We've determined that if you were a Pokemon trainer that you would have most entirely insect-based Pokemon.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Without question.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's...
Speaker: That's kind of my thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've got, you can't see them from here, but I've got a wall of different preserved insects.
Speaker: Oh, interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've collected over the years.
Speaker: So you used to raise mantises, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I used to breed and raise praying mantises, various types.
Speaker: Uh, uh,
Speaker: I was very, very single in those days.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I mean, I remember you telling me a story about like having somebody over and you just had like a wall of cases of mantises, like just stacked up.
Speaker: And that has got to be disconcerting for anyone who...
Speaker: Yeah, for two reasons.
Speaker: Well, three, technically.
Speaker: The first and most obvious one being they're praying mantises.
Speaker: And there's nothing more alien and weird looking in the animal kingdom than outside of like the Marianas Trench.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But they're also one of the only insects that have necks so they can turn their head to look at you.
Speaker: which is unnerving and and you they are also cannibalistic and so you have to keep each of them in their own little individual container so it's this library of carnivorous insects and I was this was like our third date and she'd never been to my place before and
Speaker: She knew about this.
Speaker: Like I talked about it in a class we were in together.
Speaker: But she can only imagine so much.
Speaker: That was basically her exact stance on the whole thing.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We walked in because we were going to get a cup of coffee.
Speaker: We were going to have some coffee at my place before we went out to eat.
Speaker: And we walked in and all the madnesses just go.
Speaker: And I'll never forget, she just stopped dead in her tracks and just went, oh.
Speaker: And I just said, I look like a serial killer.
Speaker: And she was like, no, no.
Speaker: She was so sweet.
Speaker: She was like, no, no, no.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: I knew.
Speaker: It's just very dramatic.
Speaker: There's a lot of them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a lot of them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was a whole thing.
Speaker: And I kept a giant Vietnamese centipede for a while, some scorpions.
Speaker: I'm a big invertebrate guy.
Speaker: So now I have cats and a wife.
Speaker: So I'm content.
Speaker: You're content.
Speaker: And your gin.
Speaker: And your gin.
Speaker: And my gin.
Speaker: I make gin and that helps.
Speaker: And I drink sherry.
Speaker: So life is good.
Speaker: Oh, lovely.
Speaker: Do you pair alcohols with whatever books you're reading?
Speaker: Sometimes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like pairing foods all the time.
Speaker: But you didn't intentionally pair sherry with FX and Heinz.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I do enjoy drinking sherry in particular while we do Pixel Lit, though.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Because Pixel Lit, we tend to record it at the end of my day.
Speaker: And sherry is one of my favorite after-work sherry.
Speaker: kind of settle down and put on your smoking jacket and, you know, chill out kind of beverage.
Speaker: I'm a big fan of it.
Speaker: Makes sense.
Speaker: I used to work in the wine industry, so I've got all kinds of weird alcoholic kinks.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: Phil's got his wine.
Speaker: Everybody has their kinks, which brings us nicely back to chapter five.
Speaker: Back to chapter five, in which there's some expressly discussed kinks.
Speaker: Jack does have a quick fantasy, yes.
Speaker: He does.
Speaker: He continues through the base and he has some fantasies about what he would like to do to Kilt while Kilt was resting at night.
Speaker: That is a thing that happens in the book.
Speaker: He, Jack fantasizes about doing things to kill.
Speaker: Jack is using a stun gun on all the guards because of course, no heroes in Worlds of Power kill anybody.
Speaker: No live ammo.
Speaker: I'm not even sure Solid Snake killed anybody in the Metal Gear book.
Speaker: Did not.
Speaker: No, I don't think so.
Speaker: No, it was all sleeping darts or whatever.
Speaker: Yeah, or Kung Fu or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, or Kung Fu.
Speaker: There's kind of...
Speaker: There's a lot of karate chops.
Speaker: There's a lot of karate chops in this book.
Speaker: Jack ends up captured by kilt in a cage.
Speaker: It's like basically the trash compactor scene from Star Wars.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: MA1 is presumed dead.
Speaker: And Jack's like, how do I get out?
Speaker: And be like, oh, I have a grappling hook.
Speaker: And he grapple hooks out of the room.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Man, that would have really taken the tension out of George Lucas's beloved film, Star Wars, is it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which was hilarious, though, because in the next scene, Luke uses a grappling hook to get across.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Get on that bridge.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: That film in general, it's just like all tension would be released if just Luke Skywalker had always had a grappling hook.
Speaker: It just has that grappling hook, you know?
Speaker: So chapter six, Jack is able to get it out of the room by using his grappling hood.
Speaker: He does not use his hot finger because he realizes it would fry him.
Speaker: The base is on fucking red alert, high alert.
Speaker: There's guards running all over the place.
Speaker: Jack gets shot, but it's only a flesh wound.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: He's not in terrible shape.
Speaker: And he signals his helicopter.
Speaker: But, oh, no, bad soldiers are closing in.
Speaker: And that's pretty much chapter six.
Speaker: I made a note, by the way, because I did my best to read chapter six.
Speaker: My only note says, nothing to say other than the chapter is only three pages long.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Three pages compared to chapter one, which is like a nice solid 12 pages to introduce the world of Bionic Lander.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's, there's no rhyme or reason to how they, they, they space these out at all.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: What, what, what, where does the chapter start and where does it end?
Speaker: Just like, Oh, well, whatever's interesting.
Speaker: It ends when it ends.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We don't question the author's creative method here at Worlds of Power.
Speaker: Absolutely not.
Speaker: We understand that authors are the ultimate creators.
Speaker: Do you think that was Judith's idea?
Speaker: Do you think that was...
Speaker: Levi something?
Speaker: There was also another writer involved in this, so I don't know what that unfolded, but there's three writers.
Speaker: There's obviously... Yeah, so... Seth Godin is the creator.
Speaker: There's somebody that's thanked for something.
Speaker: There's somebody who wrote the outline, and then I think Judith wrote the book.
Speaker: I got story created by Capcom and Eric line wand.
Speaker: That was it.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: Eric Leinwand.
Speaker: I don't know who that is.
Speaker: He was the person who said, okay, chapter six, three pages.
Speaker: You know, based on the brief conversation we had with Seth about these, it is very much, it's impossible to say because it depended entirely on the author half the time.
Speaker: Sometimes he would like have to squeeze blood out of a stone and other times he had a great story about a person who he said will remain nameless.
Speaker: We still don't know which one it is.
Speaker: who got so invested in the book and wouldn't stop tinkering with it and toying with it.
Speaker: And Seth Godin actually had to go to his house and like physically take the manuscript from him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because he was like, no, I could still do this and I still want to do that.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: And we're still not sure which one it is, but... It's in that George RR R. Martin wrote, like, he was the one who wrote the Mega Man 2 book, and they just, like, they just wrote somebody else's name on it.
Speaker: He's like, no, I got an idea.
Speaker: I really want to... The robot master's going to have this really interesting political lineage.
Speaker: It's like...
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: In between, in between writing that weird, uh, modern beauty and the beast TV show that he did.
Speaker: Uh, he was, he was writing worlds of power.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah, he was.
Speaker: He was working on a really interesting bubble bubble book, but they were just like, no, it's fast.
Speaker: It's cut the funding.
Speaker: Find another project.
Speaker: Go back to those ice and fire books.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's, you know, it's hilarious is like Seth Godin is not a gamer at all.
Speaker: He is unable to play games.
Speaker: It gives him like a headache or something like that.
Speaker: So he just like he he he wrote a lot of game guides just by watching his like nephew play.
Speaker: I want to say was the was the story behind that is like he's like, yeah, just just play.
Speaker: I'll watch and we'll write.
Speaker: I'll write down notes on what you have to do in the game.
Speaker: Yeah, something like that.
Speaker: Interesting guy, though.
Speaker: He's a really interesting guy.
Speaker: That was a fun interview.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, chapter seven, he gets out of there by pressing the speed lift button.
Speaker: Whoosh.
Speaker: Whoosh.
Speaker: Whoosh.
Speaker: I wrote down whoosh as a note.
Speaker: I made a screenshot of whoosh.
Speaker: Which then led to a lot of introspection about Jack running his left hand across his bionic arm.
Speaker: If it hadn't been for the arm, he would have been dead about 30 seconds into the mission.
Speaker: He went to the lifelife plastic, wishing it was his real arm.
Speaker: Too bad he couldn't have both.
Speaker: yeah there's like a lot there's like a sudden moment of like you know he's like he has emotions uh about the arm he goes back and forth on it a lot he does um by the way i will surprise no one that on the list of books after uh that robert another robert heinlein book makes i was i
Speaker: I made notes about, because I didn't want to hop ahead, but I did make notes about the books that were said, hey, if you like this.
Speaker: And one of them was about a girl who was in an accident who then had to live with a prosthetic.
Speaker: And I was like,
Speaker: Seems a bit gritty and real versus, hey, if you like Bionic Mando, you might... I guess I wonder... Is this where that came from?
Speaker: Maybe?
Speaker: I can't say for sure, but we did... It's like the first one we read, Mega Man 2.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: It has them in the back.
Speaker: And now, based...
Speaker: Now, bear in mind, on top of all of this, listeners, before we even started recording, I pointed out that Mega Man 2 is actually a junior Worlds of Power book.
Speaker: So it's like rudimentary Worlds of Power.
Speaker: And in the back here...
Speaker: For dear readers, I hope you liked reading Mega Man 2.
Speaker: Here's a list of other books I thought you might like.
Speaker: The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key.
Speaker: Have Space Suit Will Travel by Robert Heinlein.
Speaker: How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell.
Speaker: I robot by Isaac Asimov, my robot buddy by Alfred Sloat and the phantom toll booth by Norton just like, it'll be like age.
Speaker: It'll be like three of them will be age appropriate.
Speaker: And then two of them will be like the old Testament.
Speaker: If you, if you, if you like this, you're telling kids to read Robert, you're reading, telling kids to read a Robert Heinle, Robert go fascism Heinlein.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If you like this book, you will also like, we'll remember it for you wholesale and super fudge.
Speaker: If you like this book about Bionic Commandio, you'll love the things they carried.
Speaker: If you enjoyed this fascism, you might also enjoy the Turner Diaries.
Speaker: Did you have to read the things they carried, Phil, in high school?
Speaker: No, I... Oh, sorry.
Speaker: Have to, fucking James.
Speaker: You got to.
Speaker: James, have you ever read it?
Speaker: I don't even know what it is.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: It's a, it's a God.
Speaker: It's, it's a really, it's a really heavy book about the Vietnam war.
Speaker: And it's just about like the things soldiers left behind after they died.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The things they carried like a photo or, or like, you know, whatever.
Speaker: And it's stories about that.
Speaker: And it's like, it is the, it's just the biggest punch in the gut bummer of a
Speaker: It's written.
Speaker: It's basically the, I mean, it's, it's basically the memoirs of the guy who wrote it.
Speaker: Like it's all, it's for the most part, very true stories.
Speaker: I remember in the first like five pages or something, one of the things that they carried, they would talk about the medics carrying M&Ms so that they could pretend that they were life-saving pills.
Speaker: And you're like, like this, this guy's bleeding out and he's dying and you feed him an M&M and say, you're going to be all right, buddy.
Speaker: Just swallow that down.
Speaker: It's like, okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm invested.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: You pulled me in with this.
Speaker: And was that book recommended on the back of the Nunda Gaiden?
Speaker: No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: But we're not too far off at this point.
Speaker: Alongside Judy Blume.
Speaker: We're a sneeze away from Are You There, God?
Speaker: It's Me, Margaret, and The Things They Carried.
Speaker: I don't want to go too far off the show, but I do just want to quickly mention.
Speaker: So when I was, so our school curriculum was, they hadn't updated since the 80s.
Speaker: So all of our reading material was all to do with nuclear holocaust stuff.
Speaker: And one of the books that we read was called like Children of the Dust.
Speaker: And it was literally like this harrowing story about three generations of children.
Speaker: before, like, right on the cusp of war, the first, like, generation of that, and then, like, the generation afterwards.
Speaker: And it's just, like, these incredibly detailed explanations of just, like, oh, yeah, everyone's gone blind because of the brightness.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: The water's completely irradiated, so you can't drink any of it, and, uh...
Speaker: just like reams of diesel about this and it's just like hmm yeah can we two romeo and juliet next semester i think that'd be a bit more please we would like we would like to turn it down a notch into teen suicide oh yeah i need a little break
Speaker: It's been a thing with my wife basically since we've met.
Speaker: I get night terrors and I talk in my sleep and all kinds of unnerving shit.
Speaker: And I'll wake up.
Speaker: And I'll look at Emily and I'll go, yeah, I just had crazy bad dreams last night.
Speaker: And she'll go, oh, is that so?
Speaker: Could it be that you were reading a fucking horrifying horror novel before you went to bed?
Speaker: I know you're into that, sweetie, but maybe just something light, something friendly to the point that...
Speaker: the week of our wedding, she put a moratorium.
Speaker: She's like, she's like, cause I was like, I gotta bring a book.
Speaker: I gotta bring a book to the hotel, you know?
Speaker: And she said, you're not bringing horror.
Speaker: You're not, it's our, it is our wedding.
Speaker: You're not bringing.
Speaker: So I brought, I brought a star Wars novel to read.
Speaker: And she's like, that's great.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Hi, high sci-fi adventure.
Speaker: Go for it, honey.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: May the force be with you because if you read a horror novel during our wedding weekend, I won't be.
Speaker: So we get to chapter seven.
Speaker: We're in chapter seven.
Speaker: Speed lift whoosh.
Speaker: He has a dilemma about his biological arm and he gets to San Gennaro, which is, which is, it's a place in, I guess, fake Argentina.
Speaker: I don't even know where this is supposed to be.
Speaker: That's the only thing that's important.
Speaker: It's orange trees.
Speaker: It's orange trees.
Speaker: So it's in tropical, you know, tropical area.
Speaker: So he sees a woman who he thinks, I wrote, I highlighted this.
Speaker: Jack thought she looked like she might be Kilt's sister and he didn't trust her for one second.
Speaker: Welcome to San Gennaro, the woman said smoothly, giving him the once over with her eyes.
Speaker: We are a peaceful village and we stay that way because we have rules.
Speaker: If you use weapons here, you will be killed.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Completely natural, naturalistic writing.
Speaker: That's what you're on.
Speaker: Totally, totally the first thing you would say to somebody.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Death penalty if you shoot a gun.
Speaker: He runs into town.
Speaker: I was about to say, is that followed by a cafe advertising in Plot Capitals?
Speaker: The best pizza in the world.
Speaker: The best pizza in the world.
Speaker: He runs to a cafe that has the best pizza in the world.
Speaker: Pizza returns.
Speaker: Pizza comes back, folks.
Speaker: Pizza comes back and he gets there.
Speaker: Jack made a beeline for it.
Speaker: He hadn't eaten pizza since that night in Buenos Aires with Joe.
Speaker: Oh, Joe, how he loved his tender touch.
Speaker: The Federation cafeteria was mean potato's place.
Speaker: And he meets Heather Willis, who is another spy for the Federation, and she leaves him a note about the flare bombs that he'll need in stage four.
Speaker: And he wolfs down this pizza.
Speaker: Then he meets a really annoying kid called Tiger.
Speaker: His short rounds.
Speaker: I was just going to short round.
Speaker: He meets Short Round and Short Round like guides him around town and he gets to an arcade where the flare bombs are supposed to be hidden in a room behind the arcade, except the room is like blue lights and spikes on the floor and the flare bombs are on a shelf on the other side of the spikes.
Speaker: Like, guys, you don't have to actually adapt to
Speaker: The trap rooms.
Speaker: It is funny though, because that is in, not only is it in the NES one, it has also been rearmed and it looks exactly like that, but in high definition.
Speaker: Just like, you might as well have said he walked into a room.
Speaker: It looked like a video game level.
Speaker: Anyway, there were spikes.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: There were spikes.
Speaker: It was three meters by nine meters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he he this is like part of the pit portion from earlier that that started the book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The pit peril.
Speaker: So, yeah, he he gets across and he melts a spike with his hot finger and he gets the bombs.
Speaker: He gets the bombs and he gets it back and he tells Tiger to basically fuck off now.
Speaker: Like he doesn't.
Speaker: He's like, get out of here, kid.
Speaker: You're no good to me, kid.
Speaker: I only have eyes for- Get out of here, kid.
Speaker: You bother me.
Speaker: You bother me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so then he talks to the captain who's more concerned about the arm than him.
Speaker: And he sees Heather walking away.
Speaker: She's going towards the boats.
Speaker: There's a lot of like weird details in here that don't matter at all.
Speaker: And he gets to stage four on his helicopter and he outmaneuvers the bad jets in his helicopter, which I would like to say is probably impossible.
Speaker: Like, yeah.
Speaker: Like a helicopter versus a jet.
Speaker: There should really be no... Composition.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But we are also talking about helicopters that have autopilot settings.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: We just have a lot of armor and autopilot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, he is able to... And he jumps down and he ends up in the water and he's fighting a giant octopus.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, what is this that the deleted scene from the Goonies?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It became Cobra Triangle out of fucking nowhere.
Speaker: Judith was watching footage of the game that they sent over, but it was actually only like a level from DuckTales spliced in there.
Speaker: She didn't notice the graphics had changed and she went, oh yeah, this just must be what happens in Exotic Thunder.
Speaker: This is fine.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: I think she just was familiar enough with video games that she was like, these are just soldiers that he's fighting.
Speaker: The occasional robot.
Speaker: Video games have giant octopuses.
Speaker: I'll put that in there.
Speaker: That'll spice things up.
Speaker: Like, no!
Speaker: No!
Speaker: you doing and then she goes like you know this this this music from this moon level really slaps and no one would disagree have you ever did you ever hear the the version that they did in the ducktales animated series the recent animated series oh yeah where i had um sung by the cousin's mother yeah
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So there's a moment.
Speaker: What's what's her name?
Speaker: The the the mother of the ducks who was lost on it.
Speaker: Basically, she's lost on the moon.
Speaker: And there's like a scene where it cuts to her and she is singing a song to like this spider monster or whatever to get it to go to sleep.
Speaker: and it's that song it was the moon oh that's they used the the music the music bed for the moon theme and she added lyrics to it and it was like it was such a neat little moment that's that recent cartoons like it's decent i mean it's really good things where it's like they countered it after like four seasons people like no it should have went on forever but
Speaker: It's like, no, they did quite a lot of good stuff with it.
Speaker: It was really good.
Speaker: David Tennant as Uncle Scrooge.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: A couple of SNL guys as the nephews.
Speaker: Danny Puddy.
Speaker: Bobby Monaghan and stuff like that.
Speaker: Bobby Monaghan.
Speaker: The weirdest choice was...
Speaker: Whatever the scientist is called, fixes Donald Duck's voice.
Speaker: And for a single episode, he speaks like Don Cheadle.
Speaker: He's Don Cheadle.
Speaker: He's Don Cheadle, yeah.
Speaker: It's like he puts something on his throat to fix the problem he has with his vocal cords.
Speaker: And he's like, I can speak clearly now.
Speaker: And it's just Don Cheadle.
Speaker: He's just Don Cheadle.
Speaker: Oh, that's fun.
Speaker: Okay, that's great.
Speaker: Because when you think of Donald Duk, you do think, oh, yeah, the guy who does the bad Cockney accent in Ocean's 11.
Speaker: That's my guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're at Barney.
Speaker: Oh, leave it out.
Speaker: Oh, leave it out.
Speaker: Leave it out.
Speaker: So bad.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: But so.
Speaker: Chapter eight.
Speaker: Chapter eight.
Speaker: Chapter eight.
Speaker: This is where I actually mislabeled my notes.
Speaker: But he fights the giant octopus and he wins.
Speaker: Because he remembers he has a second grappling hook on his hands.
Speaker: No, it surprises him.
Speaker: He didn't even know about the second one.
Speaker: Or he realizes he has a second one and was like, oh, the captain must have forgotten.
Speaker: And instead of it ripping his arm out of the socket, it actually provides more force to get him away.
Speaker: Get him away from the octopus.
Speaker: From the octopus.
Speaker: Cool, cool.
Speaker: You are a bionic.
Speaker: So he he he gets through the octopus and he he gets in the base and it's a bunch of obstacle courses.
Speaker: He's just like and that's actually like later levels of Bionic Commando are very obstacle course heavy where it's just like swinging.
Speaker: There's like there is no platforms.
Speaker: It's just like swinging across a bunch of areas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Over spikes and stuff.
Speaker: And he he he
Speaker: Gets his way past the eye and he gets into the communications room and he intercepts a message between kilt and the hand.
Speaker: Not the daredevil one.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Not the cool one.
Speaker: Not the ninjas from daredevil, but a guy called the hand.
Speaker: Different ninjas.
Speaker: Different ninjas, yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Chapter 11.
Speaker: That's actually the last chapter I have notes on.
Speaker: Well, I was doing my notes.
Speaker: We're getting there.
Speaker: We're getting there.
Speaker: I was doing my notes and then I didn't finish.
Speaker: So Jack is crawling through a sewer and he gets caught by a Venus flytrap.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I just started thinking of that level in that game that the Game Grumps were playing.
Speaker: It was like the really hard one where he's fighting the plants.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, fuck.
Speaker: It was a fan-made game.
Speaker: It was a fan ROM game.
Speaker: It was like Action Boy or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, something like that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And Aaron is just absolutely losing his shit fighting this plant.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Green plant, blue plant, purple plant.
Speaker: That's what I thought of with the Venus flytrap.
Speaker: You know what is funny, though?
Speaker: And I made a note of this is that apparently, like, even though he's fighting a like an ascension Venus flytrap, Jack thoughts over what he learns about plant warfare in spy school.
Speaker: So apparently this is an ongoing problem.
Speaker: Like plant warfare seems to be a thing that he's the US Army is aware of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, he's never surprised by this giant octopus.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He knows about this shit.
Speaker: And okay, fine.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: So I'm not going to be surprised either.
Speaker: Yeah, no.
Speaker: A lot of spec ops work in Argentina and Buenos Aires.
Speaker: They just use giants.
Speaker: They use Audrey 2s as part of that.
Speaker: It's just a whole bunch of Audrey 2s.
Speaker: Yeah, less of a year, but the idea is the same.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we get to, he makes his, he continues his way through and he's, he's, he's able to get to the safe where the wide gun is and he gets the wide gun.
Speaker: Well, I was going to say, that's enough, what did you call him?
Speaker: Like a stupid cliff, like a dummy's cliffhanger or whatever.
Speaker: Yeah, Schmuck Bay.
Speaker: Schmuck Bay.
Speaker: Schmuck Bay, because it was like, what if Kilt had rigged the combination to fool him?
Speaker: Regretted he.
Speaker: Jack pulled open the door.
Speaker: Beginner chapter 12.
Speaker: Jack pulled the guy going out of the safe.
Speaker: Glad to still be in one piece.
Speaker: Everything was fine.
Speaker: Everything was fine.
Speaker: Nothing bad happened at all.
Speaker: Nothing bad happens.
Speaker: So chapter 12.
Speaker: He has the wide gun now and he's going on a rendezvous with Heather Willis in stage 15.
Speaker: And we get some more backstory about Heather Willis and how she's the harlot that Super Joe was actually dating and breaking up his loving relationship with Super Joe.
Speaker: Her and Super Joe were supposed to get married in New York City after the Buenos Aires mission.
Speaker: But then he got captured by Kilt,
Speaker: Because we don't know why there's been no motivation for that scene yet, but who cares?
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: Let's be real.
Speaker: And I guess maybe now reading through this properly again,
Speaker: Because they kept switching between whether they were the Bads or whether they were the Naz.
Speaker: But from what I understand now, the Bads are working for the Naz?
Speaker: The Bads came after the Naz?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's the Naz, and then the Naz were defeated, and now there's the Bads.
Speaker: The Naz came first, and then after the Naz were defeated, they became the Neo-Naz.
Speaker: Sorry, the Bads.
Speaker: The Bads.
Speaker: And Master D was a Naz scientist.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And then NASA hired him.
Speaker: As part of Operation Paperclip.
Speaker: As part of Operation Paperclip.
Speaker: Operation Paper Put Togetherer thingy.
Speaker: Operation Clippy.
Speaker: It looks like you're trying to repurpose Nazi scientists.
Speaker: Here's how I can help.
Speaker: Hey, Vuna, do you need help today?
Speaker: This looks very similar to the V2.
Speaker: Do you want me to... V-Gates!
Speaker: V-Gates, Herr... I'll just go, Herr Kommissar.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: So he meets up with Heather and he is, he's back to wolfing down food, man.
Speaker: He, there's no, he only wolfs food.
Speaker: There is no other way that he eats food other than wolfing it down.
Speaker: He eats like a boy in an Archie comic.
Speaker: Like he's like, I'm going to have three of all the menu.
Speaker: And like, he eats like joke heads.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's shoving his head full of food.
Speaker: Handful, just burgers one by one.
Speaker: He's like, Jughead or the, who's the dude who's like, I'll pay you.
Speaker: Wimpy from the Popeye comics.
Speaker: He's Wimpy, yeah.
Speaker: I will Dougie pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today.
Speaker: Or like those Silver Age Superman comics where it's like, I need to eat all these hamburgers and they'll kill Jimmy Olsen on the
Speaker: Oh yeah, those Silver Age Superman comics were like peak schmuck bait comics.
Speaker: Oh yeah, it's like, oh no, Superman is evil and he's the Pope now.
Speaker: Oh, I gotta buy this comic, I gotta know more.
Speaker: It was like, Superman is gonna throw Jimmy Olsen off of a cliff or something.
Speaker: Sorry Jimmy, you know my secrets, you're not allowed to live anymore.
Speaker: God, I love those covers.
Speaker: And then the story would not have really anything to do with that.
Speaker: But, you know, it's got people in the door, you know?
Speaker: That's what those new DC movies are missing out on.
Speaker: Like, they should have trailers which are edited like that, where it's...
Speaker: I am kind of generally amazed that there isn't more trolling in trailers.
Speaker: It just feels like it's going to happen and it's going to take all of us so off guard one day where it's just going to be
Speaker: you know, touted as some sort of romantic comedy or something.
Speaker: And people, it's going to be torture porn and it's going to piss everyone off.
Speaker: What was that movie that said, that was like Steven Seagal is going to star in it.
Speaker: And then Steven Seagal dies in the first five minutes.
Speaker: Oh, oh, yeah, I know.
Speaker: It's a more recent film.
Speaker: And I know I know the one you mean by I can't remember.
Speaker: Yeah, he's like, he's like, he's like, oh, he's going to save everybody.
Speaker: And then he's like, it's thrown out a plane.
Speaker: He gets thrown out of like a jet or something like that.
Speaker: It's like, oh,
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's sort of like Sam Jackson in Deep Blue Sea.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's towards the end though, I suppose.
Speaker: That's like at the midway point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a little bit further in.
Speaker: And then you discover that LL Cool J is the final girl of Deep Blue Sea.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: LL Cool J is the final girl.
Speaker: LL Cool J and Saffron Burrows are the final girls of Deep Lucy.
Speaker: Look, LL Cool J is the final girl in all of our hearts.
Speaker: So I don't see why he shouldn't be such in a sharp movie.
Speaker: I'm just saying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So Tiger interrupts them.
Speaker: That is what his name stands for.
Speaker: God.
Speaker: LL Cool James.
Speaker: LL Cool James.
Speaker: Ladies Love Cool James.
Speaker: Ladies Love Cool James.
Speaker: Ladies Love Cool James.
Speaker: Ladies Love Cool James.
Speaker: Ladies Love Cool James.
Speaker: It sounds like a nickname you come up with in third grade.
Speaker: He probably did.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: The thing is, when you're sure there's an LL Cool J, you go, oh, that might be a really, like, that's got to be something interesting.
Speaker: That works.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That might be a thing.
Speaker: And it never is.
