Transcript
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Editor Kevin here.
Speaker: Just to drop in before the show starts, a little note that this episode ended up going super long.
Speaker: So I've split it into two parts.
Speaker: One part is coming out this week.
Speaker: The second part is coming out next week.
Speaker: So on with the show.
Speaker: It's funny because on the podcast, the amount of times where I will, like, make a joke and Tristan just responds with, mm-hmm, and then continues on.
Speaker: You gotta have a straight man.
Speaker: It's not as good without a straight man.
Speaker: So fun.
Speaker: But you know what's great without a straight man?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: Alongside with me as always is Phil.
Speaker: And today... Hello.
Speaker: Special guest.
Speaker: Scott and I swander.
Speaker: That's me.
Speaker: He's here.
Speaker: Hello everybody.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker: This piece of great literature that we're about to dive into has genuinely just made my day.
Speaker: It's so fun.
Speaker: This is a foundational text.
Speaker: Oh yeah, 100%.
Speaker: This is part of the literary canon of video game novelizations.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Actually, if you think about it, what we are about to talk about, when you think about it, actually might be kind of a foundational text among like video game novelizations.
Speaker: I'm not sure there are any earlier.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that's true.
Speaker: Unless there was a Pac-Man thing.
Speaker: But I don't think there would have been a novelization about Pac-Man.
Speaker: It may be like a comic strip or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like what's the bad story?
Speaker: But you're probably right.
Speaker: Pac-Man would have been the one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That would have been the one.
Speaker: So you're purporting that this may have been the first video game novelization?
Speaker: Is that right?
Speaker: At least this series.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Is it weird... Because this is 89.
Speaker: Is it weird that the title is Mega Man 2?
Speaker: Like, that people might be like, oh, cool.
Speaker: Is there a first one?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yes and no.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That was the first...
Speaker: Yeah, I guess it must have been like a hot ticket item.
Speaker: You're like, we got to sell Mega Man 2, damn it.
Speaker: No time for a novelization of the first one.
Speaker: And, you know, but frankly, if all I knew about Mega Man 1 was the, if you can even call it exposition that we get,
Speaker: Here in Mega Man 2, it must have been a very, very boring game slash book.
Speaker: Well, you know, because Mega Man, prior to this novelization, he didn't feel feelings.
Speaker: No, that's right.
Speaker: He didn't.
Speaker: I was going to ask.
Speaker: So I know nothing about Mega Man.
Speaker: I know nothing.
Speaker: And so this is why you're here.
Speaker: OK, great.
Speaker: So when I was reading this, I was like, wow, this is cool.
Speaker: Like it feels like this must be very close to what actually happens in the game then.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Oh, oh, I mean, here's the thing.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: beat for beat to a severe detriment.
Speaker: It feels like every chapter was describing a part of a level.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just like a sliver of a level.
Speaker: It's a fascinating book.
Speaker: So in case you, the listening audience, have not picked up on it, we're talking about Worlds of Powers Mega Man 2 by FX9.
Speaker: And it's a book created by FX9 written by Ellen Miles.
Speaker: A set of production.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So we were looking into that before the before you jumped on the call, Phil.
Speaker: So Ellen Miles, her her primary work in the aughts was a series of books called The Puppy Palace.
Speaker: And there's like there's like a hundred of them.
Speaker: And it just has adorable puppies on the cover.
Speaker: Yeah, I have a lot of them.
Speaker: I mean, I hope I hope since in the in the time since that her writing ability has gotten a little better.
Speaker: Because if she's selling hundreds of these, I mean, my God.
Speaker: I need to know who FX9 is.
Speaker: FX9 is the guy is Seth Godin.
Speaker: Seth Godin and FX9 are the same person.
Speaker: Same person.
Speaker: I'll never forget.
Speaker: I had a feeling because that was like, that's the guy who gives himself a cool nickname.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, you know, like I remember years and years ago when Cisco came out with the thong song.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And the name of his album was the dragon, which is a really weird, like that's a weird juxtaposition.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like this,
Speaker: here's here's my hit single thong song from my album the dragon yeah and then i saw him on mtv and he referred to himself as the dragon he's i'm cisco the dragon and i remember thinking i get a feeling cisco's the only one who calls himself
Speaker: It's like he's lucky we're all calling him sister.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: It's like you can't get your own nickname to stick.
Speaker: You know, it has to come from somebody else.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a that's a foul right there in terms of.
Speaker: Yeah, that's not that's not allowed.
Speaker: That's not allowed.
Speaker: Nickname, nicknameography.
Speaker: The other thing I'd like to point out on the title page is I didn't even notice this at first.
Speaker: This book is not authorized, sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo of America Incorporated.
Speaker: It's it.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: I just picked up on that too.
Speaker: How did Scholastic get away with this?
Speaker: How did they get away with this?
Speaker: I'm just now noticing there's no there's no Nintendo logo.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: They mentioned Capcom.
Speaker: Like they give Capcom a registered trademark of Capcom USA.
Speaker: How the fuck did they get away with this?
Speaker: I'm not sure.
Speaker: Maybe it's like Capcom allowed it, but there's some weird like...
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: There's some sort of loophole where they had to point out that legalese that it wasn't like Nintendo doesn't approve this when they are very specific because Mega Man at the time was a Nintendo only character.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For the most part, there's some weird ports of Mega Man onto like DOS or whatever.
Speaker: That's that's that's that's their they're funky.
Speaker: Yep, I remember those.
Speaker: I had one of those.
Speaker: It had a total of two robot bosses.
Speaker: Yeah, so why don't we just get right into it?
Speaker: I would love to.
Speaker: I would love to so much talk about this book, please.
Speaker: This book is dedicated to Jerry, the original Mega Man.
Speaker: And right into chapter one.
Speaker: one right off the bat, right off the bat, if I may.
Speaker: Yeah, I'd like to.
Speaker: This might be aging me a bit, but right off the bat, the first thing we get, we are in Dr. Light's.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: What do you call it?
Speaker: His his lab.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It mentions that there are bubbles everywhere.
Speaker: They use the word bubble twice.
Speaker: They sure do.
Speaker: And he opens up the chapter with welcome, welcome to which I immediately ask, is Dr. Light Lawrence?
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: It's so funny too, because I didn't even catch that it starts with, you know, just like welcome, welcome, welcome, like repeating a word because that is so much of like, as I'm reading through this so many times throughout this book, the author will repeat the same word like twice to describe things.
Speaker: And I like made notes of all of them.
Speaker: So there's like, I don't know.
Speaker: There's like a wet, wet world, the blue, blue sky, a long, long shoot, a long, long ladder.
Speaker: Like they just do that so much.
Speaker: And they, they, they like give it to you up front.
Speaker: Very first words.
Speaker: Welcome.
Speaker: Welcome.
Speaker: Like, welcome.
Speaker: Welcome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Gotta be ready.
Speaker: Beakers bubbled over as they boiled away on flaming burners.
Speaker: Bubbles rose through clear pipes.
Speaker: And I don't know what he's, I don't know what's going on here.
Speaker: So because Dr. Light makes robots, uh,
Speaker: What is he doing with all this liquid bubbling over his lap?
Speaker: Moonlighting as an alchemist or something.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: So yeah, chapter one, Dr. Light is laying some track.
Speaker: He's basically saying, oh, Mega Man.
Speaker: That's his voice in the... That's now canon.
Speaker: That's Dr. Light's voice.
Speaker: That's his voice in one of the later games.
Speaker: He's got, I hate to have to tell you this news, but... And then notice how Mega Man responds.
Speaker: I know, I know.
Speaker: Just repeating again.
Speaker: So yeah, Dr. Wily's back and he's got to fight some battles.
Speaker: Yeah, you're gonna have to go defeat him.
Speaker: And Mega Man's just like, cool.
Speaker: But Mega Man, you can't fight him alone.
Speaker: Did either of you also notice the immediate typo on chapter one, page one?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No, where was it?
Speaker: In that final paragraph, Dr. Wily is spelled with an E, whereas everywhere else it's just W-I-L-Y.
Speaker: Immediately.
Speaker: Typo.
Speaker: Everywhere else, no E. Right off the bat.
Speaker: Right off the bat.
Speaker: I gotta wonder if this woman was paid by the letter.
Speaker: Had to squeak one more out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just like, look, the double words are a creative choice.
Speaker: Back off.
Speaker: Now give me that extra 35 cents.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, you're totally right.
Speaker: It's like you turn the page and they say Dr. Wily like five times.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Even before then, they set it up in the paragraph before it with Dr. Wily is just W-I-L-Y.
Speaker: And then they've, yeah, it just caught me off guard immediately.
Speaker: Like, which one is it supposed to be?
Speaker: But
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So they find out that you find out that doctor Dr. Wiley is back.
Speaker: Mega Man's going to have to fight.
Speaker: But he says he says that the what is it here?
Speaker: He says Dr. Light was just as smart as Dr. Wiley, but he used his genius for good, not for evil.
Speaker: You've had long ago to do everything in this power to protect the universe from destruction.
Speaker: And we get a little background information on Mega Man, who is a tool using robot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not a superhero.
Speaker: Not a superhero, except he's referred to as a superhero.
Speaker: dozens of times after this dozens of times um he is he is a he's a superhero and um yeah this is um he's he's got he's like he's like a uh he's like a he's like a gunman he's like a wild west gunman who's retired to the mountains after the first game yeah right
Speaker: He's got like his own little village that he like loves to that.
Speaker: He just talks about home sweet home.
Speaker: I just love his home sweet home.
Speaker: It's just yeah, you imagine him as a farmer out there.
Speaker: It's like, oh, those days are far behind me.
Speaker: That would be I mean, he is a tool using robot.
Speaker: So he would know.
Speaker: He would know.
Speaker: And I love that they where is it?
Speaker: They say that.
Speaker: when dr light basically designed him he made sure that he would only ever think of good like the only so like canon right here megaman's a paladin like that's just right there if it yeah and he's a he's a paladin um what what's the what's the robot um uh dnd robot uh
Speaker: Oh, Warforged.
Speaker: Yeah, Paladin Warforged.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: And his deity is Dr. Light.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah, because he has to obey everything.
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker: They said this twice.
Speaker: They make a point of saying it twice.
Speaker: Mega Man has to obey Dr. Light because he's a robot and what else can he do?
Speaker: And you would think then that the very next thing that happens in this story sets up that he will do something that defies Dr. Light.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't think that happens.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: At no point.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: And at no point in this entire book, which at my count, the edition I have is 73 pages.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At no point in this entire volume,
Speaker: Is there ever a moment where Mega Man has to defy any expectations?
Speaker: You pretty much know exactly what's going to happen.
Speaker: I feel like Ellen Miles literally sat down and watched FX nine or whatever his name is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: FX nine play Mega Man Seth.
Speaker: And so basically Seth Godin wrote an outline
Speaker: He wrote an outline for the story and handed it to our writer.
Speaker: That's that's that's apparently the way these words.
Speaker: I believe that.
Speaker: I absolutely believe that.
Speaker: There's so there's so many examples of that.
Speaker: So and it's so perfectly set up because what happens is there's a failed cloning experiment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where the fuck did that come from?
Speaker: Wild.
Speaker: Well, so it comes from the Robo Transometer XZ4000.
Speaker: But what I love about this device is it is just, I don't know what it's meant to be used for, but it is the Robo Transometer XZ4000.
Speaker: With cloning capabilities.
Speaker: With cloning capabilities.
Speaker: Yeah, that's not its primary purpose.
Speaker: It just has that on top of whatever it's also used for.
Speaker: Yeah, this is just like a model version up from the regular XZ4000 that does not have cloning capabilities.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a personal massage.
Speaker: It's what it's mainly used for.
Speaker: Yeah, it's mainly just has cloning capabilities.
Speaker: So whoopsie, somehow the cloning machine replaces all of his circuits and circuit boards and robot parts with bones and fats and flesh.
Speaker: And somehow Mega Man is now human.
Speaker: Which I gotta tell ya, that's a colossal fuck up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's like if you went to McDonald's and ordered a Big Mac meal and instead they punched you in the face.
Speaker: Like, oops, sorry.
Speaker: Absolutely wrong.
Speaker: And you were just fine with that for some reason.
Speaker: Yeah, you're like, you know what, honestly, I deserved it, you know?
Speaker: You know, I, I, I, my new year's resolution was to cut back on the fast food and you're helping me out.
Speaker: And yeah, yeah, it's, it's, uh,
Speaker: I don't and I've been I was waiting the entire book and maybe this is the wrong.
Speaker: This is this is the wrong horse to back is this book.
Speaker: But I was waiting for the entire right for that to pay off.
Speaker: This is like a this is almost like a Chekhov's gun of like he's human now and he's not a robot.
Speaker: And maybe he doesn't have to follow a set do whatever Dr. Light says.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's a major it is a major complication in the story.
Speaker: And nothing comes up, changes everything about the character from the ground.
Speaker: Nothing matters.
Speaker: It's actually it's actually kind of fascinating.
Speaker: Like they talk about, I'll tell you what, I will not lie.
Speaker: There was a moment where Mega Man talks about feeling fear and he's not used to the idea of feeling fear.
Speaker: He doesn't know what that emotion is.
Speaker: It takes him a minute to realize his fear.
Speaker: That's actually pretty cool.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That's actually not bad writing and nothing comes of it.
Speaker: She might as well have given him a 14 inch cop.
Speaker: Like, just for all the difference it makes in this entire story, it's just, and every now and then, like in the fight, every now and then, like, Mega Man absentmindedly adjusted himself to the other pant leg and then prepared the Mega Buster, which is not his cock.
Speaker: I mean, you know, it's a book for kids, so.
Speaker: That one will need to be a second draft on that one for sure.
Speaker: They've got to learn somewhere.
Speaker: About robots with 14.
Speaker: Previously he was mega boy.
Speaker: Now he is mega Mega Mega man is all grown up and Was it many ways comes a Chuck tingle?
Speaker: Oh my god, can we skip that man on this?
Speaker: Oh gosh And and Scott your favorite line then it starts right off of chapter two.
Speaker: Oh my gosh Yes, Megaman stirred
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Mega Man stirred his head hurt.
Speaker: Quote, my head hurts.
Speaker: He said.
Speaker: And I love the follow up because Dr. Light says, what?
Speaker: Shaddae, you're a robot.
Speaker: You're impervious to pain.
Speaker: It sounds like he's blaming him.
Speaker: Dr. Light immediately gaslights Mega Man.
Speaker: That is it.
Speaker: Your head doesn't hurt.
Speaker: Your head doesn't hurt.
Speaker: You don't have a head.
Speaker: That's not that's just not a thing.
Speaker: Oh, my.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: These emotional moments.
Speaker: We get a lot of emotional moments.
Speaker: Mega Man, like, he
Speaker: Dr. Lake's telling him about his, he's like, you still got to go fight these robot masters.
Speaker: And I don't care that you're you're you're going through puberty now.
Speaker: And and he says, do you have, you know, it's like
Speaker: I forget what it is.
Speaker: Here it is.
Speaker: He's trying to get the briefing and he senses a hesitation from Dr. Light.
Speaker: He says, I know what you're thinking, said Mega Man.
Speaker: You think now that I'm human, my size might work against me because they mentioned that he's really short.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: You think I'm too small to do the job?
Speaker: And it's like, did he also he also gained insecurity as a human or something like that?
Speaker: He became like, he became like a angry, you know, Italian New Yorker or something like that.
Speaker: Just like, yeah, I'm short.
Speaker: I can still kick some ass.
Speaker: You're saying I can't do it.
Speaker: Dr. Light is most likely just concerned that Mega Man is now human, but the one insecurity in Mega Man's head is like, I know what you're thinking.
Speaker: I'm short.
Speaker: I'm short.
Speaker: I can do it.
Speaker: I promise.
Speaker: It's
Speaker: I'm five, three, and I can't kill some robots.
Speaker: Fuck you, life.
Speaker: Listen, this short King can do it.
Speaker: Come on, short Kings.
Speaker: So the, the one of the, one of the changes from the game to the, to the book is that his, his, his gun is called the mega gun.
Speaker: The mega gun, yeah.
Speaker: Instead of the mega blaster.
Speaker: Mega blaster.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: The other change, Scott, in case you didn't pick it up, was that he's now human.
Speaker: Yeah, that one was sort of a big one.
Speaker: That's never a thing in the games.
Speaker: He's always a robot.
Speaker: That's wild.
Speaker: That is absolutely wild to me.
Speaker: It's kind of a it's kind of an abrupt change.
Speaker: Do they do that because they thought a robot main character would be not emotionally interesting to follow?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know how much thought they really put into it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: From from the mind of FX9 and and Ellen.
Speaker: What's your name?
Speaker: Ellen something miles miles.
Speaker: They they just they just threw this change in there and.
Speaker: Doesn't matter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For no reason.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just like, it's just, it's just in there.
Speaker: It's just in there.
Speaker: He's, I, there's a part of me that kind of, that my instinct said, um,
Speaker: And this would rely on Ellen Miles being much older than she is.
Speaker: But I don't know why.
Speaker: I don't know why in my head I thought of Ellen Miles as like a mom or something like that.
Speaker: And I could, cause I could just imagine my mom going, well, a robot can't be killed.
Speaker: So we have to make them a human because humans can be killed.
Speaker: Robots can't be killed.
Speaker: It's like, you're literally about to, okay.
Speaker: Like to make it to raise the stakes a little bit.
Speaker: So we've got to raise the stakes.
Speaker: Got to raise the stakes.
Speaker: So he can feel things as this goes.
Speaker: Because he does feel some fear.
Speaker: Yeah, but he also kills other robots.
Speaker: He's a terrible psychopath.
Speaker: Oh, he kills so many people.
Speaker: For someone who just got emotions, he has no remorse.
Speaker: Like that was one that like totally skipped him by.
Speaker: He is like, does not get that emotion.
Speaker: Oh, you know, yeah.
Speaker: For the listeners, we are about to go through
Speaker: eight obliterations.
Speaker: We don't, we don't, he doesn't leave like the body anywhere.
Speaker: It's always like there were a few springs left and nothing else.
Speaker: Like he, he just, he nukes the earth with these people.
Speaker: And like, look, I know it's a, it's a book for children.
Speaker: So I know they're not going to explore a lot of, you know, deep philosophical themes, but how interesting would it be if he starts questioning like, well, wait, if I could have turned human and had all these emotions, like, why am I just killing these robots that also otherwise could have been these fully fleshed out beings?
Speaker: And I don't know.
Speaker: It's like, that's another story for a different time.
Speaker: I'm going to tell you something, Scott.
Speaker: I thought about that kind of thing a lot while I was reading this in the half hour it took me to read this.
Speaker: I thought about this a lot.
Speaker: And it was...
Speaker: It's I here's the thing.
Speaker: Every single time I thought to myself, but this is a book for children.
Speaker: And then I finally had this epiphany where I was like, wait, never ending story was for children.
Speaker: And it dealt with some heavy, dark topics like don't talk down to children.
Speaker: Children are smart.
Speaker: They can handle shit.
Speaker: Have you ever seen
Speaker: All Dogs Go to Heaven?
Speaker: There's some brutal fucked up shit in that story.
Speaker: Yeah, also at the very end, I'm skipping way ahead, but it's not narratively.
Speaker: At the very end, at the very end of this book, it says, Dear Reader, I hope you liked reading Mega Man 2.
Speaker: Here's a list of other books I thought you might like.
Speaker: And it has things like I, Robot by Isaac Asimov.
Speaker: And it's like, are you comparing this book to these texts?
Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, yeah, I'm so glad I the moment I saw that I texted Kevin, I was like, did it does you does the PDF version have this?
Speaker: I need to know at the end, at the end of this book, which is it was not an uncommon thing with kids books to like say, here are some other books you might like.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Yeah, we've got we've got how to eat fried worms.
Speaker: Thomas Rockwell, that was a classic when I was a kid.
Speaker: The Phantom Tollbooth, total classic.
Speaker: Have space suit will travel Robert Heinlein.
Speaker: Robert Heinlein.
Speaker: Robert fascist Heinlein.
Speaker: It's so wild.
Speaker: I robot by Isaac mutton chops Asimov.
Speaker: And I think it's great.
Speaker: I think I think challenging kids to read outside of their reading group is awesome.
Speaker: My dad gave me a copy of Jurassic Park when I was in third grade and I am forever changed.
Speaker: He may have done things a little differently now looking back on it, but I liked it.
Speaker: And this is it's a good thing.
Speaker: But it is.
Speaker: But after this book, yeah, like after after a book that in no way could challenge this, this book could not challenge an amoeba.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So this book, why don't you dip your toe into some starship troopers?
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: It has themes extremely similar to this book.
Speaker: You will have noticed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now that you're done hearing about the story of Mega Man, how about we go nuke some skinnies?
Speaker: Oh, that'll be fun.
Speaker: Wild.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: OK, so we we get into Chapter three.
Speaker: We are in Metal Man's world.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And I think I think the one thing that this book got 100 percent all across the board correct is the importance of Metal Man's Metal Blade.
Speaker: weapon.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uses it all throughout the book.
Speaker: And that's big.
Speaker: And this is why I think that she watched someone play because anyone who plays Mega Man 2, especially like when they were a kid knows that the metal blade is good for everything.
Speaker: You use the metal blade constantly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a detail.
Speaker: I think that's a nice little, it's a nice touch.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: And I mean, I do like that this, that the game through or that the book throughout has game tips for how to beat bosses and things like the order that Mega, the order that Mega Man beats all these other robots is supposedly the book tells me, I don't know, is supposedly the best order to play the game out in.
Speaker: That's, that's, that's, this is, I don't recall if there was a lot of different
Speaker: other ways that people did it.
Speaker: But this is, as I recall, the way I did it.
Speaker: But I didn't own part two.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Because the whole game is basically a, it's almost like a rock, paper, scissors type thing where each robot has a weakness for the other robots.
Speaker: But yeah, I forget the specific order.
Speaker: There were a couple different orders you can use for this game.
Speaker: But I think Metal Man historically was always the first dude.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We spend a good amount of time here, I think, in this chapter, yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: He, he, he fights his way through metal man's, uh, level.
Speaker: There's, there's conveyor belts, there's things falling from the ceiling, uh, at him.
Speaker: And, uh, he, he blames doctor.
Speaker: There's way to like, this must be Dr. Wiley's doing like, yeah, we knew that mega man.
Speaker: Like, yeah, that's the whole, that's the whole, it's like every one thing if he got like mugged, you know,
Speaker: Some kid with a switchblade shows up.
Speaker: He's like, oh, this probably doesn't have anything to do with Dr. Watt.
Speaker: This is just bad luck.
Speaker: This is just a bad neighborhood.
Speaker: Mega Man wandered into Grand Theft Auto.
Speaker: He did not wander out.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: We have not seen him.
Speaker: Please call his wife.
Speaker: So he fights his way through Metal Man's level.
Speaker: And again, we're going to see this.
Speaker: We're going to see a theme of this as we go.
Speaker: We get like a total of maybe two paragraphs dedicated to the fight between Mega Man and Metal Man.
Speaker: It literally, the fights literally go pow, blam.
Speaker: Like it's like the 60s Batman cartoon.
Speaker: There's almost no descriptions of like what actually, you get like sort of the before and the aftermath, but you don't get like the specifics of like maneuvers or really much of that.
Speaker: It's just a lot of like, you know, kapow and bzzz and things like that.
Speaker: Because kids are dumb and loud noises, even when written on the page, will do.
Speaker: They'll take that.
Speaker: It'll just be different every time they read it because they can make up exactly what happens.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: They're encouraging the imagination.
Speaker: It's a good book.
Speaker: I haven't thought about that.
Speaker: Just fill a page with onomatopoeias and move on.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we get, and we get pow, blam metal man exploded into a million gears, cogs and flywheels.
Speaker: And, and then just stood there and grinned.
Speaker: I always knew you were nothing but a heap of junk metal man.
Speaker: Mega man, please.
Speaker: Someone has died.
Speaker: You have murdered someone.
Speaker: You just, you cold blooded psycho.
Speaker: Not an hour ago.
Speaker: You were exactly like this being, you know, right?
Speaker: You,
Speaker: I know this is a new concept for you, Mega Man, but please try to have some humanity.
Speaker: This is such like a very cheesy 80s movie where every time he defeats one of these robots, he says a very punny one-liner like this.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It's entertaining to say the least, though.
Speaker: I do like this.
Speaker: And it comes to one of my favorite bits of dialogue.
Speaker: We'll get to it soon.
Speaker: But where you just go, wait, where the fuck did that come from?
Speaker: So chapter four, we are heading over to Flashman's Empire, which is cold, a damp kind of cold and gloomy.
Speaker: That's...
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's, that's, I mean, that's, that's an adjective.
Speaker: Like, all right.
Speaker: A damp kind of cold.
Speaker: It's, it's a, so he's making his way.
Speaker: We, we get introduced to his, his energy pellets.
Speaker: He gets to carry them around.
Speaker: Apparently that's not something you were allowed to do in the game.
Speaker: No, you're not allowed to carry.
Speaker: Now that's another thing.
Speaker: That was another thing.
Speaker: We get introduced to an E tank, which is the kind of energy you're allowed to carry around and use later on.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But it's and that was something I was like, oh, he's going to hold on to it.
Speaker: He's going to be the end of his strength.
Speaker: He's about to die.
Speaker: And then he goes, wait a minute.
Speaker: And he pulls a Popeye and squeezes the spinach out of the can.
Speaker: And, you know, his arms become horribly warped and disfigured.
Speaker: And he wins.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I but no, it's just he just it's kind of like meals.
Speaker: He has to have a little snack.
Speaker: Yeah, it's I just the way they're described in the book, I just imagine it's like he just carries a little Pez dispenser around.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Delicious.
Speaker: In between robot murders, I like... I like the grape one more.
Speaker: And the E-tanks are even... Yeah.
Speaker: And the E-tanks are even described as containing vitamins and nutrients.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Like, that's...
Speaker: Next time you have a gaping, sucking chest wound, please, you need some vitamin D, that's all.
Speaker: But that's also wild to me because had he not become human, what good would that have done him?
Speaker: Vitamins and nutrients.
Speaker: I think we're stumbling onto why they made him human.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, he needed a weakness.
Speaker: He was too mega.
Speaker: Too mega.
Speaker: Not enough man.
Speaker: Not enough man.
Speaker: That's that's the next T-shirt to make it.
Speaker: So, yeah, he has a he has a showdown with with Mr. Big from Sex and the City.
Speaker: And who has a heart attack and dies before Mega Man can properly beat him up.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Spoilers.
Speaker: Spoilers for episode one of the new sex in the city series.
Speaker: We know that we know that our audience are big sex in the city fanatics.
Speaker: Look, I'm not watching that show, but my fiance is.
Speaker: And if I got to suffer, the rest of you do too.
Speaker: Well, I mean, it was perfect timing because Chris Noth was like, was, uh, they found out that he was like, Oh yeah.
Speaker: He was sexually harassing just about everyone everywhere all the time.
Speaker: They, we all, I think, yeah, that was, yeah, that was all coming.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: We we get we get also the beginning of a trope that happens throughout this book constantly.
Speaker: And it's when Mega Man sees a bad guy, he has to tell us that Dr. Light warned him about this thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's like, why can't he be surprised?
Speaker: Like every single monster he fights, he goes, Oh, Dr. Light warned me about this one.
Speaker: He did when this bad boy was coming.
Speaker: Yeah, why can't, why not, why not an element of surprise?
Speaker: Why is that a bad thing?
Speaker: Or just like work in the warning into that part, like have Dr. Light, because he's like, he's doing like the guy in the chair thing where he's just like outside of the battle being like, are you ready to move on to the next thing, Mega Man?
Speaker: I would rather, it would be more fun to have him be like, oh, Mega Man, watch out.
Speaker: It's this character.
Speaker: This is how you got to deal with it.
Speaker: Mega Man's like, I'm at Dr. Light.
Speaker: And then it's like.
Speaker: Cool beans.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then, and then, yeah, the worst, I hate to disagree with you, Scott, but some of the worst game hints I've ever seen.
Speaker: They end some of these chapters, they take them and they put them upside down.
Speaker: To kill Airman, carefully jump the tornadoes to get close to it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is that a bad tip?
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Well, it's kind of, you kind of have to.
Speaker: There's literally no other way.
Speaker: It's kind of like, they'll be like, yeah, game hint.
Speaker: Eat an orange to avoid scurvy, you know, like something like that's like, I got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Game game.
Speaker: Press buttons on the controller to do things.
Speaker: Oh, pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Now.
Speaker: And you're right, though.
Speaker: One of them does point out and I thought it was clever.
Speaker: They say, you know, if you pay attention to the order that Mega Man's fighting in this book, that's the way you want to see.
Speaker: That would have been more stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: It's like game hint, press right to advance in Super Mario Brothers.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And then.
Speaker: Press right to go right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just, I got it.
Speaker: So we are.
Speaker: So he kills Flashman.
Speaker: That was super quick.
Speaker: I don't even think Flashman says anything.
Speaker: Flashman doesn't say anything.
Speaker: No, he doesn't.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: He's just fast and he throws and he just kills him.
Speaker: And the pun for this one is, you've got to be more than just a flash in the pan to beat me.
Speaker: Mega Man said that smiling.
Speaker: He was proud of him.
Speaker: He's saying it to no one but a corpse.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Mega Man, for God's sake, I'm writing.
Speaker: I'm writing a letter to Flashman was used by Dr. Wily.
Speaker: He was reprogrammed.
Speaker: This isn't who he was.
Speaker: His real name was Joseph.
Speaker: I knew him, Mega Man.
Speaker: I knew him.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Two down, six to go.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: Leaves Flash Man's grieving widow behind.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: So we're into chapter five, and these chapters, there's like a thousand chapters in this book, and they're all kind of short.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that's one compliment I can give this book.
Speaker: It is just like...
Speaker: lightning fast.
Speaker: There's no pause.
Speaker: It's just action to action to action.
Speaker: There's no moment of... He's not dissecting his actions or his thoughts or there's no inner life of Mega Man.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It literally might as well be if you were to sit down and I mean, we've mentioned this before, but if you literally if you were to sit down next to somebody who was playing through the game and you literally just wrote Mega Man kills a big giant frog monster, Mega Man goes through things, Mega Man kills Flashman, you'd essentially have what you've got here with just fewer puns.
Speaker: That's really what it comes down to.
Speaker: That's all it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I, and they do, they do.
Speaker: And you can tell because they, they do have the little mini bosses like the croaker, the big robot for pops up, Mr. Big pops up.
Speaker: And that actually gives them an excuse to make more chapters.
Speaker: I thought at first I was like, okay, so we're going to get like 10 chapters, one chapter for each of the bosses, one for Wiley.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: If we've got a mini boss,
Speaker: you get an extra chapter and aren't you a lucky boy and or girl.
Speaker: That's exactly right.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is stuffed.
Speaker: This book.
Speaker: Stuffed.
Speaker: Every detail.
Speaker: So he kills the giant frog with the metal blades.
Speaker: Kills the frog.
Speaker: Kills the shit out of the frog.
Speaker: Kills the shit out of that frog.
Speaker: Which, by the way, Scott, that has actually been pointed out.
Speaker: It's been pointed out to us.
Speaker: that that is the first pixel lit trope is Phil or I saying kills so and so and then the other responding kills the shit out of them.
Speaker: Which we were not doing on purpose at first.
Speaker: You just had your own pattern.
Speaker: Yeah, I like it.
Speaker: And now now we're doing it now.
Speaker: It's for real.
Speaker: That's for you.
Speaker: That's for you, Harry.
Speaker: That's thank you for listening, Harry.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So so Mega Man is
Speaker: He's going down, he's going underwater.
Speaker: He's having his private little freak out moment.
Speaker: It's kind of this is another great example of like it does.
Speaker: Nothing matters because he has a momentary thing of like, well, I was a great swimmer when I was a robot.
Speaker: I wonder if things are going to be different now that I'm a human.
Speaker: No, it's the same.
Speaker: He could swim fine.
Speaker: It doesn't make any difference.
Speaker: The question here, the problem here is like, can he swim as good as when he was a robot?
Speaker: Not like, how's it going to struggle having to hold his breath now that he's human?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: How's he breathing?
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: It says, his helmet kept the water out.
Speaker: And it's like, terrific.
Speaker: What happens after like,
Speaker: 30 half a minute.
Speaker: No idea.
Speaker: And he's just hyperventilating himself.
Speaker: This cubic space of air is that's like 30 seconds of air here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's all we've got.
Speaker: So he's looking for bubble man whose shtick is that in each sentence every other word is a blorble or a gurgle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because, which I would think he would be the only person who didn't talk that way if his whole shtick was he lived underwater.
Speaker: I think he would be adapted to communicating underwater if he's supposed to be an underwater robot.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Maybe those are, do you think those are just his underwater swear words?
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Like, how gurgle dare you enter my King Borble Dung?
Speaker: Oh, I wonder, okay, hold on, hold on.
Speaker: If we replace each one of those with fuck, or fucking.
Speaker: Mega fucking man, he cried.
Speaker: How fucking dare you enter my King fucking Dung?
Speaker: You'll never fucking get me, Mega Man.
Speaker: You fucking figured it out.
Speaker: Dr. Wily fucking will be proud of me.
Speaker: That's what it is.
Speaker: You fucking nailed it.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: You blurbled it.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I wasn't even trying, but I'm glad we figured out we solved that mystery.
Speaker: I was really concerned about that, that we weren't going to get to the bottom of that.
Speaker: No letters over this one.
Speaker: I thought that was going to take at least 40 minutes of this podcast.
Speaker: Drop everything.
Speaker: We've got to figure this out.
Speaker: Yeah, we're going to make a double episode out of this thing.
Speaker: Because the blurbling would assume some sort of oxygen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, that's so, so mega, he, he tries to use the, the bubble lead on him, which, which always was a little weird to me, but they, they describe it as like a mobile, a molten lead basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which kind of cool.
Speaker: Um, I never thought of it that way.
Speaker: So he, he takes an energy pill, it,
Speaker: Uh, cause for a split second, Mega Man gets hit and he just lays still.
Speaker: It's like the Witcher.
Speaker: It's like, it's like in the, like, you know, when the Witcher has to like drink his little potion and his eyes go black.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's what Mega Man is doing right now is, is that's essentially what we're looking at.
Speaker: This was like the, the most, um,
Speaker: the most sort of scary part of this book.
Speaker: Cause this is like the only time where like Mega Man really gets, gets, gets hit.
Speaker: And, uh, they, they milked it for just like maybe two paragraphs.
Speaker: If that like, yeah, like, like just, he lays still,
Speaker: Bubble man gloats over his body.
Speaker: Then there's a beeping inside the helmet and Dr. Light basically gives him a, you gotta do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You gotta kid, you know, just kind of gives him a pep talk and make a man blink.
Speaker: I knew you weren't dead said Dr. Light, but he didn't sound so sure.
Speaker: Oh, Dr. Light, we really appreciate your confidence.
Speaker: He goes, instead of going back to the lab, he is straight into Airman's empire.
Speaker: And I like the fact that they keep referring to them as empires.
Speaker: So in the Mega Man canon, and I forget about Mega Man 2, the way it's set up, each of the robots has a specific...
Speaker: like task that they do right so um there is there's like uh in the first game there's a guy there's a robot named guts man which yeah like looking back on it doesn't make any sense why he's called that but he all he does he's a construction robot he lifts heavy things and he moves them and then he goes rogue he goes evil um so the fact that they're calling them like little weird worlds and empires be like
Speaker: I don't get where is this like a multiverse situation or is it like hopping to their own dimensions where they rule over people?
Speaker: That was what I was wondering.
Speaker: Is it like going from Midgard to Niflheim?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It kind of implies that it also implies that these guys are like the leaders of this empire and therefore they've taken it over.
Speaker: Like they take, you know, they like they, you know, massacred the local population.
Speaker: They took it over and they're looking to expand.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Mega Man might just have to sit back and they'll fight amongst themselves for for land.
Speaker: And unless unless we are looking at a multiverse situation, right?
Speaker: In which case that shit's infinite.
Speaker: There's a lot of... Mega Man, what are you going to do?
Speaker: Mega Man, what are you going to do?
Speaker: He's just going to... This is... There's a lot of detail in terms of... What he's seeing in this chapter specifically.
Speaker: I feel like this is one of the... This is a long one.
Speaker: Suddenly decided that we needed to talk about the little monsters.
Speaker: And they're strange.
Speaker: They're strange creatures indeed, which it says several times.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Strange.
Speaker: Another one that we get a lot is a mean looking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a mean looking.
Speaker: It's like, what does that mean?
Speaker: It just it looked like it would steal your lunch money just like that.
Speaker: Just like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Mega Man is making his way through Airman's level.
Speaker: Let's call it what it is.
Speaker: It's not an empire.
Speaker: It's a level.
Speaker: Well, you're diminishing his accomplishments at that point, but all right, I'll allow it.
Speaker: Well, you know, forgive me.
Speaker: I'm not going to aggrandize a warlord, Scott.
Speaker: That's fair.
Speaker: I'll concede.
Speaker: We do not platform robot terrorists on this.
Speaker: No, we do not.
Speaker: Not on this show.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: That is a line in the sand.
Speaker: No, sir.
Speaker: Oh, uh, but he makes his way through.
Speaker: We got, we've got bomb birds.
Speaker: We've got a thunder chariot, uh, which he's riding a one thunder chariot after another, making his way through the air.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: We got a nasty looking creature.
Speaker: Now, this is funny because I forgot about this creature.
Speaker: I thought they were describing Airman up ahead was a nasty looking creature with quickly spinning blades set into its middle.
Speaker: It grinned at him as it made its blades spin faster and faster.
Speaker: And I'm like, you're talking about Airman, right?
Speaker: A fan fiend, which I'm just going to be honest with you, that's a that's a name that bums me out.
Speaker: Fan fiend.
Speaker: So in the game, I think the fan fiends were like sumo wrestlers or something like that with a fan in their chest.
Speaker: I guess Airman was more like a fan as a mouth.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That is literally what it is.
Speaker: It's just a... Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Well, he kind of looks like an overweight Mega Man.
Speaker: He's basically an overweight...
Speaker: Oh, I see.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He just looks like an overweight Mega Man with a fan in his stomach.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then I just get a lot of fiend art after that.
Speaker: That's enough internet.
Speaker: Mega Man, Mega Fan.
Speaker: That's what he should have been called.
Speaker: Mega Fan.
Speaker: So, and so we get to, we get to Airman.
Speaker: Airman was the scariest looking super robot that Mega Man had ever seen.
Speaker: It wasn't that he was big.
Speaker: It wasn't that he was strong looking.
Speaker: It was his mouth.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Can I, did you, did you both notice that the very start of this book has a quote about Airman that is almost like this, but not like that?
Speaker: Like, so- Wait, wait, wait.
Speaker: Oh, oh my.
Speaker: Oh, hell, you're right.
Speaker: It's a different draft.
Speaker: It's a different draft, because the official one says Airman was the scariest looking robot that Mega Man had ever seen.
Speaker: It wasn't that he was big.
Speaker: It wasn't that he was strong looking.
Speaker: It was his mouth.
Speaker: Whereas the book like opens before anything else.
Speaker: They give you this little like excerpt from the book.
Speaker: Airman was the scariest looking robot that Mega Man had ever seen.
Speaker: He was big and he was strong, but the scary thing about him was his mouth.
Speaker: And like there's little details like that that go on, but it just it felt so weird that there are two different versions of this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Part in this book.
Speaker: Yeah, that is nuts.
Speaker: And what's funny is I like the fact I actually like the excerpt one better.
Speaker: He was big.
Speaker: Do you really?
Speaker: He was big and he was strong.
Speaker: But the scary thing was about him was his mouth.
Speaker: Something about that reads.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: The negative, I don't dig the negative as much as just acknowledging the fact that he was big and strong.
Speaker: yeah yeah that makes the scary thing about him was the eldritch horror that was his mouth of fan blades 100 i think i think as long as the draft that they went with included as long as it included demolishing you will be a breeze mega man uh as long as it includes that i'm gonna i'm gonna accept that it was the best choice yeah that's so that's
Speaker: So we get I think we get like literally like three sentences dedicated to the fight on this one, which has got to be some kind of record.
Speaker: And this is kind of ugly.
Speaker: All the air was let out of air man and he collapsed like a popped.
Speaker: That's like something about that makes me think of like a corpse load.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the wind died down at once.
Speaker: I guess it's going to be a nice day around here after all said Mega Man.
Speaker: Mega Man, have you never been sailing?
Speaker: Wind can be a beautiful thing.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: A nice breeze.
Speaker: A nice summer breeze.
Speaker: Who doesn't love that?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Who doesn't love a nice, a nice, a nice breeze on your face?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's only been human for, I mean, it sounds like based on this, he's, he's been killing robots for like an hour and a half.
Speaker: So he'll figure it out eventually.
Speaker: How, yeah.
Speaker: How long do you suppose this book, like, was this like a day of killing robots?
Speaker: Was this like a week?
Speaker: Like it never says like Megaman sat down for a nice nap.
Speaker: It's weird though, because I do think it, the book reads like it's immediate one after the other, but then there are,
Speaker: Then there are these interludes where Dr. Wily's over the news beam and he's sending these messages.
Speaker: So it's like clearly he's gotta have time to do these things and get reports back that Mega Man had destroyed some stuff.
Speaker: So it feels like there should be, that it should be longer than it is, a longer span of time.
Speaker: But the book just goes immediate one after the other.
Speaker: So it's hard to know for sure.
Speaker: There's there's no downtime at all.
Speaker: And that's not such a good thing.
Speaker: Usually when you say something like there's no downtime, it feels like it's like, wow, it's just action packed.
Speaker: Just one after the other.
Speaker: It's like there's no downtime.
Speaker: I don't know what's going on.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm so confused.
Speaker: Just immediately.
Speaker: Just always running.
Speaker: So Mega Man does give another one-liner in the following chapter where he says, oh, he was just full of hot air, referring to Air Man.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: He had that one waiting.
Speaker: He was like, oh, which one do I go with?
Speaker: Which one do I go with?
Speaker: Everyone's waiting.
Speaker: I got two for this guy.
Speaker: I'll say one now and one later.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, he said the one and it didn't get the reaction he wanted.
Speaker: So he's like, all right, man, I should have done the other one.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: I'm
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like he didn't want to say the hot air one.
Speaker: Cause he felt like it was cliche.
Speaker: Like he was like, everyone does the hot air thing.
Speaker: I want to, I got something, but he was like, really, he was really married to the whole nice day thing.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: And just like when you are, Kevin can speak to this when you're, when you become that obsessed with a joke, you wrote it almost never goes over as well in the process.
Speaker: So he, he didn't, and he didn't even have a writer's room to like,
Speaker: pitch it and like, you know, And that's the real tragedy, honestly, of Mega Man.
Speaker: That's the real sad part.
Speaker: That he doesn't have a writer's room that he can pitch the one-liners to.
Speaker: Mega Man is written before a live studio audience.
Speaker: It's been good.
Speaker: Season two has been extra good.
Speaker: It's our showrunners Mega Man.
Speaker: Yeah, the Mega Man.
Speaker: It's good stuff.
Speaker: So, no, speaking of what Scott mentioned earlier.
Speaker: You said to your Dennis Miller again.
Speaker: Yeah, I did.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Mega Man's coming in here.
Speaker: The guy's just full of hot airpads.
Speaker: You get it like air, man.
Speaker: Just full of hot air.
Speaker: So but Scott actually referenced this and now we get it.
Speaker: We get a little bit of a downtime here.
Speaker: You know, we find out that Dr. Wily has been has been talking shit against Mega Man.
Speaker: And it's kind of hilarious.
Speaker: It's not even live.
Speaker: Like, Dr. Light's just like, oh, yeah, he's been he's been talking trash.
Speaker: And I recorded it if you want to hear it.
Speaker: And it's just.
Speaker: It's just Mega Man, the evil genius roared, you little pipsqueak.
Speaker: How dare you even think about destroying me?
Speaker: I am invincible.
Speaker: And I got to say, it's kind of funny how hard the writer has focused on Mega Man being short.
Speaker: This is the first time I've ever thought about it.
Speaker: Do you think the writer is insecure about it?
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: I mean, I guess when you look at the sprite of Mega Man versus everything else on the screen, yeah, he's got kind of a Logan quality to him.
Speaker: But I never thought about it.
Speaker: And it's so funny how this writer seems to have kind of like- Maybe the writer's not insecure about their own hype, but maybe they were watching something.
Speaker: Like we keep saying, they were definitely watching someone play this game and writing it.
Speaker: Maybe they're just like, that's the hero?
Speaker: The little guy?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Are you sure?
Speaker: He's so tiny.
Speaker: He's so little.
Speaker: He's not Megas.
Speaker: He's got to be human.
Speaker: We're going to make him human for some reason.
Speaker: I mean, in Japan, his name is Rockman.
Speaker: So that is the subtle difference there.
Speaker: The subtle difference.
Speaker: And his girlfriend's name is Roll.
Speaker: Is it his girlfriend or his sister?
Speaker: I never knew if it was his sister or his girlfriend.
Speaker: There's a huge difference between those two roles.
Speaker: I mean, I'm from Georgia, not as much as you think.
Speaker: Yikes.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: Well, they're robots.
Speaker: I don't think they, I mean, I guess they can be socialized to be family, but it's not like there's genetics to worry about there.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: That is true.
Speaker: That, yeah.
Speaker: Robot incest, moving on.
Speaker: Moving on.
Speaker: Anyway, they're totally boning.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: So this is this is the best bit of dialogue, I think, of the whole book, the opening of chapter 10.
Speaker: So this is where Crash Man hangs out, said Mega Man.
Speaker: And it's like, where is he?
Speaker: Mos Eisley?
Speaker: Like, I didn't expect him to be in the cantina.
Speaker: He's like, so this is his old stomping ground.
Speaker: I wonder if that blue guy will stop playing that annoying song.
Speaker: There's a jukebox in the corner.
Speaker: So he makes his way.
Speaker: Oh, we get we get a he fights a squad of pipe bombers, which I this cracked me up because the description kind of
Speaker: It sounds like they're trying to be relatable and it's so bizarre.
Speaker: These tiny robots look like small sections of pipe which had broken off, grown eyes and learn to use weapons.
Speaker: Huh?
Speaker: You know, you know, like you do like pipes that grow eyes and fight with weapons.
Speaker: You know, you know what that happens.
Speaker: Sometimes they look like inanimate objects suddenly evolve to have eyes and use weapons, not tools.
Speaker: They skip right over tools into weapons.
Speaker: Now, do they fight with pipes?
Speaker: Good question.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: No, no, they don't.
Speaker: There are pipes.
Speaker: They would actually.
Speaker: There are pipes that use bombs.
Speaker: They are not pipe bombs.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They would actually consider you a bit of a bigot if you even suggested they use pipes.
Speaker: It's incredibly offensive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's incredibly offensive.
Speaker: It's just they've got a very different culture.
Speaker: Suggest the pipe people use pipes because that's just.
Speaker: Yeah, they're just there.
Speaker: Just no.
Speaker: So he's he's making his way through it and we get our first instance of seeing a monster on this level that is in other levels.
Speaker: So he sees he's what is it?
Speaker: He sees the little fist things or whatever.
Speaker: Oh, it's a bomb bird.
Speaker: He sees a bomb bird and he says they live here, too, said Mega Man ducking as the bomb fell near him.
Speaker: And it's just he's just learning that sometimes the designers need to save money.
Speaker: Sometimes the designers need a break.
Speaker: And we're just going to pace.
Speaker: I guess the bomb birds are loyal to multiple empires.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're just, they're just, they're not even, they don't even know what they're doing.
Speaker: This is part of their mating ritual.
Speaker: They're just part of the local fauna.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is local fauna.
Speaker: yeah you can't blame the loyalties yeah they you're on you're on their the bombs that they they drop are just byproducts of yeah they're they're they're mating ritual um so right you know megaman you're just interrupting and you find out later that megaman is like uh traipsing through like uh uh protected habitats yeah
Speaker: Mega Man, you've destroyed three species in two hours.
Speaker: Yeah, he's like so triumphant at the end of this whole thing.
Speaker: I beat Dr. Wily and everyone's like looking at all the corpses of all the endangered now extinct animals.
Speaker: Just like, at what cost, Mega Man?
Speaker: I win!
Speaker: Freeze frame.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like just people, people weeping in the background, congressional hearings or Meg man's testifying in front of the Senate.
Speaker: It was for the good of the people, right?
Speaker: He's he's in a suit and tie.
Speaker: He's just like, it's like, I don't understand.
Speaker: I defeated Dr. Wiley.
Speaker: I don't know what you people want from me.
Speaker: And then he says a racial slur.
Speaker: I don't know why that's a, that's how it always goes.
Speaker: That's his, he has a real gamer moment.
Speaker: And then he, uh, in front of Congress.
Speaker: Yeah, the worst time for us.
Speaker: We get we get a fight between Mega Man and Crash Man.
Speaker: That is a full four or five paragraphs long.
Speaker: It's pretty good.
Speaker: Now, to be fair, their version of paragraphs are like one to two sentences.
Speaker: Sure, it's a kid's book.
Speaker: But it counts.
Speaker: It counts.
Speaker: So Crash Man's throwing bombs at him.
Speaker: I always liked Crash Man's bombs.
Speaker: Scott, I don't know if you looked up this guy at all or anything like that.
Speaker: Is he the one on the cover of this book?
Speaker: He he is.
Speaker: Yeah, well, he's he's he's that's quick man on the right.
Speaker: But that's trash man on the left.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: And his bombs actually have like drills built into them.
Speaker: So you throw them and they implant themselves in life.
Speaker: Start drilling a wall or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then explode.
Speaker: And I always that was always like my favorite weapon.
Speaker: And I oh, such a neat detail that didn't really go into.
Speaker: That is cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Also Crash Man had, uh, that's the one thing that is really lacking, uh, in the novel of this game, of this game novel is that, uh, is that the game, the soundtrack, uh, is, is, uh, it slaps.
Speaker: It's, uh,
Speaker: Oh my God, it is one of the greatest 8-bit soundtracks.
Speaker: That's actually the thing that I'm most familiar with with Mega Man is when I was in college, I used to exclusively listen to video game music to get me through like assignments and things and Mega Man would come up a lot on Spotify.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, the the Wiley's Lair Mega Man to song is used to be my phone ringtone, and it's just it will never not be able to hype me up.
Speaker: It is such a great freaking song.
Speaker: So, yeah, it is.
Speaker: I will say, Kevin, I had I had.
Speaker: the soundtrack like rolling through my head.
Speaker: I was reading this and it still wasn't enough to make this good.
Speaker: And and and speaking of that, this is actually a funny background story for Phil is that Phil's friend was one of the co-founders of the proto men.
Speaker: which was a band that rose to popularity doing a lot of Mega Man.
Speaker: Well, they wrote a Mega Man rock opera.
Speaker: Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker: And he was one of the founding members.
Speaker: They're still out there.
Speaker: They still tour.
Speaker: They actually went on tour with the Tupperware Remix party.
Speaker: Twerp, love it, yeah.
Speaker: And they... Because it's two bands of people pretending to be robots, so how can you not...
Speaker: super get into that.
Speaker: It's incredible.
Speaker: But yeah, they I got to host them in in Savannah.
Speaker: So yeah, check out check out the protoman if you guys haven't already.
Speaker: Their first album is it to me is still like one of the best things I ever wrote.
Speaker: It's friggin amazing.
Speaker: It's like
Speaker: It's like all of what you could do with retelling a Mega Man story in like an amazing fashion as opposed to and then he jumped and then he threw a bomb and then, oh, what did he say at the end of this one?
Speaker: Another super robot bombs out, he said happily, which is that's cusp.
Speaker: That's the worst.
Speaker: That is the worst of the lines that he says.
Speaker: It's like all the lines and then there's like a space and then
Speaker: You really didn't try.
Speaker: Do we workshop a new one?
Speaker: Like who's got a better one?
Speaker: All right, all right.
Speaker: Crash man.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: That's what I call a crash and burn.
Speaker: Crash and burn.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: That's how I killed that robot.
Speaker: I didn't have one before I started talking.
Speaker: That was, I mean, but it's on point for the character.
Speaker: Okay, yeah.
Speaker: It's a little similar to mine.
Speaker: Mine is I am become Death Destroyer of Worlds.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: And that would then go on to inspire Oppenheimer, yeah, for sure.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker: It was that order.
Speaker: It was that order and not, it didn't go back as far as ancient Hindu scripture or anything like that.
Speaker: I was about to say, I think it was the Rig Veda, but yeah.
Speaker: Hey, everybody.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to the first part of our Mega Man 2 episode with Scott Niswander.
Speaker: Part two is coming out next week.
Speaker: Look forward to that.
Speaker: And remember, if you can rate us five stars on whatever platforms will let you rate us five stars and also share us with your friends, family and etc.
Speaker: Anyway, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you very much and have a good evening.
Speaker: Bye.
