Transcript
Speaker: So, Tiger shows up.
Speaker: Tiger Electronic Handheld shows up and just really annoys and he's like, hey, can you take me to America?
Speaker: And Jack's like, fuck off, kid.
Speaker: I'm busy.
Speaker: I'm busy.
Speaker: I'm busy eating, wolfing down burritos.
Speaker: Which is fair.
Speaker: Which is totally fair.
Speaker: Which is fair.
Speaker: So, yeah, basically the kid's like, but I can help you get into the outpost because I'm a delivery boy for a Japanese restaurant.
Speaker: And we're like, wow, this is taking a weird, weird turn.
Speaker: Yeah, it turns out Commander Kilt loves octopus.
Speaker: He loves raw octopus.
Speaker: Raw octopus.
Speaker: Loves his...
Speaker: But that's why you h ad a really big one.
Speaker: Yeah, that's why you had the really big one.
Speaker: He loves his calamari and he likes it as fresh as possible.
Speaker: He actually would like it if it's still kind of wriggling on the plate.
Speaker: He took all the wrong messages from old boy.
Speaker: You know how they sometimes serve squid kind of like still alive or whatever on a plate?
Speaker: Which, you know, I'm
Speaker: kind of like an anti-eating cephalopod type of type of guy yeah I'm not a fan of eating the it's just because octopuses are too like they're too damn clever crazy smart yeah I am but not so much from a kind of an ethical standpoint more from just I don't like the texture oh they're also very chewy oh see I eat them because I like the texture despite the fact that I know that they're super smart but I
Speaker: I'm a monster, so.
Speaker: I have to do the mental gymnastics that I do whenever I see animals in the zoo and I go, well, you know, they're bad animals that have committed crimes instead of imprisoned.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: You don't want to know what that leopard did to its wife.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: This is fine.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Those gorillas were, you know, they staged a bank robbery.
Speaker: That's why they're in there.
Speaker: They did the gorilla version of Heat and that's why they're buying it.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The gorilla version of Heat.
Speaker: All of those flamingos were there on January 6th.
Speaker: It's just... This is all fine.
Speaker: This is all fine.
Speaker: It's all fine.
Speaker: You're just going around interviewing all the animals.
Speaker: January 6th, 2021.
Speaker: Where were you, flamingo?
Speaker: And the flamingos, they were all pooping in Nancy Pelosi's office.
Speaker: They were taking selfies with the QAnon shaman.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Alright, chapter 13.
Speaker: I just want to quickly mention, by the way, in chapter 12, they do say the name of the book.
Speaker: Jack smiled and activated the heat button on his index finger.
Speaker: He reached out and lit a candle on the table, watching it burst into flames as the waiter brought his food.
Speaker: Bionic Commando, at your service, he said with a wry grin.
Speaker: And he cuts to Peter Griffin in the audience and he says, that's the name of the book.
Speaker: That's the name of the book.
Speaker: I said...
Speaker: So chapter 13, he's in stage five.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And he interacts with M8, who is another secret agent.
Speaker: And he's, I highlighted this.
Speaker: Hey, M8, it's been a long time.
Speaker: Jack grinned at the face of his old buddy from a mission in Egypt.
Speaker: Like, guys, what the fuck were you doing in Egypt?
Speaker: Well...
Speaker: That was the point where I was just like, okay, can we please focus?
Speaker: Can we focus on the fictional bad guys?
Speaker: Because you're crossing over into the line into like...
Speaker: into like CIA copaganda.
Speaker: I was going to say.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Jack Marks and Mark Jackson, however his name isn't Super Joe, they're both like Gladio guys.
Speaker: They're just doing all the CIA work.
Speaker: Yeah, they're just all Gladio.
Speaker: God.
Speaker: No, our job was to reestablish fascism in Italy.
Speaker: That was... Just keeping cells for the CIA.
Speaker: It's nothing new.
Speaker: He was really good at it.
Speaker: That's why they call him Super Joe.
Speaker: Bionic Commander, the gay man in this book, is actually just a form of limited hangout.
Speaker: Like, we only... This is as much as they will tell us.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: This is as much as we know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they, so basically he's, he gets in and he's, he's in, he's in area stage five and the hand calls out for, for the, the killer copters to come in and start attacking.
Speaker: And the hand is like, you get a little vibe that the hand is the dude who really wants to be in charge because he's been second fiddle in so many operations.
Speaker: So he gets, he's like,
Speaker: He's doing his bionic commando thing.
Speaker: He's he's going up the tower and the the chopper, the choppers are after him and he signals for his own chopper and he gets on and he turns on autopilot and he he's throwing flare bombs down.
Speaker: And there's a line in here where it says, prepare to die, Markson.
Speaker: It's the end of the game for you.
Speaker: Ah, ah, ah.
Speaker: Because it's a game.
Speaker: We forgot to mention earlier that there's a bit where he's with Tiger and he is playing an arcade game called like American Commando or something.
Speaker: Yeah, it's Commando.
Speaker: Yeah, he's playing Commando.
Speaker: I have to believe that was on purpose.
Speaker: That had to be on purpose.
Speaker: Commando is one of the earliest games that I remember playing because we had it for the Commodore 64.
Speaker: And we had, it was...
Speaker: So the Commodore 64 had a cartridge attachment for it.
Speaker: There were cartridge games for the Commodore 64, kind of like Nintendo.
Speaker: And Commando was one of the games that we had on the cartridge attachment for the Commodore 64.
Speaker: So that's cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's weird because I looked up and I was like, oh yeah, the cartridge thing didn't last very long for the Commodore.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, and we had one.
Speaker: And it probably got thrown in the trash at some point.
Speaker: Probably worth a lot of money now if we...
Speaker: Could have sent it to LGR, too, right now.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, could have sent that to LGR, and he would have loved to have that and put wood paneling on it.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: He would do a 20-minute video speaking in very soft tones about, look at this neat thing that I got in the mail.
Speaker: plug it in and see what we got see what we got um he he gets like uh there's just explosions everywhere um he gets he never saw the tiny metal half inch screw that that was i made a note of that what tiny metal fuck was that like
Speaker: I feel like the author's just fucking with us now.
Speaker: It's like chaos, baby.
Speaker: All kinds of crazy shit happens in war.
Speaker: And this guy's got the constitution of a piece of zucchini because he blacks out more than a frat boy in 1997.
Speaker: Da da da da da.
Speaker: And other jokes as well.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: And other jokes.
Speaker: And other jokes as well.
Speaker: This guy, this guy's got to get a CAT scan after this is all done because he has blacked out like half a dozen times.
Speaker: I was about to say, it's not a bionic army.
Speaker: Like there's other bionic pieces that he needs.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He doesn't have a bionic skull.
Speaker: So this guy is going to have like Herschel Walker levels of CTE by the end of.
Speaker: He's going to be, he's going to be running for Congress in no time.
Speaker: He's going to be like an Oliver North figure.
Speaker: Just like running my words.
Speaker: And just with like complete dementia riddled stories about, well, no, he's going to tell stories of when he was fighting Albatross and people are just going to think, is
Speaker: Yeah, no, he's going to be telling the absolute truth and Twitter's going to blow up being like, who is this fucking psycho?
Speaker: And you're like, no, but it was a Nazi albatross.
Speaker: It was real.
Speaker: There was a kid called Tiger.
Speaker: We couldn't stop eating pizzas.
Speaker: I had a hot finger.
Speaker: I had a hot finger.
Speaker: It's like when Husha Walker pulled out his wallet and he said, I'm a cop.
Speaker: I've got a hot finger.
Speaker: This is the proof.
Speaker: He just pulls the hot finger.
Speaker: Super Joe is my boyfriend.
Speaker: He just pulls it out on Raphael Walker.
Speaker: We hate beats.
Speaker: I've got a hot finger.
Speaker: Don't mess with me.
Speaker: I've got a hot finger.
Speaker: The army gave me this.
Speaker: The army gave me a hot finger.
Speaker: And a truth telling finger, but I only used it once.
Speaker: He gets knocked the fuck out for his fifth concussion.
Speaker: But before that, he had punched in the coordinates for San Pedro, which is where Heather would be.
Speaker: And she's a doctor too.
Speaker: She's not only a spy, she's a doctor.
Speaker: Of course, right.
Speaker: He needs help.
Speaker: Obviously.
Speaker: So chapter 14, he wakes up.
Speaker: He begins with him blacking out again.
Speaker: Shut up.
Speaker: He wakes up to Heather's voice.
Speaker: He blacks out again, but then he wakes up again, and he sees her, and she's like, oh, she is a beautiful woman.
Speaker: Joe's a lucky man.
Speaker: I wish Joe and I were getting married.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I wish he would come in and say this is all a big, big thing.
Speaker: trick and that he and I are gonna get married instead.
Speaker: That I'm a beard, really, is Super Joe loves you the most.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And then Tiger turns up to be a short round again.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And then, so basically, you're like, the next six stages are going to be child's play in comparison.
Speaker: They do the wonderful thing.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, they give you all the items of every stage.
Speaker: It's almost very weirdly in the PDF.
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't work in the PDF.
Speaker: But one of the other things I highlighted here in this chapter was Heather, a doctor, used an ancient Chinese herbal ointment
Speaker: It was something I learned during a mission in China.
Speaker: I got caught in a burning bamboo hut that had been firebombed by Andalusian revolutionaries.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: An old village woman dragged me to her house and nursed me back to life.
Speaker: She used the salve to heal the burns that covered 60% of my body.
Speaker: She did a good job, Jack said, admiring Heather's clear olive skin.
Speaker: Heather blushed when she caught his gaze and changed the subject.
Speaker: I love how the hidden horny on main that these books have.
Speaker: Just sneak it right in there.
Speaker: I also just want to point out to the people at home who haven't read this book, which I think Kevin has quite nicely illustrated.
Speaker: Every single paragraph in this book is less, is over 40 words or less.
Speaker: It is incredibly to the points.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's not a lot of purple pros in this until they start talking about Andalusian revolutionaries.
Speaker: Or super chair.
Speaker: And super.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like it just.
Speaker: By the way, I thought I was losing my mind.
Speaker: This was on a mission to China.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That this happens.
Speaker: And she's firebombed by Andalusian people.
Speaker: Do you know where Andalusia is, right?
Speaker: It's in Spain, right?
Speaker: Southern Spain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's southern Spain.
Speaker: It is where the Rock of Gibraltar is.
Speaker: It is the area of Spain directly across from Tangier.
Speaker: It is, you know, it is not...
Speaker: near China and there's no reason for Andalusian separatists because let's, let's be honest.
Speaker: Let's be honest.
Speaker: Spain has a lot of regions that are like, no, we don't want to be fucking Spain.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We want to be our own country, you know, and Portugal got to be its own country.
Speaker: What about this?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Come on, man.
Speaker: Like, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's,
Speaker: Like Spain is is is like one of those countries where it's like, fuck it, man, we'd rather just be our own independent states.
Speaker: We have our own life.
Speaker: We have our own language.
Speaker: Why do we have to do this?
Speaker: But that's that's aside from the one there's no reason for this to have ever happened.
Speaker: Why did they go all the way to China?
Speaker: Why are they there?
Speaker: It's very out of the way for their political motives.
Speaker: Any Spanish revolutionary of any flavor, and there are many, has already got plenty of irons in the fire in their own home country before going all the way over to fucking China for any particular reason.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, the Basque separatists attacked me in South Africa.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Yeah, like, why?
Speaker: How?
Speaker: They were lost.
Speaker: They were really lost.
Speaker: They were really, really lost.
Speaker: Super lost.
Speaker: Lost in the woods for years.
Speaker: For years.
Speaker: You know, they took a boat, they landed, they just started walking and who knows, man.
Speaker: They shoot at you just to keep their practice up.
Speaker: They don't want to get rusty.
Speaker: They just firebombed just so they never get rusty at it.
Speaker: They don't give a shit about Johannesburg.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Who cares?
Speaker: So he gets the list of items from Heather, and Heather is going to destroy it immediately once he commits it to memory.
Speaker: And so stage two has Super Joe's good luck charm.
Speaker: Need that?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Stage three has a magazine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Stage three has a magazine of ammunition.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: You'd think that the army would just hand those out.
Speaker: You think so?
Speaker: This was the eighties.
Speaker: You know, Reaganomics.
Speaker: Reaganomics, trickle down ammunition and all that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Trickle down ammunition.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They spent all the money on that bionic arm.
Speaker: They had like nothing.
Speaker: That's why all the stuff in Nicaragua went horribly wrong.
Speaker: Phil, can you ask your dad about trickle down ammunition?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I'm sure he'll have lots of explanations as to why it was better.
Speaker: uh yeah so i was i'll have to i'll have i'll write it down have you have you both got right have you both got like right wing 80s dads um because we talked about this on the soldier of fortune yeah yeah yeah i was i was raised in an army family i see phil's dad is a literal colonel uh okay
Speaker: And his, his, you know, I would imagine that a lot of his heyday years were the eighties.
Speaker: Like, Oh yes.
Speaker: We were, we were, we were mostly in West Germany.
Speaker: Uh, uh, that's, that's where I was born.
Speaker: We stayed dad.
Speaker: Dad was a propagandist for the West until he did psyops.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: There's, there's a lot about me that makes,
Speaker: Quite a bit of sense when you think about it.
Speaker: He was a propagandist in Germany until the wall fell.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: He raised a wine critic theater major son who went on to proudly make a podcast about video game novelizations.
Speaker: And it all comes back around.
Speaker: All the knowledge comes back around.
Speaker: It all comes back around.
Speaker: Just a snake eating its own tail.
Speaker: It's just beautiful.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My dad was a big fan of Ronald Reagan, I believe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, magazine of ammunition, permit, electronic permit for entry, a helmet because that was a standard issue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The ninja iron boots in the blue communicator and also the three way gun.
Speaker: So, you know, the famous the famous iron boots of the ninja ninjutsu style of martial arts.
Speaker: Yeah, ninjutsu style.
Speaker: One thing that we know about ninjas is that they move very quietly on their feet due to their iron boots.
Speaker: On their iron boots.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And the freeway gun, which is, you know, for Super Joe and Heather.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For their wedding day.
Speaker: For their wedding day, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, any tips, Tiger?
Speaker: Be careful in stage nine, Tiger said, his dark eyes looking troubled.
Speaker: Last time I was there, I heard screams coming from the basement.
Speaker: Dun, dun, dun.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: He gets all the other stuff and now he's in stage nine.
Speaker: Chapter 15 does the brilliant thing.
Speaker: Merciful.
Speaker: So merciful.
Speaker: It's bad writing.
Speaker: It's bad writing, but it's kind.
Speaker: And that goes a long way in my book.
Speaker: Let's just fucking fast forward through this shopping list, buddy.
Speaker: Yeah, shall we?
Speaker: Yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker: Like the fucking very hungry caterpillar.
Speaker: He wolfed down three hero sandwiches.
Speaker: He's had four hot pizzas, three-year sandwiches.
Speaker: And the whole menu at a Mexican restaurant.
Speaker: Seven old pops, six cakes.
Speaker: The man hasn't had a solid bowel movement in five years.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: He has like the eating habits of a child in a car.
Speaker: That's a idiot.
Speaker: It's like that episode of Parks and Rec where they're at the restaurant and Ron Swanson's like, I'll have the number eight.
Speaker: He goes, you know that's a party platter that's supposed to feed like 70 people.
Speaker: He's like, I know what I'm about, son.
Speaker: I know what I'm about, son.
Speaker: You're about to watch something spectacular.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, all right.
Speaker: Chapter 15.
Speaker: What the fuck is he doing in chapter 15?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: He's in stage nine.
Speaker: He's he's talking to Hal.
Speaker: He's he's recounting everything that's happened to Hal.
Speaker: And he's like, oh, I'm in stage nine.
Speaker: Maybe Super Joe is here.
Speaker: And Hal's like, yeah, no, he was there three hours ago.
Speaker: Just missed him.
Speaker: You just missed him.
Speaker: Maybe if you had started with stage nine, instead of doing all the other things first, you would have gotten him.
Speaker: But you didn't.
Speaker: But you didn't.
Speaker: But you didn't.
Speaker: He falls down a pit because it's an evil smelling pit.
Speaker: It's just what he's good at at this point.
Speaker: He just loves falling down pits and forgetting to use his bionic arm.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And failing at that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And from now, after he gets out of that trouble, there's a line that I love.
Speaker: From now on, he had to slow down and think clearly.
Speaker: In stage nine, haste made waste of you.
Speaker: Of you.
Speaker: Of you.
Speaker: We got it.
Speaker: We got it.
Speaker: We got it.
Speaker: What's that line from Spaceballs where the guy is like, it ends the same similar way.
Speaker: It's like Pizza the Hut is going to.
Speaker: Oh, he's going to order in for you or something like that.
Speaker: It's going to order out for you.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: There's more fire pits and there's like people down there just like screaming.
Speaker: And is it like literal hell?
Speaker: Is that the thing?
Speaker: Is that feels that way?
Speaker: Doesn't it?
Speaker: It's in San Jarena or whatever they are now.
Speaker: Yeah, that's where hell is.
Speaker: Just hell is literally there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to look up and see if San Gennaro is an actual place.
Speaker: Oh, no, that's a. Is it a piece of the feast of San Gennaro?
Speaker: It's a Italian.
Speaker: OK, that's a high holy holiday for the Italians.
Speaker: I feel that the word San Gennaro just gives me blasphemous vibes.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: That's why I was looking it up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: suddenly like oh okay where's the worlds of power for blasphemous dude you could have asked seth to bring it back that and um oh god i'm just trying to think of like a just like a really dodgy indie game he's he's one of the richest people i've ever spoken to uh by the way yeah maybe we can pitch that to him i was gonna say when you interviewed him it looked like like your your counter quality is really nice but it
Speaker: It's not like he was on a Vox document.
Speaker: That's his life.
Speaker: That's what he does.
Speaker: He's constantly on these calls and doing remote interviews.
Speaker: So he has this crazy ass setup in his house where it's nice.
Speaker: Beautiful bookshelf that hides him.
Speaker: Beautiful bookshelf with shallow depth of field.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: Perfect lighting on him.
Speaker: That's the dream, isn't it?
Speaker: I'm going to go ahead and write this one down so that when I get drunk later tonight, I might actually write him and be like, hey, what if we resurrected worlds of power?
Speaker: Just as a goof.
Speaker: All right, a few.
Speaker: I already heard of a game called Hollow Knight.
Speaker: That'd be good.
Speaker: That's pretty good.
Speaker: What about Dead Cells?
Speaker: What about Dead Cells?
Speaker: You hear of a game called Skrm?
Speaker: It's like Geiger.
Speaker: Seth, have you ever heard of a night in the woods?
Speaker: I do that one.
Speaker: They do Night in the Woods, but they care the military person who wrote this book to write.
Speaker: She moved on to stage six.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Gunfire overheads.
Speaker: It made her think of her post-collegiate ennui.
Speaker: And then you get, yeah.
Speaker: And then you just surprise Scott Benson with it.
Speaker: And you're just like, here you go.
Speaker: We wrote a worlds of power for night in the woods.
Speaker: Can we get your permission?
Speaker: And all the upside down tips alike to help you write a video essay about night in the woods.
Speaker: You know, you know, you know, two of them went to my alma mater.
Speaker: Oh, interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause I, cause it's, it's a Western Pennsylvania.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Cause night in the woods is loosely based on Western Pennsylvania.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I, and I remember getting a lot of, and I, and I tweeted one of them and said, Hey, as an IUP grad, I got a lot of, uh, I got a lot of Western Pennsylvania vibes.
Speaker: And she was like, yeah, two of us are IUP grads.
Speaker: So that definitely had something to do.
Speaker: It was like, Oh, son of a bitch.
Speaker: Indiana university of Pennsylvania.
Speaker: Yep, because that's not confusing enough.
Speaker: That's not confusing at all.
Speaker: We had a rival outside of Pittsburgh called California University of Pennsylvania in a small town called California.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is a very silly country we live in.
Speaker: Pennsylvania, as somebody who is from Pennsylvania, and Phil, you've spent many formative years in Pennsylvania.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Pennsylvania is a very silly state.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We have a town called Intercourse.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Blue balls, Pennsylvania.
Speaker: Blue balls.
Speaker: We have.
Speaker: Oh, what's the town that's named after that guy?
Speaker: The Olympic Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
Speaker: I did a lot of Western Pennsylvania.
Speaker: Kevin was Eastern Pennsylvania.
Speaker: Yeah, so we've been around.
Speaker: Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania has absolutely zero relation to Jim Thorpe, to the actual Jim Thorpe.
Speaker: They just renamed themselves, the town renamed themselves Jim Thorpe.
Speaker: To get tourist dollars to make confused people think that Jim Thorpe had something to do with Jim Thorpe Pennsylvania.
Speaker: It's not like when they rename an arena like the Crypto.com Arena because it has nothing to do with Jim Thorpe.
Speaker: Nothing to do with him.
Speaker: Absolutely nothing at all.
Speaker: I see that they changed the name to Crypto.com Pennsylvania.
Speaker: That's coming.
Speaker: That's coming.
Speaker: PetS.com, Pennsylvania.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Towns being sponsored, I believe, is the next hell step in capitalism.
Speaker: And Pennsylvania, they're going to innovate it.
Speaker: They're going to make it happen.
Speaker: There were a lot of problems, obviously, with Fight Club, but I think one of the main things that it absolutely 100% got right was talking about, like, the galaxies will be named after corporations like Planet Starbucks and shit like that.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, yeah, no, that's, yeah.
Speaker: I don't think you have to be particularly clever to realize that, but you nailed it.
Speaker: You absolutely nailed it.
Speaker: Thanks, Chuck.
Speaker: Thanks, Chuck.
Speaker: Good job, David Fincher.
Speaker: Um, so, uh, he talks to the captain again.
Speaker: The captain is like, Hey, you might be in line for a medal.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Um, that means though, that was short as finished.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That is if you survive.
Speaker: The world ending thing is built, but don't worry about it.
Speaker: They found Master D sauce.
Speaker: Master D in the sauce.
Speaker: And we learned that the D is short for his full name is Master Destructo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is like that G.I.
Speaker: Joe character.
Speaker: What's his name?
Speaker: Destro.
Speaker: Destro.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Destro.
Speaker: Full name is Adolf Destructo.
Speaker: But the less said about that, the better.
Speaker: He shortens it to add the Destructo now just to, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Move on with his life.
Speaker: Folks, if you don't know what that's a reference to at home, the sports brand Adidas is named after its founder Adolf Dazze, who shortened his name to Adi.
Speaker: So Adidas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: And Volkswagen.
Speaker: And, you know, Hugo Boss.
Speaker: Don't look in their stuff.
Speaker: And Orange Fanta.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don't look back there.
Speaker: Don't ask where Fanta came from.
Speaker: The past is the past, you know?
Speaker: I think we can all agree on that.
Speaker: We can all agree a lot of German companies would rather you not.
Speaker: Don't mention the war.
Speaker: Or IBM for that matter.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Or NASA.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: Rooks Brothers.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: Rooks Brothers.
Speaker: They got some shady backgrounds.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: Wasn't that brought up in Behind the Bastards?
Speaker: It sure was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, the hand found Master D and Jack is maybe in stage 17.
Speaker: But nope, wait, M8 finds, not Jack, Joe has moved to stage 17 and then M8.
Speaker: It's like, wait, by the way, no, that's wrong.
Speaker: He's in stage seven now.
Speaker: Be like, okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I'll move.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: And I'll go back to the overworld map and rock out to that strangely tense theme song that is playing during.
Speaker: Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-
Speaker: I guess a really good remix and re-almed, by the way.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker: I'm playing those after we sign off here.
Speaker: Chapter 16 starts with Jack's bionic arm was raised in a karate stance.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: What is that?
Speaker: Is that like, you know, like this?
Speaker: Yeah, I thought like a chop.
Speaker: Like a chop, like action chop.
Speaker: Chop.
Speaker: He's back going into an underground corridor and it's a real shitty place and he is running and he is running and god damn, he just keeps running.
Speaker: The thing's collapsing.
Speaker: It's just a tunnel full of big rats.
Speaker: And the crumbling stones.
Speaker: And oh, no, that he gets the door and he puts the electronic permit in and nothing happened because he had it in the wrong way.
Speaker: Jesus Christ, that was an entire chapter.
Speaker: That was chapter 16.
Speaker: He just ran through a tunnel and then swiped his his Metro card the wrong way.
Speaker: Any any budding authors at home, that whole chapter could have been cut.
Speaker: We did not need that chapter.
Speaker: There's a lot in this book that could have been cut.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: This is a high-level overview.
Speaker: We could cut the book, actually.
Speaker: About 10 chapters out of this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We could have tightened this bad boy up.
Speaker: Chapter 17, Jack jerked the permit out, turned it around and stuck it in the other end.
Speaker: And wouldn't you know it?
Speaker: The goofball just had the wrong.
Speaker: He just had the swiping thing on the wrong.
Speaker: That's wacky.
Speaker: That is wacky.
Speaker: Ripley, what are you doing back there?
Speaker: They're having an adventure today.
Speaker: They've both just been crawling on everything.
Speaker: I think it's because Emily isn't home yet and they're used to her being home by now.
Speaker: And any disturbance and normalcy ruins their lives.
Speaker: So Ripley's trying to figure out Skyrim.
Speaker: That's her thing.
Speaker: She's looking.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: That's a map of Skyrim.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: She's trying to figure out which side she's going to support in the Civil War.
Speaker: Come here.
Speaker: This is a white run family and you know it.
Speaker: Not any fucking, we're not having any boot lickers in my family.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: Um, all right.
Speaker: This is it.
Speaker: He's going to stage seven.
Speaker: Uh, going up against the hand now.
Speaker: Going up against the hand now.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: He's he's shooting things.
Speaker: The the tank he's blown up tanks with the three way gun because the three way gun shoots straight left and right.
Speaker: Oh, and that's important somehow for tanks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: You don't know what to do about that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's got killer copters.
Speaker: He's talking to Hal.
Speaker: Hal's like, you got to go this way and this way.
Speaker: And then suddenly it's the hand.
Speaker: The hand is booming over a loudspeaker.
Speaker: And he says, you're a fool, Jack Markson.
Speaker: You're going to die.
Speaker: And a giant robot attacks him.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: And the robot is really tough.
Speaker: It's a super tough robot and only a bionic commando could save Super Joe and he kills the robot by using the electronic EMF generator on his... Yeah, he uses the... Could have been cool...
Speaker: If Bionic Commando was like a Metroidvania and he's like, you're getting like upgrades to your thing to access certain area, like you just start out with a grappling hook, but you're like going around to different, but it's not, it never was.
Speaker: And this was not in the game.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: There was almost nothing in this book that was in the game.
Speaker: There was almost nothing other than calling- Mostly just the guns, and they don't know how to make the guns exciting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, he finds his boyfriend.
Speaker: Super Joe jumps up in surprise.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Kilt told me you were dead.
Speaker: His face was covered with bruises, but he was smiling when you saw Jack.
Speaker: His voice shaky with emotion.
Speaker: I'm as alive as you are, Joe.
Speaker: Looks like we're a team again.
Speaker: Joe punched him on the shoulder and started to laugh.
Speaker: Looks like I owe you one now.
Speaker: And they've been keeping score forever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Aren't we all?
Speaker: So they they they recap everything that's happened.
Speaker: He talks about how he lost his arm in Buenos Aires, really relaying that pipe.
Speaker: And so you're the bionic commando.
Speaker: Kilt has been going nuts about you.
Speaker: Jack laughed and raised his bionic arm in a fist.
Speaker: I thought Kilt was already nuts.
Speaker: He said, he's a dangerous nut, Jack.
Speaker: Like peanuts if you're allergic.
Speaker: Like peanuts if you're allergic.
Speaker: Like a Brazil nut.
Speaker: Like a lot of people are allergic to Brazil nuts and they don't realize it.
Speaker: He's like a Brazil nut.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Surprisingly dangerous.
Speaker: So it's that classic, you know, you've got Thomas Pynchon, you've got Kurt Vonnegut, and you've got Judith Drower, whatever his name is, right?
Speaker: Stamper.
Speaker: All classic writers.
Speaker: Classic.
Speaker: This is that naturalistic dialogue you just want.
Speaker: It's what put her on the map.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: She wrote Glen Gary Glen Ross after this, I believe.
Speaker: She went on to, you know.
Speaker: In collaboration with somebody else.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She punched up a lot of David Mamet's work after this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She actually put the line in that coffee is for closers.
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: That was her line.
Speaker: It was all JB.
Speaker: All JB.
Speaker: Most of the dialogue.
Speaker: Phil, the character that you played on stage, that was mostly her.
Speaker: Mostly her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was, I was honored to bring her words to life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It meant the world to me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Who did you play again?
Speaker: That was Moss Moss, which is which character, which actor.
Speaker: Oh, um, is that?
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: Oh, God damn it.
Speaker: I'm such an asshole.
Speaker: Uh, uh, God damn it.
Speaker: I know who you mean, Ed.
Speaker: God.
Speaker: Ed something.
Speaker: Ed Harris.
Speaker: Ed Harris.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Ed Harris.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A man who has slowly been turning into Peter Weller from Robocop.
Speaker: I mean, it's the odd years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The Ed Harris, Peter Weller continuum.
Speaker: The line just continues to draw closer.
Speaker: The Venn diagram just...
Speaker: He's in what's it called Top Gun Maverick, and he literally does look like when they remove the helmet from Murphy.
Speaker: He's like, oh, Peter Weller's in this.
Speaker: Oh, wait.
Speaker: Oh, wait, no, it's Ed Harris.
Speaker: It's the love actor Ed Harris.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Because Peter Weller's always looked like Peter Weller.
Speaker: Right, yeah.
Speaker: Peter Weller owns that look, but Ed Harris has not always looked like Peter Weller, and he's just moving...
Speaker: Last thing I saw Weller in was the Star Trek Into Darkness.
Speaker: I haven't really seen him in much sense.
Speaker: I don't know whether he's... I feel like I saw him in something like in the last year or so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's a good dude.
Speaker: I think... I don't know anything about him personally, but... Yeah, I hope he's on a jump for a star actor.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: My chair is doing the thing again where it's like the hydraulic is just like...
Speaker: You're slowly sliding down.
Speaker: I'm slowly sinking.
Speaker: It's like the progression bar of the episode.
Speaker: It's just Kevin just slowly gets lower out of frame.
Speaker: That's how that works.
Speaker: Now that I have this super wide monitor from work, it's just like my thing is up in the air and you guys are over here and my script is over.
Speaker: It's a lot.
Speaker: A lot of things are going on right now.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Anyway, Jack and Joe separate for some reason.
Speaker: They take different exits because the hand says the two spies must die.
Speaker: So they split up.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: So we're in chapter 18 now and get to the end.
Speaker: We're getting home stretch, baby.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he is going to stage.
Speaker: He's like, do I go to stage 11 or 12?
Speaker: So he's going to 12.
Speaker: Super Joe is already there waiting to meet him.
Speaker: And he sees Tiger and Heather are waiting and they're like, we're here for you.
Speaker: Jack.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We're here.
Speaker: He leaves them by the chopper and he's like, all right, if I don't come back, you guys got to leave because shit's about to get messy because, you know, the Albatross is going to be built and that Albatross has like a dozen rocket launchers.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the metal gear is going to be.
Speaker: I mean, the albatross and yeah.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Metal gear.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Albatross.
Speaker: Albatross.
Speaker: Albatross.
Speaker: Colonel.
Speaker: It's already built, brother.
Speaker: You can't stop this.
Speaker: Colonel.
Speaker: The albatross.
Speaker: The albatross is dummy thick.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the clap of its ass cheeks keeps alerting the guards.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Jack has ninja powers, which none of us knew about.
Speaker: They introduced those.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: I think we all knew deep down inside of us that he had ninja powers.
Speaker: Let's not act like that surprised.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: He didn't end up using them to stop the shurikens earlier, but he did.
Speaker: Well, that was a choice.
Speaker: That was a choice because he's a man of honor.
Speaker: He's a man of honor.
Speaker: He needs to.
Speaker: He must be assaulted first before he even thinks about shooting his gun.
Speaker: And then he kicks down a door like it was a piece of bamboo.
Speaker: right yeah beating about the face and neck um so he's running through this court corridors like hal have you heard from from joe uh and hal's like no he's probably captured again dumb asses um captured he's a
Speaker: He ends up getting captured again because Super Joe is actually not that super.
Speaker: Let's be honest.
Speaker: It turns out.
Speaker: It's more of an ironic name.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very ironic name.
Speaker: No one can forget about the time that he cried when they started calling him Mediocre Joe.
Speaker: And so to make him feel better.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he runs into the hand at the end of chapter 18.
Speaker: And then chapter 19 continues on with a discussion with the hand.
Speaker: And he's like, you're, I'm going to, we're going to win the hand and hands like, ah, um, I'll get you gadget.
Speaker: Uh, yeah.
Speaker: Next time, Gadget.
Speaker: Next time.
Speaker: Next time.
Speaker: So they're basically, he basically figures out that he's got to destroy the albatross.
Speaker: And oh no, the albatross is a big old ship.
Speaker: It's got a lot of rockets.
Speaker: And he keeps shooting the individual rocket launchers.
Speaker: And he's like, this is going to take forever.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: I don't know why he turned into Mike Birbiglia for a minute.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: He turned into Prince Pratt from... Oh, God.
Speaker: Oh, jeez.
Speaker: Albatross is a giant flying submarine.
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: Just like in real life.
Speaker: Just like in real life.
Speaker: The most aerodynamic show.
Speaker: This was what, what was the thing that, God, who's the guy in the Aviator?
Speaker: Oh, Howard Hughes.
Speaker: Yeah, it was Howard Hughes.
Speaker: The Spruce Goose.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what the Spruce Goose was.
Speaker: It's basically the Spruce Goose.
Speaker: Yeah, this is a flying submarine.
Speaker: His flying folly.
Speaker: But it has machine guns and rocket launchers and will destroy the world.
Speaker: Yeah, just like the Spruce Goose.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Just like the Spruce Goose.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was the whole idea, as I recall.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just as he was planning.
Speaker: So the hand is fighting with a steel whip.
Speaker: Yes, Jack Markson, I know you're the Bionic Commando, but I have my own weapons to combat your powers.
Speaker: They don't call me the hand for nothing.
Speaker: And he just starts jerking off.
Speaker: Uh...
Speaker: The hand, the hand's whip destroys the hot finger.
Speaker: Oh God, the hot finger, the thing he used the most in this goddamn story, aside from, I mean, probably more than the grappling hook.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: It's right.
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: His hot finger, his hot, hot, sexy finger has been destroyed.
Speaker: So, yeah, he has a fight.
Speaker: Master D is in the room.
Speaker: What was that?
Speaker: That was my phone alerting me to take my medication.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: As you were.
Speaker: As you were.
Speaker: So yeah, he's in the room, he's fighting the hand and Destructo is there too.
Speaker: And Destructo's got a gun.
Speaker: Jack tries to like make a deal with the hand at some point.
Speaker: He's like, I'll rat out all the double agents.
Speaker: If you tell me where super Joe is, cause that's, that's a real, that's a lot of love right there.
Speaker: Like I will, I will be a trader to country for super Joe.
Speaker: My love for him knows no bounds.
Speaker: I mean, I think we all get it.
Speaker: I think we've been there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We all get it.
Speaker: So Master D is like, no, I am the real one in charge.
Speaker: And the hand's like, but I wanted to be in charge.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: The Albatross begins his attack.
Speaker: Chapter 20, Jack is destroying the rockets on the albatross.
Speaker: Two down, Jack said to himself.
Speaker: A hundred to go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What a reaffirming action.
Speaker: Maybe don't remind your audience about how tedious this is going to be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he, like, it takes him a really long time to figure out that he just has to, like, shoot the power source for the albatross.
Speaker: But he does, and he destroys it.
Speaker: I mean, that's the best summary for it.
Speaker: So the...
Speaker: yeah, that's, that's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's that.
Speaker: Albatross is destroyed.
Speaker: He hand is dead.
Speaker: Kilt and Destructo are getting away.
Speaker: Um, and you gotta, gotta deal with that.
Speaker: And Jack's like, I'm out of ammo.
Speaker: And, and Hal's like, get the bazooka.
Speaker: I threw it down so you can deal with Nemesis.
Speaker: I mean, I mean, Tyrant.
Speaker: I mean, the helicopter.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It goes, it goes.
Speaker: It goes.
Speaker: It is a Capcom game.
Speaker: It is a Capcom game.
Speaker: You can't end a Capcom game without Deus Ex Rocket Launcher.
Speaker: There are a few little giveaways, let's just say.
Speaker: That's where the Resident Evil guy got the idea from.
Speaker: You read this book and said, yeah, I got it.
Speaker: Same guy, you know?
Speaker: And you do... Oh, there's a reference to the Karp conspiracy.
Speaker: I don't... I don't know.
Speaker: It's like they just dropped in there.
Speaker: um he remembered for the kids for the people you know for the real heads reading for the power bionic commander who are really interested in the lore of hal the guy on the phone um who is real military conspiracy experts
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Hal is basically the master Miller of this book, right?
Speaker: He's the master Miller equivalent.
Speaker: So he gets the rocket launcher.
Speaker: He goes and he does the thing.
Speaker: And in the game, what you do is you jump off the platform and you shoot the rocket and it hits the cockpit and it hits the
Speaker: kilt in the head and you get a frame by frame animation of the guy's head exploding and the eyeball like flying off into the distance it is yeah graphic it is graphic for for an nes game what's even better though is that in the japanese version
Speaker: Kilt says Adolf Hitler.
Speaker: So it is Adolf Hitler's face represented in high detail as the NES could handle exploding like fucking skaters.
Speaker: No, Master D is... Oh yeah, sorry, Master D. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: For God's sakes, get it right.
Speaker: Get your Hitler amalgams right.
Speaker: You do see his head exploding.
Speaker: You do.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: I remember that.
Speaker: I remember being a kid and having that happen for the first time and having a distinct feeling of like, was I supposed to see that?
Speaker: Oh, man, he is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Master D. Yep.
Speaker: Anyway, that's that's all great.
Speaker: They kill him.
Speaker: Wonderful job.
Speaker: It's chapter 21.
Speaker: Everyone is like running around because
Speaker: Kilt was like, hey, if I if if if I die, I'm going to blow up the base.
Speaker: Yeah, you got 60 seconds to make peace with death.
Speaker: People, comrades, we're going we're going through death's door together.
Speaker: So there's a countdown.
Speaker: Jack has to run around to the base.
Speaker: He gets out.
Speaker: And then they're like, wait, you got to go rescue Super Joe.
Speaker: He's over there.
Speaker: And we're like, ah, fuck.
Speaker: And he runs back into the base.
Speaker: And he goes and he gets Super Joe.
Speaker: And then he runs back out.
Speaker: And just in the nick of time.
Speaker: And the whole thing blows up.
Speaker: And they're there.
Speaker: And Heather and Tiger and Joe are safe.
Speaker: And, you know, that's that's the end.
Speaker: They fly off into the sunset.
Speaker: So one man destroyed an entire dictator and the army and all that.
Speaker: That's what you get when you get a Bionic Commando.
Speaker: Yeah, you wrap it up clean.
Speaker: Wrap it up nice and clean.
Speaker: No need for a debrief.
Speaker: No need to go back to space.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Not even not even boxes of pizza to bring us full circle.
Speaker: General general thoughts.
Speaker: General thoughts on this book.
Speaker: James, why don't you go ahead?
Speaker: What do you got?
Speaker: Good question.
Speaker: Wasn't a massive fan of it.
Speaker: I'll be completely honest.
Speaker: Look, I say this.
Speaker: I don't do a lot of reading.
Speaker: I didn't do a lot of reading as a child either because not very good at it.
Speaker: Always had a... Always kind of struggled a bit more into video games, really, which maybe this book would have been a perfect hopping on point for me in regards to, hey, I've played games before, so maybe I could read this book.
Speaker: But yeah, I gave it a shot.
Speaker: I had to read it over the course of a few nights because it's funny.
Speaker: It is...
Speaker: The way that it is, we haven't quite got across in this podcast, but the way it is written is very awkward.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It is a lot of very short but dense paragraphs, one after the other after the other, and each paragraph is completely self-contained.
Speaker: So it's just kind of like...
Speaker: Mark did this.
Speaker: Then Mark did this.
Speaker: And then it's trying its best to represent the gameplay, which is you take a helicopter from zone one to zone five and whatever, and doing its best.
Speaker: And again, not everyone is a great action writer.
Speaker: I think you have had examples...
Speaker: on your show of like, especially the Halo novels, they really know how to like nail that kind of military writing.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: That military.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That fun stuff.
Speaker: And not a dunk on, um, uh, uh, JB Stamper.
Speaker: Like, I think she is very, probably very good at writing probably the magic school bus stuff and the sales for midnight.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But this wasn't quite,
Speaker: This kind of maybe required maybe a bit of a softer touch.
Speaker: Like, I think she was aiming for, like, Tom Clancy light for kids.
Speaker: Yeah, there was a... It needed to be a bit more like an Arnie movie.
Speaker: Yes, I totally agree.
Speaker: There was a... I don't know where she got the idea that this was going to be a spy thing or a ninja thing.
Speaker: It takes 10 minutes of that game to go, this is a military thing.
Speaker: This is...
Speaker: you know, army, you know, boots on the ground with a grappling hook, basically.
Speaker: So I don't know where that came from.
Speaker: But it is, and just to kind of wrap up my voice, but it is really funny that, so they do Bionic Commando Rearms, and then that was meant to be a lead into the game that came afterwards, which is the Bionic Commando Reboot.
Speaker: And weirdly, they do basically, because it's like, well, how do we make an NES game modern?
Speaker: It is basically Metal Gear.
Speaker: And I'm not saying that there's a ton of, like, they don't bring anything from this bug over, but the general tone...
Speaker: And the amount of, like, dense lore that they're adding to stuff is weirdly similar.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: So I guess maybe CalCon might have even kind of said, look, we don't know what we're going to do with this franchise, but we would like it to be... This would almost be our kind of, like, military spy-fi kind of thing.
Speaker: So maybe, yeah, they were kind of riffing on that.
Speaker: But yeah, it was...
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I'm sure there are better Wars of Power books out there.
Speaker: I mean, I listened to the Mega Man episode.
Speaker: It sounded like, at least the intro stuff.
Speaker: Nothing's been worse than that one.
Speaker: No, I know.
Speaker: I think certain games and certain properties are probably a better fit, like the fantasy stuff.
Speaker: But this was, this needed a bit of a lighter touch.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And JB Stamper wrote, I think she wrote the Ninja Gaiden one, right?
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: No, I don't think she did.
Speaker: No, somebody else wrote that one.
Speaker: Ninja Gaiden.
Speaker: It came up when I Google searched her, but I don't know what that had anything to do with it.
Speaker: It was written by somebody else.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But yeah, those are my thoughts on rules of power, bionic man.
Speaker: Oh, AL Singer.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: AL Singer.
Speaker: Another initial person.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: rl stein rl stein yeah keith r a keith r a d candido uh jd salinger yeah jd r a salvatore you know all those fun all those fun folks so phil what do you think what's what's your what's your take i also didn't like it having said that it might be the best worlds of power book we've read
Speaker: So far, so far, so far.
Speaker: And, and it had basically nothing to do with the game at all.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Outside of a few kind of aesthetic choices.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I don't know if that helped or hurt, but it, it, it was, it was for a worlds of power book.
Speaker: Not bad, honestly.
Speaker: For a Worlds of Power book, I would still put this behind Ninja Gaiden.
Speaker: I think Ninja Gaiden is still better.
Speaker: So we've read Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man 2, Metal Gear.
Speaker: Metal Gear.
Speaker: So for me, it's Ninja Gaiden, this, Metal Gear,
Speaker: Well, I should say like a gap and then Metal Gear and then Mega Man 2 because Metal Gear was pretty bad too.
Speaker: It was very bad.
Speaker: I would say that...
Speaker: And the Metal Gear adaptation, you could tell that the author just completely misunderstood entire aspects of the game.
Speaker: So that led into it.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I think this one is kind of neck and neck with Ninja Gaiden.
Speaker: I'd say they're about the same.
Speaker: I would say in regards to adapting the source material.
Speaker: It kind of felt like they were going really surface level with it.
Speaker: Like, they describe moments of gameplay from the game, but that's... Right.
Speaker: But then I think the detriment is that they felt they needed to over-explain it a bit too much.
Speaker: And I think... People always fall down the rabbit hole of...
Speaker: you don't need to give us all five senses like when you go into especially for an action novel you just want to go for like good beats right right and i would ask as well from like do you think any of the like and this especially do you think any of the walls of power book because obviously they were written to get children reading
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Do you think, especially this one, do you think it would keep the attention of a child?
Speaker: Because I'm a 30-year-old man, and I was struggling to keep attention reading this.
Speaker: I think back then, you have to remember the time period.
Speaker: Sure, there was no internet.
Speaker: There wasn't as much of a... Well, when you're a gamer kid back then, and you're not...
Speaker: saturated in the media the same way we are now.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: A kid likes five nights at Freddy's and they can read fan fiction about it and find toys and find this and find that.
Speaker: And so I think if you liked Bionic Commando, for example, this was kind of like the only other thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they probably, yeah, they probably would.
Speaker: And they'd probably like it in the same way that the kids who like FNAF give the FNAF books five star reviews on Goodreads, despite the fact that they are flaming hot garbage.
Speaker: So bad.
Speaker: So remarkably bad, but not worse, but not worse than Michael Stackpole's Dark Souls novel.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't want to take that one personally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: By the way, just because we right at the end of the book, it does do the dear readers.
Speaker: You know, you might like this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Heinlein was one of the books recommended, which I don't know.
Speaker: After reading that, I don't know if a kid.
Speaker: Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein.
Speaker: Black suits from outer space.
Speaker: Black suits from outer space.
Speaker: With something interesting.
Speaker: Like, I read the Goodreads on it, and it was basically, like, it was about a kid that finds two cats, and he throws water on him to scare it off, and one of the cats melts into a ring.
Speaker: And that sends them off on a really weird adventure, where they discover, like, these aliens that pose as men in black suits.
Speaker: And it's like, okay, I can sort of see.
Speaker: That is pretty cool, actually.
Speaker: That's a cool idea.
Speaker: Yeah, like a weird kid's sort of, like, kind of adventure with a weird dark twist.
Speaker: Dog Song was about an Eskimo with a dog sled scene.
Speaker: I don't know where that one came from.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker: But I was thinking if they were aiming for this to be Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid literally begins with him being like, I've been in Alaska doing dog sleds.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I wonder whether maybe Kojima...
Speaker: I think any Gary Paulson book would be a bit of a stretch for this.
Speaker: As I mentioned earlier, so there's Izzy Willy Nilly, which was Cynthia Voight.
Speaker: And that is about a 15 year old girl who was on the cheerleading squad.
Speaker: But then she gets in a car crash and loses her right leg.
Speaker: And the whole story is about like adapting to her new like kind of, you know, change of ability and stuff.
Speaker: I mean, that's a very direct.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Well, and here's the thing.
Speaker: If you're a fan of people who are in car crashes, the last book recommended, Trapped by Arthur J. Roth, is about another person who gets caught in a car crash.
Speaker: Good lord.
Speaker: If you're a fan of car crashes, we got the books for you.
Speaker: I was about to say, it's a shame they didn't end on J.G.
Speaker: Ballard's Crash.
Speaker: I was just going to say Crash, yeah.
Speaker: I didn't actually read.
Speaker: I read the I read the I read a little bit of the back cover.
Speaker: It sounds like it would be an appropriate one.
Speaker: Put it on the list.
Speaker: 15 minutes of the Cronenberg movie.
Speaker: I'm sure a kid would enjoy.
Speaker: It's not the guy from the blacklist in it.
Speaker: Kids love him.
Speaker: Kids love James Spader.
Speaker: Let's do this.
Speaker: It's like, do you want to learn?
Speaker: Do you want to read another book about somebody who loses the use of their hand?
Speaker: Johnny Tremaine.
Speaker: read Choke by Choke Polonick if you enjoyed steak you might also enjoy Slim Jim's that's the same if you enjoy this please read American Psycho
Speaker: If you enjoyed this podcast, please listen to bullets.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: And now we've reached the closing segment of our show where we talk about what we've been playing.
Speaker: So, James, as you are the guest, I'll start with you.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: So I finished Marvel's Midnight Suns, which I believe you are covering as a book, which will be... I'll be excited to hear that, because one, how are they going to adapt... Yeah, again, what do modern game book adaptations feel like?
Speaker: But also, because it's dipping into Marvel Comics stuff, which has obviously had a rich history of...
Speaker: Yeah, he's a comic book.
Speaker: So we could do novelizations as well.
Speaker: See how we get on with this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was a lot of fun.
Speaker: I got to tell you, because this episode is coming out after the.
Speaker: This is coming after.
Speaker: Oh, interesting.
Speaker: After the series.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's this book.
Speaker: fucking banger really nice really good prequel uh to the to the game takes place six months before the game and uh it's it's really good i love it yeah it's pretty solid i recommend it um but other than that i did play uh i did play three bionic commander games to get myself one of them could become an episode of ball of time at some point because yeah rearmed is really neat but
Speaker: It's been like 10 years since this has come out, and it is like better indie games have since come out.
Speaker: It's like, ah, you know, there's places of polish, but like the soundtrack in that game is still fantastic.
Speaker: To the fact that that reboot, though, which is like a third-person adventure, it is bizarre, but it is really interesting.
Speaker: It stars... And all the scores it has, it's kind of prime fodder for bulletin.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, no, it is a 7 out of 10, like, ultimate.
Speaker: It has...
Speaker: Steve Bloom.
Speaker: Steve Bloom is Super Jeff.
Speaker: Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker: So Steve Bloom, who is also Captain America.
Speaker: No, no, he's Captain America.
Speaker: Steve Bloom is... No, Brian Bloom is Captain America.
Speaker: Brian Bloom.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: I got the Blooms mixed up.
Speaker: Steve Bloom is Wolverine because Steve Bloom is always Wolverine in every adaptation.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Bub.
Speaker: He is Super Joe.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Rad Spencer, who they have given white guy dreads for some weird reason.
Speaker: Oh, it's so awful.
Speaker: His voice is disgusting.
Speaker: He is voiced by Mike Patton, the lead singer of Faith No More.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He does a lot of screaming in the game.
Speaker: It is, again, the game is a fucking vibe.
Speaker: There is a lot of weird choices.
Speaker: That's truly bizarre.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: It's a classic B-tier game.
Speaker: That's what I've been playing at the moment.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Phil?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: I am, I feel like I'm about 75% of the way through Midnight Suns at this point.
Speaker: I just saved Wanda and it's, I'm really enjoying that.
Speaker: I finished Signalis.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Which I fucking adored.
Speaker: I told Kevin before that if this is this is a proud tradition of the first three or four games I play at the beginning of a year tend to be ones that I from the previous year that I couldn't get around to.
Speaker: And not only would this game have been on my game of the year list, it would have been in my top five easily.
Speaker: I go on.
Speaker: I was about to say, I got a funny signalist anecdote, which is that I haven't played it and I wasn't sure what the reviews of it.
Speaker: I think it might have juice though, because I have done a lot of signalist thumbnails for video essays recently.
Speaker: I think it's the next big video essay game I've
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: I know CodexEntry is working on one.
Speaker: Is Jacob working on one?
Speaker: Did you get something from Jacob on it?
Speaker: No, but I won't say just in case.
Speaker: Oh, spoilers.
Speaker: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker: Thumbnail client confidentiality agreements.
Speaker: It's like, what do they call it?
Speaker: Yeah, doctor's client confidentiality.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Patient doctor confidentiality.
Speaker: Patient doctor confidentiality.
Speaker: I actually did get a little bit of an old school gamer kick and downloaded a few demos on Steam and played through a couple of demos.
Speaker: I played one, Vengeful Guardian Moonrider.
Speaker: Oh, I see.
Speaker: Have you seen this?
Speaker: Digital Foundry did a really good video about it.
Speaker: Okay, yeah, I played a little bit of the demo.
Speaker: It's got this 16-bit, it feels like Shinobi from the Genesis.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's real fun.
Speaker: It just feels good to play.
Speaker: I don't know if I'm going to buy it, but it was a really solid demo.
Speaker: One game that I played the demo of that I might buy, though, is Road Warden.
Speaker: I'm new to that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I've seen, it's been on my steam, like recommended list for a while.
Speaker: That is different.
Speaker: It is, it's this fascinating combination of strategy and a kind of almost immersive sim sort of thing and text based adventure and visual nights.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's a great combination and the music's really good and the atmosphere really grabs you.
Speaker: I haven't played much of it yet, but,
Speaker: But wow, it is something very special.
Speaker: So I'm really digging on that.
Speaker: But that's me.
Speaker: What about you, Kevin?
Speaker: Kevin, what are you playing?
Speaker: What am I playing?
Speaker: Well, I finally broke down after...
Speaker: Literally everybody in the video S.A.S.
Speaker: Discord just wouldn't shut the fuck up about Persona.
Speaker: Like Persona games like goddamn fucking Persona.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: I'll play Persona 5 Royal.
Speaker: So I'm playing Persona 5 Royal right now.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: I'm like four hours into it and I know I got like 96 more to go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now, is Persona 5 Royal on Steam?
Speaker: Is that just Persona 5 with all the DLC and shit?
Speaker: Or is that a different game?
Speaker: It's Persona.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's the same game as Persona 5, but they added.
Speaker: It's basically it's just more Persona 5.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Same is like if you played beat Persona 5, I don't think you need you necessarily need to go play Royal.
Speaker: It's just there's more shit in it.
Speaker: Because that's what Persona 5 needed.
Speaker: Yeah, it was more stuff.
Speaker: It was more stuff.
Speaker: It needed more stuff.
Speaker: It's a fascinating game.
Speaker: I am playing that.
Speaker: I also started, you know, going through my backlog of old ass games.
Speaker: I installed The Room on my Steam Deck.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: No, no, on my Steam Deck.
Speaker: Okay, but it's an iPad game, right?
Speaker: The Room?
Speaker: It's a puzzle box thing.
Speaker: Yeah, that was an iPad game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I have it on my Steam Deck.
Speaker: Actually, I think I got a package where it's like all four of them.
Speaker: Oh, that's cool.
Speaker: So playing that, I just literally bought during the course of this episode, I bought the Bionic Commando games.
Speaker: Same.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They'll take a minute to set up is the only thing I'll say.
Speaker: We're getting to the point with 360 ports where you do have to hop into the Iron Alley files and fiddle about with them a ton of bits.
Speaker: And just muck about with stuff.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I'd say the other game I've been playing, though, is Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order.
Speaker: How are you finding it?
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: That's the thing about it.
Speaker: It's a solid blender game.
Speaker: As in, it doesn't do anything of its own originally.
Speaker: It feels like a blend of other games.
Speaker: It does them all pretty good.
Speaker: That's the thing I've been coming away with.
Speaker: It's not... It's fine.
Speaker: There's not much to say about it other than it's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's a solid Legend of Zelda style game.
Speaker: Or also Dark Souls.
Speaker: It's a Souls-like, it has bonfires, it has shortcuts and loop around.
Speaker: It has Uncharted-style action sections.
Speaker: Yeah, it has Uncharted-style.
Speaker: Yeah, it borrows from a lot of games and kind of just glues them together.
Speaker: It's kind of a master of none, but it doesn't do anything badly.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It is a really competently made game.
Speaker: Except the story I'm a little bored by.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm like, Cal Kestis is not like the most dynamic main character.
Speaker: I think that's the problem with all, like, I mean, because we did the, we did the two Cal Katan games.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's a bit of a, there's not much to him either.
Speaker: There's not much to him.
Speaker: I think that's the problem with a lot of, what ends up happening with a lot of character driven Star Wars games is that they try to give you a character and it's just like,
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: What they need is a Star Wars game where they have a character who's like a Chris Farley SNL character.
Speaker: That would be good.
Speaker: That would be... I would like that.
Speaker: I would play that.
Speaker: It was Tommy Boy, but it was Star Wars.
Speaker: Tommy Boy, but Star Wars is... Darth Tommy Boy.
Speaker: Darth Tommy Boy.
Speaker: I'm in.
Speaker: Sidious is just like, you can't be my sidekick unless you fuck up.
Speaker: And he has to bring in David Spade.
Speaker: Yep, I'm in.
Speaker: I'm in.
Speaker: So I don't know how long it is.
Speaker: I've played it.
Speaker: My playtime says 14 hours.
Speaker: It's a bit serious.
Speaker: What I will say is that it's a bit too long than it needs to be.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I kind of, I kind of got to a point where like, I think I'm coming up on the end and be like, Oh no, I've just entered a new phase of the game.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: I sure love having content in my video game.
Speaker: I heard you like content in your video game, so we put content in your video game.
Speaker: We put content in your content.
Speaker: We put content in your content.
Speaker: So you can play what you play.
Speaker: Yeah!
Speaker: But yeah, that's it.
Speaker: That's all I'm really playing right now.
Speaker: I'm probably going to play some Bionic Commando stuff later this week because I'm in the mood for it now.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: I got a flavor.
Speaker: If this one did one good thing, it was put Bionic Commando back on the menu.
Speaker: If you both like the NES game, which it sounds like you do, I think you will really like Rearms, especially if you've never seen it before.
Speaker: You will end up buying the soundtrack afterwards.
Speaker: It was actually the first video game soundtrack I ever bought because it is really cool.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: That brings us to the end.
Speaker: James, thank you so much for being on this episode.
Speaker: If you want to go ahead and plug your stuff, tell us where people can find you and all that fun stuff.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Main place you can find me is on Twitter, which is still hanging on by a thread.
Speaker: At Hot Cider, H-O-T-C-Y-D-E-R.
Speaker: I make video essays now and again, which you can find on YouTube at Hot Cider.
Speaker: I do the Bulletin podcast, which we have.
Speaker: Well, when we are recording this episode, but it will still be the case after this episode comes out.
Speaker: Me and Kevin finished a mini-series on the games of Raven, the shooters of Raven Software, which you can go back and listen to all of those episodes and see how they evolved from heretic to singularity.
Speaker: Really interesting.
Speaker: We had guests like Jessica Archeron, Jacob Geller, I Am Era.
Speaker: guests that have been on this podcast guests yeah which was very uh exciting stuff and um yeah so that's what i'm up to do and question show may come back at some point this year as well but nothing oh that would be great that would be great phil and i do want to you know repr play our characters yeah yeah yeah exactly all right
Speaker: Well, thanks for coming on.
Speaker: If you if you out there in the wide world of podcast listeners want to help us out, please follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Pixlet Pod.
Speaker: Go to our website, PixletPod.com and sign up for our newsletter where I occasionally put out an episode like a couple of days early.
Speaker: If you're on the newsletter, you get it a few days early.
Speaker: And that's like that's a neat little thing.
Speaker: And we'll also be using the newsletter to communicate other things like when Phil's short stories are available to buy and be published and all that stuff, because that's happening.
Speaker: Because it's happening, baby.
Speaker: It's happening, baby.
Speaker: Tricking people into buying my words.
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: Phil's a goddamn writer and a good one.
Speaker: yeah good pitch um if he's doing a dance if you're just listening now he's just doing a little little happy boy dance um anyway happy boy he's doing his tom york dance who we were talking about it's the it's the only dance i have any business doing really so yeah
Speaker: Yeah, and check us out on YouTube where we have the video versions, youtube.com slash at pixelitpod or at pixelit.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Just put one of them down.
Speaker: You'll find us.
Speaker: You'll find us.
Speaker: Anyway, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Good night, everybody.
Speaker: Bye.
