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S2 Ep55: Console Wars
69 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they look to those that have come before in this week's Console Wars!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Game Boy
00:00:02
Speaker
They said it wasn't humanly possible, but now you can have all the power and excitement of Nintendo right in the palm of your hand. Introducing Game Boy. It's portable, it's in stereo, and its games are interchangeable. Plus Game Boy comes with the outrageous new game Tetris. And for head-to-head competition, use the revolutionary video link and blow your opponent to work. Game Boy, only from Nintendo. Now you're playing with power. Portable power.
Podcast Introduction and Gaming Focus
00:00:32
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going, Dave?
00:00:39
Speaker
Going good. Yeah. How are you? I'm doing pretty well. Nice day. Get stuff done. Think about a podcast. Come record it. It should be good. Oh, you have a podcast going on? Yeah, after this. I'm going to head out. I don't want to hold you up. My bad. But today, we were going to talk a bit about game consoles over the years. Some people might not actually know this about the podcast, but it's
00:01:09
Speaker
It's a gaming related podcast. And so we figured we'd go back to that a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit. But next episode, 100% politics. All my prep work on a researching pre-workout has definitely been in the sled. A pre-workout episode would actually be pretty hilarious just to see like how we could sum. It's kind of like ramping it up to hard mode, essentially. You're just like, all right, how do we get around 40 minutes out of this?
00:01:37
Speaker
I would start with, hey, so I drank this pre-workout beverage. You'd be like, yeah, I'd be like, yeah, I don't know how that stuff works. I hope that it does. I don't know. It tastes okay. It's just like 39 minutes of listening to Dave workout. Just like you hear dumbbells in the background and stuff.
The Evolution of Video Game Consoles
00:01:55
Speaker
Bells aren't dumb. Yeah, just bells then I guess but So we're kind of gonna jump in near the start here where I think that neither of us really have that much to say But I broke it out in generations. Jake says neither but
00:02:12
Speaker
I'm gonna let Jake kick off while I grab a cough drop and I'll be back to rescue you all So the first to kind of like kick it off here most of our listeners probably weren't around this time but Gen 1 which is categorized is 1972 through 1983 there were 35 home video game consoles included in this generation and
00:02:36
Speaker
Um, and honestly, we're, uh, too young to care about this, this era. Um, a lot of arcadey things, very, very expensive things that your parents would never buy you. Um, by today's standards, absolutely absurd. Well, it wasn't actually marketable to like common home use, right? Like they hadn't found a way to like, Oh, well we can make these pieces of the,
00:03:04
Speaker
home console, actually cheap and affordable to manufacture it. Each one's kind of like, oh, you got one of those. Computers themselves were still really expensive, 70s to 80s, so there was no way to make the computer parts themselves less expensive.
00:03:21
Speaker
So that was that was a time but going to gen 2 that kicked in in 1976 to 1992 and you'll notice that these ranges overlap a lot and it's because not all of these not all these consoles really competed and some of them released too late to be relevant or they were just underpowered so they end up in a different generation or something like that but
00:03:45
Speaker
This was dominated by VCRs mostly was the prominent video game console There's the protean kind of evolutionary Preformed version of Atari. There's like five Atari consoles in this in this range and then the VCR Magnavox. So
00:04:04
Speaker
That's the olden days. Moving past that into Gen 3, this is where things start to pick up and people actually start caring about video games. So 1998 through 2003, which is a massive freakin' range, there was 23 home video game consoles, and the first one kinda to kick us off is the classic Nintendo Entertainment System, which came out in 1985.
00:04:30
Speaker
And that's one of those things where I didn't grow up with it immediately, but touching the NES were the ones. I think that most people's interaction with an NES at this point from like our listening group were through completely legitimate means and the original hardware entirely with no software emulation used whatsoever.
00:04:52
Speaker
If you want a good site, please look below the description. Below the description list. That's the previous podcast description in most cases. Exactly. We planned ahead. But yeah, just a lot of classics were launched here. This was the start of a lot of IPs. Jake, why don't you list this list out?
00:05:11
Speaker
Alright, so Super Mario Bros came out here, Legend of Zelda, Mega Man 2, which some people liked I guess, Castlevania 1-3, Metroid, Final Fantasy, the original, which was a complete lie as it turns out, Metal Gear, nothing else after the name, just Metal Gear, and Kirby's Adventure.
Iconic Consoles and Games
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah, what I find interesting is that this is the cast of Smash Brothers, which is, you know, around 30 years later. That is actually true. And I didn't realize that. Nintendo sticks a lot with their characters, though. Yeah, they have IPs and they stick with them because
00:05:57
Speaker
That's part of the appeal. If you do like a fresh spin up, you have to make people fall in love with this new cast of characters, this new game. Yeah. Whether it be like new style of game or just game in an existing genre that stands out. Yeah. You can like cash in on people's nostalgia with a lot of this because these characters are older than I am. Fun fact, Kirby is like 30, 40 years old, something like that. He's aged well.
00:06:27
Speaker
Very few wrinkles on a pink rotund body that you can say. But yeah, kind of competitors in that space. Same year, Sega Master System. Look through some games here. Most of them nobody would care about, but they did release Phantasy Star, which I heard was a really good RPG.
00:06:50
Speaker
I've heard of Phantasy Star Online in later days, still quite before my time. Yeah. I'm aware of it. Yeah. Part of the same series, one might expect. And then the little tidbit that they made this console in Brazil until 2016, which makes it the longest running release of a console contiguously. Usually they stop producing them because that makes sense. But they didn't do that in Brazil.
00:07:20
Speaker
So they kept producing the console, but no new games were being made for it. They'd made new games in Brazil also. But these are games that had to run on the console. Yeah, so they couldn't be that technically advanced. It'd still be within the confines. It's basically like how you know later on in the console generations they would release Doom for every console, but it was garbage on the N64, good on PlayStation, best on PC or something like that, right?
00:07:48
Speaker
It was like that, but it was always absolute garbage to hear for every other game. There's a lease there That's crazy. So I imagine they're like crisis. I make games like oh really for who Rick Oh for Sega
00:08:03
Speaker
What? Do you live in the past? Yeah. Apparently so. In this case, I'm just imagining crisis as a port. Can it run crisis? This one can. And then there was the Atari offering here. The XEGS came out two years later, 1987. And that had Mario Bros, Donkey Kong and Battlezone, which is a tank game I've actually heard about a little bit beforehand. Those first two, though, are Nintendo games. So that was the interesting
00:08:33
Speaker
Yeah, and those would have been before the Super Mario Brothers, correct? Yeah. This was the OG. I need two brothers and let's give them the same name. Mario. Let's get one's name. Mario. Weird acquaintance, but okay.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yeah. Not very creative parents. And this is because like this era of video games was all just rip it from arcades, get it under consoles, license it if you need to and run with it. So, um, for the next couple of generations, there exists consoles that literally only have like 32 games ever made for them. Or, um, a lot of these home systems had like the, the game pack.
00:09:14
Speaker
Or it's like oh, here's all of these titles, and that's literally all you could ever play on it
00:09:21
Speaker
Um, kind of like you, did you ever like see those, those handheld, uh, uh, not, um, etch a sketch style, but they were just like similar, um, gray pixels, essentially like blow game boy color. Are you talking about like game boy, shitty handhelds that have like ports type thing. Yeah. Like one game. Yeah. Like, um, like borderline McDonald's happy meal type. Uh-huh.
00:09:46
Speaker
But yeah, it was very simplistic. Like you said, just had like the black pixels on the gray. Exactly. Portal, I miss your game and watch background. Yeah, pretty much. And that was the standard for a long time. But as you can see, Nintendo was already kind of breaking that.
00:10:02
Speaker
Which takes us into Generation 4, where a couple leaders emerge. There are 17 home video game consoles in this generation. One of them was Sega Genesis in 1988, which my sisters actually had. So I have fond memories of playing Sonic 2 with my brother on Sega Genesis.
00:10:24
Speaker
Like you said my sisters had this thing enjoying this experience together, right? I think everybody has a little bit of that though. Like if you had an older sibling or like
00:10:36
Speaker
friends or things like that you're like oh you have a video game console that's great for me it is because like to a point like you were outside the park you were throwing sticks at each other or what have you but then like when somebody had a concert like oh
00:10:54
Speaker
That became the friend. Yes. We definitely talked about this before, but like you go over to their house in their basement, a couple of friends, you'd be down there after dinner, after school for like until you had to go. Yeah, I was definitely kind of guilty of that, too. I think part of the tragedy here is that if you had a friend like that, you never had the potential to play the game so much that you got bored of it to the extent that they did.
00:11:20
Speaker
So like I would have a friend who has a console and they'd be like, Oh, let's go out, you know, like play baseball or something like that. I'll be like, yeah, I mean, that's fine. I guess. But, uh, that X-Men X-Men on the SNES seems pretty good too. Also side tangent. Do you remember?
00:11:38
Speaker
You'd have like the friend who owned the game. So old class example, which we'll eventually get to. Yeah. Super Smash Brothers for GameCube, right? Melee. You had the one friend who owned the game. Right. And was drastically better at everyone else who came to visit. Yeah. Because that's the only time that they had to play was when they visited.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, we joke about this a little bit, but definitely that and some first-person shooters too. There's some of that in GoldenEye as well for the N64. You're just like, I've already learned where all the weapon spawns are.
00:12:15
Speaker
That's the thing like this is my 500th hour hour in the facility Even in our teenage years games were not as accessible as they are now Yeah, whereas like one person has that why because their parents decided to buy it for them. Mm-hmm
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, it was definitely ruined our generation. But yeah, Sega Genesis came out and that was a very solid console.
The Console Wars Era
00:12:44
Speaker
It had all of the Sonic hedgehogs and knuckles.
00:12:47
Speaker
And Knuckles. And Knuckles. And Knuckles. Altered Beast was one of the launch titles. Streets of Rage, Earthworm Jim, Shining Force 2. I don't know what happened to the first one, but Shining Force 2 shows up here. Kid Chameleon, Golden Axe, both 1 and 2. And then the thing that I put here, which is not on anyone's top list, but Cyborg Justice, which I think I've already talked about in retro. Robot fighting.
00:13:15
Speaker
Was it like a player versus player type thing? It was co-op, actually. Yeah. If you played a two player, it was a side scroller kind of like Golden Axe or something. So I was going to say for a lot of these titles, they do seem to be side scroller where you have to kind of line up vertically. Yeah. Where your enemy was for when you did your attack. Exactly. Otherwise you would miss them like turtles in time. It's like the poorest man's 3D. Yes.
00:13:42
Speaker
The Genesis was a solid console pretty expensive, but had some really good games I I want to say as a standout here in this list Yeah, as I've bought like the second Genesis pack on Steam. Yeah, and just growing up with it kid chameleon is a fucking solid title Yeah, no, it's got mechanics and choices and Secrets and just everything that you'd kind of want in a scroll. Yeah, I
00:14:07
Speaker
It has a lot, it has great sound effects, and the most cool thing when you're a kid at that age, like 13, 14, is you can pick up these different powers. I remember like being a samurai and like fucking down sorting things and like bouncing across enemies or turning into a tank after I went to hell. Save your kid things, honestly. It just had so many cool things and so many unique mechanics where nothing felt stale.
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah. This is around when games started to move beyond just being arcade tier. I think Kade Chameleon is probably in the arcades too, but it progresses past this to the point where you're playing games that really don't make sense in an arcade.
00:14:52
Speaker
And yeah, still coming out with some really cool characters. Sega didn't make, I think, as many. I think Sonic kind of reigned Supreme from their IPs. But Vector Man, obviously, for a second, which I don't even have in my list. I have fond memories of Vector Man. I remember playing the game. I just have fond memories. Yeah. Vector Man? That's nice.
00:15:15
Speaker
Coming off of that there was a super Famicom which some people just like a you know underground name the Super Nintendo Entertainment System so a SNES Had Super Mario World Legend of Zelda linked to the past which some people played Super Metroid Earthbound Final Fantasy 6 I don't know what happened between one and six, but they just skipped I guess
00:15:41
Speaker
Mega Man X, I guess someone would say. Again, a couple of people played that one. Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, which is really good. And Donkey Kong Country. I'm surprised you didn't make a joke about Chrono Trigger. Nobody's heard of that. Yeah. I can't make a joke about that. I actually played that one. I really... Chrono Trigger is so good.
00:16:02
Speaker
I have legitimately not played that game to completion. Yeah, I probably played it for like four hours. And just between that and the soundtrack and everything else, I fucking love that game. It's just so good. It's just it's great. Like this is this is like I said, perfect example of the game. Literally couldn't be played in an arcade because it's like 40 hours long or whatever nonsense. But you like you spent two thousand dollars in a session. Yeah, why didn't they put this? Lava stop.
00:16:31
Speaker
My gosh, how long would the the password codes be in order to save your state? But yeah, just so We've been kind of like burning through these I want to want to slow the pace as well as just listing off stuff We have one here that stood out particularly for you. I Mean, Meg man X but I can do a whole other so than that one Obvious joke
00:16:59
Speaker
Earthbound's another thing that I've never actually gotten to. I said gotten to, like I haven't had the chance. Right, right. That I've never gotten around to playing. Yeah. But fucking love playing Ess in Smash. But again, like a lot of fucking solid titles, I feel like Nintendo was on their shit for this generation. Yeah. For when they're coming out with things, because a lot of these became just either great entries in an existing IP or fresh IPs that, you know, fucking hung around for fucking Africa.
00:17:28
Speaker
And that was really, that was the place that they innovated a lot. Sega had their own teams kind of working on Sonic and some of their other IPs and some kind of like tie-ins to movies, things of the time. And Nintendo had that as well, but they also just really, really developed their first party IPs.
00:17:49
Speaker
with solid game entries and this is what basically in my opinion destroyed the other offerings like in this generation and the generation next ultimately converting on Sega itself was just it was no longer good enough to copy a game from an arcade and then sell it on an expensive piece of hardware and call it good
00:18:13
Speaker
they released so many cartridges of like high quality games that it was complete insanity to pick like a different game other than or a different console other than Sega's or Nintendo's in this generation.
00:18:31
Speaker
Yeah, there wasn't really anything else at the time either. And there never would be. Jake scrolls the notes. Yeah, so really good stuff out of Nintendo. There also is Sega CD, which I put in here because a lot of their games also got direct kind of ports to PC. Eventually they're like, we made a CD game.
00:18:57
Speaker
For our console, can we make a CD game for a PC? Yes, you can. Yes, you can. That's really easy as it turns out. That's what PCs use in this age. And so, yeah, I played.
00:19:10
Speaker
One of my first games, I really got into it. I talked about it already, but, um, Sonic CD. Yeah. Which originally those days originally came out on this. And then there was other like hard hitting games, like virtue of fighter virtue, a cop virtue, a fighter to virtue of racing. Like it was not keeping up at this point. And, uh, yeah, that just continues really in the future.
00:19:40
Speaker
But...
00:19:42
Speaker
Some other stuff that kind of came out on the Sega space or in the the next generation, which was 1993 so a couple years after I was born into 95 Was Sega Saturn doesn't matter that much PlayStation which some people liked and Basically shook up the entire game No pun intended for the console wars essentially. They're like, hey, how about we just enter this and then have all the games
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of the things that places should be doing for a while For every console they've had so many fucking titles. Mm-hmm where it's like either somebody know it has a PlayStation or you have a PlayStation because Otherwise you're missing out. Yeah
00:20:33
Speaker
Like, when I started my gaming career, the first console I ever had was a GameCube. Right. Because I played Sonic Adventure Battle 2 at a Walmart and I'm like, yes. For some reason, this is what I want. And we all played those games at Walmart, though. That was the place. Just leave me here. Just fucking like stuck in there and robert in. Yeah. Possibly like messed up a little bit because literally all the kids play with it. Your parents are off shopping.
00:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, you have to let this connect you're trying to like rearrange wires like please just send the electrical signal over Um, but my parents had a rule where I couldn't have more than one console at the time Okay, which I think was to instruct me to like Pace yourself or something appreciate it
00:21:20
Speaker
Probably a little bit of both and also they didn't want to spend the money. Yeah, that thanks You're like you can have one but like you're gonna trade in this for something else. Mm-hmm So start off the game cube and then went to Xbox for a good deal of time. Right so I could do Halo things wait, which I think was the main reason for xbox, but Yeah, yeah, we'll get into xbox's wide variety of offerings But then they went over to ps2. Mm-hmm
00:21:51
Speaker
That's a good place to end up.
Innovations and Competition in Modern Consoles
00:21:53
Speaker
It was. And I had the most games for PS2 out of all of those consoles that I had. Yeah. And I think part of that is because PlayStation. So Nintendo did a lot of first party stuff. They had like a lot of first party IPs, like a strong team of developers.
00:22:11
Speaker
Mario games came out. They were almost always good link games came out with Legend of Zelda came out almost always good But they didn't really go outside of their space nearly as much as Sony did so he's just like oh we got all these Japanese developers with great ideas Bring them in bring them in like onboard them bring them aboard the arc That will destroy all other competitors and we will get through this And they ended up with a really really solid IPs for a long time
00:22:41
Speaker
Final Fantasy went from being on all these Nintendo systems to a PlayStation exclusive for many years. So they aggressively pursued some of these exclusives, whereas Nintendo was just like, we'll make our own.
00:22:58
Speaker
And, um, I mean, they've also been successful. So yeah, definitely have, but like when we capped off at like super Nintendo, I feel like that's kind of when they stopped making for the most part, fresh IPs. Yeah. So like outside of.
00:23:15
Speaker
Yeah, there's what's the squid ink game squiggling or Inklings now a splatoon. Sorry. See I don't know why I keep that's why I have a you don't even fucking know I don't know. It's splatoon splatoon 2 but like around Super Nintendo like they already had
00:23:30
Speaker
Let's say bare minimum rough numbers 10 to 12 solid IPs. Yeah niche pursued those. Oh, yeah donkey Kong Kirby Pokemon yeah, like anything like they had that and they just went with it. Oh
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, and Pokemon mostly existed in their handheld space, but they did have a couple entries. This generation was also in 64, which we can get to, but they had Pokemon Stadium for that. And Nintendo really also dominated the handheld space, which we're not really talking about in the console wars, but like who competed with Nintendo compared to like Game Boy Advanced and things like that? Like pretty much nobody.
00:24:14
Speaker
Nobody else really had a portable system. Yeah, like I don't remember Microsoft making anything PlayStation didn't really make a handheld until like PSP. Yeah Like there actually was a lot but none of them were nearly got the market share then and so they just fell off They were just like those old they were like handheld arcades. That's what they were basically billed as and couldn't compete
00:24:40
Speaker
But PlayStation right out the gate had crazy solid offering Games like and I remember some of these literally from Walmart like you're saying first time seeing Spyro Ape escape I thought was like hilarious. Yeah, they also had some there was the multi-console offering of Tony Hawk's pro skater
00:25:03
Speaker
This came out for like N64, came out for PlayStation, I think it also came out for Xbox. But between N64 and PlayStation, PlayStation's version was just so much better. Like N64 had crappier graphics.
00:25:19
Speaker
floor resolution, all of this. And it was still a good game. I played a lot like 900 in the dark side, but, um, and cheat codes for infinite, uh, stability while grinding. Um, but PlayStation was just way better. Yeah. That's the one I played. I had never heard of other versions. Yeah. You didn't know. I had a neighbor friend who lived like.
00:25:47
Speaker
I'm gonna say five doors down, but for the sake of the band, three doors down. And their older brother had a PlayStation, so we'd go in the basement and we would just play that. And it was good. And one of few instances of me enjoying Ska is Goldfinger's Superman. But it was played on Tony Hawk and it was just a solid game, solid tunes.
00:26:14
Speaker
This was one of the first times that a CD based console also really succeeded. So we're talking about how Sega pretty much failed with Sega CD. Yeah. PlayStation came out the door and they're just like, yeah, we're using CDs, but they're cool now. Like we have all of these awesome games. We have these first party game or not first party, but we have these third party games. No one else has exclusives. Rayman, Parasite Eve, which I never got around to playing.
00:26:43
Speaker
That's the thing. PS2 always had like a cool vibe as far as the titles that they offered, but also in how they did their marketing. Yeah. I wasn't really around for Sega's marketing so much. Yeah. But even with PlayStation, even like the PlayStation, like load-in animation and sound, you're like, oh, oh yeah. No, they, they, they.
00:27:05
Speaker
I think that if they had waited too much longer, it would have been really, really hard for them to establish market share in the US. They probably would have been fine in Japan, but this was the perfect time for them to come out with a fully developed a CD console and all of these games. Why do you say that? Because so if you compare it to like the offerings at the time, so compare this to N64, which we didn't really get to PlayStation controllers are better than N64.
00:27:35
Speaker
Oh, they're manageable. Yeah. That's the thing. They're almost unchanged. Sega Saturn didn't really compete that much in this market. This was before Xbox came in. So their competition is Nintendo. Yeah. And they're like, we're just going to do the hardware better. So Nintendo is running the N64 with their cartridges and eventually the expansion pack, which is just like another four megabytes of memory or something like that. It was hilarious to think about now.
00:28:05
Speaker
But Sega's using CDs. Their games are the better ports. If there's a game that's really starting both, they have really good soundtracks. Their controllers are almost unused or unchanged like over the years for the PlayStation.
00:28:24
Speaker
You said Sega. Oh, I say Sega? Yeah. I meant PlayStation. Sorry. All of that applies to the PlayStation. Nobody cares about Sega. Kind of starting now. A few people cared about the next one. But PlayStation just punched right into that saloon and was just like, I'm going to fight the biggest guy. And I've got all these games, which I think is what happened in saloons.
00:28:47
Speaker
Seriously like the easiest way is to go to like Maybe not anymore. Mm-hmm that used to be you go to a game stop You look for like these game section. Mm-hmm, and you see like thousands of Madden titles Yeah, and like 30% of the other things Madden year one through the year 2000 Here you use games that people have already traded in. Yeah, I think
00:29:11
Speaker
Yeah, PlayStation really got right in there. A bunch of great Castlevania games, had the Tekken series, just saw it all the way through. Nintendo 64 was what I finally convinced my parents to get me, the fools, and that came out two years after PlayStation.
00:29:30
Speaker
So this also gives you, gives PlayStation some time and makes Nintendo sort of look bad because their games are great for the N64. The first party games. Oh my God. Like freaking awesome. Some of like the classics of my childhood were all N64.
00:29:47
Speaker
But PlayStation's already been out for two years, and it's better than everything previous, right? That's why I'm talking about this one-two punch of getting in there early and then having better hardware that really got it ahead. This is turning into a bit of a PlayStation circle jerk, but this was the entry they needed.
00:30:12
Speaker
Yeah, agreed. In 64 though, solid series. I had to literally just cut myself off when I was putting in top titles for that. Super Mario 64, freaking awesome. I think Dunkey's favorite game also is what he said. Mario Kart 64, first 3D iteration there. GoldenEye 64, bringing the shooters to what we thought was the modern era.
00:30:35
Speaker
As it turns out, not so much. Banjo Kazooie, which I didn't play, but a lot of people played and it was awesome. Donkey Kong 64 required that expansion pack. Freaking amazing. Legend of Zelda, both Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Ocarina of Time is a lot of people's favorite game of all time. It's up there for me. I think it was GameStop's first Perfect Ten or really close to their first. Perfect Dark, which was Gold Knight 007, but better.
00:31:05
Speaker
Basically. Seriously. Paper Mario. I didn't want an arrow, but that's very true. Yeah, I'm just finishing out the list and then you can come back to any that really, really stand out. Paper Mario, which was great. Kirby 64 Crystal Shards, which I already talked about in the retro. Freaking awesome. Super Smash Bros., which some people played.
00:31:25
Speaker
And infinitely other games, like there's just so much that I could, I could have a podcast just on N64 because it was such a big part of my childhood. So my two big questions are, um, how did you hold the controller? Right. Like, like a civilized person. I had the left hand on the Z trigger, the central prong of the controller, if you will. Are you left-handed?
00:31:51
Speaker
No, it's left hand on the Z right here with, and the, uh, the joystick on my left thumb, right hand on the C-pad with A and B. And then you're fucking left-handed. That makes you left-handed. I put my right hand on the, the deck of the N64. You use the D-pad? I mean, I guess it depends on the game, but yeah. C-stick was, or C-pad for the time was not used as much.
00:32:20
Speaker
I mean, it was used for Legend of Zelda, which is one of the games I played. It was the Ocarina controls. How did you hit the A and B button on an N64 controller? Sure force will, next question. You literally would have to take your hands off of the joystick.
00:32:39
Speaker
Were you good at games around this time? No, it's, uh,
The Future of Console Generations
00:32:45
Speaker
but yeah. Pigeon typing that N64. There's been a lot of weird controllers and there's a couple more after this, but N64 controller is freaking weird. The other thing is, um, were you somebody who played Mario party and 64 days? Not so much, uh, around the N64 era, only a couple of times, but.
00:33:05
Speaker
My question is, do you have the N64 Stigmata? I don't know what that means. So in a lot of the Mario Party games, or other things of that era, there's a lot of times you'd have to grind the analog stick.
00:33:20
Speaker
So I have like those three rings. That's the first time you really like taking analogs like like grinding it into your palm Yeah, we're trying to move very quickly. Yeah, usually for the sake of minigames But a lot of people would always complain like oh There's like a fucking hole in my hands now. Yeah
00:33:35
Speaker
And that became like a badge of honor through the years of like hilarious. Ah, yes, I remember because they had they had like the intro level Joystick that still had like eight notches for kind of like your eight Cardinal directions, but they're like this is hold on eight cardinal directions north east Northeast ish Lee and
00:33:59
Speaker
Uh, there, I think Nintendo was just like, we have to find out a way to make this 3d, uh, slap the only thing that we can come up with on that. And that's the N 64 controller. Yeah. PlayStation didn't get the, they didn't open with the, um, the dual shock, which became, uh, like the standard forever. Their first one didn't have, uh, joysticks. It was just the D pad. You're right. Yeah.
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah. You wouldn't have actually needed that for a lot of those titles. It wasn't until later that they, uh, like a few years later that they made the only controller that they've ever used. Yeah. Spoilers PS two, three, and four. What they made them. What? But no, they've been sitting with that and that's been.
00:34:51
Speaker
It's my go-to for a lot of games, actually. Yeah. If you like name certain genre of game, I immediately think of like what I would play it on. Right. So whether it's like PC or, you know, statistically PlayStation 4 controller. Yeah. Of like the dual analog dual shock.
00:35:11
Speaker
Everything else has become more like a playstation. And halo is the other category. Yeah. Everything else has become more like a playstation 4 controller. Yeah. Which is probably their biggest like batch of honor. It's just they didn't overdo it. They didn't over engineer anything. Um, and they, uh,
00:35:31
Speaker
Yeah, again, PlayStation Circle jerk, but their controllers are really good for a launch controller. Really freaking good. Wasn't super flimsy, kind of like the SNES. Really flat. Harder to get a good feel for. More ergonomic is a word that starts coming up in controller lingo.
00:35:51
Speaker
Really solid. And so they actually got to compete with the N64, which would have otherwise been really hard if not all of that release timing and everything came up. And pretty much everybody who wasn't a Nintendo or PlayStation company started to really, really struggle at this point.
Personal Reflections on Console Wars
00:36:11
Speaker
It takes us to generation six which was 1998 to 2000 through 2013 of when there are nine home video game consoles Most of them are not gonna be listed Thank God But you have Dreamcast which was Sega's last
00:36:34
Speaker
Kind of attempted offering here and they had really big controllers. They were pretty weird some good games sonic adventure jet set radio Shin Moo Soul Calibur things like that
00:36:51
Speaker
But they really just couldn't keep up with the pace that PlayStation and Nintendo were coming out ahead in this generation. They were also the first out the gate, which should have gotten them a little bit more ground. This was 1998 that the Dreamcast came out. But two years after that, PlayStation 2 came out, which just destroyed all hope for the Dreamcast.
00:37:17
Speaker
Yeah is again goes back to like ps2 I think of all consoles of all time has had The most titles on that. Yeah It's a stupid number of games Absolutely crazy, and it's also like the sleekest of consoles Dreamcast Xbox obviously very bulky. Yeah GameCube Pretty compact. There's yeah, almost as though they kind of crushed it all down into a compact piece of geometry
00:37:48
Speaker
Let me rephrase, original PS2, still pretty fat, but it was meant to lay flat, just kind of like on a shelf. Right, just to stack your books on it, it overheats. Yeah, but like not too long after they had like the PS2 slim, which was like, hey guys, this is a PS1, but it's a black. You're like, cool, it plays PS2 games. Yeah. And it felt sleek enough. You could just put it as like a book and a shelf. Yeah. Which again, lends back to the coolness.
00:38:15
Speaker
Yeah, it was the aesthetic for the modern age. It was angular. You knew exactly what it was when you looked at it, and it didn't take up all of your space. Yeah, and they also didn't feel they needed to change their model. Like Jake was saying with the PS1 controller, they didn't really change anything for the PS2 controller. They had analog sticks as like a, this is something we're keeping going forward. Yeah. But- 3D has not burned itself out. We'll run into that. Yeah.
00:38:44
Speaker
People still put some joysticks on, I guess. They also came out with two. That was interesting. The dual shock was the two shocks. That's what that translates to. Which had nothing to do with the joysticks. It actually had rumble feedback.
00:39:04
Speaker
Right. You had to get a pack for that back in the N64 days. You did, which is odd in a way. And it also precluded the use of a memory card because it used the same slot. So it's like, do I want a memory card or do I want a rumble pack? Give me the vibrations. Fuck the save data. Yeah. But I mean, at the same time, like GameCube and Xbox. Yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
GameCube came out a year after the PlayStation 2. And honestly, I wasn't going away. You're right. Yes, it was good. And Xbox also came out in 2001. But yeah, PlayStation 2. I have like the smallest sampling of games for this. There's just looking at this and shaking his head.
00:39:49
Speaker
Um, some final fantasy game shadow of the Colossus, which some people liked, uh, MGS two through three God of war, which some people liked and was also their kind of console front runner exclusive. Um, persona three.
00:40:08
Speaker
Ratchet and Clank. A bunch of other stuff. I know Jak and Dax are also on. Jak is the one I was probably going to say. Because those are like, they hold hands into the sunset of gaming history. I was the one who was throwing Pepper in a little Beyond Good and Evil, thank you very much. Another solid title. I hope it's on the PS2. That doesn't sound like an asshole. That's fine, no one's going to leave it up.
00:40:30
Speaker
I was going to say other controllers at this time were still making the dual analog. Granted, they came out a little bit after PS2. It wasn't the exact same time. Exactly. But GameCube had your left analog and then your C stick rather than like a C pad. Yeah. And then Xbox had their also dual analog, but they kind of have it staggered. Yeah. Where your left one, your directional slightly higher than the one you use for aiming.
00:41:00
Speaker
And it's worth noting that GameCube kind of carried forth the N64's tradition of having weird controllers. But it's a weird controller that everybody got used to, unlike the N64. GameCube controller's still the Super Smash Bros. standard today.
00:41:20
Speaker
like as soon as the switch uh like smash ultimate was announced for switch i'm sure people were like all right now how do i make a gamecube controller work with this like day one yeah they've kept it around and like they have first party and then for the wee they're like we have a gamecube adapter it's okay yeah and then for the wee you were like uh-huh uh-huh yeah and for the switch like no seriously it's fine yeah plug it in go ahead
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, like I was saying, they have Nintendo first party adapter for GameCube controllers for the Switch, which is, yeah, I mean, good on them, I guess. It is good on them. It's essentially in the way of Blizzard saying, like, hey, we now approve of, like, WoW Classic being a thing, and, like, you still having servers for that?
00:42:09
Speaker
It's nice that you're willing to appreciate the part of the community that's still appreciating things from long ago. Yeah. And not forcing them to upgrade to the latest version of Windows or something, you know? Which is also good in Nintendo's case because they, until they made like the pro controller for the Switch, they didn't make another good controller. So they kind of had to. Yeah.
00:42:30
Speaker
But top games for the Gamecube Legend of Zelda Wind Waker which was very controversial upon launch due to its art style I remember that explicitly Super Smash Bros Melee which some people played Super Mario Sunshine Metroid Prime Luigi's Mansion which was like my top game to watch people play at Walmart because people are always playing it Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess
00:42:54
Speaker
Pikmin which is my top game to watch people and Basically around this point Sega's kind of there they realized that Dreamcast wasn't really getting them across the finish line. They pulled out of the the console wars and started letting other people Produce their games, which is why game keep also has sonic adventure battle to
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And Sonic Adventure DX. Keep that in mind. Yeah. Um, I gotta say GameCube, like I said, was my first console. Um, was mainly for Sonic Adventure, but I'll too, cause I was a weeb. Right. I still am, but I was then as well. What's your Sonic name?
00:43:40
Speaker
But then very, if not the next day, uh, melee became the game to play with friends. Yeah. Oh yeah. Like I played, I like, you know, that I jumped from in 64 to, um, to ultimate. So I have a huge smash jump, but, uh, melee is one of the most popular, I think smash games to ever come out. It's just crazy how many people that brought into it.
00:44:06
Speaker
Yeah, it started a whole fucking fighting community. Yeah. As far as, um, I think it was like fighter Royal. Yeah. Um, but like the controls were tied up in response to that. Like they still have tournaments, like they have smash ultimate tournaments and they're like, but also may lie. Yeah. Yeah. And it's crazy that it's had that much persistence and all of these other titles are still very.
00:44:31
Speaker
Breaking the mold like what other game was like Luigi's Mansion or Metroid Prime or fucking sunshine Yeah, that's when they stopped calling to Mario too. Actually. Yeah, Luigi's Mansion. They're like, is that all right, Luigi, whatever that means Yeah, no like
00:44:49
Speaker
Really cool, um, designs and mechanics like super mario sunshine. I remember seeing that and I was like, why is he just spraying water all over the place? What kind of game is this? Like, if you said like it's Mario, but he sprays water, I'd be like, that's a dumb idea. There's somebody showed me sunshine and be like, I want to play. Oh, are we utilizing squid? Fair enough.
00:45:09
Speaker
Yeah, there's really interesting stuff. Taking Metroid into 3D with Metroid Prime. That's a big jump. And Nintendo's kind of... They play this paradox, sort of, of like never changing and also trying to innovate.
00:45:26
Speaker
So like later we get to the Wii and the next generation, which was like, Hey, let's push everyone into motion controls. And people are like, we don't want that though. And they're like, but there's Mario now. And you're like, okay.
00:45:44
Speaker
They definitely stay competitive in this, and Nintendo obviously. They have really good offerings in the Japanese and American space. It really just keeps it going. Then Xbox, which was a console. I played Halo.
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah, this is for the purpose of brevity and not just restating the PlayStation story. Really tough for Xbox to enter at this point alongside the GameCube. I mean, this is their first. This is their console. This is Microsoft's. Yeah. Yeah. Entry. And they're just like, all right, we have to have something literally no one else has. Like we have to have a thing that will get our console sold. And that was Halo.
00:46:33
Speaker
And like there's other games on here. Nobody really cares that much. It was Halo. Halo is this old. This trend would continue through generations of Xbox games. Very true. Very, very true.
00:46:45
Speaker
Halo's really been their pioneer game because it did stand out so much compared to what else was there for the time. Nobody was doing first-person shooters on the scale with the style. And it was so over the top. And then the multiplayer was tight as well.
00:47:05
Speaker
And just launched it. You had vehicles, you had local co-op, online co-op with Games for Xbox Live, which I've had discussions and discord about how advanced, how ahead of the curve their online system was. They basically beat PlayStation to having a good online offering and community. And that was also huge.
00:47:28
Speaker
There's another thing where if Xbox, if Microsoft would have waited any longer, they probably would have pushed out. They struck while the iron was hot. Yeah, exactly. And they made Halo, which was their game. Bringing us into Generation 7, 2005 through 2017, which is pretty recent. You know, a decade plus ago. 2017 isn't a decade ago. That was two years ago.
00:47:56
Speaker
It was 2007, you'd be right, but... Oh, you said 2017. Teens, yes. My, mister. It's important to know what is and isn't a team. Yes. Sing. Oh, man. That one's to Jared from Subway.
00:48:16
Speaker
But Xbox 360 first out the gate this time, which is also good for building their market share. Gears of War, Halo, Halo again. Crackdown, which I actually was talking to people from work about recently for some reason. Shadow Complex, Forza, which they maintain forever. Alan Wake and Xbox contained or they continued Microsoft's offering of like games for Xbox. Then they came out for Windows like two years later.
00:48:44
Speaker
That gave them some exclusives with big air quotes for games that were destined to come out for Windows but not other consoles.
00:48:58
Speaker
I remember being as like the next big console that like people had in their basements. Yeah. And like when I come home from college, I went over to like Tucker's house and we'd all play eight person Halo and you fucking squint at your corner on the TV and hope to God you get to shoot somebody. No looking, no screen looking.
00:49:20
Speaker
But I also remember like the red ring of death. Yes. So how prominent was this as a console for you at this time? Were you part of like the other games in this generation consoles? I mostly skipped this generation up to the next generation. I didn't really play console based games around here. I was mostly PC. But a couple of Xbox 360 games.
00:49:48
Speaker
couple previous generation playstation 2 games at uh youth group at church play mortal combat you know standard church games hold on youth group had video games yeah they had a son of a bitch they they didn't usually just sit there and play them but if you're having a busy praying and doing sword drills yeah
00:50:07
Speaker
You know the, um, you know, the, the super bowl, uh, with Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears one. Yes. Uh, so I was at, uh, church and my, my youth group, you're going to get the super bowl. No, that didn't happen. I was in my church, uh, like a party for the super bowl. When that whole thing happened.
00:50:31
Speaker
I think like literally no one saw it because everyone's like halftime show. Let's go out and play frisbee or something It was crisis averted sin averted. There was your one titty churchgoers. Yep PlayStation 3 which I pretty much skipped entirely but they had some cool stuff there. That's the thing like again playsters building off of their Existing framework. Yeah, and like there are a lot of good titles here, but I didn't
00:51:00
Speaker
I don't know if I was in like college or something, but like, I miss this whole generation. Like I never had any of these consoles. Like I said, I just played Xbox 360 when I came home on breaks. And this was, this was around the age where you chose one, right? You were in the Xbox group or you were in the PlayStation group. This was before the synthesis and we realized that.
00:51:19
Speaker
Everyone in video game publishing was going to try to ruin video games. It was up to gamers to unite and fight against that and be friends. That's a whole separate five. But a lot of games, but some of the key ones here, MGS4, which was the conclusion to the main Metal Gear Solid franchise, most would say, I would think. It's one of the longer movies I've watched for sure. And The Last of Us, which was games some people play.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, and then obviously continuing and finishing out the God of War franchise which was their God of War was their halo essentially rough corollary and really it's hilarious to go back and and see how
00:52:15
Speaker
Not that's the word for it kind of chauvinistic those games really were they were they were the male power fantasy But and there was the Wii which had Wii Sports Resort next generation I Feel like we're talking about like the fucking nunchucks. Oh
00:52:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think this is like an actual like And more so encourage wireless controller. Mm-hmm, or is just kind of like Xbox 360 had a wireless controller. I
00:52:45
Speaker
This was almost required for most of the Wii games, though. This was their primary cell. The fact you could use another controller was almost hidden in the subtext. Yeah, but if you had anything plugged in, you're like, what is that fucking umbilical cord? It wasn't expected at that point. It was like you had Wii bowling. You put the spit on the fucking bowling ball. That's how it was designed. And something like No More Heroes needed to be. Masturbation simulator.
00:53:14
Speaker
I wasn't gonna go there, but yeah, but it needed to be like a much more Mobile and because they needed to like read the movement of the actual Wiimote Mm-hmm was a lot of the mechanics. Nobody wants to masturbate with a dual dual shock, right? Like it's just not gonna work. I masturbate with nunchucks That's it. End of statement done Now it was um, it was interesting. This was Nintendo trying something new
00:53:39
Speaker
and like the games honestly I feel like out the gate they didn't usually the Nintendo usually has their first party offering to be like buy our consoles got Mario and they really didn't have that for the Wii
00:53:53
Speaker
which made it struggle a little bit. And then some people didn't like Skyward Sword, which was their Zelda offering. So it's like, what are you doing? Like how stable is this going to be? And I think this offered more market share to PlayStation and Xbox because we just didn't apply to everybody. It didn't, like not everybody wanted to have a Wii or play with a Wii.
00:54:20
Speaker
Yeah. And also at this time, there's definitely one of the cheaper consoles and something that humans have for sure is if you have like a price tag, that's significantly cheaper or free. People are like, Oh, is that what's worth? Nothing. It's just something that people do. Playstations got crazy expensive. People were like selling these scalpel them for like 600 bucks. Yeah.
00:54:47
Speaker
Well, that's one of those things where it's just, it fit in like a slightly off kilter space. Like I definitely did play with a Wii again for like smash four. Yeah. Um, it just would've been four would've been three brawl. I think. Right. Is that four super smash bros, melee brawl. And then, uh, there was four after that. And then ultimate, I think.
00:55:35
Speaker
It was it was interesting and Nintendo learned to not be interesting going forward That's not true. Actually, but they try to innovate in the hardware space where PlayStation and Microsoft basically gave up after their like I toy slash like motion tracking connect
00:55:45
Speaker
I think, right? Anyways, right in to tell us how video games work.
00:55:56
Speaker
The connect was uh an experiment. It was something Nobody wanted it as it turns out Maybe do some focus testing Yeah, i'm glad i'm glad some of like bad experimentation happens one cool monster movies too You find things that don't work and from that you kind of push into a direction of like this is what people are looking for Yeah, or this is what's like an untapped
00:56:23
Speaker
Market or space yeah, then that's what they wanted and they also didn't want to get they didn't want to be behind it like these are people who saw the last decade or two of technological innovation and they're like if someone else comes out with motion controls and Everybody else has awesome motion control mechanics and the games are going for it We may never catch up. Yeah They wanted to be part of it, but then it wasn't a thing. So thank God
00:56:49
Speaker
Which took us into generation 8, 2012 through 2019. Hey, that's this year. That's weird. And then there was four consoles here. First off was Wii U, which was just mobile Wii, kind of. It was like a handheld, really.
00:57:11
Speaker
I know nothing about the Wii U. I know it existed. That's it. Actually, reach out to a Nintendo rep and we still have no idea what a Wii U is. I heard them shrug over the phone. I honestly remember seeing ads and things for this.
00:57:30
Speaker
I don't know it even falls under the category of like a ps3 was like it was just outside of that space where I was Owning consoles and giving a shit and it just kind of like went very under the radar for me And the thing was this is basically a prototype switch The Wii U was like you can play with it as a mobile. You can hook it in you can like play play your Wii games but it just was not refined enough yet
00:57:57
Speaker
Um, so I don't know anybody who personally had one, but PlayStation four is a console that some people play. I'm going next one. And some jokes is something, you know, it actually did well. Yeah, I know. So this is a year after the Wii U, which nobody bought. So technically the first, like the first meaningful one in this generation, uh, 2013 was when the console that I'm currently using is my latest console came out. So six years ago.
00:58:25
Speaker
It's true though. Like PS4 was a game console that I eventually got after being PC gaming for many, many years. Yeah. And I still am strong, strong and true. But I wanted to have a console for some of these titles.
00:58:41
Speaker
Mainly when they made last of us for ps4. Yeah, the remaster the ps3 also eventually want to get the Final Fantasy 7. Mm-hmm remaster read Remember the fuck they do there reded. I wanted to play it And they also have like a lot of other good titles. Yeah, but also they're again still they've evolved from like the sleek interaction of even like the ps3 menu. Mm-hmm
00:59:07
Speaker
And then also having like the skins on your PlayStation menu. Yeah, they just the online still not great. I would like to point out because Jake and I played a lot of Monster Hunter.
00:59:19
Speaker
Yeah, but that I think a lot of that was probably on monster hunter though. We were also playing close to launch. So it was, it was, I don't want to give excuses for how bad our online experience was. People can go back to that episode and listen to it, but wasn't great. But I feel like a lot of it was. Yeah. Square Enix, but even so, like,
00:59:43
Speaker
I would say I probably have up to 10 games for the PS4, but that's still like a solid console for me. Oh yeah. I still want to go back and play some of these games I haven't gotten around to beating yet, like fucking Horizon Zero Dawn. Yeah, I'm looking at this list and I've played or beaten like half of them.
01:00:01
Speaker
Let's let's bang that quick. Yeah, so first up here bloodborne started it haven't beat it yet want to Say until dawn, which is like a horror type movie game thing. I don't know probably never heard Yakuza, which I've heard is good God of War, which I've heard is good. I've played some of it. It's pretty good Persona 5 which is I played for like a hundred and ten hours. I'm not a weed
01:00:25
Speaker
Keep saying it. Infamous Second Son, which was the next game in the Infamous series. Really good. Better than Prototype. Fight me. Horizon. I'll also defend Prototype. Horizon Zero Dawn. Solid game. Solid freaking game. I beat that. Did I beat it?
01:00:42
Speaker
Can't remember if I beat it. I think I beat it. I remember yes Jake Jake beat this I did beat it. I just mine blinked Uncharted which I haven't played any of the games up, but here it's good Spider-man, I didn't actually realize this only came up for PlayStation, but it did and it was good Yeah, the Last Guardian again, not a weep. I've I've heard mixed things about this one. Yeah
01:01:08
Speaker
It was a heavily marketed game for PlayStation 4, which is one of the reasons I put it in here.
01:01:12
Speaker
Yeah. I just don't know of anybody like who would follow on YouTube or gaming space who was like, Hey, this game was good. And I enjoyed it. Yeah. Everyone just says, it's bad. And I loved it. And then the last was Detroit become human, which was a remedy is kind of next offering. And I actually really enjoyed Detroit become human. I recommend it for people who like that sort of heavy rain, um, indigo prophecy style, uh, game quantum break, things like that.
01:01:42
Speaker
Things are based more so on choices choices story. Yeah, kind of like a choose your own adventure in modern age. You mean like life? Yeah But this one's better than than many of those. I hope someday to coverage Detroit become human But I don't know but yeah PlayStation 4
01:02:02
Speaker
Really freaking good. There's a reason that it outsold everybody else in this generation by twice as much. And I know, like everybody I know has one. Yeah. That's the thing, like if you have a console, it's pretty much a PS4. I only know one person to have, we're about to say, is the Xbox One. Yeah. And that's my uncle. And I don't know why. There's a guy from work that has one, but he's a pretty big Halo fan.
01:02:31
Speaker
Which is the only reason still to have the baseball. Because you want to keep up with Halo as a series. You're too invested at this point. It's older than you are. Not really. But I still don't know of anything that really stands out for Xbox games outside of FPS. And even those FPS I wouldn't say are so stand out that I would want to get the console just for that game. Right.
01:02:57
Speaker
As someone who really, you know, is invested in games, we've played a lot of games, I would recommend an Xbox to somebody who doesn't have a PC and still wants to play those games that only came out for one or the other. Yeah. Because, I mean, that's, you know, perfectly valid and fine. But if you have a PC and you have a PlayStation 4, you get like 80, 90 percent coverage on top games that come out now.
01:03:22
Speaker
It's true. And the opposite is not true if you have an Xbox One and not a PlayStation 4. And they came out around the same time, so they really got to fight it out. And PlayStation, they're their own kind of one.
01:03:38
Speaker
Like, obviously, it's Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation in the space, but I feel that Xbox and PS... We've never said the word Sony, I realized. Sorry. Sony, everybody, front of the show. I actually have no note on this, and it's been an hour. Microsoft, Xbox, Sony, PlayStation, Nintendo, Nintendo machine.
01:04:02
Speaker
I just realized like it was a curse or something. Literally just never used the name of the company. Always the product. People know who they are. But I feel that it's always been PlayStation versus Xbox for a lot of that space because they typically had more titles. They compete for the hardcore gamer too.
01:04:22
Speaker
Yeah. Whereas Nintendo was like very family friendly, but they also like, Hey, we have this bucket of games. Yeah. Like, you know, if it comes from an attendant, you know, there's going to be a Zelda, you know, there's going to be a Mario. Yeah. They have these existing IPs that they're working with where PlayStation, Xbox, I'd say more so PlayStation or less established in the front. Yeah.
01:04:43
Speaker
It's kind of like Nintendo's sitting back on their beach chair with a little mini umbrella and like a lemonade and Xbox and PlayStation were like exchanging fire over the RAM parts trying to claim ground and Nintendo's like, I'm going to sit on my like 33% of the market and not worry about this.
01:05:03
Speaker
Like I said, it's a slightly different demographic whereas PlayStation X much more so hey, you like the game you want gamer fuel Yeah, you want to kill people and an FPS what's funny about this just to subvert this entirely you're correct like a hundred percent correct and then Nintendo released that dead space on real shooter for like the GameCube I think or the Wii
01:05:26
Speaker
And it was an exclusive. It was the only console it came out on. I want to argue that rail shooters are very different. I mean, they basically didn't exist other than that one. It's a dead genre. And then they're like, let's make one and we'll put it on a Nintendo system. But yeah.
01:05:43
Speaker
That's literally the exception everything else is. Yeah. And yeah, so Xbox kept running with Halo, Gears of War. And then you'll notice that that was 2013 and there was a jump to 2017 where the Nintendo Switch came out, which is the other console that I own. I actually lied earlier. I said that the PlayStation 4 was the most recent. I knew you were lying, but I didn't want to out you.
01:06:10
Speaker
right yeah also nobody's gonna listen this far no it's fair i mean we've had episodes this long before it's all right nintendo switch doesn't honestly have that many games that are exclusives but it has one game that i really really like and there's another one on here you're probably thinking of breath of the wild isn't on it
01:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, I fucking am. I don't even have the game and I'm not set. I was like filling out notes here pretty quickly, but Super Mario Odyssey, Kirby Star Allies, which I didn't even realize was a co-op game, Mario Plus Rabbids, which I remember seeing a developer cry over at a convention, Octopath Traveler. It was tears of joy for the record.
01:06:49
Speaker
Octopath Traveler, Splatoon 2, which was the second in the Splatoon series. Thanks for clarifying that last bit. I wasn't following. And Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, which I think is the reason 80, 70, 90% of people who bought a Switch bought the game for that system.
01:07:11
Speaker
What's the thing it's like when I think of really good open world games, I think of which are three MGS five. And from what I've seen, but not experienced.
01:07:25
Speaker
Breath of the Wild. Because it gives you so many options to approach things how you want. You have so many options. Yeah, it's just a sandbox. People actually say the story is not that great. But it's sandbox with a content. Yeah. I can't speak for the story of Breath of the Wild. I can speak for the story of Witcher 3 so far. Mmm, it's pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good.
01:07:50
Speaker
It's a story. But the open world aspects are good. You've avoided a lot of bad open world games is what I'm hearing. You're just like, I'll skip over entirely. I'll wait till I get the one that's nine out of 10. Then I'll play that. Seriously. And because I'm not the type of person to jump into open world. Yeah. Typically, because if I have too many options, I have no options. I just put the controller down.
01:08:17
Speaker
Don't like that much freedom police. Thank you But I mean if there's not a directive for me if I'm not doing something for like a goal or like an endgame Why am I doing a thing? Yeah, so I need to have like find motivation within the game itself for like enjoying just playing it Yeah, like MGS 5 you could just like dick around and that was really fun Yeah, there's a lot of sub mechanics things that you can pursue that are enjoyable. Yeah the moment to moment
01:08:47
Speaker
the long reaching goals of the game don't matter so much if the moment to moment gameplay is fun.
01:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, I'm saying Jake we're having fun in the now why we have to think about marriage But also on the switch super mario odyssey was another thing that really innovated within the space Yeah of again having that cool kid chameleon transformation shit. That's exactly it full circle much freedom and mechanics and Other things and then had a million fucking cool collectibles. Yeah, I played it at my friends my friend
01:09:23
Speaker
Still my friend but my husband's uh-huh place over Christmas So like they went out to the other side of the family. I'm like, I'm not related to them technically So like I would just I played Mario Odyssey. There's like just two hours. I'm like, holy shit I see why people enjoy like it. Yeah, it's really well-designed gameplay and like the salt the core mechanics were
01:09:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm so good we talk about like the gameplay loop sometimes like the core loop of a game and Nintendo just like takes that loop and they like pound it across like an elven anvil and then like Enchant it like Lord of the Rings style like they're making the one ring and they sprinkle cocaine all over it and then they present it to children
01:10:07
Speaker
And they're like, man, this loop is tight. Um, yeah, that's not a loop. That's a new spill. And, uh, yeah, so Nintendo switch most recent console. Got a couple of games for it, but I would say this is their advanced Wii U is what it was. Yeah. Closing that loop on that earlier point. This is the home console. That's also portable.
01:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cool how you can have it docked and like just HDMI up to the CV, not speak from experience. Right. Or if you can just. I bring the switch over sometimes. Yeah. Or you can put like the joy console either side and kind of just like taking the other room with you. You can still play Smash. Yeah. Again, not speaking from experience. Right.
01:10:52
Speaker
Tune in for next week where I cover smash cuz I own this game now I wasn't sure if you're gonna if you're gonna out yourself Again, nobody listens this far and they'll hear about it. Yeah future episodes. Yeah, I didn't I didn't want to spoil it for anyone But yeah, Dave owns a switch. So judge him judge him
01:11:11
Speaker
and then That that was a Nintendo switch you'll realize that that last generation was hecka long just like this podcast and There hasn't been an official Wikipedia Sanctioned jump to generation 9 and I had a point here to talk about Why you think that is why do you think the switch does or does not deserve to be? generation 9 discuss
01:11:40
Speaker
I don't give a fuck, Jake. All right, that's fair. So I just leave it to Wikipedia. Nobody cares. And you know what's funny about this? I actually did some research on this. Most people share your opinion. They're just like, the generations don't matter anymore. So much time has passed. Microsoft and Sony continue to re-release slightly updated versions of their same systems. Yeah, PS Pro, Xbox One S, I think is what it's called.
01:12:06
Speaker
And they definitely don't count as System leaps and then the switch doesn't even compete in the same space like they're not trying to surpass Xbox or ps4 So why does it matter anymore? It's like you're following three separate celebrities who each have their own lives and careers Yeah at this point
01:12:26
Speaker
Whereas in the earlier days of like GameCube ps2 and Xbox Like I said, my parents are like you can have one console I'm like, oh I have to pick one of these three existing consoles at the same space. Yeah Cuz I like that's what was featured at Walmart like that's these games are so they hadn't broken up into categories. Here's your GameCube Here's your Xbox. Here's your ps2. Yeah, you look behind the glass case. You're like this looks really
01:12:54
Speaker
and you read the back of the box and you make your selection that way or something. So as the title of this is Consul Wars, looking back with this historical perspective, what do you think your ordering for Consul Wars is and why is Magnavox one of the top two?
01:13:17
Speaker
This knife here I remove the knife We'll find the knife we'll find the knife yeah, so Xbox I I'm not actively playing Halo 2 it was a huge fucking chunk of my multiplayer time Yeah in my teenage years still a solid fucking title But outside of that Xbox has done nothing for me
01:13:45
Speaker
Fucking ever right so I it Bottom of the list bottom of the list. Okay, presumably Magnavox slightly about that I Would say next for me is probably Nintendo. Mm-hmm. They have a lot of good games, but it's not as nostalgic for me Yeah, I didn't grow up playing a lot of Nintendo titles I
01:14:15
Speaker
As far as the multiplayer, like one V one titles, the grudge matches I'd have with my friends in Soul Calibur two. Um, and now also owning a PS4 before a switch. Yeah. Uh-huh. Definitely PlayStation for me as far as it's numerous offerings. It's really, really, uh, has a large variety as far as games are concerned.
01:14:41
Speaker
a lot of compelling games that I would actually want to pick up as an adult, which is not always an easy choice to make. I think my ratings are probably the same as yours. I might put Nintendo a little bit, it's like it's real freaking close to PlayStation just based off of hopes for the Switch, but PlayStation still beats them out because I just
01:15:05
Speaker
It has the games I want to play, other than Smash, which I play more than any other console game. But in the end, it's up for people to decide. You get to decide how the console wars were actually resolved. And statistics, which show that Microsoft came in slightly below Nintendo in the latest generation. And then Sony PlayStation doubled Nintendo. Nintendo's actual unit sold.
01:15:40
Speaker
And that's our historical recollection of the war with our own personal takes on it. It's been another episode of Soapstone. Thank you for listening. As always, you can reach out to us at soapstonepodcast at gmail.com. Not just at gmail.com. As some people have thought, I don't know why. Or contact us and join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast.
01:15:58
Speaker
Get fucked.
01:16:07
Speaker
And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Bye.
01:16:56
Speaker
you