Blaster Master with Mathas from Chilluminati!

Transcript

Speaker: You need to get some lower standards with Jesse and Alex.

Speaker: You know who else has lower standards, Phil?

Speaker: Who's that?

Speaker: Hey there, everybody.

Speaker: Welcome back to the Pixel It Podcast.

Speaker: My name is Kevin.

Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.

Speaker: And on today's show, we got Mike from the Tuluminomity Podcast.

Speaker: Mike, how's it going?

Speaker: It's going in a direction I can't stop it going in, and it's good.

Speaker: Thank you guys for having me.

Speaker: Yeah, that's a good thing working on.

Speaker: We're happy to have you because we love when things go in that direction.

Speaker: Correct.

Speaker: We love when things go in that direction.

Speaker: What a book to have me read for this, by the way.

Speaker: I know we're going to get into it, but I just want to put it on there.

Speaker: Oh, dear God.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: We are going to get into it.

Speaker: It suits me in a strange way.

Speaker: It does suit you in a strange way.

Speaker: You know, I picked it and I was like, no, this is perfect for him.

Speaker: We're reading Blaster Master.

Speaker: from the Nintendo Worlds of Power created by our dear friend, friend of the pod, FX9, also known as Seth Godin and written by A.L.

Speaker: Singer, who has been the author of, I want to say half of the Worlds of Power books that we've read so far is A.L.

Speaker: Singer.

Speaker: I don't know if we've done A.L.

Speaker: Singer yet.

Speaker: I thought A.L.

Speaker: Singer was a couple of the, oh, well, A.L.

Speaker: Singer brings up a boxer.

Speaker: I was just Googling A.L.

Speaker: Singer author.

Speaker: There we go.

Speaker: No, I've got him right.

Speaker: It's the pen name of Peter Larangius, I believe is how you say his name.

Speaker: A Harvard grad.

Speaker: Oh, Harvard boy.

Speaker: Harvard boy.

Speaker: I can see why he gave himself a fake name.

Speaker: I mean, who would really have a rate of Harvard and you're writing master.

Speaker: You don't get the impression that when it comes to the pay to write stuff or pay to pay, pay, write for pay stuff like that.

Speaker: Yeah, that's when he uses his his his because he's done a lot of like, I mean, he's he has a crazy big prolific bibliography of of of

Speaker: of just a lot of YA stuff, a lot of YA stuff that he's written, a lot of fantasy science fiction trilogy stuff.

Speaker: But he also did a lot of ghostwriting and wrote a lot of novelizations.

Speaker: And when he does the novelizations, that's when he's like, oh, it's a Al Singer.

Speaker: For example, if I wrote Surf Ninjas, the novelization, I might go with Al Singer.

Speaker: See, me, I can appreciate it.

Speaker: I respect his decision for it.

Speaker: No harm, chase that money.

Speaker: You got to do what you got to do.

Speaker: I would see.

Speaker: I'd slap my fucking name all over that shit.

Speaker: That would be the first thing on my website.

Speaker: That's right, that was me.

Speaker: You want to talk about it?

Speaker: Because I'll talk about it.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: He also did the novelizations for The Sixth Sense and The Road to El Dorado.

Speaker: That is that's that's interesting stuff.

Speaker: Oh, anything prolific.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And Home Alone 2, the novelization for Home Alone 2.

Speaker: I wonder if that has Donald Trump into it.

Speaker: Do you think he wrote Donald Trump into it?

Speaker: We have, we have, we have got a bone to pick this guy.

Speaker: I would put money on the answer would be yes.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And not because he wanted to, but because Trump probably would have been up his ass.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: In the most annoying way.

Speaker: I heard you're writing a novelization.

Speaker: It's going to be a beautiful novelization.

Speaker: Huge novelization.

Speaker: Huge.

Speaker: It's not Trump.

Speaker: I'm Barron, his assistant.

Speaker: John Barron or whatever his name was.

Speaker: John Barron, just get him in the novel.

Speaker: I know he'll be so mad.

Speaker: Oh, God.

Speaker: Yeah, because I know Chris Columbus, the director of Home Alone 2, wants to, like, go back and cut that scene out.

Speaker: I don't blame him.

Speaker: I don't blame him.

Speaker: He wants to George Lucas all over that one.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So you know what?

Speaker: I'll let him, man.

Speaker: Every director should get one George Lucas.

Speaker: I think that's fair.

Speaker: I think that's fair.

Speaker: Right?

Speaker: Because you get the workout, you see it, you get time to absorb it.

Speaker: There's things I think everybody might agree would be better to change.

Speaker: You get one George Lucas permission and you get to swap some stuff up.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And so make it good.

Speaker: You think you would pick Blaster Master as the one who would redo.

Speaker: You've also done some research into Blaster Master lore.

Speaker: So before we do that, I want to tell everybody about a wonderful website named patreon.com slash pixelitpod.

Speaker: You can go to pixelitpod.com or patreon.com slash pixelitpod.

Speaker: They both get to the same place.

Speaker: You can follow us for free.

Speaker: You can join our discord from it.

Speaker: We got three tiers, $1, $5, $10, $10 gets your name read out in every single episode.

Speaker: And to that end, I want to thank Jesus Loves You, Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mudder, Middle of Things, Sigma Sal, Chut Beaks, Dumbass Thick, and Friendly Friend.

Speaker: Thank you for being a friend.

Speaker: It's all true.

Speaker: I'm going to that Patreon right now and everything he said is true.

Speaker: It's all real.

Speaker: It's all real.

Speaker: It's not a lie.

Speaker: We wouldn't lie to you.

Speaker: It's Harrison Ford saying it's all real.

Speaker: All of it.

Speaker: The one line I remember from that movie right there.

Speaker: I don't even see movies.

Speaker: I don't I've never watched a movie in my life.

Speaker: That does feel that way sometimes.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: But yes, this is this is a fascinating book because this might be the only example we have of this period that we've ever that we've ever a book we've ever talked about that's done this.

Speaker: But much less it's much more interesting that it's a world of power book.

Speaker: This book actually introduces characters like all the worlds of power books.

Speaker: It takes some liberties with the source material, which is fine, but it introduces a character that ends up becoming canon.

Speaker: The female lead in this we're going to talk quite a bit about.

Speaker: ends up she's just made whole cloth for this book.

Speaker: Almost everything else is pretty much taken directly from the book.

Speaker: But in which one it was Blaster Master Zero.

Speaker: What those came out in like the 2000s at least, right?

Speaker: Like it was like a Harley Quinn of this universe made in a different.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So they end up, this is the only time I think this has ever happened of anything we have read where the novelization spawned a canon character.

Speaker: But it's extra hilarious that it came from Worlds of Power, which is unsanctioned by Nintendo.

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: Seth Godin said, he told us that he did talk to somebody and they're like, listen, we're not going to put our stamp on it, but we also won't

Speaker: So they can pluck that character if they choose to.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: Which they absolutely did.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: So this is, it's fascinating.

Speaker: That's a mafia style mob rules.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You know Nintendo.

Speaker: But every week we're going to take an apple.

Speaker: from your shop.

Speaker: And that's the thing is he did actually have a sit down meeting with Minoru Arakawa, the first president of Nintendo.

Speaker: And he, Seth was like, oh yeah, no, I would talk to Mr. A. And it was like, I've never heard anyone call him Mr. A. Mr. A. That is absolutely a mob.

Speaker: That's a mob, dad.

Speaker: I had a word with Mr. A. Yeah, that's some triad shit right there.

Speaker: Yeah, so yeah, that's actually really fascinating because, and look, getting deeper into it, there is lore in Blaster Master Zero that becomes more and more established, and it's weird.

Speaker: Also, this character that they created, Eve, we'll get to her.

Speaker: If you look up her art for Blaster Masters, at least two and three, I was like,

Speaker: Oh, fan service McGee over here.

Speaker: Oh, fantastic.

Speaker: Mike, Mike, just so you know, she looks really, really smart.

Speaker: Really smart.

Speaker: Really 1980s male idea of smart girl.

Speaker: Very smart woman.

Speaker: Huge tracks of land.

Speaker: Huge brains.

Speaker: Of course.

Speaker: Of fucking course.

Speaker: If only the book's plot was as interesting as like its origin story.

Speaker: I know, right?

Speaker: If only.

Speaker: So just as a reminder.

Speaker: I'm not sure if I like you or if I'll ever do a show with you again after making me read this, actually.

Speaker: Which is actually the main goal of all of our... We try to do this week.

Speaker: We are burning bridges on a weekly basis with the show.

Speaker: That's what we're waiting for.

Speaker: Smart.

Speaker: It's just me trying to find somebody I haven't talked to already.

Speaker: It's getting tough.

Speaker: And ruining the relationship immediately.

Speaker: Yeah, just ruin everything outright.

Speaker: And here we are.

Speaker: Oh, God.

Speaker: Yeah, this book sucked.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But there's...

Speaker: It's like a weird fever dream.

Speaker: I don't know if we're getting into the book, but I don't know.

Speaker: Oh, we're going to get into it.

Speaker: It opens like a fever dream.

Speaker: We're going to go ahead.

Speaker: Phil, let's put the body in the marsh.

Speaker: Marsh body.

Speaker: Do it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So when I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them.

Speaker: In the mind.

Speaker: Yeah, the book opens like a fever dream and it starts with a teaser, which is funny.

Speaker: All of these books have teasers and most of the time they're actually re they're a scene taken from the from elsewhere in the book and rewritten slightly to make it seem like it's more tense or or what have you.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Yeah, because it just opens with a noise.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And then bizarre.

Speaker: We get into chapter one and we were introduced to Jason Froden, Nick, which is peak peak 80s.

Speaker: Like, oh, character has a silly.

Speaker: This is like this is like peak scholastic humor where it's like we just we just put a funny name on this character.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Jason's biggest personality trait is like he owns a frog.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Jason owns a frog.

Speaker: That's basically.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: If you're putting a lower third on him, it would just be loans a frog.

Speaker: Yeah, that's it.

Speaker: That's all he's got.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: That's all.

Speaker: That's all.

Speaker: There's really not much they can give him.

Speaker: No, it's that's it.

Speaker: That's as far as they go with him.

Speaker: That frog, man.

Speaker: His frog is making a lot of noise and he's this is all this is a dream to start with.

Speaker: He's walking through his room.

Speaker: He opens the door.

Speaker: He gets hit by a blinding flash of light before falling out of bed and we're in Chapter Two already.

Speaker: And he was having a bad dream.

Speaker: His pet frog, Fred, is making a weird croaking sound.

Speaker: freaking out, wants to be let out of his cage.

Speaker: His dad, who never appears actually in the book, just yells off camera, basically.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Telling him the author, just like putting a little bit of the trauma into their pages there.

Speaker: It is kind of foreboding.

Speaker: Like if you only see him for a second, but you're like that, that there's a story there.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: See, in my mind, I'm like, this is the treat.

Speaker: So Jason is, uh,

Speaker: being abused by his dad.

Speaker: So he's, he's escaping into an imagination, escaping into an imaginary world.

Speaker: And t hen he leaves and enters this like cosmic horror world kind of.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This is actually, this is actually kind of like Pan's labyrinth.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Or, you know, Homeward Bound, if like Shadow turned into some weird biomechanical hell child.

Speaker: Which no one will return my phone calls when I send them that screenplay, by the way.

Speaker: It's like, I don't understand.

Speaker: It's a gritty reboot.

Speaker: We can just go.

Speaker: It's like the DCU were just really violent.

Speaker: This is what people are waiting for.

Speaker: Shadow comes back, but he's a bad guy now.

Speaker: Shadow comes back, but he's a libertarian now.

Speaker: What?

Speaker: Fuck don't tread.

Speaker: The first words he said is don't tread on me.

Speaker: And the second words he said were how old are those puppies over there?

Speaker: He gets beaten and all he screams is anarcho-capitalism.

Speaker: Anarcho-capitalism.

Speaker: so yeah you know you fit right in so he has a frog and he lets the frog out because that's what you do and the frog is jumping and it goes to the front door uh and it starts throwing itself at the door yeah yeah what if you twist what if i what if i slap a twist like there's a twist with this frog sure twist at the end as i reveal mega oh fuck

Speaker: Oh, fuck.

Speaker: The whole time I was lying.

Speaker: The whole time.

Speaker: Oh, God.

Speaker: Oh, no.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Sorry.

Speaker: Continue.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The frog is trying to commit suicide by throwing itself at the door.

Speaker: He opens the door.

Speaker: Not the frog.

Speaker: Jason does.

Speaker: And the frog continues on to the creepy swamp that Jason never goes to.

Speaker: He gets the frog into the swamp.

Speaker: He loses his shoes in the muck.

Speaker: Fred vanishes into the bushes and he catches up and he sees Fred sitting on a glowing box and Fred is getting bigger and bigger and bigger until suddenly he sinks.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Fred being a fraud frog sinks through the surface.

Speaker: Actually and a fraud.

Speaker: So the kind of fraud.

Speaker: Think about it.

Speaker: Is it that no one, no one should trust anything.

Speaker: Fred says that much is obvious.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No one.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Chapter three.

Speaker: Jason runs into the hole, runs to the hole, dives down and he calls out for his frog, but is only met by an echo.

Speaker: He lands on something squishy and deep below.

Speaker: He finds no signs of Fred or the metal glowing chest and he turns around to see a humanoid pointing a gun at him.

Speaker: And this is this is the first of what I like to refer to as schmuck bait.

Speaker: Do you remember this term, Phil?

Speaker: Schmuck bait?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: OK, so in television, I don't know what it means.

Speaker: OK, so in television writing, in television writers rooms, at least this was the case in the 80s.

Speaker: They whenever they did an act break, so an act break being like going into a commercial and they had like

Speaker: Oh, my God, the main character is about to die or there's a gun pointed at them.

Speaker: And then at the other end of the commercial, it gets resolved without much issue.

Speaker: Yeah, that's called.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Writers.

Speaker: So writers called that in writing writing writers rooms called that schmuck bait.

Speaker: I love that.

Speaker: What a weird thing to put into a book.

Speaker: It's like, you know, I can just keep reading, right?

Speaker: I was like, I can go to the next page.

Speaker: It's not like there's a commercial break that I have to get across.

Speaker: No, that was when the author had to go like to the bathroom very badly.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He was trying to inspire himself, really.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: something's going to happen.

Speaker: No, he meets a woman named Yves Kiziz or Eve, and she gives him a radiation suit to put on and she's got some weird Russian language vibe going on.

Speaker: But if he needs a radiation suit now, he's already dead.

Speaker: Yeah, that's true.

Speaker: It's my first thought was, bro, you're

Speaker: You're done, right?

Speaker: You're done.

Speaker: You know, like Chernobyl, they got like 60 seconds with shit protecting them a little bit.

Speaker: You're done.

Speaker: He got he got he already got hit by the polonium.

Speaker: You know, he drank his polonium in the tea.

Speaker: Yeah, he's about to.

Speaker: Yeah, he's absolutely.

Speaker: This is all a hallucination from radiation poisoning after, you know, he was exposed to something that came out of the swamp.

Speaker: That's all this is.

Speaker: This is all in his mind as he is.

Speaker: He slips further away from living.

Speaker: I agree.

Speaker: Yeah, I think that's what I think.

Speaker: I think we can accept that that's what suffocating to death as he dissipates into his own imagination.

Speaker: And then it's just the final moments.

Speaker: His mother says, wait, I think he's going to say something.

Speaker: And he says, blaster master.

Speaker: This is all from that last like DMT dump your brain may or may not do when you die.

Speaker: The wildest trip of his life.

Speaker: The last images of a dying synapse.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, this is why I don't want to do too many mushrooms because this might happen.

Speaker: I might start seeing a frog.

Speaker: I don't know, man.

Speaker: Yeah, I don't want to.

Speaker: I don't want this to be the beginning of my adventures.

Speaker: No, no.

Speaker: I don't want to go underground and have fucking Leeloo pop up with a gun.

Speaker: She's got her multi-pass, though.

Speaker: And she's got red hair.

Speaker: Jason is in love, I assume.

Speaker: And they get into the vehicle, which is called.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: What's how do you pronounce this?

Speaker: Is it Sophia the third or Sophia third?

Speaker: So my brain automatically just said Sophia the third, even though it literally just says Sophia third, Sophia third.

Speaker: But that just Sophia third is just not.

Speaker: It makes no sense.

Speaker: I don't understand it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I don't know why that's it.

Speaker: The Sophia Sophia Third has all sorts of weapons on it, but they don't work because they don't have enough power.

Speaker: And there's a robot that's about to jump on them and it's going to crush them.

Speaker: And then at Chapter five, more schmuck bait.

Speaker: It lands on top of them and they land.

Speaker: They sink further into the ground.

Speaker: And then Eve guns the engine.

Speaker: They're able to drive away and make an emergency jump.

Speaker: And oh, no, robots arrive.

Speaker: And Eve's like, no, you got to press the button that says gun.

Speaker: Yeah, basically, the Sophia the third has like a missile button for everything.

Speaker: Like, there's just like a fucking button that does whatever you need it to.

Speaker: It's just like I just imagine just like a Nintendo controller.

Speaker: Yeah, basically, that's exactly what I imagine they had in their mind.

Speaker: Just like a giant button.

Speaker: So the fun thing about these books is that the way the outlines were written was that Seth Godin just sat there and he watched his nephew play the games and just kind of like wrote the loose outline of the story.

Speaker: That explains a lot of how Eve talks too because Eve is like...

Speaker: exclusively just speaks in like weird alien idioms in like half assed Southern metaphor, but garbage.

Speaker: And I don't know.

Speaker: Like, what was it?

Speaker: Hang on.

Speaker: Hang on.

Speaker: I wrote it down in my notes.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Don't count your turkeys before they're in the bush.

Speaker: That's not, yeah.

Speaker: They keep going back and forth on, like, sometimes it's as simple as her mixing up a letter and other times she is like reaching for the source.

Speaker: Basically it's like, okay, there's no, there's no rhyme or reason to this.

Speaker: No, there's other things like backup drive forward, missile launch, lava pit.

Speaker: That's what a Tuesday felt like in a 1990 NES game.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Fine.

Speaker: Good Lord.

Speaker: So they fire the gun, destroys the robots, but oh, they're about to drive off a cliff and there's boiling lava at the bottom and we're in chapter six now.

Speaker: Things are fine.

Speaker: Go, go, go, go.

Speaker: Chapters are either a paragraph or five pages.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Things are fine.

Speaker: Eve hit the button and they're they're jumping again and they short shoot some more robots.

Speaker: They have like a Yakov Shmironov level of jokes in here.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: The car drives you like.

Speaker: Thanks, Eve.

Speaker: Hold on.

Speaker: You're an excellent addition to this cast.

Speaker: No one pre-read this book for any reason.

Speaker: It's one draft.

Speaker: It is one draft.

Speaker: He took it from AL Singer, handed it to Scholastic, and Scholastic handed him the check.

Speaker: Pretty much.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: And then they gave him five new contracts.

Speaker: And I got to tell you, it's a good thing that his nephew was clearly good at video games because at no point in the book is like, and then he died and he tried to kill it and he died again.

Speaker: And then he died and jumped into the fucking lava like an idiot and he died again.

Speaker: That's just what life in 1990 NES games was like.

Speaker: Because we didn't have any choice.

Speaker: I played this game when I was younger and all I remember about it was how smooth it felt.

Speaker: It felt good to play.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Play the game.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Play the it's it's it's like it's done by Sunsoft and there are the people who did the Batman NES game, which is also another like yeah, a May feels just feels good to play and it shows.

Speaker: But I just to warm myself up for this, I watched a long play of of the game just to get reacquainted with the whole thing.

Speaker: And.

Speaker: It's all there.

Speaker: So this was before YouTube.

Speaker: So theoretically, his nephew was like, yeah, I'm burning my ass all the way through this game.

Speaker: Here we go.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: Thank God he was good at it then.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: If you were good enough, it took about 90 minutes to get all the way through it.

Speaker: I was never good enough.

Speaker: Well, and that's the thing is apparently there's no there's no passwords, save states or anything like that.

Speaker: So you had to beat it in one sitting if you were going to beat it.

Speaker: Oh, God.

Speaker: It was one of those days, dude.

Speaker: So anyway, they they drive through like a glowing sphere left by one of the robots.

Speaker: And Jason's losing his mind.

Speaker: And Eve is like, nah, it's cool.

Speaker: We're getting our energy back for the vehicle.

Speaker: And then he gets and gives an exposition dump.

Speaker: That she is from a planet called.

Speaker: This is the book, brother.

Speaker: It's Exposition Tums.

Speaker: It's Exposition City.

Speaker: Planet called Signar L. And she had left to investigate life forms.

Speaker: And while she's gone, her entire civilization had been destroyed by a creature known as Plutonium Boss.

Speaker: Literally, I read that.

Speaker: I was like.

Speaker: Did they forget to like give it a name or like it is literally capital P capital B plutonium boss.

Speaker: It really does sound like a placeholder.

Speaker: They're like, well, we're going to come up with something really fucking epic for now.

Speaker: Plutonium boss.

Speaker: I like something about plutonium.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: Was he typewritering this or was he like word processoring this?

Speaker: I mean, it was 1990.

Speaker: So.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So probably word processor.

Speaker: I would say there is, it's very likely he had a little word pro.

Speaker: He was using, typing on a word processor with those screens that were like this big or something like that.

Speaker: There's no control F.

Speaker: Find Plutonium boss replaced with.

Speaker: Give it an actual fucking name.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I remember.

Speaker: And that's the thing about being around our age is remembering a. I remember the transition from having a digital typewriter.

Speaker: um to a which was basically a typewriter connected to a dot matrix printer to a word processor to oh why do we have a word processor separate from the computer that we already own the home computer was uh that was a huge upgrade dude uh home computer internet access

Speaker: 14 years old porn.

Speaker: Holy shit.

Speaker: I ruined my family computer numerous times with viruses.

Speaker: She had to take it in and get it fixed.

Speaker: And I was just like, I'm sorry, I'm 14.

Speaker: You know, and the purity of it is gone now because there used to be viruses were just to fuck you up and ruin your day.

Speaker: All the pop-ups and just slowed your computer down.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: It did nothing other than just ruin your day.

Speaker: It's all about money now.

Speaker: It's just fishing and shit like that.

Speaker: Yeah, they use your computer to farm fucking cryptocurrencies.

Speaker: Yeah, there's just no passion for it anymore.

Speaker: They used to be in it for the love of the game.

Speaker: They used to be in it for the love of the game.

Speaker: Now, thank God I invested all my money in NFTs.

Speaker: That went well.

Speaker: I don't.

Speaker: I'm just going.

Speaker: Yeah, great.

Speaker: Good.

Speaker: Don't check your email.

Speaker: All my giant monkey pictures are worth so much now.

Speaker: They're doing great.

Speaker: They're doing great.

Speaker: They're doing great.

Speaker: I have a Zupo of monkeys.

Speaker: Anyway, Eve's from a destroyed planet.

Speaker: Yeah, she's from a destroyed planet.

Speaker: And the boss just eats radioactive material.

Speaker: So he just eats her world.

Speaker: He ate, yeah, he lived underneath the earth for years or Signar L. And then they had their nuclear revolution.

Speaker: And then he started getting bigger and bigger and then he consumed the earth or Signar L. And now he's here doing the same thing to earth.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So thank God he showed up when he did.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I don't know if this is chapter seven or eight or whatever, but then they get to level two, like literally.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Written in big ass metal letters.

Speaker: Level two.

Speaker: Level two.

Speaker: Like, yeah, man, I just.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Check.

Speaker: Mustn't have been that big.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No, no, no way.

Speaker: I feel like two seconds of thinking you could just make something.

Speaker: You made up signar L. Yeah.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like, hello.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Call him.

Speaker: Call him like Pluto, Pluto Caesar or something like that.

Speaker: I don't I don't know.

Speaker: And this is supposed to be a secret game hint for people playing the game or reading the book at the same time.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This is something the guy wrote over the weekend.

Speaker: Let's let's be real.

Speaker: He like he was like, you know, I got a couple thousand dollars.

Speaker: This isn't worth more than a Saturday afternoon.

Speaker: Let's just let's like great job.

Speaker: Like, yeah, yeah, that's all it is.

Speaker: That's all it is.

Speaker: He wrote it.

Speaker: He wrote it sweating over a over a bottle of gin and a word processor.

Speaker: You think I'm paying some money and have him write me a trash version of a modern game like a god of war?

Speaker: It's already a narrative masterpiece, but if I could get him to create me a God of War, Words of Power, if I paid him a couple of thousand, or you think I could do that?

Speaker: I would try.

Speaker: That would be amazing, dude.

Speaker: The sex scenes would be pretty outstanding.

Speaker: But I would want him to have to call his nephew and watch his now adult nephew play for God of War while he writes the words.

Speaker: Who is probably nearing 50.

Speaker: Let's be honest.

Speaker: I think his nephew is.

Speaker: Take him on a 70 hour journey and I need him to write an 89 page novel.

Speaker: He's like, I need you to write this, this book.

Speaker: It's gotta be 88 pages.

Speaker: Just Axeman in the book.

Speaker: It's like Axeman, all one word.

Speaker: Yeah, Axeman.

Speaker: Anyway, sorry.

Speaker: That's just a random thought.

Speaker: No, I think that would be, I think we can run that by Seth.

Speaker: Friend of the pod, Seth Godin, we'll reach out to him.

Speaker: Oh my God.

Speaker: Let him watch a long play of it or something, you know?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So they meet Plutonium boss who gives who like threatens them with a weird rhyme.

Speaker: The rhyming doesn't happen ever again.

Speaker: He just does it this one time.

Speaker: He just does his slam poetry.

Speaker: For fools who dare.

Speaker: A dozen levels save two pair.

Speaker: I remember reading that part specifically.

Speaker: A dozen levels save two pair.

Speaker: And I was like, what, eight?

Speaker: Minus four?

Speaker: Eight?

Speaker: Are they trying to say eight?

Speaker: Two pair.

Speaker: Two pairs is a set of two couples.

Speaker: So four, right?

Speaker: Yeah, 12 minus four is eight.

Speaker: Four, so eight.

Speaker: This is a Scholastic book, so they had to have some sort of math word.

Speaker: Some education.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: And this is that my younger brother actually works for Scholastic.

Speaker: He's like their project manager.

Speaker: Oh, that's hilarious.

Speaker: See, all the pieces are falling into place.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This.

Speaker: This is why it's OK for us to do this show, me specifically, because we have read several worlds of power books.

Speaker: And more than that, we've read several really shitty novelizations.

Speaker: And I never stop giving the author the benefit of the doubt.

Speaker: I'm saying they're going, well, they can't possibly mean eight, like 12 minus two pair.

Speaker: That's got to be there's something clever that it's going to be.

Speaker: They're going to encyclopedia brown this shit.

Speaker: And it's like, no, that means eight.

Speaker: Oh, God damn it.

Speaker: Reading that many books, does that ever hit you when the podcast hits record done and you click, you know, hang up on the call and you're sitting there?

Speaker: Do you ever get hit with like, I could have read so many other things and learned so many more useful skills.

Speaker: And you sit there knowing except the name Signar L and you may not even know why in a few weeks, but you will.

Speaker: You know, that's actually a good question because I would say actually reading all of these bad books has actually made me appreciate reading good books more.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Because there's so many bad novelizations out where, I mean, there's been some tremendous ones.

Speaker: So real quick.

Speaker: We have gotten to read some very, very good ones to be fair.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: There's some actual good ones out there.

Speaker: The actual good ones, a lot of the Halo books, tremendous, top notch.

Speaker: And, you know, we just finished off.

Speaker: We just did The Witcher, the first Witcher book, because why not?

Speaker: The rules are backwards now.

Speaker: Because normally we have just been doing books that were novelizations of games, but The Witcher book came first.

Speaker: But yada, yada, yada.

Speaker: Who cares?

Speaker: It's our podcast.

Speaker: We can do what we want.

Speaker: That's what I say.

Speaker: So, yeah, no, it's it's made us appreciate the the good stuff more.

Speaker: No matter what you cover, somebody's going to hate you for it.

Speaker: Yeah, that's true.

Speaker: That's all it is, man.

Speaker: That's all it is.

Speaker: You know, it's like you got a sense.

Speaker: That's the entertainment life, baby.

Speaker: Internet personality like we are.

Speaker: Hell, you got to got to deal with the hate.

Speaker: I've never seen... We do so much on Chiluminati and nothing drives out the angry people more than aliens.

Speaker: I kid you not.

Speaker: Talking about aliens pisses off.

Speaker: such an enormous amount of people, more than true crime, more than everything.

Speaker: It's wild.

Speaker: Is it just because their opinions on whether they're real or not or something like that?

Speaker: They don't like that I am a believer and I sound like a conspiracy theorist because I follow FOIA documents and stuff.

Speaker: But to them, that's an appeal to authority as opposed to fact where I'm just like, I'm just following the money, bro.

Speaker: I'm just...

Speaker: But that, for some reason, I don't know why, but they're like, they have to come out and like in droves talk about how dumb and like how gullible I am and all this stuff.

Speaker: I'm like,

Speaker: then just do this if you want.

Speaker: That's fine.

Speaker: I'm not saying there's little gray men shaking hands with Eisenhower making deals to abduct 10 people a year.

Speaker: I'm just saying it's of interest enough that the government has been heavily studying it for 50 years.

Speaker: Listen, I'm going to turn this into the Shaluminati podcast if you let me.

Speaker: So stop.

Speaker: We need to move on.

Speaker: I apologize for tangenting.

Speaker: You need to rein me in.

Speaker: Oh, I'm not good at that.

Speaker: We're not good at we're not.

Speaker: We can't even rein each other in when we go.

Speaker: That's yeah.

Speaker: Half the time, Mike, half the time the show, there's a middle 20 minute segment of the show where I just start talking.

Speaker: And then at the end, I say, well, it's all Ronald Reagan's fault anyway.

Speaker: And it is.

Speaker: And you're not wrong.

Speaker: That's the problem.

Speaker: See, we're all just neurodivergent dudes.

Speaker: We just see the patterns of society, bro.

Speaker: You just see the patterns and then you blame Ronald Reagan in the end.

Speaker: And then you're like, how are neurotypical people this blind?

Speaker: It was either make this podcast or get really into trains.

Speaker: That was my only other option.

Speaker: Yeah, man.

Speaker: I just turned my hyper fixation into a job.

Speaker: You know, like you see my sexy aliens that I have.

Speaker: It's hard to maybe they're a little out of focus in the bookshelf, but that's like a sexy alien gray lady.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: And that the little legs, that's another one with her little legs crossed.

Speaker: Oh, I see.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: She's up there.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No, I love it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I love the aliens are real.

Speaker: Aliens are real and they're sexy.

Speaker: But I don't think

Speaker: They're here because humanity's special.

Speaker: I just think there's multiple different intelligence.

Speaker: They just happen to be here.

Speaker: Some might be observing out of curiosity.

Speaker: Others may just be around.

Speaker: And also, you know, they may, there might be just things that are here on earth that have been here longer than us.

Speaker: That's all I'm saying.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The Appalachian mountains, older than the trees.

Speaker: I want to visit the Appalachian mountains one day, but that's horror.

Speaker: It's so scary.

Speaker: It is scary.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Phil knows all about the Appalachians.

Speaker: You live up there?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: My family is lived up there and we would take we would have like we'd have like you've never had anything weird happen to you.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I think it tries to avoid me.

Speaker: No, but here's the thing.

Speaker: The Appalachian Mountains are simultaneously the most beautiful and most terrifying place I've ever been, because it is scary, especially when you're driving around up there.

Speaker: But yeah, no, my fear usually comes more from the fact that there's no guardrail.

Speaker: I'm going to fall off this mountain and die.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: No, no, no.

Speaker: Oh, man.

Speaker: I used to go hiking as a kid and I hated being on the mountains, dude.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: I could get spooky shit and be dead.

Speaker: And that's it.

Speaker: No, thank you.

Speaker: That's all.

Speaker: They we just need a Sophia third is what we need in our lives.

Speaker: We need a third going on.

Speaker: We do.

Speaker: They they're going to level two, but they run into a giant head.

Speaker: So no head, bro.

Speaker: No head.

Speaker: No, no giant head.

Speaker: And the gun has no effect on it.

Speaker: And then Eve reverses Sophia back down a tunnel.

Speaker: And she tells what the fuck's his name?

Speaker: Jason.

Speaker: Jason that in order to activate the weapons, they're going to need to go into one of the small caverns that the car can't fit into and get it.

Speaker: And he's Jason's like, well, I'll go, even though you're the experienced one.

Speaker: It's on the underwater.

Speaker: You know how to drive the car.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I'm like, that doesn't make much sense.

Speaker: But all right.

Speaker: So she gives him a gun.

Speaker: He goes into the cavern.

Speaker: He destroys a robot miniboss.

Speaker: And he's like, how do I find the energy capsules until he shoots a wall?

Speaker: And then he finds the energy capsules.

Speaker: This is literally the first miniboss.

Speaker: I'm like sitting on this author's lap as he watches his nephew play the game.

Speaker: And he's literally just writing down what's happening.

Speaker: And then you shoot the rocks and there's the energy capsule.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: So he he he jellyfish at some point, too.

Speaker: He does.

Speaker: He does.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: He walks back out into the cliff and he falls into a black lagoon beneath.

Speaker: And now he's in the water and he's fighting his way through radioactive jellyfish.

Speaker: This is chapter nine, by the way.

Speaker: They're the worst.

Speaker: These jellyfish are the worst.

Speaker: He keeps shooting them with his laser pistol until he sinks to the bottom and he finds a ladder and climbs up and then he finds a door.

Speaker: and opens it, but he's hit with an explosion from behind.

Speaker: We're in chapter 10 now.

Speaker: It just keeps rolling.

Speaker: This is a robots that are gumdrops with guns.

Speaker: You're no longer a gumdrop or something.

Speaker: I don't.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I haven't played that game in decades.

Speaker: I don't remember that enemy in the NES game, but that, you know, I'd play like fucking Candyland Black Ops, bro.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: I'd play that.

Speaker: No, that was I remember the you are no longer a gumdrop thing.

Speaker: I remember trying to figure out what they were getting at.

Speaker: Like, is this again?

Speaker: Is this something?

Speaker: You're thinking too deep, dude.

Speaker: Is this that's the problem with me?

Speaker: I can't stop.

Speaker: We're in literal level two.

Speaker: There's nothing deeper, man.

Speaker: There's nothing deeper there.

Speaker: Like this book is, you know how how there's that there's those people who are saying, you know, sometimes the curtain is just blue and everybody else is like, no, there things have meaning and writing and stuff like that.

Speaker: But in this book, the curtain is just blue.

Speaker: Yeah, no, it's exactly correct.

Speaker: I think there's no theme here.

Speaker: Jason had never seen a gumdrop with a gun turret on its head.

Speaker: Yeah, you don't know.

Speaker: No shit, bro.

Speaker: Like, you don't think he's ever seen that in his life.

Speaker: He just dived into a swamp and he's dying in the mud.

Speaker: He's going to see a lot of weird shit in his mind.

Speaker: He's going to see some weird shit.

Speaker: He's been electrocuted by radioactive jellyfish.

Speaker: Yeah, it's rough, man.

Speaker: There's a Russian lady that keeps yelling at him.

Speaker: Shit's happening.

Speaker: So he so, OK, we're he's fights his way through.

Speaker: He goes into this room.

Speaker: He shoots the gumdrop and he he he's greeted by the plutonium boss again.

Speaker: And the room goes dark and then it lights up.

Speaker: And in Chapter 11, we got a boss fight.

Speaker: And it looks like, quote, an enormous bloated mass of animal blubber.

Speaker: animal bugger or descriptive words or a tumor or a beating heart uh it he tries to fire at it but as a force field so he has to get through the force field and fires at it till it dies and he thinks that he's killed plutonium boss now and he runs through the back door yeah

Speaker: He throws it to the back door and he finds Sophia the third arriving moments later.

Speaker: And he goes, he goes to, uh, he's like, I killed plutonium boss.

Speaker: And then plutonium boss starts talking to him again.

Speaker: He's like, ah, ah, ah, you've only killed glass Joe.

Speaker: You still have to fight piston.

Speaker: He literally shows up on like a fucking loudspeaker to monologue, like a villain from fucking thundercats.

Speaker: That's exactly what it is.

Speaker: It's exactly what he's doing.

Speaker: I don't understand.

Speaker: I am the villain.

Speaker: I mean, for a commander, you know, just piping in for 1990 though.

Speaker: It really, really absolutely.

Speaker: And, and mum raw is only a step above plutonium boss, but it's still better.

Speaker: Uh,

Speaker: Oh, God.

Speaker: And then.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: So Jason affirms to Eve that he's in it to the end and which she calls him a sandwich on a long roll, which she means she means hero.

Speaker: I mean, that's a really long stretch to get to hero.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And he said, well, I will give them credit.

Speaker: He says, he says hero.

Speaker: And she went, sorry, you're a really long sandwich on a hero or something like that.

Speaker: It's like, okay, you're a sandwich on a hero.

Speaker: You're a sandwich on a hero.

Speaker: Okay, fine.

Speaker: That elicited like, you know, that, you know, that it's just like turn my, my, my cheeks up slightly.

Speaker: It was like almost a smile.

Speaker: I think I, I think I giggled a little bit.

Speaker: There's something there.

Speaker: I felt something.

Speaker: It was the damnedest thing.

Speaker: Damn this thing.

Speaker: So they they they get the vehicles all juiced up.

Speaker: Now, Jason is able to shoot the head that's guarding the second level and they continue on.

Speaker: But they have to emergency jump over some lava and they hit some spikes and the roof of the car gets gets stuck on the spikes and it's tearing the car up.

Speaker: And then they have to chapter 13, lean back in their seats and rock until the car gets unstuck.

Speaker: And then he fires some weapons and it finally gets them off.

Speaker: Not that way.

Speaker: And then they.

Speaker: Not yet.

Speaker: Not yet.

Speaker: Not yet.

Speaker: In the third game.

Speaker: In my novelization.

Speaker: In my novelization.

Speaker: Written by Chuck Tingle.

Speaker: Bounded in the butt by Sophia the third.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: They land and begin repairing Sophia the third.

Speaker: And meanwhile, another under boss appears and Jason kills it and asks plutonium boss, where's Fred?

Speaker: Who tells him that Fred is doing very well.

Speaker: Thanks.

Speaker: Thanks.

Speaker: Jason feels sick after hearing plutonium boss talk about Fred and then all that radiation.

Speaker: Oh yeah, that's what it is.

Speaker: That's what's happening is the radiation poisoning from earlier.

Speaker: You've got to leave.

Speaker: You've got to get out of there, man.

Speaker: Every now and then he hears his mother's voice like, please wake up.

Speaker: We're here.

Speaker: We're here.

Speaker: Please wake up.

Speaker: He's like, why do I feel oneness with everything?

Speaker: You hear the doctor saying, all we can do is make him comfortable now.

Speaker: His stepdad say something about, my God, it's growing out of his fingernails.

Speaker: Like, it just goes on.

Speaker: Because I have decided canonically that that's his stepdad.

Speaker: Mr. Frodenich is his stepdad, and he took his stepdad's name.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It was one of those situations.

Speaker: It was one of those situations.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Eve comes by with Sophia III to pick him up, to continue on to the next level, but Eve isn't responding to anything he says, and is driving the car towards a lava pit.

Speaker: He's dead.

Speaker: And then he reaches out and she's a hologram.

Speaker: She's not actually there.

Speaker: And she's been like the levels of contrivance that you have to get to for this scene to actually make sense that the car.

Speaker: Well, yeah.

Speaker: If he can't touch her, how did she drive the vehicle?

Speaker: How is she driving the vehicle?

Speaker: Is the whole vehicle a hologram?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Is the vehicle projecting the hologram?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Because if it's not and the vehicle starts moving, she just slide right out of it.

Speaker: So we, by logic, the vehicle has to be projecting her.

Speaker: This is like that.

Speaker: This is like the, what's it the, in men in black when he activates the anti-theft device and it like puts a guy in the passenger seat or something like that.

Speaker: It says exact shit.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So so it's a it's a hologram.

Speaker: She's been kidnapped by by Mr. Plutonium boss, Mr. Peanut Butter.

Speaker: While Jason was the fighting the underboss PB taunts him about how pitiful he is and all that.

Speaker: And Jason's like, well, game on, you loser.

Speaker: I'm going to do this.

Speaker: And Jason beats level three quickly and he gets to the level four boss, which is a frog, but not Fred.

Speaker: And afterwards, very clear on this one.

Speaker: Very clear.

Speaker: It is a bullfrog that is not Fred.

Speaker: Afterwards, Jason sees a human.

Speaker: Why is it a frog in the first place?

Speaker: Who fucking knows?

Speaker: Who knows?

Speaker: You know what it is?

Speaker: It's a pallet swap.

Speaker: It's because he fights two frogs in the fucking game and they're a pallet swap.

Speaker: That's fair.

Speaker: Oh, that's fair.

Speaker: One's blue and one's green.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Fred is not blue.

Speaker: Or no, wait, Fred is blue, if I remember.

Speaker: It doesn't matter.

Speaker: None of this matters.

Speaker: None of this matters.

Speaker: None of this matters.

Speaker: The death of the universe is eventual.

Speaker: You know, we're all going to.

Speaker: We're good.

Speaker: We're good.

Speaker: Let's just keep doing this.

Speaker: Space dust.

Speaker: Anyway, Jason sees a human arm is sticking out of a half open door and it happens to be a boy that Jason knows.

Speaker: It's Alex.

Speaker: The same Alex that Eve mentioned earlier, but it's also Alex.

Speaker: It's just Alex.

Speaker: It's Alex.

Speaker: It's Alex.

Speaker: It's Alex.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And who did not get picked up canonically.

Speaker: I wonder why.

Speaker: He's such a well-developed, colorful character.

Speaker: Who's Alex again, by the way?

Speaker: Alex Buffoni.

Speaker: Oh, Alex Buffoni.

Speaker: Yeah, Alex Buffoni.

Speaker: Hey, it's Alex Buffoni.

Speaker: Hey, it's Alex.

Speaker: Alex is here, guys.

Speaker: Alex is here.

Speaker: When his line is like, I think is, hang on, let me scroll down.

Speaker: It's like, it's like, I dreamed I had left this place.

Speaker: Maybe that was reality and this is a dream.

Speaker: Anyway, has anyone seen my pet lobster?

Speaker: He's posting MySpace quotes like before MySpace.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Space quotes.

Speaker: The top eight.

Speaker: So Jason's top eight would probably be like Alec Eve, Alex, and then his frog.

Speaker: Just doesn't have enough to fill out a top eight.

Speaker: That's the whole thing.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Womp womp.

Speaker: But he makes you believe that just because he only likes like four other people and that people and that's it.

Speaker: It's not that he doesn't have eight.

Speaker: It's just that he really cherishes four.

Speaker: He really just cares about four.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: They beat level five.

Speaker: Alex isn't much help.

Speaker: He gets himself together, though, in level six and is able to help a bit.

Speaker: Level seven turns out to be some sort of ice zone because it was the NES and you needed an ice level.

Speaker: You had to have it.

Speaker: We know how to get you to slide.

Speaker: That's important.

Speaker: We're really fucking windy level like Ninja Gaiden.

Speaker: Oh, sure.

Speaker: Mega Man has a few of those.

Speaker: Mega Man, you know, they're like, oh, what about wind physics?

Speaker: Everybody's like...

Speaker: Wampum?

Speaker: It's extremely racist sounding now because it is.

Speaker: But it basically was Mega Man, except you're a Native American.

Speaker: No shit.

Speaker: And it's an NES game.

Speaker: Yeah, Wamp, it's spelled like W-H-O-M-P.

Speaker: Oh, Wampum.

Speaker: Space E-M.

Speaker: Extremely racist regardless.

Speaker: I had this game as a kid.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: And it was a sequel to... Holy shit, I didn't know that.

Speaker: The original Japanese.

Speaker: Sayuki World 2.

Speaker: Oh, it's another like a Mario Brothers 2 kind of like skin swap.

Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

Speaker: You can track that fact out as like Wampum was actually Sayuki World 2 in Japan.

Speaker: Holy shit, dude.

Speaker: That's nuts.

Speaker: We're going to have to play this on stream.

Speaker: You need to.

Speaker: Please, good lord, play that game.

Speaker: That game I remember loving a lot.

Speaker: It beat my ass in.

Speaker: I don't think it was good, though.

Speaker: This is how we gain our following.

Speaker: This is it, man.

Speaker: This is your dude.

Speaker: From here to MAGA to right-wing politics to money, bro.

Speaker: Oh, my God.

Speaker: You're right.

Speaker: There it is.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: There it is.

Speaker: It's a whole plant.

Speaker: It's right there.

Speaker: Love that for us.

Speaker: Oh, God.

Speaker: We didn't have morals.

Speaker: We didn't have morals, you know?

Speaker: So my friend was somebody was saying that they were just watching Clueless.

Speaker: And I was like, I just remembered Stacey Stacey Dash is in that.

Speaker: And she did she did the the the pivot to right wing grifting before it was cool.

Speaker: She did it like 15 years ago before there was like real money in it.

Speaker: She had her finger in the wind, man.

Speaker: She knew where it was going to go.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: She was a true believer.

Speaker: That's, that's what it comes down to.

Speaker: She was a true believer that the grifters you have now are just like, they believe in money.

Speaker: They don't really believe in the, in the, the whole videos of them being hypocritical of their beliefs within months of each other.

Speaker: And it doesn't matter.

Speaker: It doesn't matter.

Speaker: It doesn't mean anything.

Speaker: It's like this fucking book.

Speaker: Just like this book, Eve is running out towards them on the ice zone and Jason is happy, but Alex tries to shoot her and does.

Speaker: And Alex explains that it wasn't Eve.

Speaker: It was an atomic bomb disguised as Eve.

Speaker: He knows this based on something that Plutonium Boss mentioned to him while Alex was down in the genetics lab.

Speaker: They get knocked back by some cannon fire, fall into a ravine and then go through a door that says no trespassing.

Speaker: I, ladies and gentlemen, I am not skipping anything.

Speaker: It is just and then and then and then.

Speaker: It's a very proud tradition of these these worlds of power books.

Speaker: And it makes sense because they were made in the late 80s, early 90s.

Speaker: So it's a very proud tradition of the literary montage.

Speaker: This is it.

Speaker: We just get boom, boom, boom.

Speaker: It is.

Speaker: What chapter are we in?

Speaker: In my notes, I didn't write chapters down.

Speaker: We're on chapter 17.

Speaker: 17.

Speaker: So we're about to come into like where things go kind of anime-y.

Speaker: Oh, very much so.

Speaker: Oh, totally.

Speaker: Because the seventh and final underboss is Fred, his frog.

Speaker: The twist, the twist.

Speaker: He was a villain.

Speaker: It was him.

Speaker: I'm MAGA.

Speaker: There it is.

Speaker: There it is.

Speaker: Chapter 18, Alex wants Jason to kill Fred as Fred is just tossing him around with his tongue.

Speaker: And Jason explains to Alex that it's his pet frog and Plutonium bosses turn him into that thing.

Speaker: And Alex is like, the level five underboss, the one I didn't help you with, that was my pet lobster.

Speaker: Plutarch.

Speaker: Plutarch the lobster.

Speaker: I don't know what it is, but this book went hard on the pet frog emotional trauma.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: I don't know why.

Speaker: The emotional trauma over this frog is insane to the point where it gets its own redemption arc almost instantly.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He so he ends up killing the frog.

Speaker: He they work together.

Speaker: He shoots the frog.

Speaker: And right before the frog dies, it looks at him with betrayal in its eyes before it vaporizes.

Speaker: I imagine into like gore and viscera.

Speaker: They leave that part out with a with a tiny little ribbit.

Speaker: How does it die in the game?

Speaker: It just blows up like everything else.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Fair.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I don't think, I don't think they address in the game that that's Fred.

Speaker: I don't think they at any point say, Oh, it's weird that we had him fight against two boss frogs and he's chasing a frog.

Speaker: That doesn't, but they don't get into that narrative level.

Speaker: Unfortunately.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Jason pulls a full Darth Vader with no.

Speaker: And they escape the ice cave as it as it collapses.

Speaker: But Alex hurts his ankle as they try to get to the next door.

Speaker: It's blocked by a chunk of ice.

Speaker: And then plutonium boss.

Speaker: The following sequence makes no sense to me.

Speaker: The door gets blocked, but then Plutonium boss is like, no, you have no choice.

Speaker: And he casts level nine magic hand from across the map and picks them up with an invisible force field and just drags them through walls and floors and stuff like that.

Speaker: It's pretty intense.

Speaker: And then he drops them at his feet.

Speaker: That's the anime shit, like a nuclear powered space team and flying laser fights and emotional screaming in like the most Dragon Ball Z Naruto fucking way ever.

Speaker: It's actually the best part of the book.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: There's some emotion here.

Speaker: Yeah, there's something going on here.

Speaker: And I'm like, I can disappear into an anime world in my head pretty easily.

Speaker: This is great.

Speaker: I can do this.

Speaker: This is great.

Speaker: I can roll with that.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: It's just the torture leading up to it.

Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: I feel like this could have been a an arc in delicious and dungeon even like, you know, why not?

Speaker: So he plutonium boss monologues them for at them up for a bit and reveals that Eve is all chained up.

Speaker: And she tells them that for each person, plutonium boss will look different.

Speaker: So to Alex, he looks like a giant rat.

Speaker: To Jason, he's, I assume it's just the description of the monster that he actually is in the game.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And to Eve, he looks like a winged carnivore from Signar L. Plutonium boss reveals that he's a new device that will let him generate all the energy he needs, but he needs to test it on some people, like the three of them.

Speaker: And he turns it on and it begins pulling.

Speaker: If it gave him all the energy he needs, would it not sate him and he'd become less violent?

Speaker: That's all he wants, right?

Speaker: He just wants to eat and feed.

Speaker: He just wants to eat and feed.

Speaker: So if he gives him all the energy he wants, just sacrifice yourselves.

Speaker: Let it go, man.

Speaker: Let's go that way.

Speaker: If it's about saving the planet, I feel like, yeah, go for it.

Speaker: Great or good, motherfuckers.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: So, yeah, they it starts pulling Jason and Alex into it.

Speaker: Eve points out that plutonium boss is using his energy to get the cyclotron started.

Speaker: That's the name of this device, the cyclotron.

Speaker: Jason dives and grabs his gun and he shoots the cyclotron, which rips it, rips a hole in its wall, which then starts pulling plutonium boss into it for some reason.

Speaker: and lets the heroes free.

Speaker: Just shrug emoji at at what like what's changing here.

Speaker: Plutonium bosses fling desperate attacks at them and Jason fires back eventually forcing Plutonium boss back back back to the hole and then he gets sucked sickeningly into the hole in the device.

Speaker: And I just imagine it's that scene from, what is that?

Speaker: The really bad aliens movie.

Speaker: The one with Winona Ryder.

Speaker: Oh, Alien Resurrection?

Speaker: Yeah, where the dude gets sucked into the hole.

Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, yeah, the cyclotron begins to self-destruct and Eve's like, no, we got to do something or it's going to destroy the world.

Speaker: No, no, no, no.

Speaker: Chapter 22, Jason's flipping random levers.

Speaker: Are they labeled like missiles and guns?

Speaker: Yeah, they're just flipping levers.

Speaker: And it's like it's it's basically the scene in Spaceballs where he opens the thing and it says, fuck, even in the future, nothing works.

Speaker: Alex and Eve join him in turning guiles before being flung backwards by another tear in the device.

Speaker: Jason braces for the end, but nothing happens.

Speaker: The cyclotron has been deactivated and now the place is falling apart.

Speaker: They run and Eve shows them to where Plutonium boss stashed Sophia the third because he wanted to use it as a pleasure vehicle question mark.

Speaker: Oh, I know.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The less said about that, the better that we just know if we've determined it can produce holograms and I don't want to know.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, you know,

Speaker: No, I'm good.

Speaker: Not going to kink shame.

Speaker: I'm going to kink shame this guy, actually.

Speaker: I'm not going to kink shame.

Speaker: I just don't want to be there.

Speaker: Don't want to be there.

Speaker: Don't want to see it.

Speaker: Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Speaker: They retrace their steps up through the levels again, but Sophia the third runs out of power right at the end, but they are fine.

Speaker: They're always fine.

Speaker: Yeah, auxiliary engine, baby.

Speaker: Yeah, they're good.

Speaker: They're in the lower part of the swamp hole and they climb up to the surface and they feel the sun on their face.

Speaker: And Eve's like, the air stinks.

Speaker: And Jason laughs so hard he falls down and takes a nap.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The final quote of the goddamn scene is he was home.

Speaker: Stinkoed or not.

Speaker: I want to, you can just tell her that you're in a swamp and that's not how everything else smells, but he's just like, you're right.

Speaker: How about we just came from a radioactive destroying planet of a giant boss where we had to kill my best, like my friend frog and a bunch of other things.

Speaker: This man boy went from boy to murderer in 89 pages.

Speaker: Like there's other things to worry about.

Speaker: And Eve is like, this place stinks.

Speaker: And he's like, ha ha ha, you're right.

Speaker: You are right, young girl.

Speaker: I'm going to nap now.

Speaker: Good night.

Speaker: He wakes up and he's back in his house and there's a news report on the radio about the earthquake that was caused by Plutonium Boss's demise.

Speaker: There's a noise at the door and it looks like a tall frog.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: When Jason opens the door, he slams the door but falls backwards.

Speaker: But it's actually Alex in a mask playing a trick.

Speaker: But wait, Fred is actually there, too.

Speaker: And so is Plutarch.

Speaker: It seems like Plutonian boss is just using the images of the pets to make them sad.

Speaker: Also, Eve is now living with Alex.

Speaker: The end.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: End of story.

Speaker: He's like, my parents are totally cool with her living with us.

Speaker: They love science fiction stuff.

Speaker: So as long as she keeps telling them about that, it's over.

Speaker: And I get to see some Mondo titties.

Speaker: Like, did a bunch of innocent people die because of that boss?

Speaker: Like, is that the implication?

Speaker: I mean, is this like...

Speaker: Did the book just like turn the final boss, it was like a radioactive blob that turned your pet frog into like a war criminal?

Speaker: I think so.

Speaker: Is that what this book is doing?

Speaker: And then it just ends?

Speaker: I also love, by the way, that before...

Speaker: before Jason realizes that his frog isn't dead, Alex, as far as we can tell, Alex is playing the cruelest prank on him ever.

Speaker: Like he might as well shown up in like a mask resembling his dead grandmother or something like that.

Speaker: Like what if it's like the thing, but frogs, dude.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Oh, now.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: And I agree that I give the a plus a plus plus.

Speaker: He's not dead.

Speaker: He's just, he's still, he's still around.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: I love it.

Speaker: I love it.

Speaker: And just like the book, the podcast ends.

Speaker: Goodbye.

Speaker: And it's just like, oh, God.

Speaker: So so, Phil, I'll start with you.

Speaker: What did you think of the book?

Speaker: Mike, this might surprise you, but this was not the worst worlds of power book we've read.

Speaker: You know, not even a little.

Speaker: I don't know if it surprises me, but would you put it in like the lower echelon?

Speaker: I put it smack dab in the middle to be completely honest.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What do you think is the worst?

Speaker: Is it?

Speaker: Oh, Mega Man 2.

Speaker: Mega Man 2.

Speaker: Interesting.

Speaker: Mega Man 2 feels like it has more of a story built into it than Blaster Master does.

Speaker: And they ignore it entirely.

Speaker: They add details that like they make Mega Man human.

Speaker: Maybe they are basing the book off of the North American cover or whatever it was.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like the cover gone.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Shooting.

Speaker: And they didn't look at the game at all.

Speaker: They just saw the cover.

Speaker: And that's it.

Speaker: It is truly heinous.

Speaker: It is a very, very bad book.

Speaker: It might be the first we've read.

Speaker: That's fair.

Speaker: Interesting.

Speaker: Metal Gear wasn't great.

Speaker: Metal Gear is bad.

Speaker: Actually, I think the best one was possibly Ninja Gaiden.

Speaker: Ninja Gaiden was all right.

Speaker: Yeah, that was fun.

Speaker: Yeah, that was fun.

Speaker: That's the thing.

Speaker: We talk trash.

Speaker: We recognize these are books made for children.

Speaker: Oh, absolutely.

Speaker: But children still deserve better than this.

Speaker: That's the thing.

Speaker: There's always a line where it's like kids can be written for, but not written stupid.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And this was written stupid.

Speaker: It was written stupid.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This was written for a paycheck.

Speaker: But I enjoyed talking about it more than I enjoyed reading it.

Speaker: That's for sure.

Speaker: Yeah, that's true.

Speaker: That's true.

Speaker: We enjoyed having you on to talk about it.

Speaker: Yeah, it was great.

Speaker: It was super fun.

Speaker: It was not.

Speaker: It was like a fucking fucking disaster of a disaster.

Speaker: But it's super fun that you're on the show and we totally respect and appreciate that you'll never speak to us again.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: But I will not tell the other two that so that you can ruin the relationship with the other two.

Speaker: That would be very appreciative.

Speaker: If we could burn burn three Bridges on the same podcast, that would be amazing.

Speaker: That would be wonderful.

Speaker: If you have a member back here, it's because you offered me such an apology gift.

Speaker: I couldn't say no.

Speaker: So before we go, Phil, I just want to ask you one question.

Speaker: Yeah, sure, sure.

Speaker: What are you playing?

Speaker: Oh, I I'm playing a lot of the same stuff.

Speaker: I'm still playing Claire obscure.

Speaker: That has become my my weekend game because I do not have time when I come home.

Speaker: I have a my guy of an 18 month year old and I come home from work and I do not have time for anything but like some tower defense shit and everything.

Speaker: everything like that.

Speaker: Absolutely understand.

Speaker: My, my sister has three kids of her own.

Speaker: So yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And so that's my Saturday game.

Speaker: I get to sit down and really get into it.

Speaker: And I'm, and I'm really enjoying it.

Speaker: I love the combat.

Speaker: Uh, the story is shockingly, I don't really go for,

Speaker: the big persona style stories so much.

Speaker: But it is it has hooked me and it did make me well up in that first act a couple of times, which is impressive as hell.

Speaker: I'm having fun with it.

Speaker: I'm having fun with the bad guys.

Speaker: I think they're really excellent.

Speaker: I played a couple of demos.

Speaker: I played the demo for a indie game called Final Outpost, which is a kind of city builder zombie apocalypse kind of thing.

Speaker: It's very rudimentary.

Speaker: It was

Speaker: nothing much about it, except the one thing that I only bring it up in the first place because it had a mechanic that I haven't seen before in one of these games.

Speaker: And that's birth because you're in a zombie, you know, you're this area and you're bringing people in and stuff.

Speaker: And every now and then, based on how much time passes, you get a new member of

Speaker: the society, that as they can take on jobs and stuff like that, which is just the natural... What's the name of the game again?

Speaker: I'm going to write this down.

Speaker: It's called Final Outpost.

Speaker: It was fine, but that was the mechanic that caught my eye.

Speaker: I thought that was really interesting.

Speaker: I feel like... I also played the demo for Talisman, the fifth edition Talisman, the old board game.

Speaker: And this is not a... This is...

Speaker: I don't know if either of you ever played Talisman.

Speaker: It was it was just a really it's a really rudimentary fantasy light RPG board game that came out, I think, in the 80s originally.

Speaker: And this is just a nice it's a very nice package for a

Speaker: a video game version of the board game.

Speaker: It's just the board game, which there's no problem with that because it's because I'll tell you the thing about it for me was that I have a lot of fond memories of going into a Denny's with my friends and taking over too much of a table to play this board game, too much coffee, trying our best to tip the waiter as like something that they deserve, but never being able to.

Speaker: You're broke as fuck.

Speaker: Oh, exactly.

Speaker: And just playing this game until like two in the morning and and I have a lot of and it recreated that.

Speaker: I think, though, it's something you have to play with your friends.

Speaker: It would be a really good thing to have your friends play.

Speaker: And if you're sitting around talking about other stuff and just shooting the shit and playing this game, it would be super fun, like a lot of board games.

Speaker: But sitting there playing it against the A.I., it's a perfectly serviceable

Speaker: you know, adaptation of the game and it looks really good, but it bored me to tears after a while.

Speaker: Yeah, just playing it by myself.

Speaker: It would be fun to have some people on the play.

Speaker: But that's that's me.

Speaker: So, Mike, what are you playing?

Speaker: I'm actually also playing through Clare Obscure right now.

Speaker: I am.

Speaker: 50 hours in, I'm pretty heavy into chapter two.

Speaker: But me and my girlfriend always like play a game that I play and she'll watch.

Speaker: I actually very much am recently into the Persona stuff.

Speaker: I basically hadn't touched JRPGs in years and I really loved them as a kid.

Speaker: Except the Western RPGs, like having influence and choice over the story really dominated my tastes.

Speaker: And it still is my preferred taste, but I jumped into Persona 5

Speaker: old edition, like the ultimate edition, uh, maybe six or so months ago.

Speaker: And after 137 hours of the game, I was like, Oh yeah, I do like JRPGs.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I haven't jumped into one after that.

Speaker: I kind of was giving myself a break.

Speaker: I was going to jump into three reload, but then Claire obscure kind of came around and out of nowhere people were just like keeping praise on this game.

Speaker: And so I was like, well, fuck it.

Speaker: You know, why don't we jump into this?

Speaker: See how it is.

Speaker: If we don't like it, we don't like it.

Speaker: We move on.

Speaker: And, uh,

Speaker: Like you like immediately was just like taken by it.

Speaker: The story is excellently well done.

Speaker: The voice acting is incredible.

Speaker: Um, and, uh, I was, you know, I wasn't spoiled on any of the stuff that was going to happen with the characters in, you know, the early first half of the game, which was great.

Speaker: Uh, in the, in Gustav's voice actor, I was listening to it.

Speaker: I'm like, I know this guy's voice.

Speaker: I know his voice.

Speaker: And it's fucking Charlie Cox of Daredevil.

Speaker: And I'm like, anytime he did an emotional scene in Claire Obscure, I was like, that's upset Daredevil voice.

Speaker: I know that voice.

Speaker: But the, you know, I got really into just like learning about the history of the game and the development of the game is phenomenal.

Speaker: The story is so cool.

Speaker: I don't know if you know much about it, but the developer originally pitched it.

Speaker: He was Ubisoft guy and he pitched it to Ubisoft and they said no.

Speaker: And he wanted to make this game so bad he left.

Speaker: And he had a little small team of six.

Speaker: And the person who did the music and the music of this game is incredible.

Speaker: It's somebody he just found on SoundCloud.

Speaker: who never produced anything professional in their life.

Speaker: He's like some young 20 something year old.

Speaker: The writer was a woman who was an investor who they found on Reddit.

Speaker: He made a post on Reddit to make it get his original team.

Speaker: That's amazing.

Speaker: And he plucked people out of like nowhere.

Speaker: The guy clearly has an eye for talent.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And he just cobbled this team together with a shared vision and passion.

Speaker: And now the team, I think is 50 people by the end of the game's development, which wasn't all that big.

Speaker: And it's just, you can see the passion in every, every ounce of this game.

Speaker: It's so well done.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So I'm with you.

Speaker: I'm on that Claire Obscura ride right now.

Speaker: It's been my my my life.

Speaker: I've also been quickly crushing through.

Speaker: I never got to go through Hades, the original Hades back when it came out.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But Hades, too, is like almost done.

Speaker: And I'm watching people play and I'm like, I want to play this.

Speaker: So I should probably play the first one.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Other than that, I'm heavy into like simulation games.

Speaker: I don't know if you are very much, but like X4, I love playing X4, but a new like XCOM style, invisible ink style game came out by a pair of developers who has a very good track record.

Speaker: It's called Cyber Knight Flashpoint.

Speaker: It literally came out of 1.0 yesterday.

Speaker: It came into 1.0 yesterday as they were doing crazy amounts of development and updates.

Speaker: That is extremely Phil's shit.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The trees brothers are very, very good at what they do.

Speaker: They have very interesting ideas and everybody they they're very open with playing with a lot of simulation elements.

Speaker: So this is up your alley.

Speaker: Dude, definitely check it out.

Speaker: Looks lovely.

Speaker: Yeah, I'm going to have to have to take a look at this.

Speaker: Check it out.

Speaker: It's great.

Speaker: But yeah, that's that's kind of what I've been into.

Speaker: And it's been eating up my time.

Speaker: It's been great.

Speaker: Yeah, awesome.

Speaker: I actually haven't been playing anything new somehow this week.

Speaker: Well, okay, I'll tell you what happened is I was putting hours into Tainted Grail, The Fall of Avalon, and I got through the first act, and I was like, ah, this game kind of sucks.

Speaker: I know that feeling.

Speaker: It's like, so it's a moment of like, do I, cause if I go, you go from that point on, you have to finish it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's like, I finished the big story elements of act one and I'm like, I, it's like somehow my motivation to play it just went right off the cliff because I was like, I was like, wait a minute.

Speaker: Uh, I,

Speaker: Let me tell you, the first couple, the first dungeon of the game, the dungeon that you start off on is really intriguing and it's fun.

Speaker: It sets this world up and you're all like, oh, this is really cool.

Speaker: And then you're like, you get out into the open world and you start doing stuff.

Speaker: And then you're like, oh man, this is just like a worse version of Skyrim.

Speaker: And you just...

Speaker: That's unfortunate.

Speaker: It just kind of like gets getting more milk toast as it goes on.

Speaker: And then I finish act one and I'm like, I don't care anymore, guys.

Speaker: I'm I'm going to this is going on the did not finish pile.

Speaker: Can't return it because I accidentally put 20 hours into it.

Speaker: Oh, yeah, that's the other part.

Speaker: It's like, oh, well, fuck.

Speaker: I just got to keep the money at this point.

Speaker: It's like the opposite day version of like the whole of the, you know, well, when you get 20 or 25 hours into the game, that's when it gets really good.

Speaker: It's like, you know, you get 24 hours into the game and it starts to really suck.

Speaker: You really start to hate it.

Speaker: Yeah, I got to make a decision now.

Speaker: Listen, I'll turn to you.

Speaker: If you want something, I don't know if you liked Morrowind back in the day and if you're okay with any game.

Speaker: Morrowind, loved Morrowind, and I've been disappointed pretty much with everything since then.

Speaker: It's not as big as Morrowind, but it's open in that way.

Speaker: And it's got that older look.

Speaker: It's called the Dread Delusion.

Speaker: It's another phenomenal indie game.

Speaker: It came out in 2024.

Speaker: It's like 20 bucks.

Speaker: It's an open world RPG with like exploration and dungeons and shit.

Speaker: But it's like, it looks old school, but it's, you know, it came out last year by these devs and it's a lot to this game.

Speaker: And it's just...

Speaker: It's a beautiful, weird game to explore.

Speaker: It's super dangerous.

Speaker: There's a lot there.

Speaker: If this is something that you'd even think would tickle you, I think you should.

Speaker: This has some cosmic horror shit.

Speaker: This is crazy.

Speaker: Yes, yes.

Speaker: It's fucking cool, dude.

Speaker: It's a very, very cool game.

Speaker: Give it a shot if it's up your edge.

Speaker: You think it remotely up your alley.

Speaker: That's like the shit I'm into.

Speaker: On the wish list it goes.

Speaker: But yeah, and the only other thing I've been playing is I've been poking around at Hollywood Animal a little bit more.

Speaker: Mike, have you heard this one?

Speaker: Hollywood Animal?

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Basically, it's a simulation game where you run a Hollywood studio back in the 19, starting in like 1929.

Speaker: and the fascinating thing about it it's like this game is like this game set in 1929 and let it we're not going to hide anything things sucked for minorities and women a lot back then on the reality side you will you will hire people for uh parts like a director and you'll see a little label on their on their name and you hover over the label and it's like oh yeah this guy's racist

Speaker: So if you have if you plan on casting anybody of color in your movie, the actual quality of the movie is going to be affected because you have a racist director or this guy is addicted to opiates or this guy is addicted to is an alcoholic or whatever.

Speaker: That seems interesting.

Speaker: It's still in early access too.

Speaker: It's still in early access.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So like not everything.

Speaker: So you have like all these different skill trees that are based on you.

Speaker: There's like some main buildings that you build.

Speaker: There's like pre-production, post-production and all that.

Speaker: And then within each building, there's skill trees that you develop.

Speaker: that take time to develop.

Speaker: So like pre-production or the producing office, like you can hire new producers or in the script in pre-production, you'd hire a story department.

Speaker: So you can, you can actually put together your own story elements for a screenplay and assign it to a writer to try to develop.

Speaker: It reminds me of that game from the early 2000s.

Speaker: Yes, the movies.

Speaker: The movies.

Speaker: Yes, that's exactly what it's called.

Speaker: I loved that game.

Speaker: I made my own little tiny short World War II film in that thing.

Speaker: I put so much time into the movies and it was, that was, what's his name?

Speaker: That was Peter Molyneux, right?

Speaker: Peter Molyneux.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Just like you'd expect it didn't quite achieve what they were going for, but it was still pretty good.

Speaker: It was still pretty good.

Speaker: It was like, oh man, this would be great if he didn't over promise and under deliver again.

Speaker: That's exactly it.

Speaker: That's all he ever does.

Speaker: He's very good at it.

Speaker: Hey, who remembers Milo?

Speaker: A little virtual boy that definitely didn't make you feel like a pedophile.

Speaker: Do you not remember that?

Speaker: Oh yeah.

Speaker: Oh God.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Cool.

Speaker: So I got the game on my wishlist now.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I'm, I'm, I'm glad.

Speaker: Um, but yeah, also I'm going to get into the rematch.

Speaker: Uh, I got into the beta test for rematch, which is, uh, the people who slow clap, the people who made a Sifu and they made a soccer game.

Speaker: Soccer game.

Speaker: That's right.

Speaker: I actually am super, I'm interested in that.

Speaker: And I asked to be in the beta test.

Speaker: It was on Steam.

Speaker: I was like, apply for beta test.

Speaker: And I just got a pop-up and said, you're in.

Speaker: That's awesome.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: I'll take that.

Speaker: Thank you very much.

Speaker: I'll take it.

Speaker: But yeah, no, I wanted to get in there and check.

Speaker: I'm going to have to apply for that too.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Oh, this is so over the top.

Speaker: Looks super fun.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's after Absolver and Sifu.

Speaker: It's like a soccer game.

Speaker: Really?

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: I love Sifu.

Speaker: Let him go wild experiment.

Speaker: Go wild, slow clap.

Speaker: Do your thing.

Speaker: That'll do it for tonight's episode, though.

Speaker: Thanks so much, everybody, for listening.

Speaker: And thanks, Mike, for being on.

Speaker: If you want to go ahead and plug whatever you got to plug.

Speaker: You know what?

Speaker: I got one thing to plug.

Speaker: It's one thing only.

Speaker: Thank you for having me on.

Speaker: It was super fun.

Speaker: That was a really fun book to just even talk about because how fucking insane it was.

Speaker: But if you want to find me just to illuminati podcast wherever your podcasts are on YouTube, whatever you like comedy and True crime and paranormal and weird shit.

Speaker: That's what we do, baby.

Speaker: We've been doing it for seven years We're gonna do it for at least seven more Other than that Yeah, that's kind of oh, you know what if you like tabletop RPGs

Speaker: and you like that kind of show, check out my tabletop RPG, Vampire the Masquerade show.

Speaker: We wrapped up a six-year campaign a few months back, and we just started a campaign too, essentially.

Speaker: You can find that at PodByNight anywhere on YouTube and all that good stuff.

Speaker: But yeah, that's it for me.

Speaker: Thank you guys again.

Speaker: It was a pleasure to be on.

Speaker: I very much enjoyed it.

Speaker: Fantastic.

Speaker: Thank you so much.

Speaker: So y'all out there listening, you can find us on Blue Sky and Instagram and Patreon, as I already said, and you can go to Discord and all that.

Speaker: But

Speaker: But beyond all that, Phil, I got a question for you.

Speaker: So I got a, there is a giant mechanical bird that has been roosting on the top of my house.

Speaker: What would you say I should do to get rid of that?

Speaker: Do you have your keys nearby?

Speaker: Yes, yes.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Check the ring for an old fashioned, old timey, big, funky kind of key.

Speaker: And then you're going to take the key, approach the bird from behind and slide it gently into...