Ep. 34: Sim games meet action platforming: Have they gone crazy? | Actraiser

Don (00:01)
My hot take is that we give early Castlevania a lot of leeway because it turned into a great series. But I'm telling you, think early Castlevania games would be trash platformers if they never made more Castlevania games.

Steve (00:01)
Yeah.

What are you talking about?

Don (00:17)
Like I think NES Castlevania is trash. That's what I'm trying to say. Like, I think we all give it a pass because it's part of the greater lore. And we like the other Castlevania games like Symphony of the Night and Castlevania four and those ones. But if those ones didn't exist and Castlevania never left the NES, like I think Castlevania would just be forgotten. Games are bad.

Steve (00:38)
Castlevania is already forgotten because they haven't made a fucking game in like 20 years

Don (00:43)
We didn't forget about it though.

Dan (00:45)
Yeah.

Steve (00:46)
No, but that's because

it's cemented in our fucking gaming DNA, Castlevania 1, 2, and 3 are all great.

Lysianthia (00:57)
I feel like two is debatable in that group, but...

Dan (00:57)
Ha ha.

Don (00:59)
Yeah, base base

Steve (01:00)
Now shut your mouth.

Don (01:01)
base two is bad.

Steve (01:03)
What?

Don (01:05)
Two with enhancements is fine, base two is bad. They made NPCs lie to you. That's so ridiculous in a game.

Lysianthia (01:14)
Well, to be fair, they also made NPCs lie to you in Zelda 2.

Dan (01:21)
And that game's bad.

Don (01:21)
Yeah, I don't, yeah.

Steve (01:22)
That game is bad.

Lysianthia (01:24)
I guess, yeah, it's in the same

boat as Castlevania 2 in that regard, so.

Steve (01:28)
Castlevania II

is not a bad game.

Don (01:30)
And it's half ass too. Don't even get me started on those bosses.

Dan (01:34)
A huge gripe I have with two. I kind of enjoy two, but like the part where you have to like sit in the that like ledge for like 10 seconds for the tornado to take you like how the hell are you supposed to figure that out without a guide? This is no way.

Steve (01:47)
Nintendo Power.

Don (01:50)
Even throwing stakes at the orbs. There's no way that you would know that unless you talk to everybody.

Steve (01:55)
Listen, I'm telling you the only bad part, the only real bad part of the game is that every fucking dungeon you have to like throw a million holy waters so you don't fall through the floor. That's the only thing I hate. Only thing I hate.

Lysianthia (02:06)
God, the invisible

frickin' I actually forgot about that.

Steve (02:11)
That's a bad decision,

bad decision.

Don (02:13)
the death boss in that one, you can just walk past him, don't have to fight him.

Steve (02:17)
Hell yeah.

Dan (02:19)
slap in the face. You're not worth my time.

Don (02:19)
He's just too slow.

He's too slow. can't get he's too slow for the for a Belmont. He can't catch you.

Lysianthia (02:27)
Yeah.

Steve (02:28)
That's not unreasonable, the Belmont's pretty quick.

Don (02:32)
Not those ones.

Lysianthia (02:33)
Well, starting at Richter they got pretty fast, but...

Steve (02:34)
Yeah, they are.

The enemies are all slow, except the wolves, I think.

Don (02:38)
I mean...

Yeah, Castlevania

enemies are some ungodly slow enemies, like all of them. Yeah, but even like the ones that don't appear to be slow, like the what are they called? The wolves in Symphony of the Night, the beg ones. The wargs. Yeah, like they're slow as shit, too. You know, like it's a wolf that should be jumping all over you, stands there and takes it.

Steve (02:47)
Mummies and shit.

out warps.

Don (03:09)
Dracula strikes me as a very leisurely Lord as far as villains go.

Steve (03:09)
I mean, I like.

He's busy, he's got all this other shit he's managing.

Lysianthia (03:19)
It doesn't force his employees to go to the gym for leg day.

Don (03:25)
I just feel like the castle itself is a party, like whoever wants to show up. Like his enemies are so mixed, they don't even seem like they're all from the same game. they just, you know, everybody's invited to come kick it at Dracula's castle tonight.

Steve (03:37)
Well,

Hell's minions are varied. It's diversity and inclusion, all right?

Dan (03:46)
whatever the whatever the what the devil's Forgemaster can make it's pretty much what it

Lysianthia (03:47)
lot of options to pick from.

Steve (03:52)
You just

Don (03:52)
Corner guards.

Steve (03:54)
have a gimpy-ass fucking shitty Forgemaster, all he can make is like slime and flemen.

Don (04:03)
He makes one monster, has one big leg and one small leg. I know where I'm going to put this guy. He's the, he's, he's the corner guard. He puts them on the stairs to where it's where he excels.

Dan (04:09)
You

Steve (04:11)
He's really good at doing donuts.

Don (04:18)
So good. Anyway.

I like Final Fantasy VIII's subtitles should be finally something to do with magic.

Magic's bad in Final Fantasy. It's another hot take.

Steve (04:30)
Mm.

Depends on the game.

Dan (04:37)
use a magic in that game like kind of hurt your stats though I've only played it through at once

Steve (04:40)
if you have it junctioned.

Don (04:42)
Right,

but the fact that it helps you at all in the game makes it better.

Steve (04:46)
So magic used to have the

upside of being able to hit all enemies at the same time. Where in like 6 was like the first one where, you know, Edgar has tools that can do it, and then like Mog has dances that can do it. But the big thing about magic used to be that you could target all the enemies and you could get high damage if you an enemy was weak to it.

So, you know, Magic has had places in older Final Fantasies, but the newer ones, just like why the fuck you cast Magic when you can hit max damage with physical attacks?

Dan (05:20)
Yeah. You know what the real play is? Is what is it like to synthesize in the Laguna card to get like max hero drinks?

Steve (05:27)
Heroes.

Yep. Makes you invulnerable for certain amount of time.

Don (05:30)
What's a hero drink?

Excuse me.

Steve (05:37)
Yeah,

Lysianthia (05:37)
You

Steve (05:38)
and there's an item that's really hard to get called a holy war and it makes all three of your characters invulnerable for a certain amount of time.

Don (05:47)
better than a mega elixir. Like by a country mile, if you can imagine.

Steve (05:49)
yeah.

And Selfie,

Selfie's random ability, I don't remember what her limit break's called, but Trine I think it is? Anyway, you cycle until you get the magic spell you want, and she has a special one called The End, and it literally ends the battle no matter what the boss is.

Don (06:01)
you

I've seen that, yeah. People say it's cheese, but I don't know. Spamming the turn reset button makes it less cheesy, I feel like.

Dan (06:24)
or using Zell's Limit Break, like the first two over and over and over.

Steve (06:24)
Do over, do over.

Yeah, dude, I cannot-

I figured that shit out on my own without, like, a guide.

Dan (06:33)
Isn't there like a name for it that people made up like called like the Armageddon fist or something?

Steve (06:37)
I don't know.

Don (06:39)
What I do know is with that hyper wrist and a hundred fires I killed the T-Rex in one round with that.

Steve (06:48)
We'll see, sometimes you get a duel that's like six seconds, and sometimes you get one that's like 14 seconds.

Don (06:48)
you

Yeah, yeah, this one this one was a was it was a 12 second but each hit was doing 210 damage that's a lot and like you crank them out every point one six seconds or something like that if you if you just get the mental timing down

Steve (07:00)
Yeah, so I-

Dude, and you can get like everybody's ultimate weapons in the first disc.

Don (07:13)
I haven't even seen another weapon yet.

Steve (07:14)
Well, you don't get weapons like that. You find these, these, like, arms books or whatever, and it allows the crafters to make them.

Don (07:24)
I like that. You know why? Because I feel like they build these characters up to have their iconic weapons like Squall's Gunblade, right? And how stupid would it be if you were like, Squall's going to equip a rapier now. And that happens with Cloud, right? He's got that awesome Buster Sword. Every image you ever see of Cloud is with the Buster Sword. It's his brand. But you play the game, and there's a point in the game where the nail bat is better than the Buster Sword.

Steve (07:36)
Yeah, there's like four books.

Dan (07:50)
Yeah, I know.

Steve (07:51)
Well, every

weapon's better than the Buster Sword. It's like the first weapon.

Don (07:52)
You know,

right. The flavor of it sucks. So I kind of liked the idea that like, it's my weapon. And you just upgrade it throughout, throughout the story to be relevant. think, I think that's, that's cool.

Steve (08:06)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, I like Final Fantasy 8, a lot of people don't, but I think it has a lot of interesting ideas and I think that the gameplay is fun and, you know, I think they do a pretty good job of making you feel like there's a whole world you can explore and it rewards your exploration a lot better than a lot of other games because, like, you have to find these books to upgrade your weapons and you have to,

you know, find the card, the card game is actually useful, you know, with items and, you know, I don't know. I like it.

Don (08:45)
Yeah, I'm enjoying it so far. Speaking of innovative ideas that were thrown to the side for more conventional means, are you guys ready to talk about ActRaiser?

Dan (08:46)
I have to play through it again, it's been a long time.

Let's do it.

Lysianthia (08:58)
Go.

Steve (09:11)
Everybody ready?

Dan (09:13)
Ready.

Steve (09:14)
Ready.

Welcome to the Cable Club. We're a retro video gaming podcast where three guys have an unexpected thing occur. And we're linking up to talk about the games you love and rank them. This is episode number 34. We're your hosts. I'm Steve.

Dan (09:34)
I'm Dan.

Don (09:35)
And I'm done.

Steve (09:37)
And we're here with Lycianthia from the Discord. Say hi, Lycianthia, or would you prefer your real name?

Lysianthia (09:44)
No, you guys can call me Eric. How's it going? Good to be here.

Don (09:48)
We've seen him before. He was on the Hades episode.

Steve (09:50)
if that even is your real name.

Dan (09:52)
Yeah.

Lysianthia (09:53)
I've been called a lot of things, some good, some bad.

Steve (09:56)
you

Don (09:58)
Good to have you back, Eric.

Lysianthia (10:00)
Good to be back. It's been a while.

Steve (10:04)
It has. We haven't done an episode together. I was absent for that one.

Dan (10:09)
Yeah, that's always though.

Steve (10:12)
Well, anyway, moving forward. This week's episode is our seventh League episode of the year, and the entry is Act Racer. So get ready to upload data from us to you. But first, let's set the mood. It's a Saturday morning like every other Saturday morning. You've just finished eating some Cap'n Crunch and watching a bunch of your favorite Saturday morning cartoons. Gargoyles being one of them.

You start digging through all of your SNES games after, and they're all in this big box. If only you knew how important these games were to becoming in your life in all facets, you probably would have taken better care of them. As you dig through the box, you pass up games that you've beaten what feels like a million times. Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario World, Aladdin, Super Castlevania IV, all those great titles.

And finally, near the bottom of your box, you find a game that you couldn't even remember receiving. It was probably in a collection consolidation of a cousin's or uncle's or something like that. Being bored and looking for something new and fun to do on a Saturday was pretty normal for you. God knows your older brother's probably out playing some kind of sports game and you couldn't care any less about it. You wanted to experience adventure and magic. At first, you're greeted to some strange text-based menu and...

you feel a little bit lost. But shortly after, you discover the option that says, Fight Monsters. You think to yourself, yes please! And the game thrusts you into an exciting forest with upbeat music, and you wouldn't know it, or wouldn't you know it, excuse me. You're a hero emerging from a stone statue, just like in Gargoyles. This was gonna be a Saturday morning you were looking for. Let's fight monsters.

Don (12:03)
I was wondering if you were going to link that back to gargoyles or if you just picked gargoyles coincidentally because the heroes are statues and then turn into... yeah.

Steve (12:14)
Cargoyles was such a fun show.

Don (12:16)
Very solid reference.

Dan (12:16)
Yeah, I was.

Lysianthia (12:19)
That's a throwback.

Steve (12:21)
You

Don (12:22)
If I ever find the time, want to go back and revisit it because supposedly there's a bunch of adult-themed stuff in there that just went over my head as a kid.

Steve (12:30)
Oh yeah, dude, all that stuff had so much innuendo that kids just didn't even... I mean, you see it in Disney movies too.

Dan (12:30)
really?

Don (12:40)
True. True. What would happen if Disney ruled the world?

Steve (12:45)
Well sometimes you you had to throw a couple things in there for the grown-ups because you know they had to bring you know the kids are dragging them out to the movie theater or whatever you know

Don (12:55)
Like the villain dying horribly with fire. It's quality entertainment for me.

Lysianthia (13:01)
Thanks

Don (13:03)
Take that.

All right. So I've got some announcements. They're kind of the same old announcements. We've been talking about for a few weeks, but in case you haven't heard them yet, the website is up and running. Go over to the www.cableclub.com on the internets and check out our website over there. From there, you can check out league standings. Look at the guests of our, look at the profiles of our guests on there. Look at our entire episode backlog. This is episode 34, but we've got some bonus episodes thrown in there roughly at 40 episodes. Now, if you just can't get enough.

Listen to the early ones last, except for Mega Man X7. Go listen to that one pretty early. That's a good episode, wouldn't you guys say? It's the most emotional one for me. And then I also want to mention that our league is, of course, underway. This is episode eight of the League of 25. We're going to play 25 games this year, and we're going to sort them into leagues.

Dan (13:41)
It was my favorite one. Not.

Steve (13:45)
I'm gonna be sick.

Don (14:00)
And then we're somehow going to award winners at the end of the year and give away trophies that we just announced over in our Discord. They are beauteous golden cartridges with our logos on them and mysteries inside. And they will be given to five league winners this year.

Dan (14:19)
They really did

turn out great. I'll post a picture of it so you guys can see it.

Lysianthia (14:22)
They are.

As an outside viewer, they are gorgeous.

Don (14:27)
They are beautiful.

All credit to the Etsy store that made them gold. don't know how they did it, but they're great.

Dan (14:38)
Good stuff.

Don (14:40)
All right, Dan, your turn. Question of the week.

Dan (14:43)
Alrighty, of the week or questions. Got a two-bagger. So the first question comes from Alpha Data. What is your favorite weapon in any game? So guess first if Eric wants to take it.

Lysianthia (15:00)
Yeah, I had to think about this one a lot. I play some very weird games, obviously, as you can tell by my game choices, but I couldn't think of any standout weapons that were my favorite to use. The only one that I kept coming back to was from a game called Jet Force Gemini on the N64. They have a handheld tri rocket launcher.

So like all the power destruction that you would usually get in like a rocket launcher and like regular shooter games, but you can run and gun with it and there's three rockets. And to add onto that, there was a multiplayer mode that was explosives only. So you got like tri rocket launchers, cluster bombs, grenades. So it was just like, okay, I find the tri rocket launcher. I'm just going to run and shoot everything and watch bodies just explode.

Don (15:58)
You gotta love the power trip aspect of this.

Dan (16:04)
Absolutely.

Don (16:04)
I actually had a hard time narrowing down mine. So I'm gonna give a couple of runner-ups first. One is just straight up fists. I love monks in Final Fantasy or like RPGs in general, like characters that use their fists to like ridiculous proficiency. I say the monk in Final Fantasy because in many of the titles they're just murder machines. Like even though they don't require any upkeep, like you don't have to buy weapons for them.

Steve (16:28)
Yeah.

Don (16:33)
And even in some games, it's advantageous not to even dress them because they get more attack for not wearing gear.

Steve (16:36)
It makes me think of

Final Fantasy 1. If they have a weapon, they will do more damage on regular hits, but if they don't have a weapon, they hit more times. So you'll have the weapon, you'll hit six times, and it'll do, let's just say, 500 damage. But if you take the weapons off, you'll hit 12 times, your attack's lower, but you'll deal 1,000 damage because you hit twice as much.

Dan (16:39)
Yeah, me too.

Don (16:41)
Ahem.

Yeah.

Yeah, and your little warriors over there hitting for 200 at this point in the game.

Your monks critting for two grand. So that's, that's, that's one. and then the other one is the holy hand grenade from worms would be the, would be the runner up. So who can forget that.

Dan (17:14)
God, I remember that.

Steve (17:14)
Yeah

Dan (17:16)
Was that the one where it were explosicles? yeah. great.

Don (17:20)
Yeah, it goes, hallelujah, and then blows up and it sends everybody flying. It has the biggest launch distance and the

Lysianthia (17:20)
Yeah it is.

Steve (17:21)
Hahaha

Don (17:26)
biggest blast radius. So that's fun. And then, my actual favorite weapon, comes from the ratchet and clank series, which has a lot of really good ones, like the chickenator and a little like, remote control robots that explode that are fun. but it is a weapon from the third game called the suck cannon.

and it upgrades to the Vortex Cannon later on, and what it does is, it doesn't use ammunition like the other weapons, but it lets you suck up minor enemies and use them as ammunition against everything else, and it deals a lot of damage for being an early, you get it like super early, and it just completely outstrips using melee, because it has no ammunition. You can even suck up crates and stuff with it if you don't have minor enemies to use.

So it's a very fun weapon.

Lysianthia (18:21)
Sounds like they put a trigger on Kirby.

Don (18:23)
Yeah, pretty much exactly. It's a Kirby gun.

What you got, Steve?

Steve (18:33)
So

Then my second thing that I was thinking of was also just for funny, playing Silent Hill 2 and having the hammer. It was so fun. But yeah, it's just so much fun beating up monsters from another dimension with a hammer. But then it made me think of...

Dan (19:10)
The hammer of destruction.

Don (19:15)
When melee attacks become broken in that game.

Dan (19:18)
Yeah.

That's so good.

Steve (19:27)
I

Dan (19:34)
yeah.

You

Yeah.

like the ragdoll if it actually lands like the killing blow. Oh man.

Lysianthia (19:47)
Well...

Dan (19:51)
Ugh, good stuff.

Alright, so for me, like, again, I had a hard time with this question too, because there's just so many good weapons out there. So I had a couple answers. First ones from like the older dooms. Do you guys remember the super shotgun, like the double barrel gun shotgun? It was just so good.

Don (20:11)
You

can add it to my growing list of gaming sins that have never played a Doom game.

Dan (20:16)
It's just such like a dopamine hit, like when you go up to a demon at like point blank and shoot and like just ends up falling over, even though like this demon's like huge and takes like a bunch of hits, but just gets one-shotted because of all the bullets, because of the spread, just all hit them because you were just so close. That and any kind of magnum from the Resident Evil series is just so good because it was, it's like the boss killer.

Steve (20:41)
Yeah, taking out

Chigante with the Magnum.

Dan (20:46)
Yeah, you know, if you have like a feeling a boss is coming out, you'll pull that out of the storage and then you're just or even if like you need to clear a room, it's just so good. It's just like one shots, anything. And then like bosses only take like a couple of hits. And then my last answer, obviously, I can't forget the X Buster. Just love it. I'll do a lot of Mega Man X runs with just the the X Buster because I just love the charging and shooting and had to put it on the list.

Steve (20:51)
you

Don (21:14)
What do we say around here guys? A B C, always be charging.

Dan (21:17)
ABC.

Lysianthia (21:22)
I'll be honest, there's times I'm playing Mega Man X and I forget that I have special weapons, so I can't argue that.

Dan (21:27)
Yeah, it's so good. The charging is just so good.

Don (21:30)
I it's more fun to play that game with just the Buster. I like dodging the bosses. And if it's one of the titles where they get hit-stunned by their weakness, just... yeah, it's kind of a turn-off.

Dan (21:40)
Yeah, I agree with that. All right, so that was our answers. Some answers from our community. Jump cancel. The sheep bomb in worms.

Don (21:54)
My man, he's the one that made me think of the holy hand grenade because I wasn't even thinking there. I saw his answer and I was like, my God, there's so many good weapons and worms.

Dan (22:02)
I'm trying to remember that, I can't remember it.

Don (22:04)
So the sheep, you throw it and then it gallops the way you would envision a sheep to gallop. And then if you hit the, you hit a button, it's a remote detonated sheep. Like, and it just blows up, you know, yes, yes. Well, it goes by while it's galloping around, but after it blows up, doesn't buy anymore.

Dan (22:14)
Please tell me it goes by when it blows up. Yes. All right.

Lysianthia (22:22)
Yeah. I wonder if he prefers

the regular sheep bomb to the super sheep.

Don (22:28)
that's right. The super sheep that flies around like a guided missile. Yeah. Cause you, so he's a normal sheep. hit the button and then he shoots up in the air and he has a little cape and you can fly them around until he hits something and impacts it.

Lysianthia (22:31)
Yeah.

Dan (22:32)
Ha!

Good stuff.

Don (22:44)
Forgot about the super sheet. Core memory unlocked.

Dan (22:50)
All right, Happeny coming in with a few answers here. He says, the shotgun in Halo 3. Hey, man. I love the shotgun in Doom, so I know the feeling.

Don (23:02)
Kind of a shotgun guy myself. You guys?

Steve (23:04)
Yeah, I

like shotgun and gears of war.

Dan (23:08)
Yeah. Then Proximity Mines and GoldenEye. those ones were great. I know you guys haven't really played GoldenEye, but I remember playing that with my uncle and he was so like sweaty with this game. Like he would place like Proximity Mines on the spawn points. So when you would die, you would spawn in, die because it was a Proximity Mine on like on that spawn point, you die again. And literally...

Steve (23:23)
you

Dan (23:34)
You would just constantly die because you just knew where all the spawn points were. those were the days. And, and then his last one was ladder in WWF Smackdown 2. Ladders, man.

Steve (23:42)
Disgusting.

Hahaha

Don (23:51)
What's

your guys overall experience with the with the that's that's one of the N 64 games, right? WWF Smackdown two.

Dan (23:59)
I'm not sure.

Steve (23:59)
I don't

know. I know they have like attitude and mayhem, but I don't know. Smackdown 2 is on the 64.

Don (24:08)
Anyway, what's your guys experience with wrestling games in general?

Dan (24:11)
very little, extremely little.

Steve (24:13)
I had an

growing up and I had a friend that really liked wrestling so we played wrestling games but I can't say that I played them a lot by myself.

Lysianthia (24:24)
Yeah, I'm not a wrestling person. I think I played one that my cousin owned and it was interesting because it had like a create a wrestler, but not my cup of tea.

Don (24:39)
I played very little of them, but over a friend's house and I remember the ladder. The ladder is a lot of fun. That's a great weapon. You're like chairs. No, give me the ladder. As soon as it comes down and you could like open it and climb up on it and dive off of it. Yeah. No, it's, it's excellent. It's, it's lot of fun.

Dan (24:56)
They're very versatile. It's got the range. You can jump off it.

All right.

Steve (25:06)
It's like a

Jackie Chan movie where he uses the ladder as a weapon.

Dan (25:10)
Good stuff. All right, now we got Lady Lishi, Banana Pills and Mario Kart. That's like a staple though in those games.

Don (25:18)
It's the worst weapon in the whole game.

She must be good at it because you get the most banana peels when you're in first. So you don't get a lot of fun toys when you're in first. So guess objectively it's okay.

Dan (25:33)
All right, and then the last answer I have here is from Hux from Super Smash Brothers the home run bat I can't I can't I Can't argue there

Don (25:42)
Say it, the home run bat.

Lysianthia (25:46)
It's the sound.

It's the sound when it connects. That's what does it.

Don (25:50)
you

Dan (25:51)
Insta-K.O.

Don (25:56)
The funny part is like when you checkmate someone in Smash, like you know they're coming in and they're out of jumps and you start swinging it and like they see it coming, but they can't avoid it. There's that no, no, no, no, no moment.

Dan (26:06)
Yeah, it's almost like it's in slow motion.

Steve (26:06)
Or you read the role.

Yeah,

when you read the roll and you time it just right.

Don (26:15)
you

Dan (26:17)
You just close your eyes and you're just expecting the ping.

Steve (26:18)
and

Dan (26:25)
All right, so that is it for the first question. Question two actually comes from our man Happiny. He says, how long do you have to be stuck on a puzzle, boss, area, et cetera, before you seek outside help? Eric, my man, wanna take it?

Don (26:25)
So second one.

Lysianthia (26:43)
man, this one, I don't know if I have an actual answer for this one, cause like, it's always dependent on the game and the situation. I've become very accustomed to bosses. So like, will fight through those and like, come up with ridiculous strategies to make a boss work just to get through it. and I find I'm decent at puzzles.

So like, there's not a lot that I can't get through. like, usually I'll only look up a guide if it seems completely out of left field and nothing makes sense. and at that point I just like, completely gave up. Like I have, I ran out of answers. There's nothing I can do about this. I want to play the game, but I need an answer.

Don (27:33)
My answer for this one's pretty complicated as well. It just is a complicated question. If it's a boss fight and I know what I have to do next, which is beat this boss, I will run at that thing and die as many times as I have to until I beat that boss. Like I'll just assume it's my fault. It's a skill issue. I'll figure it out even if it takes me days like of, of trying. So that one is always surmountable for me. The puzzle thing.

is a test of whether or not I actually like playing the game. Like, if I do not feel that the hints are sufficient and I don't like playing the game, I'm like 30 seconds that I'm running for a guide. Like, yeah, I don't know what this is. I've never seen this before. Nobody mentioned anything about this to me. There's no characters giving me hints or anything like that. And there's no seeming logic to this. So forget it. I'm going to look up a guide and not wasting my time. An example of a time I didn't do that would be like Pokemon.

Dan (28:15)
Yeah

Don (28:31)
gold and silver, you know, like the little switches in the basement of the radio tower. That's like, like I still to this day don't really remember the sequence, but because I like the game, like I'll just, I just ate through it as a kid and didn't really care. Basically. Yeah. The puzzles are definitely an acid test and then grinding. just have no patience for, so.

Steve (28:36)
Yeah.

for me, I only ever use guides for collectibles because I just don't really like to use them for the most part. So I will throw my head against the puzzle or the boss as many times as it takes, unless I don't enjoy the game, in which case I'll probably stop playing before I look up a solution.

Dan (29:19)
Yeah. Yeah. And for me, I felt like when I was like a kid, I could spend like two, three days on what like whether it be a boss or like a puzzle. And, before I actually would seek help, I feel like that has decreased significantly as time as I go older. Like so like bosses.

Lysianthia (29:37)
It's also because

the internet is more readily available than when we were kids.

Dan (29:41)
But, yeah.

Don (29:42)
Right? The phones,

you just pick that up and get it done.

Dan (29:45)
Yeah, that's definitely

a big part of it. But, you know, fast forward to today, bosses, I'll still, you know, especially like say like, you know, souls like games, I'll spend a couple hours on that before. Like if there's like a boss completely dunking on me and I just don't know what to do whatsoever, I'll try to see like how other people did it on like YouTube or something. But like, as far as like puzzles go, I'll probably give it like 20 minutes. And if I can't figure it out, then I'll just go for a guide.

Actually, yeah, I remember I actually had a few examples too. So like when I was a kid, I went through Zelda Oracle of Ages, and it was like this one particular dungeon that I just I could not figure out. And to this day, I still have not beaten it.

Steve (30:36)
seasons.

Dan (30:37)
Yeah, did I say seasons or ages? I meant seasons. Yeah, that's why. Yeah, I meant to say seasons. Yeah, I meant to say seasons. So I had seasons as a kid and yeah, there was just one dungeon. I just couldn't figure it out. So I ended up quitting over it and like I said, have not beat it. I need to go back and beat it, damn it.

Steve (30:40)
ages.

Lysianthia (30:40)
said ages.

Don (30:43)
But you did beat it.

Steve (30:56)
What a baby.

Don (31:00)
I don't know what, what would have happened if you didn't tell me about that potion thing and ages Steve. don't know. I don't know that would have beaten ages. Like I think, I think I still would have run around and tried, but well, I probably just would have looked up a guide, but.

Steve (31:12)
Yeah, something- things like that are big sins. It's abhorrent. They don't like that kind of thing.

Don (31:17)
Yeah, cryptic.

Dan (31:20)
Right. And then Golden Sun 2, if you guys ever played that, it's a GBA RPG. There's this one part where like you're in this like giant statue head. And then there's like this one part where you're in the head, you have to like connect all like these circuits. And there's like three, four to like six circuits that all have to be perfectly connected or just you couldn't progress the game. I remember being stuck on that too. And I think I think I actually restarted a whole save.

Steve (31:24)
Yeah.

Dan (31:48)
and then got back up to that part. And then I eventually like got past it. But yeah, it was just a couple of examples.

Steve (31:54)
You know the worst part about

that is when you start a whole new save because you don't understand something and the whole time you're playing the second save you're dreading getting back to that part. You're like, this circuit puzzle is going to be up here, you know, coming up in like, you know, a couple of dungeons.

Dan (32:04)
I know

Don (32:10)
The run

ender.

Dan (32:12)
Yeah, hearts beating and everything like it's coming. I know it's coming.

Lysianthia (32:15)
had situations

like that and then I get to that point and I just do it flawlessly for absolutely no reason and it confused the heck out of me.

Dan (32:26)
It's like, why did I get stuck on this the first time?

Don (32:27)
I don't know how I

did it, but I am so glad I never have to do it again.

Lysianthia (32:32)
I'm like, what did I do differently this time? I don't think I did anything different, but I'll take it.

Dan (32:38)
The joy

Don (32:39)
If I have

forethought of missibles in a game, that is another thing that triggers me to look at guides like constantly. Like if there's something that's important that's missable, I only say that because he brought up Golden Sun and those little, gins. my God. And they're like, they're hidden like everywhere. Yeah. It's that game gives me anxiety. Like I have to like pick, pick through a guide as I go through it. It's terrible. Don't do that to me.

Lysianthia (32:51)
god, the gin.

Dan (32:54)
The Jinjos.

Yeah, they are.

Yeah.

All right. And some answers from our community, Happenie. He said, I'm a firm believer in using walkthrough since I found out they existed, but I always try to figure it out first myself. I've got like two, three hours max stuck on something before I'm on GameFAQs. That's a good one. So.

Steve (33:32)
That's fair. Some

people value their time more than, you know, the challenge and like I can respect that because as an adult myself, like my patience has grown much more thin on things like that.

Dan (33:41)
Yeah, time's

Yeah, exactly. Your free time is just so much smaller that like you just don't want to be, you know, stuck on something for hours.

Alright. And then we got one from Danko Misty. She said, two, three days for puzzles and areas, boss fights, however long it takes to bribe my brother to do it for a pizza.

Lysianthia (34:12)
yeah. No, wait a second, you know which pizza she's bribing me with, so it's worth it.

Steve (34:12)
God, you are a cheap hooker.

Dan (34:14)
hahahaha

Hey man, if I had to a boss for a pizza, I'd be up there too.

Steve (34:22)
Yeah.

Don (34:28)
Yeah, if I could, if I could scoot away from my other responsibilities, you better believe boss fights and pizzas where I'm at.

Dan (34:36)
Alright, so I have a couple long-winded answers here, but I'll just like paraphrase. Is it Relica? If it's A, no longer fun, or B, holding up other people, it's guide time. So basically like in multiplayer games where you can hold up other people's time by not knowing the puzzles and fights ahead of time. So, you know, that's why she'll look up a guide so she's not wasting other people's time.

Don (35:01)
Like MMOs and stuff. Yeah.

Steve (35:01)
Yeah, that's very

Dan (35:03)
Yeah.

Steve (35:05)
responsible. I agree.

Don (35:08)
forget all of us that want to have some fun. It's not what MMOs are for. That's why I play. That's why I play one player games.

Dan (35:08)
Yeah.

Steve (35:11)
No, it's not. Sorry.

Serious business.

Dan (35:19)
And then she said, but if it's just her, she will usually try and figure things out and push through it a bit before, you know, reaching for a guide. So, you know, there's that answer. And then Lobaca, he says, I think it varies on how vested I am on it. If I just want it done, then I'm tempted to check though. When I'm streaming, I'll generally hope for, or hope for help from chat.

Don (35:47)
You gotta be careful. It's a slippery slope to trust chat. Sometimes they lead you up river.

Steve (35:50)
Yeah,

you'll get swatted.

Dan (35:52)
Those

trolls, yeah.

Don (35:54)
Maybe I need to join Lovaca's chat. That's what I learned.

Lysianthia (35:55)
Please.

The ultimate troll.

Don (36:01)
Get hit again, I think it's working.

Dan (36:07)
Alright, let me double check here. I think that was all I had here.

Yeah, and then Lady Alicia, she says, often consulted GameFAQs or even our very own Steve a time or two. If it feels bad or not fun anymore, it's either time to move on or get the husband to help me.

Steve (36:30)
Yeah, I mean sometimes the difference perspective is good enough, you

Don (36:31)
Family Game Time.

Dan (36:36)
You know, also like a fresh pair of eyes too just helps.

Steve (36:40)
Yeah.

Lysianthia (36:42)
Yeah, I can agree with that.

Dan (36:43)
Alright, so that's all I had.

Don (36:47)
This is unexpected, but we're out of questions. Nobody has anything to say to us. Are you guys ready to talk about Act Reader?

Dan (36:49)
Very unexpected

Let's do it.

Steve (36:58)
Ready.

Don (37:01)
This is just our bumper and how we signal our bumper, Eric.

Low tech here. And I'm making a timestamp for Dan to make his life easier. All right. Okay. So whenever you're ready, Eric, can, we're to have you do the overview first and just basically, you know, tell us about the game. If you know any little snippets about the development, that's, that's cool too. Basically talk to us. Like we've never seen the game before.

Lysianthia (37:37)
hopefully.

Don (37:38)
or maybe even

video games in general before.

Lysianthia (37:41)
I'll try not to go super uber nerd.

Don (37:47)
No, go ahead and nerd out.

Lysianthia (37:49)
All right. Well, Act Razor. Oh boy. Where do I start with this one? This was one of the first games that I got with my Super Nintendo, which is appropriate because it was released in 1991 in the United States, late 1991. But I don't think I got a hold of it until like 94, 95, because, you know, can't give a one-year-old

Steve (38:08)
Yeah, November.

Lysianthia (38:18)
a game about, you know, destroying monsters and God. But ActRaiser was published by Enix of modern day Square Enix fame. This was pre merger and it was developed by a studio named Quintet, which went on to develop other, I guess, niche

Dan (38:23)
you

Lysianthia (38:45)
or like cult classic games might be the best way to describe them. They're games you've heard of probably in passing, but never hit the popular title. Things like Soul Blazer, Terranigma, RoboTrack, if you like that group. And they also helped with like, one of their latest things they helped with was Shenmue on Dreamcast. So like all those sleeper hits really. But ActRaiser,

Don (39:12)
latest.

Lysianthia (39:14)
Yeah, depends on who you ask. But ActRaiser was their first title that they ever developed. And it kind of shows. it's a definite, I'd call it an experiment in gaming. Because the way that I see it is up until this point, you had pretty defined categories. You had your platformers like Mario. You had your RPGs like Final Fantasy. You had your simulation games like SimCity.

But Quintet decided to say, hey, let's make ActRaiser and mash a bunch of categories into one game. So the game itself is divided up into six areas where you play the master or the soul of the master who inhabits a stone statue and his angel helper. Each area is divided.

into an action platformer stage, which usually has some pretty awesome music and good side scrolling action platformer with sword slashes, good fun. And then you're treated to a city building simulation stage with the angel helper, which is kind of what put ActRaiser into its own little category. So you build the town and you progress in like an RPG fashion by gaining levels.

and more powers through this simulation stage rather than actually fighting the monsters to get experience points. And then each area is close out with a second side scrolling platformer with a boss.

All of this is to beat the evil demon Tanzra, or if you play the non-translated version, Satan.

where you face, it's just straight Satan. but everything culminates in the final area called death time, where you do like a master boss rush of all the act two bosses that you fought up until then. And then you face tens or himself to save the world.

Don (41:06)
straight up the... yeah.

It's the fact that this game works at all being the mishmash of things. It is I think is a miracle. And I also like that you play as like. God like capital G, capital O, capital D, Old Testament God, like you have this nice little angel is flying around killing monsters, making nice things happen for people. And then you can just burn down all of their houses and kill all of their relatives. And they still have to love you because that's the way that it works.

Dan (41:31)
Yeah.

Steve (41:55)
Earthquake, man.

Dan (41:56)
Dude, yeah,

Don (41:57)
And, my head cannon is that you go and kill the God that was already in that land and you just become the new God. So you're just like spreading, you're just like crusade style spreading Christianity across the land. That's kind of how I picture this game.

Dan (41:58)
that wipes the whole map.

Steve (42:10)
Well, if you're as potent as the Master is, then most couldn't deny you.

Lysianthia (42:11)
Yeah.

Don (42:16)
you

Lysianthia (42:18)
Yeah, like the subtle back, the subtle backstory of it is that, the master and Tanzor got into a giant fight and the master had to go to sleep. And during that time, Tanzor had destroyed the entire population. So I don't think the it's like you're replacing it. It's just more that you're like, you woke up and you came back.

Dan (42:19)
Why can't I use? Sorry.

Steve (42:37)
I think the... I read that the Master got defeated by the Generals, which is the boss rush, and in his weakened state he had to retreat and rest, and like, I don't know, 15 years or whatever passes, and Tanzra gains control of all of the regions.

Lysianthia (42:53)
That sounds accurate, yeah. Details escape me.

Steve (42:56)
and you come back

having to get all of your powers back.

Lysianthia (43:01)
by repopulating the world.

Steve (43:05)
with people instead of monsters.

Don (43:08)
This is one of those like, you know, when you first start playing it, it it feels like so I I didn't I didn't know that this game was from 1990 slash 1991 when I first turned it on. I thought it was a little bit later in the in the SNES life. So it's taken a back that the controls are really simple. But I guess it makes sense now that I know it's that early. But it's one of those SNES games that doesn't make full use of that controller.

Like there was like a host of SNES games that just forgot that there was four face buttons and two shoulder buttons and just don't use half the buttons of that controller. And this is kind of one of them, interestingly enough, but they get a lot done with those two buttons.

Steve (43:47)
Yeah, they have like one for jump,

one for attack, one for magic.

Don (43:53)
Yeah, it's like ABC. there a Genesis port of this game? I feel like this has got Genesis written all over it. It's interesting. This game's pretty metal. I feel like it should have landed on the Genesis.

Lysianthia (43:57)
No, surprisingly not.

Steve (43:57)
I don't think so.

Lysianthia (44:05)
It does kind of feel like a Genesis style game, even graphics wise, it's right up the Genesis alley. So yeah, I'm a little surprised it wasn't released for Genesis, but no, this was a Super Nintendo only up until re-releases on like Wii U virtual console. And I think they made it like a mobile port and they actually did a complete remaster like on modern consoles.

Dan (44:07)
It really, yeah it does.

Don (44:30)
Yeah, think one of the people in our Discord said he got it for his like, Wii shop or something like that. Like fairly, you know, it would have been fairly recently in my lifetime, but maybe not for some of our listeners. it feels like yesterday. I'm getting old. I don't know. What do you guys think of the visuals?

Dan (44:53)
I think it looks fine, like the 2D part of it looks great. You know, the enemies look good. The spells that you cast look great. I love aura, by the way. I know if you guys ever used that one.

of some of the bosses I liked. Some of the bosses were weird looking, I guess I should say like the the one that was on the wheel with like the eye. But yeah, yeah. Or like, the Minotaur boss was kind of hard to make out because he was like, constantly jumping and like swinging his axe.

Don (45:22)
Yeah, he's like the weird demon head on a wheel.

Steve (45:25)
I know,

I don't even know how to dodge that guy.

Dan (45:37)
Hahaha

Lysianthia (45:38)
I've played this game multiple times, I honestly don't think it's possible to dodge it, it's just a zerg.

Don (45:46)
Yeah, which is.

Steve (45:46)
funny they put him

right in the beginning of the boss rush part because he's the one that's gonna take like a fair amount of your HP because you can't dodge you just have to attack

Don (45:51)
Yeah.

Dan (45:56)
Yeah, the bosses you fight in Death Hime are like enhanced versions, I feel like, Yeah. Because like, I remember you playing it, Steve, and you were doing the boss rush. And I remember fighting the Minotaur the first time you fight him. Like, this guy's a joke. Like, how did Steve like have such an issue with this guy? And then and then I fought like the boss rush mode like soon after. And then I was like, now I understand. This guy's way faster.

Don (46:00)
Yeah, they're faster. They're all faster.

Yeah, that one, that one you can't charge, yeah.

So it's kind of interesting because you play the side scrolling part as like your intro to the game and it kind of feels a lot like Castlevania maybe would be... I don't know, I keep coming back to Castlevania on it. Maybe it's because the music in that first level is really good. Yeah, Fillmore.

Dan (46:39)
Dude, Fillmore? Slaps.

Steve (46:43)
It's unfortunate that that's the end of it.

Don (46:46)
I know, it was such a strong start.

Steve (46:48)
the music

Lysianthia (46:49)
Yeah.

Steve (46:50)
just didn't land. The first place Fillmore had such a cool song and then like they reused another song for like you know if there were 10 levels like eight of them have this one track and it's not as good as Fillmore.

Dan (47:03)
Yeah. Well, Blood Pool starts off

really good. It's like, and then it gets all loony tunes.

Don (47:09)
Yeah.

But it fits really well when you start sprinting in that level, that beginning of the song. Your guy comes down and then just starts taking off. You're like, you're in trouble now.

Dan (47:20)
You

Steve (47:26)
I am God.

Don (47:28)
What were you doing while I was away?

Lysianthia (47:33)
chase you down,

smack you with a sword.

Don (47:35)
But then you go from, so this is, this is like where the game breaks into its own, right? So you go, you beat the first boss, pretty standard fare, right? and then you get to this, to this completely different thing, which is like this SIM mode and almost like a shmup a little bit, right? Cause you're playing as the angel. So you're playing as the angel and you're flying overhead and you're calling it a SIM is putting an image in people's heads. I don't think.

Is quite there. Eric, you want to talk about the differences between something like this and like maybe like a SimCity or or like a. Trying to think of another sim like roller coaster tycoon.

Lysianthia (48:13)
mean, if I played more actual, like just straight sim games, it would be easier, but, the simulation stage is that's actually how they describe it in the instruction booklet is simulation. but it's like, you don't give too much direction. Basically you tell the townspeople, Hey, build here in this direction, clear out these monster layers that are infecting your land. All the while you have powers of miracles, like lightning and rainstorms and sun.

and the aforementioned earthquake once you get strong enough. And then the town mostly takes care of itself up until they need something, something unexpected.

Dan (48:57)
the

Don (48:59)
Yeah. So you, kind of play like the hand that guides basically you're like build it this way villagers. And then they will build it that that way, but they also give you hints too. They're like, no, we can't build it that way. Cause it's a forest and they're like, you got a problem. You go and you lightning strike, whatever the problem is and it blows up and then they can build there.

Dan (49:19)
Yeah.

Steve (49:19)
Yeah,

it's almost like slightly puzzle- I wouldn't say puzzle solving, but you know, it's like, you have to use the right ability for the right area and, know, you clear up the land and make it hospitable for the settlers.

Dan (49:35)
Yeah, like the Sims isn't

anything crazy. It's pretty bare bones if you really think about it. Like you guys say, you got like a direction of building. That's what they'll build. And then you, you take out the monsters and, and they might have like a quest for you to do like, you got to save this kid, you know, cause he's trying to figure out why the, the pool turned the lake turn red. And, but like, other than that, like each Sim probably takes up to like, I don't know, what would you say? Like 30 minutes before you're actually fighting the boss of the area.

If that, yeah.

Steve (50:05)
Maybe even less.

Lysianthia (50:06)
Yeah, 30 minutes maybe if you're doing everything and getting every single corner. If you're just like rushing through it, get the monster layers, get everything done. It can be like 15.

Dan (50:17)
Yeah. So I actually. So I actually ran into this problem. I don't know if you guys did, so I didn't really find like a use for earthquake too much, but I remember when I first could cast it because it costs like a bunch to use it like demolish like like my whole town and I had like all the houses and stuff built. But the problem was it's like they would only build up to like a certain point and then they would stop. And I don't know.

Don (50:18)
And you find out, sorry, Dan, go ahead.

Dan (50:44)
why they would stop after that. Because I remember I had the whole town built. And for some reason, after I earthquakeed, they'd only build like half of it, and then they just wouldn't build anymore. I don't know if that's just like, if Eric knows anything about that.

Lysianthia (50:56)
So I

can absolutely nerd out about that if you'd like.

Don (51:01)
Yeah,

no, he's the master of these like hidden mechanics that are in this game.

Dan (51:02)
Yeah.

Lysianthia (51:05)
Yeah, so to explain a little bit how to optimize your towns, so to speak. So there's a few factors that go into what can be in your town. The first one is your total population for that town. Each town has a maximum amount of people that it can have. And that is based on your total score from your platforming stages.

Don (51:32)
And it's, it's, it's, it's important. So, well, it's, it's, it's, it's important because having a population levels you up and gets you to the max skills, just so that we're all, we're all on the same page here. That's, that's why you want this, but.

Dan (51:32)
so, essentially I suck then.

Lysianthia (51:35)
Well, that's only part of it.

Yeah, your

level is based on your total max population, which caps out at like 4,500 or something like that, 4,600. That's throughout the six lands that you rescue. So your score is affecting your total population for that land. The other thing that affects it is sprite limits, believe it or not. So each...

area is only allowed so many sprites or units in this case. So when your town builds a field that counts for so many units, a house is so many units or a bridge in certain towns, which can screw you over for max population, as I found out. And then it just becomes a matter of optimization. So level one houses hold four people in it.

level two houses hold six, level three holds eight. Well, if you have a whole bunch of level one houses that are only holding four people, that's what earthquake is for, because it'll blow up or destroy all your level one and level two houses. Level three houses are earthquake proof. So they will then replace those level one and level twos with level three houses that now hold more people.

Don (53:04)
and our earthquake proof. They got, they got wise to you.

Lysianthia (53:05)
and our earthquake.

Dan (53:07)
So, so did

I essentially max out the map on the population? They were just all level three houses and that's why they didn't build out further. Yeah.

Lysianthia (53:16)
Most likely, yeah. If you had empty

space, it was because your population is max. And the game is nice. There is a menu that you can check that. It'll say if population is maxed out or if it's stopped because of some event that's happening in that area.

Dan (53:32)
Interesting.

Don (53:33)
Yeah, I had like zero issue with the menu. I thought the menuing was pretty good. I don't know if you all kind of feel the same. You know, it's a, it's, it's a controller SIM. It's not like you're playing it on a PC, right? So already it's kind of at a disadvantage, but I think we did a good job for what they had. Um, and then like, uh, I don't know, Dan, if you were, if you upgraded the fields. like part of the game. Yeah. Yeah. Cause they, make the fields better. So part of the game is like trade.

Dan (53:55)
What the wheat? Yeah.

Don (54:02)
basically, like trading ideas and products from place to place. Like you'll, you'll start to build up in the Arctic area for instance. And then there'll be a point where they just stop and they're like, yeah, it's too cold to, to continue. And it turns out you, you know, build up another area that raises sheep and they give you some wool. And there's, there's like a whole unexpected offering system, that the, the, people like basically give you

what they reap from settling the land, whether it's magical items or things like wheat or skills on how to build bridges or whatever. And you take these stuff. Yeah.

Dan (54:40)
Yeah, some of those are mandatory, I think. Because

you can't progress the town without it. Like, the Fleece is one of them. I'm not sure if Wheat was. I think some are just straight up optional.

Steve (54:51)
no, like bridges, wheat, and I think those are the two main ones that are like blocked for story.

Dan (54:57)
I know there was like,

you needed some type of herb to like hear a plague for one of the towns.

Don (55:03)
Yeah, but only, only after though. So I guess you didn't technically have to do it if you didn't want to, but it's a way to. Yeah. You max your population, help max your population that way too. Or I don't know. yeah, that's true. So like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about the spells, Eric.

Dan (55:08)
Yeah, that's like one of the optional ones.

Lysianthia (55:14)
Can't get your aura spell without the herb though.

Dan (55:19)
Ugh, so good. I wanna talk about that eventually.

Lysianthia (55:24)
Yeah, so as you're doing these simulation stages, there are four magical spells that you can find mostly from hints of your population whenever they have something unexpected to tell you. The first one being in the very first town of Fillmore, you just get a very basic fireball, which is, you know, it shoots across horizontally, but it can do like four to five damage if you hit something well. But then they just get better from there.

Bloodpool gives you Magical Stardust, which is just the most busted spell. Just rains down a red meteor rain, basically. It just rains, I don't know the exact count of projectiles, but it just rains them in from the right hand side. And if your RNG is good, you can just demolish a boss in two hits, in like two casts.

Dan (55:59)
Media rain? Yeah, yeah.

Don (56:13)
It says

it says countless stars, but really it's not that many. maybe the people of this land can't count because they're all they all just came back. But I think it's like 17.

Lysianthia (56:18)
I- If I had to count-

Dan (56:18)
Yeah.

Lysianthia (56:24)
It's if I had to average it, it's somewhere between 15 to 20 because you get some really good cast and some not so great cast. And it also depends on where on the screen it starts.

Don (56:27)
Yeah.

Dan (56:33)
I thought Aura was just straight up better than the Star one.

Lysianthia (56:38)
For general boss fights, most people like Aura because it's a close range spell that just has orbs of light circle you and just does massive damage to anything that's nearby. Plus the hitstun lag just makes it hit more, which is fantastic.

Don (56:54)
Yeah,

bosses don't have a lot of I-frames when they get hit in this game.

Dan (56:56)
Yeah, I was two-shotting

bosses with that spell. was... God, it was so good. I didn't try out the last spell, so I have no idea what it is.

Lysianthia (57:05)
so ma ma magical

Don (57:05)
Well, there's one boss

who's this ice dragon and I was playing with Eric and he told me to use the falling stars when he swoops in that direction because the falling stars come from the top right. So he swoops down at you and he's coasting up to the top right. And if you hit it then, he basically takes every star and almost kills him from fall.

Dan (57:28)
So good.

Lysianthia (57:30)
Yeah,

yeah, the last spell is magical light, which you get the very end of the sixth suggested area because you can actually do the worlds almost in any order, at least the platforming stages. But the magical light spell is generally considered useless. Yeah. What it does is it it puts up two pillars to the left and right of you and it expands to the edges of the screen.

Dan (57:50)
is it? What does it do?

Don (57:51)
It's pretty

garbage. It's just a screen clear.

Lysianthia (58:00)
And it basically does like one or two hits as it goes by. is. It's, it's great for. It's good for like all screen wipe mob clears, horrible and useless for bosses, which is ironic because you get it like right before the boss rush.

Dan (58:03)
So is it basically the better fireball?

Don (58:07)
I think the fireball is better.

Dan (58:08)
yeah.

Don (58:22)
New spell! No thanks.

Dan (58:24)
Well, it's a good thing I kept aura because I didn't even try. I got the spell. I just never tried it.

Lysianthia (58:25)
Let's.

Yeah, there's no reason.

Don (58:30)
Did you use a guide

to get that? Because the steps that Eric took me through are like, would never would have figured this out.

Lysianthia (58:36)
You also tried to do it in a weird ass order.

Dan (58:36)
Night.

You

just have to do like the quests on the map, think, don't you? That's all I was doing. I didn't look up a guide at once for this game.

Don (58:45)
No,

no, no, no. You're going to get like a stone tablet and, you got to like bring it somewhere.

Steve (58:51)
I got the stone tablet and I knew where it went because the shape of the thing was the shape of the island.

Dan (58:56)
of the

The one part that I almost got stuck on with that, I wasn't gonna look up a guide or anything, because it felt like it was optional, but it tells you that they keep coming back and they couldn't find anything because the forest is too dense. And it was the type of tree that you can't use the thunder on. So I was like, I don't know what to do here. Because I was thundering the left side of it and it wasn't doing anything. So I was just like, I don't know. So I moved on. But then I just...

Don (58:59)
You guys are smarter than I am.

Dan (59:29)
For the hell of it, tried to, I just did the right side and then one single tree disappeared and I'm like, and then sure enough, they came back with, I don't even remember what it was, but they found something and.

Lysianthia (59:40)
That's where they find magical

aura.

Don (59:42)
Yeah, Steve, how did you know to thunder the tree?

Steve (59:46)
They said it was too dense.

Don (59:47)
Yeah, but you just didn't miss you. You hit the one spot the right time.

Steve (59:50)
I did the right,

the correct side the first try.

Lysianthia (59:55)
You got a 50-50 shot. also if you're also stuck with that, if you go back to the area where you got the stone tablet from Cassandra, which is area three, if you look at the geoglyph, there's a rock right where the tree would be.

Don (59:55)
That's so lucky.

Dan (59:58)
I almost walked away from that completely. So I got lucky.

Steve (59:58)
Yeah

Lysianthia (1:00:17)
So that's kind of another hint of where they should be looking.

So that's one

of the things that I want to like segue into if that's okay is I loved the exploration and the secrets that they put into the simulation stages. Cause like all this intertwined like puzzles and like things you wouldn't think about doing give you so many extra power ups and items as you're playing this game. like, like you just described with just the magical aura spell one is the hardest spell to find, but you have to beat level three.

Don (1:00:28)
Yeah?

Lysianthia (1:00:53)
get this random item that doesn't seem to do anything, which is the ancient tablet, you have to bring that to level five, drop that on them, and then remember, I have to go blow up the tree, and then, cool, here's a magic spell for you. Nowhere do they tell you to do that.

Don (1:01:12)
You have to even know that the magic spell exists. Like the only reason I knew it exists because you played it with Danko Misty and she put a screenshot up of her file and it showed four spells. So I knew there was four spells going in, but I wouldn't have even known there was four spells if I, if I like had played without, without seeing that I didn't, I didn't use a guide this week for that.

Lysianthia (1:01:36)
Yeah, I know when I like when we first started playing the game or when you first started playing the game for the two weeks. The first thing I told everyone is get a copy of the instruction manual because this was early nineties where they did not hold your hand at all. If you wanted to find the secrets, thankfully you didn't have to go out and buy Nintendo power for this one. You just actually had to read the instruction booklet because

They give you details for each land that you go and do the simulation for and tell you how to find almost every secret.

Dan (1:02:09)
Very nice.

Lysianthia (1:02:10)
Yeah, so like hidden life, hidden extra lives in Cassandra by using earthquake before you clear the pyramid. You get an extra life in level six North wall by lightning striking the shrine for no reason. And they're like, yeah, sorry, we hid something from you. Here's an extra life.

Dan (1:02:29)
Yeah, I didn't do any of that.

Steve (1:02:31)
Yeah, neither did

Don (1:02:32)
Alright,

Steve (1:02:32)
I.

Don (1:02:33)
so the life in the snow area I did find because they were slow building and I didn't understand why they were slow building and I would just go talk to them to see what the problem was and they would just keep telling me thank you for this beautiful land. So eventually I got fed up with them and started lightning striking the temple and then they gave me the life.

Dan (1:02:51)
Yeah, I had a few issues with that too. Where like they would just randomly stop building and I sometimes I just couldn't figure out what would what was happening. But sometimes like me just killing like enemies on the field for like, you know, like two minutes and they would just continue building again. I don't know that has like any recollection or it was just me me being weird.

Don (1:02:53)
Your God is not pleased.

Lysianthia (1:03:12)
So if I,

I'll get more into the hidden mechanics for that if you want.

Dan (1:03:17)
Sure.

Don (1:03:17)
Yeah, enlighten us.

Lysianthia (1:03:20)
So tied in with the score to your max population, I think it's like every hundred points or every 200 points you get in score is equal to one population soul. And those souls are stored in the monster layers of that area. So as you destroy the monsters, you get souls which create your population so that they can build out further.

Don (1:03:47)
when a mommy soul and a daddy soul love each other very much and kill a monster.

Steve (1:03:48)
Yeah, well, cause all of the people got turned

into monsters and you are turning them back into people.

Dan (1:03:57)
Yeah, so that makes sense. like there would be, there would be times where like literally they just would not do anything. And I'm just like, all right, well, I guess I got to kill this like floating skull. That's just like, I didn't know what to do, but eventually it would start back up.

Steve (1:04:09)
Dan's got a big stick,

he's like, come on, do something.

Dan (1:04:12)
Hahaha!

Don (1:04:14)
So in the simulation levels, there's like enemies too that do different annoying things. Like there's bats that like eat up your population and then there's little devils that burn your fields so you can't keep growing. But the worst ones are easily the skulls. they can attack the angel too. And if you run out of health as the angel, you're like on pause until they go rebuild. Yeah.

Dan (1:04:32)
the skulls, 100%.

Lysianthia (1:04:40)
Yep, can no longer attack.

Dan (1:04:42)
Dude, they're so

fast too. Like, my god.

Don (1:04:45)
But they but they take a lot of hits to it takes like eight

hits from your angel to kill the skull and if you leave it there long enough, I don't know if you guys found this out, but I found this out. They earthquake and they kill everyone.

Dan (1:04:53)
I did.

Yeah.

Don (1:04:58)
like brings

it down to the two people born of lightning in your temple.

Dan (1:05:03)
Even like the upgraded like bow and arrow, it takes more than one hit to kill one of those things.

Don (1:05:07)
Yeah, that's right.

Lysianthia (1:05:08)
Yeah, I think it's like three

at that point, if I remember right.

Dan (1:05:10)
Yeah, it's crazy.

They're OP as hell.

Don (1:05:13)
And they hit for like half your health. Like they clean your angel's little clock. And I'm saying angel here, but he's like, you know, the baby kind.

Dan (1:05:18)
Yeah

Lysianthia (1:05:23)
He's one of those stereotypical cherubs, I think.

Dan (1:05:24)
the cherubs,

yeah.

Don (1:05:26)
Yeah, with the little heart arrow. Cupid is stupid. I

don't like it. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.

Dan (1:05:34)
Yeah, so this game actually had some items that you could use on the maps too, like the bombs and whatnot that could just screen clear. And then...

Steve (1:05:43)
Yeah, but then enemies just reappear immediately.

Don (1:05:46)
You have you have wind though and wind does the same thing except it doesn't kill the enemies, but that's okay.

Dan (1:05:48)
Yeah.

Lysianthia (1:05:52)
Yeah, the items that the people find in the monster lairs are very underwhelming. Certainly useful against the skulls when you get to the later levels. But really the bombs are there for like a momentary reprieve and to get like a minor burst to your population souls.

Don (1:06:12)
I think

the bow was easily the best one. Like, it let me clear Cassandor lot easier because you have to deal with two skulls spawning at the same time. It's just so many hits. Yeah. But it lets you drive up the population really fast by killing those skulls.

Dan (1:06:19)
And it lasts a long time,

Yeah, I'm trying to think. Was there any other items besides the bow and the bomb that you could use outside? Was... Okay.

Lysianthia (1:06:35)
Not consumables. mean, they had like one-off

items like the magical skull or like the compass, which was a puzzle piece for finding hidden items. And then you had your wheat or rice.

Dan (1:06:42)
Yeah, I like the quest items.

Don (1:06:48)
So you're playing The Sims and you're leveling up your character to play in the side scrolling levels, right? So it's got kind of a little ARPG element to it. Is this like an early blueprint for mobile games? You know what I'm talking about? Like those crappy city builder mobile games with some other side piece type of content that you're like, oh, the point is build the city and then you get to play more of the good content.

Dan (1:07:02)
you

Steve (1:07:13)
I don't want to go down this route of mobile.

Lysianthia (1:07:14)
I don't want

to think about it like that. Please no.

Don (1:07:20)
Look, I'm not, you know, maybe these people quit, quit making those games and now they're the people that make the crappy, the crappy mobile games. don't know, but

Dan (1:07:26)
Ha

ha.

Lysianthia (1:07:26)
I

mean, that's a possibility, but like, I feel like at least this created its own niche of games before it developed into that kind of stuff.

Don (1:07:39)
Yeah, I, I, and like, I want to talk about the potential that's here with this formula. I know it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this game. I don't know that it's going to change my opinion on the game itself ultimately, but man, like I love the idea of trading all those ideas across cities. And I wish that instead of just going from point A to point B, C D E,

There was like some level of back and forth. Like maybe you got stuck at point A, your people couldn't do anything more and there was just still like bats raiding them and stuff. But then you just had to move on to spot number two, start helping those people out. And maybe they give you something to help back out spot A or maybe there's side quests that happen, you know, with more side scrolling levels that let you get more like weapons and upgrades and stuff like.

Dan (1:08:23)
I almost thought you had to do that at first in this game. Because there was parts where I was getting stuck and they weren't building. And Eric explained to us that you had to kill souls and whatnot. yeah, I would move on to the next town because I thought maybe that's how it worked. But then I found out that you could literally just do one map at a time and then move on.

Don (1:08:26)
That'd be sweet.

Or maybe like if monsters came to raid the town, you had to do like a side scrolling stage to beat up a bunch of monsters and some kind of boss or something like that. Like, I don't know, it'd be really interesting.

Dan (1:08:50)
Yeah, these are all ideas

that ActRaiser 2 should have done.

Don (1:08:54)
I know!

Lysianthia (1:08:55)
and instead they got rid of everything.

Steve (1:09:01)
They probably got the most flack for it though, like they probably got the most flack for the sim part of the game. Which is why they got rid of it.

Don (1:09:08)
They did.

And then they went, they went the safe route instead of just making it better. Like it doesn't have to be the Sims. think, I think what they did is fine. I just think they needed to, you know, flip flop back and forth a little bit more. And also I think some more upgrades, like I think, I think the magic is cool and upgrading the amount of times you can use the magic, but I'd say the magic more or less equates to, screen clears. Basically there are four different screen clears of different efficacy, which is fine.

Dan (1:09:39)
I feel like

equipment would have been nice too, like magic and like different swords and different armor, like that would actually show on your sprite, that would have been sweet.

Don (1:09:42)
Yeah!

Like, hey, master,

we found a better sword or we found a, you know, like, just, I just think stuff like that would have been neat. And I could have seen it in a sequel. Like, imagine if this got like six games all the way through the PS2 era where we would be today. Like that'd be, I feel like it'd be, it'd be sweet to be its own thing.

Dan (1:10:05)
Yeah, and then new games could have like come up too because of it. You know, if it was the idea was good enough.

Don (1:10:06)
But, no.

Lysianthia (1:10:12)
Yeah, there's definitely games. I was going to say there's games that definitely built off of this formula like Dark Cloud. And then the other one that I know of was for the DS, Ever Oasis. very similar in that it's, okay. Build the town, do a dungeon crawl.

Steve (1:10:13)
Instead we got dark cloud.

Don (1:10:31)
I might have to pick up ever, ever Oasis dark cloud for whatever reason. I've tried it a bunch of times. It's just, can't, I can't seem to get through it no matter what I do, but yeah, it is very.

Lysianthia (1:10:40)
That's because it's grindy.

Dan (1:10:42)
And yeah, it's repetitive.

it's basically you're climbing a tower on each map for like 20 floors. It's boring.

Lysianthia (1:10:49)
I love the game, but it's super grindy.

Don (1:10:50)
Yeah, it's a little too

much too much tilted in the other direction, I think. Unlike unlike this one, where I thought the pacing was actually pretty good in this game, honestly.

Dan (1:11:01)
Yeah, no, especially the sim part, you're you're not on it for that long. Like we said, like 15 minutes and then you're back, you know, in action on the 2D side scrolling part. I think 15 minutes is like a good sweet spot.

Don (1:11:13)
It gives you a lot of choice. like you can, you know, you can just ignore trying to build up the population and you can gun straight for those monster dens and you can be in and out of a sim in like five, five to 10 minutes. So, and there's a good amount of side scrolling content here. There's 12 levels that are pretty decent length. You know, it's not, not like, there's just four, you know, and it's really a side piece.

Dan (1:11:37)
All I want to say though is like a nice quality of life thing that they added in this game was the tech speed. Because like, oh my God, like anytime you use the spell and you're to tell me what it does every single time with like the slow scrolling text, I was like, dude, come on, this cannot be how it is. But then you could change the tech speed where it's just like instant where you go boop, boop, boop, boop and done. Like you can just mash through the whole thing in like one second. I was like, thank God.

Don (1:11:44)
Yeah.

Thanks.

You might say it was unexpected.

Steve (1:12:03)
Yeah, I didn't know.

I didn't know about that. I just use the fast forward button every time I selected a spell on my emulator.

Don (1:12:12)
You might say it was unexpected, an unexpected surprise.

Steve (1:12:15)
Completely unexpected.

Don (1:12:19)
And this is unexpected, but there was a boss fight, a boss rush at the end, which was, I always appreciate a boss rush. I feel like people think it's lazy, but I'm a Mega Man fan, it's what I like. I like the end game boss rush.

Dan (1:12:31)
Yeah, it was,

I had a lot of fun doing it.

Steve (1:12:32)
Yeah, it's fine.

Lysianthia (1:12:35)
Yeah, I definitely got accustomed to the bosses a lot. And it was nice that the boss rush wasn't just, okay, here's the same bosses. They at least like boosted them up to make them a little harder. But like I got very accustomed to the action side scrolling parts and the bosses because like when I was little, like it was a shared console and I had to share with my sister. like it became tradition is the best way I'll say it is that like I'd play all the action platforms and beat all the bosses.

and then I passed the controller off to her so she could do the sim stuff. And then once it came to act two, she'd give me the controller back. know, early, early, early co-op stuff, but yeah, I became very familiar with the bosses.

Dan (1:13:22)
I'm quite impressed actually that you beat that, how old were you when you beat that game? Because the Bosch Rush is actually pretty hard. Like if you're not, you know.

Don (1:13:22)
Yeah, she does that.

Lysianthia (1:13:27)
I think when

I beat it beat it I think we were well I was probably six or seven give or take it it was not like a I got the game I beat it like immediately god no that it took me a long time to actually get through everything but

Dan (1:13:38)
That's impressive.

Don (1:13:50)
And there's a counting if you count the last boss two forms as two separate bosses, there's 14 bosses in this game, which is a lot. And like you fight. Yeah. So you fight one when you first land in a in a town, then you fight one when the town is mostly built to kind of free it of the monsters control. And I think some of those mid level bosses or those those those first act bosses are really tough. Like there's the the the the antlion.

Dan (1:13:59)
yeah, like the Act One bosses.

Don (1:14:20)
When you're like in the sand pit, he has little claws come down at you. Like it's like, can angle it so you can jump over it, but you have to work at it. Like it's, it's definitely skill.

Dan (1:14:21)
yeah, the sandworm or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It feels like it's almost

like Pixel Perfect almost. Chopping over that stupid thing.

Steve (1:14:33)
Like, every boss in this game,

Don (1:14:33)
Yeah.

Steve (1:14:35)
almost every boss can just be hacked to death. That sandworm boss, if you're sliding down the hill, as soon as you get close enough, you just start spamming the attack button and it stops you a pixel before you hit him. And you just hit beat on him. Like, it was so easy. The main boss that's like really, really hard are...

Don (1:14:57)
Yeah, I didn't end up figuring that out.

Lysianthia (1:14:57)
Yeah.

Steve (1:15:02)
to zer down other than the final boss, the dragon and like the Lamia guy that flies mostly.

Lysianthia (1:15:09)
Yeah,

Kaliya.

Dan (1:15:10)
Good.

No, the yeah, that stupid manticore one to the one that's like constantly jumping like across like the platforms and stuff. I feel like I feel like I can only get like two wax out of them at a time.

Don (1:15:17)
Somebody

Somebody didn't watch the speed run. Apparently the guy

Lysianthia (1:15:22)
Hahaha

Steve (1:15:23)
Yeah, he has

Don (1:15:23)
jumps right at it. Takes the first hit. Yeah.

Steve (1:15:23)
a really, he has a really like a pattern, not necessarily a pattern, but if you know which platform he's on, you know which platform he's going to go to next. So you can cheese him that way.

Lysianthia (1:15:38)
Yeah, I will say the bosses did not involve a lot of strategy. But I love the designs for most of them. Or at least a good chunk of them were nice, I should say.

Don (1:15:46)
I mean...

It's psychological. Like there's a lot, and I mean a lot. Like if you watch like old game speed runs, like from this era, from this like this eighties to early nineties era, you realize that a lot of games give you enough HP to Zerg down punch for punch bosses. Like tons of games do this, but like if you are actually trying to not get hit, I think most of the bosses in this game are pretty well designed.

There definitely some where you have no option, you just drop away. And I guess the option is there, but like, I don't know. It's definitely not good design, but I think it's mostly forgivable in this realm of.

Dan (1:16:30)
I think the issue is, like

most attacks in this game only take one bar of your health. Like if bosses were to take like, you know, three every time you got hit, I think they would be significantly harder. then you wouldn't be able to zerg them down like that. Cause you know, they're taking more health off from you than you are to them. The only attack that I remember that actually took more than one health was like the laser beam from the final boss. I think that took like three.

Don (1:16:43)
True.

Lysianthia (1:17:00)
Dude, I segued professional mode then.

Don (1:17:03)
Yeah, I actually was just about to bring it up. If side scrolling is your thing, ActRaisers got you covered.

Dan (1:17:03)
haha

Lysianthia (1:17:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. So something hidden in the game. Well, I say hidden. If you beat the game once and apparently have to have a save file as we found out with Don.

Don (1:17:18)
I tried to get to professional mode man this week. beat this game three times, Eric, three. I beat it once, once on my, sorry, twice on my, on my retroid wondering what my problem was. And then I beat it with you. Well, only I didn't save the whole way through. And when I reached that the emulator, there was no save file and no, professional mode.

Lysianthia (1:17:21)
Yeah, I know.

and still couldn't. Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm not sure if it's a save file thing, but if you beat the game and you like sit through all the credits and stuff and it's it sits there at the end screen and you can't hit any buttons and it just stuck there. So you go and reset your console. When you get back to the title screen, it'll give you the option of new game or continue. And then if you keep hitting down, you get a professional mode, which is a hidden, like hard mode that takes out all of the simulation. There are no sim stages.

and it just drops you right into Fillmore one, at max health, but no magic. So you have no magic spells, no magic casts. You have 24 health and a sword. So you're going through all 12 platforming stages with your base number of lives and whatever you pick up in the platforming stages. And like most of the monsters that you're fighting take twice as much hit.

Dan (1:18:15)
Yeah.

Lysianthia (1:18:36)
So like the little goblins in film war one that you used to just like, hit dead. Now they take two hits and everything does double damage. So your 24 health is really only 12. I can say it makes the boss rush a lot harder. There are strategic deaths to get a health refill during that boss rush.

Dan (1:18:46)
boy.

Don (1:19:00)
you

Dan (1:19:02)
Yeah, I'd imagine. Yeah, the no spell thing, ouch. especially having... Yes, having aura and like some of the bosses in the boss rush mode like are so good. Damn, dude.

Lysianthia (1:19:07)
One of reasons my sister doesn't touch it.

Yeah, it definitely tests your pattern learning, especially for like level five boss Kahlia, the floating snake. You really have to learn their attack patterns and know when to attack them in order to do it correctly.

Steve (1:19:31)
You bait the platform that falls right next to them, move out of the way, jump on that. You can get two slashes in, then you drop off. You just bait the platform again.

Lysianthia (1:19:38)
Yep.

Yeah.

Don (1:19:41)
I did struggle with that boss until I figured that out. the first time you fight that snake boss, the best way that I found to beat it was you run under it and then it tries to stomp on you. And the first form is so slow that you can get in like three or four whacks before you have to run away and he starts to like do his swivel thing. And you can just rinse and repeat that. He'll try to come down at you every time you're under him and you can get like...

three or four wax it on him and that's his loop unfortunately for him. But the faster version will get back up before you can even hit him once and hit you in retaliation so you have to use like the platform method.

But yeah, so interesting. He was probably my favorite boss, actually, just because there was something that you had to do to accomplish it.

Dan (1:20:40)
Yeah. I downloaded the the boss with the wheel in the eye. So basically, like when the fight starts, I take the first hit, obviously, because he just lunges at you. But there's a point where all you have to do is just drop off the ledge. And then he just does like a certain pattern. And then basically, you just have to like jump off the jump on that ledge and then jump off at certain times and he'll never hit you. And that's

how I would kill him. And I would only take one damage. Yeah.

Don (1:21:11)
Yeah, can get like three or four whacks in a cycle. Yeah.

Lysianthia (1:21:14)
Yeah, there are a lot of bosses

Don (1:21:15)
Get him.

Lysianthia (1:21:16)
where you can just understand their pattern and you just won't take damage. And then there's bosses like Minotaurus where it's just like, nah, you're going to get hit.

Dan (1:21:24)
Ha

Don (1:21:24)
The ice dragon's pretty tough too, actually.

Steve (1:21:28)
That stupid dragon. I was playing and Dan was watching me and he did his like dive thing four times in a row.

Don (1:21:36)
Only

four?

Lysianthia (1:21:37)
I think Dawn had like seven when I was watching him play.

Don (1:21:39)
Okay.

Dan (1:21:40)
Yeah, he's

a he's a prime candidate for the aura spell. Like, just get out of here. Just you're dragging this battle on way too long. Just delete them. Yeah.

Don (1:21:49)
or the stars

like, Eric told me how to do and he gets eaten alive.

Lysianthia (1:21:52)
It's, yeah, either one

works. If you have stars, you wait until he's in the top right corner. If you have aura, just wait for it to swoop and just damage frame through them.

Dan (1:22:01)
Yeah, it takes half his health bar when he's swooping in on you. It's nuts.

Don (1:22:06)
So how did you guys find the final boss? Like, did you find it like adequate, tough? How did you feel about it?

Dan (1:22:13)
I mean, the first form is an absolute joke. feel like he like, I don't know, he does like one attack and then sometimes like if you're like standing in like a right spot, he just won't ever hit you. And like you only have to like, so you'll pair once you can literally almost kill him in that one time that he appears. And then like he appears again, then you just, finish him off. The second one was a little bit challenging, especially those things that are like homing in on you like.

I don't know, sometimes it's like really hard to hit some of those because they're like hovering right right under you and you don't have a hitbox to hit under you. And then they just like swoop in and like hit you. I don't know if you guys know what I'm talking about, like, but those those stars can go in some spots where it's just like so annoying.

Don (1:22:58)
Yeah,

sends little homing projectiles after you.

Steve (1:23:01)
Yeah, I had the star storm ability or magic spell or whatever and it was not good against that boss.

Dan (1:23:07)
Yeah, same with Aura.

Don (1:23:08)
No, it's

a tiny little hitbox. It's only open sometimes.

Dan (1:23:12)
Yeah,

I tried using aura on it too and I was like, no go. I was like, all right, we're just sorting this thing.

Don (1:23:17)
think he's the only boss that deals you more than one damage too. Like think when he hits you, it's either two or three.

Dan (1:23:23)
Maybe, one I specifically remember is the laser beam that it shoots. That does three to you. I, I remember when Steve was playing, it was like chunking them. I was like, Ooh, we gotta try and avoid that.

Lysianthia (1:23:36)
Yeah, one thing I will mention about the second form of the final boss, there's that moment when you watch his health fill up and it just keeps going.

Dan (1:23:47)
yeah, yeah.

Don (1:23:47)
Yeah,

Lysianthia (1:23:48)
And it just

Don (1:23:48)
most of the time.

Lysianthia (1:23:48)
goes off the screen. You're like, wait. This isn't right.

Dan (1:23:54)
You

know what would have been funny if you hit him a few times and it was still full because it's off the screen? That would have been hilarious.

Don (1:24:03)
Yeah, most of the boss health bars only go halfway across the screen. This one just keeps going and your eyes are like watching it go across the screen. I got in a situation where I was crouching and Eric, Eric was on for this watching me and all his little projectiles that that home in on you for some reason, they stop where your head would be if you weren't crouching and they were just hovering above me and I was just like swinging away until he died. I think he only managed to hit me once because of the

Dan (1:24:05)
You

Lysianthia (1:24:17)
Yeah.

Dan (1:24:32)
Yeah, that's what I mean. It's like they'll stay in these like awkward spots like around you before they actually like lunge in and hit you.

Don (1:24:32)
It was like, this was the scene.

Well, these ones were not lunging. was there for a long time. Yeah, it's just some cheese.

Dan (1:24:41)
Really? Wow.

Lysianthia (1:24:42)
Yeah, Don found some magic pixel, like some magic pixel

Dan (1:24:45)
You

Lysianthia (1:24:46)
where they would not come closer, but they weren't close enough to hit him. But he was still in a good spot to hit the boss.

Dan (1:24:53)
Wow.

Don (1:24:54)
Yeah, hilarious.

Alright, think we've done this game for about an hour-ish, which honestly is more meat on the bone than I thought we were going to get out of it. But I want to ask Eric before he goes off, Eric, what do feel like the chances are of this game winning a prize in the Cable Club League?

Lysianthia (1:25:16)
man, well, I mean, I'm early in the roster, so I've got a lot of games following after me, but even then there's some strong competitions beforehand. So I mean, top prize, probably not. Is it good for like middle of the pack stuff? Sure. I mean, it really depends on how you guys feel about it being such a niche conglomeration of categories and genres, I guess.

Don (1:25:49)
I think it'll be interesting. I feel like we designed these categories because I wanted picks like this sometimes. And I wanted to be able to award picks like this. I didn't want just like a whole year of like the best games that I've played a thousand times. this is cool. Thank you for bringing this one.

Lysianthia (1:26:07)
if you want weird games, just come see me. I've got like a whole bucket list.

Don (1:26:12)
I just might.

Steve (1:26:14)
My heart can only take so much.

Lysianthia (1:26:16)
How do you guys feel about a collect-a-thon that requires 100 % completion to get the final boss?

Dan (1:26:16)
Yeah.

Don (1:26:16)
Yes.

Steve (1:26:27)
It depends on how well the game is designed.

Don (1:26:30)
when there's a secret boss at the end of that. Like, you can beat the game, but if you want to fight the last last boss you've got to do the collectathon.

Steve (1:26:37)
I mean, I'm

a collect-a-thon kind of guy. Like, I banjo-kazooie, and I... ...less than 102 % of Donkey Kong 64 and all the games. Like, I like collect-a-thons.

Lysianthia (1:26:51)
Maybe that's a game for another day.

Don (1:26:54)
Indeed. All right, we're going to say goodbye to Eric and we are going to get into our review. Eric, thank you so much for coming on.

Lysianthia (1:27:03)
Great to be here.

Don (1:27:05)
Looking forward to having you on again sometime.

Dan (1:27:07)
Does he have any plugs, if any?

Lysianthia (1:27:10)
no plugs for me. I have a dead YouTube channel with some old let's plays. I used to stream on Twitch, but not so much anymore because time. so I'm just around on the discord with some weird tastes in games. So if you want some recommendations, come, come chat me up.

Dan (1:27:29)
Good stuff.

Don (1:27:33)
All right, fellas, you ready to get to our break and our plugs and then our review?

Dan (1:27:38)
All right, pleasure to have you, Eric.

Steve (1:27:41)
Thanks, Eric.

Do have any plugs? Not any that I'm comfortable sharing here.

Lysianthia (1:27:50)
none that I would like to pull out. What?

Steve (1:27:54)
my goodness.

There's shit on it!

Don (1:27:57)
Hahaha!

Dan (1:27:57)
Yeah,

let me stand up real quick.

Steve (1:28:03)
Dung.

Don (1:28:07)
Alright, so you can go ahead and bump off Eric and then we're going to finish out the episode here.

Lysianthia (1:28:13)
All right, sounds good. Thanks guys. Great talking.

Don (1:28:15)
Thank

you.

Steve (1:28:15)
Thanks.

Don (1:28:19)
get the dummy going finish up

Steve (1:28:22)
my god,

I had to stop myself from yawning so much.

Don (1:28:26)
with this game.

Steve (1:28:31)
No, just in general. I'm just tired.

Don (1:28:34)
Yeah, it's been a rough week.

Now, now you have me yawning. What's wrong with you?

Steve (1:28:46)
What's wrong with me?

Don (1:28:59)
good.

Act Razor.

All righty. You guys need a second? Are you ready?

Dan (1:29:47)
think I'm good.

Don (1:29:49)
Alright. So if you are still listening to us at this point, you must kind of like what you're hearing, so why don't you try subscribing? It's free for you, it means the world to us. You could also leave a like on this video if you're watching us on YouTube, or comment to us and tell us why we're wrong about everything.

Steve (1:29:49)
Yeah, I'm fine.

Dan (1:30:11)
We're never wrong.

Don (1:30:12)
or just come

chum it up in our Discord, which you can get to in the link in the show notes here, whatever listening platform you are on. You could also go over to our website and you can actually join the Discord from there if you can't find it in the show notes. We are also open to you emailing us at the Cable Club podcast at gmail.com. If you're interested in joining the league or just hanging out with us or just talking or leaving comments on the video, we'll take all of it. It's good stuff.

We really, really appreciate our community who supported us thus far. We're really happy to have you guys. I especially think this week we had good activity in our Discord, people talking about this and that. It really brings the warm and fuzzies. It's a good time. But we're here to review ActRaiser to give our impressions of it, cover anything we didn't cover with Eric in terms of our opinions. And.

So I don't know, I just want to say that like, I think this game is, I think it's a little bit primitive in its design. I kind of wish that it had a little bit more of what it does. Like that's, that's my general consensus on this game. I wanted more of what it does. Cause I think what it does is so cool. But unfortunately, you know, it being the first of its kind and

Maybe the last of its kind, arguably, because I don't know if I wholeheartedly agree that Dark Cloud is like, you know, the iteration that we all deserve of this title, but who knows? Maybe in Indie Studio we'll see this episode, look at this game and be like, I'm going to give them what they want and make an awesome, you know, indie game that does this exact same thing, but better. That's kind how I feel about it. It's where I land.

Steve (1:32:03)
Yeah, I kind of echo a lot of that. I would say that overall, I feel like the side scrolling portions of the game were medium. The sim part was medium and the music was... There were a couple of okay songs and then a lot of not so great songs, but I think the best place...

for this game and its time was its visuals. think it did a pretty good job. Like, in the levels, you for early Super Nintendo, it looked good. And the top-down sim, you know, looked as good, if not better, than like a Final Fantasy overworld map, you know? Like, what you would expect. It looked pretty good.

Don (1:32:55)
True, I hadn't actually thought about comparing it to an overworld map of an RPG. But yeah, I you're right, it actually did look really good.

Dan (1:32:59)
Yeah. Yeah,

I feel like it was better in some ways because I feel like the way that they utilized Mode 7, like with the trees, it wasn't like a top down view of like trees. was like actual like, like you were like looking at it from the side, but it conveyed it a lot better because it actually looked like trees and buildings and stuff like that. So, I mean, if you're going to do Mode 7, I

Steve (1:33:05)
Yeah.

Dan (1:33:27)
think that's like a better direction to go with it. Because a lot of times with like the Final Fantasy games, like, especially like when you're on the airship, it just looks like a pixelated mess because you just it's like a top down view looking down on it. And sometimes it just doesn't jive well.

Steve (1:33:40)
Yeah, I don't have any problems

with the visual presentation of the game. It was good.

Dan (1:33:46)
Yeah.

Don (1:33:47)
I like that moment when you go to be the master and go fight a monster and it's like that moment where you're coming down from the sky pyramid and it's swirling around and going in. That moment is like Super Nintendo as hell. It's like the most Super Nintendo thing I think I've ever seen.

Dan (1:34:01)
Yeah.

You

know what, I was actually surprised that too, where it's like when you go up in the sky on your like little like floating Island or whatnot, it actually has your progression on the map where, where you built it and stuff, which I thought was pretty neat. I didn't know that, that, like that kind of technology existed back then. Cause it was like, if you actually go on like, like say like, for example, blood pool, if you only built on half the map, it will actually show it on that like high up view.

Don (1:34:16)
Yeah.

Steve (1:34:17)
Yep.

Dan (1:34:34)
which I thought that was pretty cool.

Don (1:34:37)
Yeah, what you, it really did feel like in this world, what you do matters, which I think is really neat. and that's just one, one single touch, right? But the other touch is that you upgrade yourself further by going the extra mile for the, for the communities that, that you ended up building up. And again, this is like, this is like where I start to bleed it, bleed into the potential of it. Cause I feel like there could have been so much more that was done with this. Right. I'm trying to think of games that came around, came out around this time that we're doing so much more.

Like when did Zelda a link to the past come out?

Dan (1:35:10)
Was that 93? Was it 91? Was it that old?

Steve (1:35:10)
Mmm, 91.

think so.

Don (1:35:16)
Yeah, so you know, would have been right around this era, but like, look at the amount of like depth and content in that game, right? Like this, this game was just missing a little bit of that depth, I think.

Dan (1:35:27)
Yeah,

I feel like the especially like the side scrolling parts could have been a little better maybe not

Steve (1:35:34)
This

game is 20 days older than a link to the past in North America.

Dan (1:35:39)
is it? Yeah, I just I felt like they could have expanded on the like, at least like the the 2D parts. Like I wish like you got like stronger equipment and stuff like that. So I felt like you were progressing your character rather than just strict like level ups through your population.

Don (1:35:39)
Wow.

Steve (1:35:57)
Yeah, you get like the magic spell amounts. The HP up and the spells themselves are like the big upgrades you get.

Dan (1:36:07)
Like

a direction I felt like that would have been cool is like some of the areas that you see on the map, like, you know, like Teddy, for example, like is going through the cave or whatnot. Like, why can't we go in that cave or like the random temples that are littered throughout the some of the towns? Like, why can't we go in this temple and explore it? You know, that's like stuff I wanted to see in like, you know, sequels and stuff. But.

Don (1:36:31)
But stuff I did like was like random stuff happening, right? Like plagues or there was like the one town that decided to fight, like have, conflict. Yeah. And like, but like, I was like trying to solve their problem because it shows you which houses are like the problem people.

Steve (1:36:39)
They needed music.

Don (1:36:50)
And like, I'm sitting there talking, I'm trying to figure it out, trying to get them to build again. So I just go in lightning strike all the houses that are the problem. And I'm like, here you go. There's just end the war decisively. Aren't you guys happy now? No, still weren't happy. We gotta get the music going.

Steve (1:37:05)
Yeah, some of the stuff was a little bit like obscure, I wasn't sure. But, you know, once you get there and you see it, then you know what it's for. But, you know, a lot of times you fix all their problems and then you go to leave and they're like, hey, we have another problem.

Dan (1:37:19)
Unexpectedly.

Steve (1:37:23)
You're like, well, I don't have what you need. Give me some time. Go to the next area.

Dan (1:37:27)
Yeah.

Don (1:37:28)
But I think that that stuff's good though, because again, that would have been cool to have more of that stuff for more upgrades. I think it did a lot of things right. I think this is a really cool blueprint and I'm really, really disappointed. Did you guys look at ActRaiser 2 at all? Did you look at any of that?

Dan (1:37:44)
Yeah, yeah I did. You're like a dude with

Steve (1:37:46)
I did

Dan (1:37:46)
some

Steve (1:37:46)
not.

Dan (1:37:46)
wings instead of like a dude in armor.

Don (1:37:50)
Yeah, you're still the master, but you're basically naked. You're wearing like a kitchen towel and you have wings, but you're so jacked that like, your guy's like the character that like ate pit from Kid Icarus for protein. But he hits like, you know, he tickles enemies with his sword because the enemies in that game take like four or five hits, like all of them really annoying damage sponges.

Dan (1:37:53)
Yeah.

Steve (1:37:56)
Altered beast.

protein.

Dan (1:38:19)
Yeah.

Don (1:38:20)
And,

know, when you start to get into that space of side scrollers, well, now you have a problem because now you're competing with games like Castlevania 4, right? And you have to live up to that. And if you don't live up to that, then nobody's going to remember it. And I feel like that's what befell this series.

Dan (1:38:34)
Yeah. Well, unfortunately it's they didn't have like a crystal ball. Like back then, you know, platformers were the fads. So that's probably why they went that route. They knew Mario was doing good and stuff, but they didn't know that they were going to be a dime a dozen. like, you know, if they stayed the path, they could have, you know, carved out their own genre, so to speak. But unfortunately it didn't go that way.

Steve (1:38:44)
Hey.

competing with Mega Man X.

Don (1:38:57)
Or even made a good platformer because it's not a good platformer. Like it's. Yeah, so I don't know. Kind of an interesting decision there. My understanding is people that, you know, like critics kind of are mixed and kind of like the second one more. I don't know. I didn't, I didn't really find the first one to be cryptic or anything. It was just kind of a walk in the park. I feel like.

Dan (1:39:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

No, Sam.

Don (1:39:27)
Those are my final thoughts. guys have anything else to add?

Dan (1:39:31)
Yeah, I just wish they expanded on the series, but that's pretty much it. I thought they had a good idea. It's unfortunate that, you know, they went 2D and eventually that was the end.

Steve (1:39:43)
Yeah, unfortunately that makes this feel almost half-baked, you know?

Dan (1:39:48)
What could've?

Don (1:39:51)
Indie studios pick it up come on give us the give us the act razor we deserve. Give us the Mega Man X7 we deserve too. Alright, we ready to rate this thing?

Dan (1:39:59)
Yeah, for real.

Let's do it.

Don (1:40:05)
Let's do it.

Steve (1:40:09)
I think I'm gonna be sicker.

Dan (1:40:10)
UGH!

Don (1:40:15)
Let me pull up that tier list. So bad.

Dan (1:40:59)
I think depending on the games that we get in the future, I think this is going to land somewhere in between Pokéball and Great Ball.

Don (1:41:09)
Yeah, I think so too.

Dan (1:41:16)
But you never know.

It could land up in apricorn if we get fucking heavy hitters somehow.

Don (1:41:26)
We got a lot more offbeat games this year than I expected to get.

Dan (1:41:32)
Yeah. JJ squawkers was a wild pick.

Don (1:41:35)
But even things like Eternal Darkness, which I think is interesting, but I just I guess I didn't expect to get it. I guess I expected to get more of the top shelf stuff constantly.

Steve (1:41:48)
Eternal

Darkness has a lot of high review scores.

Don (1:41:54)
Yeah, it's just not a game I think of, right?

Dan (1:41:56)
Is it like horror or puzzle?

That's what it is.

Steve (1:41:59)
kind of. wouldn't really. It's like in the horror genre, but there's like no jump scares and it's really just like more atmosphere than anything.

Dan (1:42:11)
Yeah, I'm gonna have to download that. haven't even started it yet.

Steve (1:42:15)
It's probably like a 12 hour game.

Dan (1:42:19)
Get it going on the raw galley.

Don (1:42:25)
JJ Squawker's going to Pokéball? Hell no.

Dan (1:42:28)
Hell no, dude. That might be the toilet game.

Steve (1:42:36)
Out of what we have so far on the sign up it is.

Dan (1:42:42)
I don't know, man. I feel like it's probably like Superman 64 tier, maybe slightly better.

So unless we get a game like Superman 64, it's not looking good for it.

Steve (1:43:13)
So JDRK is moving Crusaders of Senty to a different date.

Don (1:43:19)
Yeah.

Steve (1:43:22)
And instead we're doing.

Mega Man Soccer for the 28th.

whether he shows up or not. If somebody doesn't show up, their game can't win, right? Like a...

Don (1:43:33)
Pretty much.

Dan (1:43:35)
We need to do another Mega Man game.

Don (1:43:41)
I'm thinking

about putting it to to a vote after.

Dan (1:43:47)
with the community.

Don (1:43:49)
That way our games can win if they get voted for. I think it would be totally lame if they did, or we could just say, we'll give it the second place and we'll lie. Like I won't reveal the results of the polls, but yeah. But, and it's unlikely if he doesn't show up that he interacts with us and he probably won't get his fan base to vote for it. So it's unlikely it will win. Right.

Steve (1:44:01)
Yeah, that's what I mean. I wouldn't,

Don (1:44:14)
And if he does get his fan base to vote for it, to win a prize, that's really good for us. Right.

I don't know how you guys feel about the vote in general, but I think it would be nice. Like we sort them into categories, then, you know, people vote. we can do it the same style. They can do two votes.

Dan (1:44:31)
So we'll put them in the cups and then

they vote which game should win in that cup, you think?

Don (1:44:38)
Yeah, and make everybody do two votes. So there's like a survey, like I can just use survey monkey. It's free. Five, five questions. Pick two, you know, which two of these games do you think should win? Right. So everybody has to pick two.

Dan (1:44:50)
Yeah,

that might be a good idea. I don't think they should have complete control, but if we can control what game goes in each cup and then they control maybe which game wins in that specific cup, I feel like it's a good trade-off.

Don (1:45:06)
Yeah, we're, we're, we're controlling the cups now. Yeah. So.

All right, let me bump this over here.

Chair money.

All right, so if this is your first League episode, then let me tell you the rules real fast. So what we have here is a website called Tier Maker making a tier list. But this game this year is not a tier list in the traditional sense. These are all cups. They're all running their own competition, basically. And every time we reach a divisor of or a

number of games that can be divided by five, we create a new cup. We're going to play 25 games this year and each cup is going to have five games in it. So when a new game comes in, it can either go to the top cup or it can get dropped in at a lower level. But that means that we have to push games up and you'll see as the year goes on and we get more and more cups, we'll have to do a lot of shifting around. It creates a little bit of excitement there. So in our, in our lowest cup, Apricorn, right now we have Donkey Kong Country 2.

Pokemon Gold Silver Crystal, The Legend of Dragoon, The Legend of Zelda Oracle of Ages, and JJ Squawkers. And in our Pokeball Cup, which is currently our highest cup because we're only up to game eight, we have Paper Mario, and we have Street Fighter III Third Strike. So fellas, let me ask you.

Is act razor pokeball cup material.

Dan (1:47:02)
Not quite.

Steve (1:47:06)
No.

Don (1:47:07)
Alright, so I would agree out of these titles. So we're going to put it down in Apricorn and just for all of you watching, it's not a tier list. So from left to right is not necessarily the order in which we favor the games. But I feel like I'm getting, it's getting kind of hard to pick two games to vote up from Apricorn. I don't know if you guys feel the same.

Dan (1:47:29)
Yeah, there's a few I can still bump up. But yeah, it's getting thin.

Don (1:47:37)
And one rule we've instituted for ourselves that we can't vote for our own games.

Who wants to kick us off? Who wants to give us which one they think should move up?

Dan (1:47:48)
Sure. So we've been picking two games lately and we try to find the overlap. So my first pick in Apricorn to go up is going to be the Legend of Dragoon. And my second one that would go up would probably be Donkey Kong Country 2.

Steve (1:48:15)
for me, it is probably...

either Zelda or Oracle of Ages or...

I would say probably Pokemon Gold or Silver. Not being able to pick mine. Yeah.

Don (1:48:35)
Really? Over

Legend of Dragoon, huh?

Steve (1:48:40)
For me, yeah.

Don (1:48:42)
I think it's just because I've played Pokemon Gold and Silver so many times, it's just like ambiguous with breathing.

Steve (1:48:47)
And

I think it's that I've played so many JRPGs on the PlayStation that Legend of Dragoon doesn't do it for me.

Dan (1:48:53)
Yeah, he doesn't have that nostalgic factor too that we have.

Don (1:48:53)
Ugh.

Yeah,

true. I'm like super blind to it.

God, like I know it's not my f- the last time I'm gonna vote. And like my bias favor for Pokemon Gold and Silver is like working against me, because I've played it so much that I don't want to play it again. Basically. Like, like it's not a bad game, it's a very good game, I've just gotten everything that I want out of it out of life. Like, so if I never play it again until I die, it's fine.

Dan (1:49:22)
So

it deserves to go up because we played it so many times.

Steve (1:49:28)
You

Don (1:49:29)
I know

there is, there is that, end of it, then like adult me is like, do you, do you still enjoy it? And I'm like, not really. So like.

Dan (1:49:36)
haha

Steve (1:49:38)
But which game out of these did you have the most fun playing for the podcast?

Don (1:49:43)
Right, like I had a ton of fun playing Donkey Kong Country and Zelda Oracle of Ages. Both of them. So I think those are going to have to be my picks. But I really, really feel like Legend of Dragoon needs to move up too. I just like out of the most fun that I had. Yeah, I'm going to say it's those two.

Dan (1:50:04)
Okay, so Donkey Kong's got the overlap it seems like.

Don (1:50:10)
Nobody else picked Oracle of Ages.

Steve (1:50:12)
I picked Oracle of Ages and Pokemon.

Don (1:50:15)
Was it your first or so Oracle of Ages was your first pick?

Steve (1:50:20)
Yeah, because we can't pick our own game. Yeah, Oracle of Ages is... It was a surprising little Game Boy Color title, even though I've played all the Zelda games.

Don (1:50:32)
So wait, did we all

three pick Donkey Kong Country? Did I miss it? OK.

Steve (1:50:35)
I can't pick it.

Dan (1:50:37)
Yeah,

me and you overlapped on it, Don.

Don (1:50:43)
I don't know how to break this tie.

Steve (1:50:51)
Well...

Dan (1:50:55)
What, did we overlap on another game? I know we did with Donkey Kong, what other game?

Steve (1:51:00)
There's two people.

Don (1:51:00)
Steve and I overlapped

on Zelda.

So Steve can't break the tie because Steve's game is Donkey Kong Country 2. So therefore I think it has to go to Zelda for now.

Is that fair?

Dan (1:51:18)
Yeah, mean, yeah, I don't know what to do if we have to overlaps.

Steve (1:51:23)
Or at that point, yeah, I'm not sure.

Dan (1:51:31)
Maybe that's something we can rectify in future episodes.

Don (1:51:31)
All right, let me just.

So wait, Dan, what were your picks? Donkey Kong Country 2 and Legend of Dragoon?

Dan (1:51:37)
I'll let...

Yeah.

Don (1:51:42)
Was Donkey Kong Country 2 your first pick?

Dan (1:51:45)
It was Legend of Zhugeun was my first pick.

Don (1:51:47)
Okay, all right, let's let's let's talk this out. All right.

Dan (1:51:50)
So wait,

your first pick is priority over your second pick?

Don (1:51:56)
not necessarily. I guess that's, that's, that's up to you. So if you had to order them, which one would you put up first?

Dan (1:52:07)
It would probably be Legend of Dragoon if I couldn't pick Pokemon.

I just have the most nostalgia for that game and I still love it to this day. So it definitely would go up for me.

Don (1:52:20)
OK. OK. All right.

So then I think what we need to do.

I think we just put up the only game that doesn't belong to one of us that had overlap. This is a really odd tie where we somehow all tied in opposite directions. Like it's, this is a very uncommon situation. Do we all pick a third game? Cause then I would pick Legend of Dragoon as my third game.

Dan (1:52:47)
Yeah.

Mine would be ages.

Steve (1:53:03)
Yeah.

Don (1:53:03)
So that gives

you the same three picks as me, Dan.

Steve (1:53:07)
My third would be Legend of Dragoon. I can't pick my own and I liked Legend of Dragoon more than JJ Squawkers and Actraiser.

Don (1:53:15)
So Legend of Dragoon and Zelda got three votes each. Donkey Kong got two. Steve can't pick his own. Yeah, OK.

Steve (1:53:21)
Yeah, because it can't get three.

Don (1:53:27)
I don't know, what do you guys think?

Dan (1:53:28)
So would it, if, now why don't we break it down like this between legend of Dragoon and Aegis, which of the three of us we would like to see go up. Mine would be Dragoon.

Don (1:53:42)
ages.

Steve (1:53:43)
ages.

Dan (1:53:44)
So there we go.

Don (1:53:45)
All right. Fair's fair. There's still so much time left. There's no way Donkey Kong Country 2 sits in, sits, sits in apricorn. It's just, we got this weird rule about voting for our own games. So maybe we'll have to rectify that for next year. But anyway, this is, this is our current cup list. So up in the pokeball cup is a Paper Mario Street Fighter third strike.

Legend of Zelda, Oracle of Ages. Down in the Apricorn tier, have Donkey Kong Country 2, Pokemon Gold, Silver, Crystal, Legend of Dragoon, JJ Squawkers, and ActRaiser. And that is our competition so far. So we are going to set ActRaiser aside and all of its potential unexpectedly. And the guest for our next episode is someone very near and dear to Steve's heart. Steve, who's our guest?

Steve (1:54:39)
So on the next episode, my wife Lady Lishi will be coming on to the podcast, and the game she's bringing along with her is Eternal Darkness. It is a 2002 Nintendo GameCube horror slash puzzle game developed by Nintendo and Silicon Knights. So find yourself a copy or find a self-willed way to play it, and we'll be excited to talk about it.

Don (1:55:08)
This our first, what is GameCube? Is that Gen 5 consoles? Is that it? Tell us in the comments what generation is. It's going to be Gen 5 for this. It's our first Gen 5 game, first GameCube PS2, Xbox-y era game. So this will be exciting to see how it stacks up against games older than it. It'll be a different vibe for sure.

Come hang out in our Discord and play some Eternal Darkness with us and come back and see us in two weeks where we take it to the League and see how it fares. But for now, game over fellas.

Dan (1:55:47)
Game over.

Steve (1:55:48)
Game over.