Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, a video games podcast. I’m Sammy Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, how’s it going lately? Have you been up to much in these early February days? Oh, not really. I feel like I’ve just been playing Dying Light 2 forever in order to get the review out, which was relatively close to what I said in last week’s episode. I had that kind of hanging over me. I was worried that I was gonna have a very different opinion and render last week’s episode a bit pointless, but no, I kind of had the right vibe. But yeah, aside from that, I’ll tell you what I have found, a new, very good lunch deal. Oh yeah? You’ll be pleased to hear it. Yeah, well, Intermezzo- Keep talking. Was out of action for a while due to the guy was ill. Oh yeah, I wondered why I couldn’t order. Yeah, so I ventured to quite an unusual place that you wouldn’t naturally think of. I went to the Cake Cafe. Oh yeah. They do a kind of baguette, a homemade cake and any drink for like £4.90. Is it a good baguette as well? It’s only fine. But I’d say for £4.90, like a nice homemade cake, a big bottle of apple juice. It’s not like a little can of Coke. I’d say you get at least £7.50 worth of lunch for £4.90. That’s good, yeah. It is funny how like all these places you go to, the proximity to your office is like, I can just measure in my head the exact amount of walking it takes. I don’t want to waste my lunchtime walking around Bath. I want to go out, get food, come back and watch however much of an episode of Ozark I can get through. You’re big on the Ozark trade at the moment. That’s kind of… I’m trying to get into it. I don’t know if it’s going to ruin baguettes for me because I only ever eat baguettes when I’m watching Jason Bateman have a horrible time. So I don’t know if it will sort of form this sort of Pavlovian sort of response to that. See, I thought you were going to say that like, there was an episode where Laura Linney’s character out of nowhere surprisingly beats a guy to death with a very old baguette that’s gone quite hard. And then they just kind of look at each other. Isn’t that what that show’s about where you’re like, oh. I wouldn’t put it past them. Like it’s the kind of thing that could feasibly happen, but it’s more like whenever I now see Jason Bateman’s face, I start salivating, which is unhelpful. Yeah, perfect normal reaction. Yeah, I sort of always see that show as like, oh, the husband is secretly very bad. And then I said, but the wife is even worse. Is that like basically what the show is? They’re both quite ruthless, but they’re also competent. I wouldn’t say it’s about like good people getting involved in bad business. I’d say it’s about like kind of corrupt people trying to kind of keep their head above water. It’s all right actually. It’s very Breaking Bad-ish in terms of how the kind of thriller elements escalate and how every little decision they make goes on to like absolutely screw them later down the line. It’s quite funny in that sense. Terrible advert for the Ozarks though. It just looks like the worst holiday destination ever. Well, Breaking Bad very much did that for Albert Kirke. It’s like I have no reason to go to this flat pack Ikea kind of like American town in the middle of a desert or wherever. So yes, three and a half baguettes out of five there Matthew for Ozark, is that what you’re at? Yeah, basically. Yeah, I can’t say like my lunches have been particularly adventurous lately. Me and my partner just went to Bristol for the first time in a while. Went to the burger boat there and had their blue cheese and caramelized onions burger, which is amazing. And they also do chips that have like sort of like a spicy dirty fries. It’s kind of like all the nacho stuff but on chips. And you’re like, oh yeah, that’s good. That’s good shit. So if I was a pirate, I would definitely target a burger boat. I’m not sure it’s like capable of sailing honestly. Well no, I’d attack it from the water and get, you know, like if I was looking through my telescope in Assassin’s Creed and I look at every ship and it tells me what resources it has on board to help me with my decision making. I look at one and it’s like, it’s got a load of cotton and look at another and it’s like iron and I look at another and it’s just like fat burgers. I’d be like, yeah, definitely that one. Yeah, yeah. I do like the idea of like you turning up in a boat in Bristol Harbor and just sinking this burger boat. And then like these, but like see if the style, these boxes of burgers just emerge on the surface and you just take them and sail away again. That’s definitely how boats and piracy works. Yeah, very good. Yeah, so yeah, nice to go to Bristol again and do something a bit different. But Matthew, we’re back to, we’re doing another draft this episode. So a bit of a break from our recent ones, which have all been console focused. We’re doing a draft that’s about building a game pass competitor. So we have resurrected the famed companies, Big Sammy Holdings and Matthew Castle Productions. They never really went further away. But for those who are new listeners, I recommend them listening to the Game Developer Draft episode of this podcast, where we established these two fictional companies. Then if you want the complete history, I think you also need to listen to the Let’s Turn E3 into a Games Magazine one. I think that has some more lore in it. I can’t remember now. Our listeners might remember. But those two combined should give you a bit of an outline. But Matthew, I think this might be our most fun draft yet, because the categories are so unexpected, and we’ve got some fun nonsense at the end to run with. How are you feeling about this episode? Yeah, I think it’s going to be quite chaotic. Yeah, I’ll be interested to know if what we’ve got at the end of this is in any way feasible or desirable. Definitely not, I would say. I would say that the categories, I think something I’ve noted from doing the previous drafts, right, is that we have, because of the way, the nature of console libraries, you have three to four really juicy categories and the drama sort of tails off a little bit. Here, I’ve tried to keep the drama or at least the mystery element high until the end so you don’t exactly know how we’re going to play it, because the categories are very broad. But also, they’re broad and specific at the same time. You’ll see what I mean by that. But yeah, that was fun. How are you feeling about the way we’ve approached categories this time, Matthew? There is a bit more of a mystery element to them. There’s some of them I slightly struggled with just because almost they were so big. I was like, God, how do I do something exciting in this category, when there’s so many potentially exciting things? But there’s also a couple of just monster categories that remove loads and loads of stuff from the board and are maybe so big that they make and break the whole thing. But we’ll see. Yeah, for sure. So we’ve got a little brief preamble here, Matthew. Everyone knows what Game Pass is. You pay a small fee and get access to a big library of games. It’s growing over time. Microsoft acquires studios and publishers and puts their games on there. So you have an ever broadening array of stuff. So they kind of seem unbeatable in that respect. But I was curious what you would want from Sony or Nintendo with their response to Game Pass if and when such things emerge. Maybe this is tied to where I’m at with TV and film subscription services. And obviously, it’s a very different scene there because that’s already massively splintered. We only really have the one to worry about. We’re kind of where we were with Netflix kind of 10 years ago at the moment in terms of games. But I do wonder if the future of these things as people get more used to being a subscriber rather than a game owner, maybe we see the kind of the scene fraction even beyond the platform holders. You know, maybe we do see, you know, more aggressive stuff from like EA, Ubisoft, whoever, you know, kind of going down that route and thinking about what I’d want the future of it to look like. I value things which are maybe a bit more heavily created. Even with Game Pass at the moment, it’s incredibly generous. There’s loads there, but I kind of almost don’t know what to do with some of it. Because there’s so much stuff. My ideal version from other people is you have the bedrock of first party, which is kind of guaranteed or that I would want that to be guaranteed as part of the subscription service. But then what they’re doing with third party maybe has a bit more shape to it. It’s maybe a bit smaller. I’d actually be okay with a slightly smaller library that is a bit more carefully honed. This may be coming from the fact that recently we’ve been getting into Mubi, which, you know, is the sort of the world cinema, art house kind of pretentious streaming service, which, you know, has a more limited library than the other services, but sort of sells itself on that in a way by sort of saying, well, it’s not limited, it’s curated and delete. And you know, there’s less on there. And actually you find yourself watching more because of that because there’s, you know, you’re not just sort of paralysed by all the choices. Yeah, so for the streaming service comparison, I agree with you. I think in December it reached ahead where it was like, I have Now TV, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus. And I was just like, this is actually like way too much. And I kind of just need two of those really. And even then, like you say, the kind of sheer volume of stuff means I don’t always know exactly what to watch or what to pick or I don’t know, I’ll watch 10 minutes or something and then not go back to it or whatever. So yeah, I don’t know if like more choice has actually made the process of watching things any more, any better than it was like 15 years ago, it’s perhaps resulted in a greater quantity of like high end product in terms of like money spent. But I don’t know that TV is necessarily better than it was like 10 years ago. I think it’s just like it’s just different and this is more of it. So yeah, curated does sound good. Like I can’t really it doesn’t seem like Nintendo is going to do anything like this for the time being. They don’t need to all of their first party games sell amazingly. And also they’re much cheaper than the PS5 and Xbox Series X games. So that works their favor too. I don’t know. I don’t know that I want them to. I don’t necessarily know that I want these services though. Like I like Game Pass and I kind of like Game Pass as it is now. Yeah, I wonder if they’ll ever go down the route where it has like more tiers to it. Because there’s already some tiers where there’s like Game Pass and then there’s Ultimate Game Pass which has PC as well. And there just comes a point where there’s so much juicy stuff in it you think it’s can’t really carry on. I guess like Nintendo sort of Switch Online is sort of their Game Pass, like Retro and that’s a direction I’m happy Nintendo going. It would be absolutely lethal if they decided to add like GameCube to it. And I know they’ve been bumping up the price as they add more platforms to it. I’d be alright with that. I’m fine with that too, as long as they actually grow the library at a faster clip than they are now. They’re just very, very languid with doing this. That’s probably like the other extreme where it is too, that is too kind of arguably too curated like the N64 thing is kind of, you know, they’re like in a month you’ll get Banjo-Kazooie and you know, I’m not that bothered about Banjo-Kazooie at the best of times, but the idea of having to anticipate that for a whole month is like, I mean, just give it to me now. It’s not like, why are you even treating it like this? Why are we even pretending that this is like something exciting to look forward to? It’s just, just give it to us now. It’s not like drum roll, here’s something from 20 years ago. I just, I don’t really get that. I wonder if any of it’s tied, and this is definitely not the case, this is just me being silly, but like, you do wonder, like, because the stuff that Nintendo have is precious as all first party, and a lot of the people who made those games are still there. I wonder if on any level there is politics involved where you literally just don’t want to upset the people who made it by kind of being like, oh yeah, everyone can have that. Like, that’s not important, that’s the stuff they need, everyone, oh yeah, here you go. You know, maybe they have to treat it like an event, just because you don’t want to hurt any feelings. But you don’t want to upset Mr. Metroid, he’s still there, still making Metroid games. So you’ve got to pretend it’s a big event. Look Matthew, I don’t comment on rumour or speculation, okay? So, yeah. Yeah, like, I have no idea, but either way, that just, it just seems like you just see this so many times at Nintendo, like, you know, the sort of whole Bluetooth thing and like, you know, just the approach to online back in the day where like, you know, playing Mario Kart DS and it, the beeping the whole time you’re online and all that sort of stuff. Just that classic Nintendo not quite, not quite doing it the same way everyone else does at the same clip, but surviving nonetheless because they make amazing games. It’s probably that, a continuation of that rather than my bullshit theory. I enjoyed it nonetheless. I don’t like the idea of like, president of Nintendo is like, doesn’t want it to be awkward in the cafeteria when he sees, you know, whoever made fricking ice climbers, you know. A good bit of theory crafting there to kick off the show. It’s like, oh no, it’s that guy, quick, run. That’s good. It’s not, yeah, just don’t apply the how you dealt with your old athlete housemates, Matthew, to Nintendo. Some people can just do confrontation, you know. They don’t end up hiding microwave under their desk. I guarantee the president of Nintendo doesn’t, at the time that we’re recording this, does not have a microwave under his desk. Someone in our Discord, which we’ve just opened, by the way, if you can get a back page pod on Twitter, I’ll have found some way to pin it so you can join. Someone accused me of law-phishing by bringing that back up. I was just naturally curious to know how that saga ended, and I’m so glad I asked. It was like a man with lots and lots of appliances under his desk, because that was the only way he could cope. It was a great time. Yeah. Okay. Should we get to the draft, Matthew? Yeah, let’s do it. Cool. Okay. So the Game Pass Competitor Draft, which I didn’t label as such in our document. That’s confusing, isn’t it? What was I thinking? So, as ever, this is a competitive draft, so no one can pick the same thing twice. It is a snake draft, so one person goes first, picks one thing. The next person picks two, then we pick in pairs until we’ve gone through all ten categories. So you’ll vote on the winner at Back Page Pod. So once again, the sort of thought experiment here is that our fictional game companies, Big Sammy Holdings and Matthew Castle Productions, are building a Game Pass competitor, so a subscription service where you get a whole bunch of games bundled in from launch. So yes, it’s essentially we’re assembling a library to compete with Xbox Game Pass. But Matthew, we’ve added a kind of like caveat here that hypothetically we have solved any potential input issues, like there’s basically what we’re saying is if we add a DS game to this service, you’ll be able to play it like a DS game. Is there anything else that we should note do you think going into this so it doesn’t get too complicated for people listening? There’s some rules for some of the categories, but I guess we can explain those as we as we talk through it, so that it didn’t become just completely ludicrous. But yeah, I think that’s the key thing. You’ve just got to imagine that by subscribing to this service, you are somehow able to play everything on the service on a device. We’re not saying you have to own all the respective machines to enjoy this. Yep, and for those who enjoy the bullshit, there is a last section, we’ll take a break after we’ve done the draft section, and we’ll go through some fun bullshit section where we’ll talk about the name of our Game Pass competitors and that sort of thing. The voting, though, should just be based on these 10 categories. So let’s go into the categories, Matthew, I’ll just read them out. Number one is Cult Favorite Game. Number two is Licensed Game. Three is Game with All Expansions Included or Ongoing MMO. So you get all the expansions with the MMO if you go with that. So that’s like a live service element, I guess, to the Game Pass thing. Number four is Scored 90 Plus on Metacritic. So any game that basically got that average or more. Category five is Never Rereleased. So that’s pretty self-explanatory. Category six is Short Game. Category seven is Game that Isn’t Out Yet. So a forthcoming release to try and make these competitors sound spicy. And category eight is Lost Game. A never-finished game resurrected for your service or a translation of a Japanese game that already exists and never came to the West. So the idea is that you’re giving people that Star Fox 2 style thing of like, here’s a cool thing that you haven’t seen before to get you invested. Probably one of the most complicated categories, but wait. Category nine is an Entire Game Series. So every single entry in a series minus spin-offs. We had to do minus spin-offs because otherwise you might as well just pick Mario and get Paper Mario and all that stuff and the other ones become a bit redundant. And category ten, finally, is the Entire Library of a Single Console. So I will recap those before we go into it. But Matthew, top line thoughts from you, please. I mean, well, as people can imagine, the entire library of a single console is pretty major because really that is the meat. That is like 99% of what you’re going to be playing is represented by that one category. We agreed between us. I believe this is right. You can correct me if I’m wrong, that once you’ve taken an entire console’s library, the other person can’t take games from within that. Is that right? That is correct. Yes. So that can also like cut you off from lots of stuff. But I think we agreed that we wouldn’t let that overwrite the series. So yes, if one entry is on the console that the other person picks, they can still have that game because they’ve picked the entire series. So we didn’t want to make that too complicated. So but otherwise, it does kind of cut off a whole bunch of other picks. So yeah, it’s interesting stuff. I’m going to read those out again, Matthew, just to say people have it in their mind as we go into it. I actually did have one quick clarification on never re-released. Do you mean, does that also include like virtual? It hasn’t been on a virtual console services? No, it doesn’t have to be that rigid. Like it’s never been like, what I’m saying is it’s not been like a HD remaster or, you know what I mean? That’s fair enough. I’m talking about like a physical release, it hasn’t been released physically again basically. So yeah. Okay I’ll fire through these very quickly. One cult favourite, two licensed game, three game with all expansions included or ongoing MMO, four scored 90 plus on Metacritic, five never re-released, six short game, seven game that isn’t out yet, eight lost game, nine an entire game series, ten the entire library of a single console. So, I think Matthew is right, whatever you pick for category ten might just shape who wins or loses, but I think it was important to have in there because if you really were going to set up a game pass competitor draft, you would probably have to like, sorry, game pass competitor, you would have to have volume on your side. This is one of the reasons that backwards compatibility happened on Xbox is because it gave them a big library from the off essentially, so it was a shrewd move. So yeah, we think that each of these will need that library in order to thrive on the market for a Big Sammy Holdings and Matthew Castle Productions not to go under essentially. So we’re also cutting off the console at last generation, so you can’t like future proof it by saying PS5 or Series X and you can’t have PC or Switch, I think we agreed. I think we agreed Switch because, or we agreed you could have Switch, but you’d have to have it as it is now. Or you couldn’t have like, you know, the Switch in three years or whatever it ends. So yes. It makes sense. Matthew, let’s get into it. Do you want to do the coin toss? Yeah, let me get up my coin tossing. Have I won every single one of these coin tosses today? I think I have. Yeah. I will say as a general thought, like this, I haven’t taken this draft as seriously as some of the other ones. Like it’s a bit, it’s a bit too preposterous. Some of the categories I think I’ve got smart picks for a lot of them and just like, oh, that would be cool. I mean, in truth, there’s so much good stuff that you can’t, you simply won’t be able to pick. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Right. What do you fancy? Heads or Tails? Tails. Tails it is. Okay. So I get to choose whether I go first or second. Just gonna, I’m gonna take first. This might not be worth it, but I’ll do it anyway. I’m gonna go category 10 first. Entire library of a single console. And I’m gonna take the PlayStation 2. An absolutely vast library of games there. Games that are quite, fairly inaccessible, generally, I would say. There’s not like, there’s PlayStation now, but it’s not an easy way to play a vast library of PS2 games in the modern age, so this is, you know, giving you that, that whole library from Metal Gears to Silent Hills to, you know, anything you want, basically. And I think that the curiosity factor of that is just dipping in and seeing what’s out there and being like, oh, tonight I’ll play Gregory Horishoi, or Auto Modelista, or Devil May Cry 2. And I think that, like, that was my thinking there. I thought about PS4, because that’s a robust library of very playable modern games, but I don’t know, PS2, the kind of raw excitement of that. If someone sold me, like, a Game Pass competitor, it was like, we have every single PS2 game. I’d be like, fucking yes, I’m there. Interesting. Yeah, so, for this one, I kind of wrestled with what I thought was best, what I thought you thought was best. I put it down to two, one of which was PS2. I guess we’ll see what I think is the other one. But, yeah, I was really umming and ahhing about this, of the balance of, like, the size of the library versus the fact that people maybe like modern shiny games versus, like, how many classic things I could just tick off by taking one particular library. It’s, yeah, I think PS2 is a great choice. Yeah, you get a lot of stuff, Automodel East. The only reason people are playing Automodel East is because it starts with an A and is at the top of the Game Pass list. Yeah, that’s definitely going to be working in its favour for sure. So, yeah, so people, you know, it could take you years and years to get through this library. You still wouldn’t complete it, you know. You get to, like, TAC and the power of Juju and you’re, like, 85 years old, I think you’ll be fine. So we’re talking a deep library here and Matthew’s favourite PS2 game Red Faction, of course, which is included in this one. So what are your firstly picks, Matthew? So I’ll also take a, you know, it makes sense to take the library off the board so it doesn’t confuse matters more than anything. I think I’m actually going to take Xbox 360. Yeah, this is the other one I thought about too. Yeah, like I thought what you said about PlayStation 4, like, people wanting modern games makes sense. But actually, I think this this generation is so rich, it is so massive, like there is just more happening. I think that the next generation, we talked about this on a previous episode, has loads of great games, but everything takes everyone much longer. Like this period, you get like crazy, like, you know, well, crazier Rockstar productivity, you know, you get Mass Effect, you get Portal 1 and 2, you get the, you know, the arrival of Dark Souls 1 and 2. I just think this, this generation has so many 10 out of 10 absolutely adored games. I did contemplate PS4 as a shinier thing, because people like shiny modern games, they still feel modern. You’ve got their first party games, but also their first party games are also similar. I think you get greater variety with 360 plus Xbox Live Arcade, which I’m assuming is in the mix. Yeah, that’s fine. Let me throw this at you, though. The reason I didn’t pick 360 is that almost every single 360 game I want to play, I can play on my Xbox One or Xbox Series X. That was what counted against this for me, is that the juicier factor of like, I can’t access this was kind of like more why I picked the PS2. Yeah, there is that. That’s going to be against a lot of consoles, though. I just think in terms of like money spent to like the amount of stuff I’d want to play, to have access to all of that is just, that’s maybe not as enticing as PS2, but it’s as close to as I can get, I think. Yeah. All right. Well, it’s certainly a console I love. So, you know, I think it’s a very strong pick, regardless of how many Splinter Cell games I can currently play on my 360. So yes. Why don’t you hit me with your next choice? So next choice for the entire game series, I’ll take all the mainline Mario’s. That gives me my Galaxies. That gives me my Odyssey. It gives you retro stuff if you’re desperate for that too. There were a couple of things I thought about for this, so I’m sure we can discuss them when you get to this category, but I think in terms of variety, that will help me also by not picking a Nintendo console for the entire console library. This gets me several of the best games on several different Nintendo consoles. Yep. I think this, combined with 360, is a good strategy in terms of covering off bases. You’ve got a big Nintendo box ticked, and then also all of this very un-Nintendo Microsoft stuff and Western Publisher stuff, so yeah, good thinking there, Matthew, I like it. And what I will say is, if I had access to all the Marios, I think I’d play one that I’d be done for quite a long time, but you could say that about any game series, so yes. Interesting. Interesting, undermining the greatest Nintendo catalogue of all time. Yeah, that’s bold, isn’t it? Oh, I’ll probably get a bit… You did say that these games tired you out because they were too creative or. You basically saw Mario turn into a cloud and went, oh no, that’s too much, no more for me. I’m full. I’m full. No, I have seen it. That was the day I sold my Wii. It’s a good pick, you get a good spread of stuff here. I was actually surprised you didn’t take another category first, because I wouldn’t have rushed to take Mario. There’s one other thing on the board that’s quite spicy, I think. Okay, should we get to my next choice, Matthew? Yeah, hit me. You’ve got two now. Two picks, yes. Let’s go with category eight, lost game. A never finished game resurrected for your service, or a translation of a Japanese game that already exists. So, we’re going to take Silent Hills. It makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense. You’re always punching Silent Hill from me in these drafts. That is the theme of these drafts, is I’m not quick on Silent Hill. That’s so funny. Yeah, so, I actually like really, really considered Final Fantasy Versus XIII here, the kind of Nomura version of XV, like he would, because like he basically put a version of that in Kingdom Hearts III, I think that seeing the kind of like Nomura version of XV would be quite interesting to people. So I’ve considered that, but gotta pick the Hideo Kojima, Guillermo del Toro horror game that was, barely seemed to like really exist, and then kind of went away. The thing that followed PT. I feel like this is like the ultimate lost game that people talk about still on kind of like social media posts and still people still think that Kojima is going to go back and make this and it’s just never going to happen, but like, I can’t deny that, you know, Kojima meeting Silent Hill is just an enticing thing. So for this service, it would really make a splash. So I think that’s a good pick Matthew, thoughts? Yeah, I mean, it was it was my number one pick for this, obviously. Actually, I shouldn’t say that because that makes my second wide, whatever I picked, diminished. So it was my number two pick for this. I think I’ve still got something interesting. Dinosaur Planet on N64 coming your way. Yikes. Yeah, I mean, the good thing about this category is that the game the games like they’re completely unknowable. You could say like this had the makings of a 10 out of 10. We have no idea. But yes, as a novelty factor, wow, they’ve resurrected this basically impossible to resurrect game. Yeah, that’s very enticing. Yeah, this is like the kind of closest to a sort of like magical fiction category in this whole thing. So yeah, I think that there was there was a few other things I thought about there for this, like, you know, police noughts and games hadn’t been translated here. But you got to pick something really big and juicy here, I think, to compete with the back back page pod listeners. So my next category, let’s go with going to take game with all expansions included slash ongoing MMO. Okay, I’m going to take Final Fantasy 14. Oh, yeah. So thinking here is this MMO is so beloved, they had to take it off sale because it was too popular. So as a thing that’s bundled in with the this this game pass competitor of mine, I think this is strong. Get all the expansions, get your subscription fee included. It’s all in there. Go do some, yeah, some epic Final Fantasy 14 stories on on Big Sammy’s service, which I can’t reveal the name of yet until later in the podcast. So thoughts on this, Matthew? Yeah, yeah, it’s just I’m I am so bad on MMOs. I was really racking my brain for one, which I had any idea about what I could offer any kind of analysis of. You having said that, yeah, I’d definitely be up for like a nice neat version where you definitely get access to this. Yeah, that seems very wise. Okay, well, I’m excited to hear the next two Matthew Castle categories like thrilled. In fact, what do you go ahead? So I thought you were going to go. I thought you’d go for future game. Oh, yeah, I guess I’ve left something on the table there, but we’ll see. I am going to go for that. Let’s just get that out of the way. I’m going to go for game that isn’t out yet. I’m going to take Grand Theft Auto 6. Okay, interesting. That’s not what I thought you’d pick for this category. We can only just make this because it’s only been formally said that they’re working on it. I know everyone’s like, oh, yeah, that’s a surprise. But I think this is valid. This was this was one of the this was one of the biggest games, you know, it is one of the biggest games at the moment. I don’t want to say like, I’m assuming it’s going to have like a big online component which would tick that off. I mean, we can’t say that we don’t know exactly what form it will take. But I think being able to pull the next Grand Theft Auto, well, is this does this guarantee that I get it eventually or that I can have it now with this category? I think it has to be eventually. Eventually. Because I was going to say the ability to like pull Grand Theft Auto 6 into today would obviously be an astonishing get. But I know what these games are like. They truly dominate the video game discussion more so than your Elden Rings or whatever. You’ve got your little niches who are into sort of smaller things, but this is the… In terms of like mass popularity, maybe not the thing I’m personally most excited about playing in the future, but if I can guarantee that day one you can play this for free, well, for free as part of your subscription service, I think people would be really up for that. Yep. A good pick. This was my number one pick, but I have a number two pick that’s so, so close in terms of what I think is viable. So yeah, Grand Theft Auto 6, yes. They’ve said it exists. I joked on Twitter, Matthew, that if we were still on magazines, like an editor-in-chief would arrive out of nowhere and be like, you need to write six pages on this before your PDF deadline tomorrow, just this like one sentence announcing the game or whatever. So yes, GTA 6, good choice, Matthew. So what’s your next pick? I think for scored 90 plus on Metacritic, Zelda Breath of the Wild, I think that still means you could take Zelda as a series and that would be fine if you wanted to, I don’t know if you will. Again, maybe I’m just shoring up the fact that there’s not a lot of Nintendo on this platform apart from all the Mario games, but all the Mario games, the current best Zelda game, I think that’s sensible. Yeah, that kind of makes sense. Yeah, I think that this is quite interesting actually, because when you look at this, this is a massive load of stuff you can pick from here, so loads of different ways you can take it. But yeah, I personally feel like I’ve very much got Breath of the Wild out of my system, but may people enjoy it on your service. This always happens. I feel it, it’s like, oh well. Yeah, I guess if you’re into that kind of thing. I’m just sat here thinking, how many more Silent Hills can I take from Matthew? There are no more Silent Hills. There’s one on PS1, and the later ones that people don’t like as much. But anyway, yes. It would be very strange if the underpinning strategy of your game pass was to get as many Silent Hills as possible. Extremely cursed. It’s like, we may not have the best games, but we’ve certainly got the spookiest games. Well yeah, I mean, I do have three of them on my PS2, so yes, good, good, all right. Sensible picks there. Should we move on to my next picks, Matthew? All right. So let’s go with License Game, and I’m going to take Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2 Rogue Leader. I think this is a good pick because it is lost to time. It’s a very hard game to emulate on like GameCube emulators. I think that might have changed in recent years, but I remember there always being some like graphics clipping out issues and stuff if you tried to do that with this game. So Star Wars, a space fighter game, I would say not really better than the very specific type of spaceship combat it does, which is that kind of like more Star Foxy kind of like ground combat stuff where you fly around in X-Wings knocking off objectives. And it looked absolutely beautiful for the time. It would look amazing if brought back in HD. So why not bring it back on this service? You get this from day one. Just go enjoy this GameCube Star Wars classic, which I think still holds up very well. Thoughts Matthew? It’s interesting once some of these other categories, once we get into them, that’s what I mean. It’s like you’ve got every PS2 game and you’re like, oh, and and this one licensed game. It’s kind of definitely valuable. Definitely interesting. I definitely play it. I’d be like, oh, that’s interesting. It does also underline just how sort of demented these game passes are that we’re making. It’s like every PS2 game and my squadron and everyone’s like, what? Why didn’t you balance it? Why didn’t you have some PS2 and some GameCube? You might say this, Draft is conceptually flawed from the off. Who could really say that? Absolutely. I just I can’t picture the advert where it’s like every PS2 game ever and Final Fantasy 14. And you’re like, oh, OK, well, yeah, I guess I like those things. And our Silent Hill game that got cancelled. Yeah, it is. I suppose like a little bit of it is people are voting on the kind of taste, I guess, or the balance of stuff. Like, you know, it’s sort of like, it’s less thinking about, oh, Samuel’s got this as Football 2003 on his game pass, technically. It’s more thinking like, you know, what speaks to my sensibilities in terms of curating the stuff on top of the big library. So I think that was kind of like my thinking and how I stacked this. Interesting. Okay. And it wouldn’t be a draft without some freaking Star Wars in it, that’s for sure. Yeah, that’s, I’m afraid that’s me. Matthew doesn’t really give a fuck about Star Wars, but I’m there, baby. Yes. Okay, good. So my next pick then, an entire game series. Let’s get out of the way. I’m going to take Zelda. Okay. I think it’s true that I didn’t really have much in the way of like Nintendo stuff on my game pass competitor. Zelda offers me a strong variety of stuff. Like you said, Matthew, it will get me Breath of the World and it also gets you some retro games on top of some modern games. And I think like this, these games are like fairly evergreen. Obviously, we did a very good best Zelda games episode. I think just having these to hand gives me a good counter to your Mario pick. Any thoughts? I did R&R about it. I thought at the end of the day, you maybe got a little bit more variety with Mario. Like, Odyssey is, I’d say, more different to Galaxy than most Zeldas are to one another. You know, there is maybe less variety in it. But at the same time, by having every Zelda, like, you are guaranteed to have someone’s favourite, everyone’s favourite Zelda, everyone has a favourite Zelda, and it’s probably quite an important game to them, because Zelda tends to be. You pick either Mario or Zelda, you’re guaranteed to get, you would hope, a person of taste’s one of their top ten games of all time. Yeah, for sure. There’s also, part of the thinking here too, was that in terms of like navigating the no spin-offs rule, Zelda is quite good for that, because even the games that are, that could be called spin-offs, like the oracles games, are part of the main series technically still. So that was the other thinking. The only thing you don’t get is like crossbow training. Yeah, so yeah, that was part of the thinking really. It was like, well, I know that this hoovers up a whole bunch of stuff that’s like slightly different to each other. So yeah, that’s why I picked this and not like Final Fantasy, which I thought about. But once I got the PS2 and FF14, I thought this kind of a bit of a redundant pick to pick the Final Fantasy series, because I’ve got a bunch of the ones I like. Not all of them, admittedly, but some of them. And so yes, that was the thinking there. So I think we move on to your next two categories. Yeah. Oh man, some of these are a little tricky, because I really feel like one of my big aims with these drafts now is just to pick something that doesn’t violently shit the bed. It’s not so much about picking the thing that wins, it’s about not picking the thing that loses. Yeah, it has like turned into that. It’s like the Hydroventure Red Faction rule. I do not want to give anyone a sort of thing to beat me with. The alternative is you do the thing where like you put all of your experience points into like dialogue and then you coax the listenership into thinking that Infernal Machine is a great n64 pick. I knew you were going to say Infernal Machine. That’s like that was the Red Faction and Hydroventure of that draft, but you were like, hey, it’s this great game you’ve never played. And it’s like, that’s just not true. It’s like a six out of ten platformer puzzler game. That is. Anyway. I mean, how dare you compare that to Red Faction and it’s a compliment to compare it to Hydroventure because that’s amazing. I’m not saying that these are bad games. They’re all fine. I’m just saying they’re not like the juiciest games to pick. They should be, though. That’s my point. Weirdly, there’s categories you haven’t picked stuff in, which I think I could react to what you pick. So I’m not too desperate about getting in earlier. They’re a bit too broad for it to be like, fiercely. That’s the thing. I mean, cult favourite and even licensed game, I’m not too worried about. Well, I’ve got licensed game anyway. Yes. Yeah. Never re-released. I’m still arming and aahing about that. I almost… I’m going to be honest. I’m kind of waiting to see what you do for that, just so I can kind of see what the standard is. Right. I see. So, I’ll go for Lost Game, even though it’s not competitive and you can’t pick it. I did want Silent Hills. I am going to take… I’m going to take Amy Hennig’s Star Wars game, Project Ragtag. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Good. Good pick. I know I just made fun of you for always picking Star Wars. This obviously ticks that box. The pitch of this, as it was known, was it was going to be more of an Uncharted style. We hope Uncharted quality. That’s what I’m gambling on. That it was basically going to be as good as Uncharted, but with Star Wars in it. We obviously can’t argue against that vision because we didn’t see it. We can’t really argue for it either, arguably. So yeah, let’s go with that. I’m going to say Project Rag Tag, which I believe was it’s sort of… We never knew it as anything else. A very good pick. I always wanted to play this. It seemed like it never got out of like pre-production properly, which was kind of a bummer. The little bit of it they did show, I was like, oh, that looks tasty. It’s just a man stepping out of a doorway into like a dusty planet, right? Yeah, indeed. The classic Tatooine, Star Wars, can’t fucking go anywhere else, particularly if you’re watching the Book of Boba Fett. It always ends up on Tatooine again. So boring now. Can we please go somewhere else? But yes, had lots of Stormtroopers in that little bit of gameplay and like, yeah, like you, I was very, I was all in on the kind of Uncharted style Star Wars game. That feels like a real, a real miss. And maybe now we’ll get a game like that with the Star Wars license like spinning off in about a million different directions, which I find quite exciting. I wondered if you might have taken that LucasArts Star Wars game for this. I don’t think it was going to be more than like a seven out of ten, really. I think like at the time, the thing, the thing that got it interest was it looked like a next gen game at a time when no one else was talking about next gen. So that’s why I think 1313 was like tasty for a while. But now, even though there’s some good footage of it that released a few weeks ago, I’m not really, I didn’t think it was that good a choice. So not compared to Silent Hills anyway. Okay. So what’s your next pick, Matthew? For game with all expansions included or ongoing MMO, in the name of balance and variety, which I think is important in these game passes, I’m going to take The Sims 4 and all its expansions. That’s a really good pick. I don’t think there is currently a service which offers this. I don’t think even like EA’s most premium version lets you get all the expansions for free. I think they are still trying to gouge you on that. I may be wrong. If I’m wrong, then it’s a little less sexy. But that is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds worth of game, just from a financial perspective. I’m not a big Sims guy myself, but I used to work with Alice on Rock Paper Shotgun. She was like a huge Sims head. I was always struck by like man alive. They take their fans for a ride. They give them a lot of desirable stuff, but it’s so kind of partitioned and overly priced and the ability to offer all that I think is, as I’m not interested in MMOs, I think that’s something cool. Yeah, I think that’s a good choice. The other one I thought about for this category was Destiny 2, Matthew, because that’s always getting new stuff. I know you’re not a big Destiny head. I thought that would just be two faults. I’ve been like too sniffy about it to pretend. The Sims, you know, I’m not massively into it, but I sort of recognise that it’s an interesting quality thing. I think they’re like 25 quid in an expansion or something like that. So you have like chosen wisely here, I think. And it seems like it’s like the last few years, its popularity has crested even higher than it ever had before as well. It feels like people really, really love this. They seem content to treat it just as a platform. They may have been mentioning of like, yeah, Sims 5’s in the same way that there’s always a GTA in development, but they haven’t talked explicitly about it. So I feel like there’s still a healthy dose of Sims 4 to come. Oh, yeah. They’re so eight years old at this point. And I think like the Sims 3, like only lasted for like three or four years. So yeah, a good choice, I think. I thought about some Paradox games for this too. You’ll see Skylines and the like, but yeah, for like you for a bit of variety, but I think that’s a good pick, Matthew. Yeah, maybe I should have. I am going to lose the incest crowd by not having Crusader Kings, but there you go. Oh yeah, that’s a what a shame that market will have to go elsewhere, I guess. Okay, good. Moving on from that tasteless joke. Next pick. Okay, let’s take game that isn’t out yet, and I’m going to go with the sequel to Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild 2. This kind of like, I think this is a choice on a par with GTA 6, so my thinking there is we know this is probably out this year, might stick till next year, you know, that seems like a possibility. But we know that a sequel to Breath of the Wild is on the horizon. And this will go nicely with my Zelda series package. So you get all the Zelda games on day one, and then the next Zelda game is on its way very soon. So that’s a thing you can be excited about. Thoughts Matthew? I think actually the reason I dismissed it is originally I had planned to go with Zelda as a series, even though I had complete freedom to do that and then I didn’t. Maybe I should have gone Breath of the Wild 2 instead of Breath of the Wild as my 90 plus. We all know that Breath of the World 1 is good and it’s still super expensive to buy Breath of the Wild 2. Like, you know, it’s unlikely but there’s always a chance they could shit the bed. It’s fair, you needed to fire back a little bit Matthew after all my dunks on like Mario and stuff. I sort of take that back. I refuse to be painted into a corner where I slam a future Zelda game. That’s absolutely preposterous. Like truly, like what’s the point in winning a draft if that’s what you had to say? To get there. Oh, that’s really funny. Yeah. Okay, good. What have I become? Yeah, this is like, yeah, just yeah, the monster, the monster has emerged. Yeah. Okay, great. So we’ve got all the Zeldas. I’ll just pick my next one, then we can recap where we are so far, actually. That might be good. I’m going to go to category one next, Cult Favorite. And I’m going to take Snatcher on Mega CD. I have played this. This is a re-release of the Hideo Kojima-designed graphic adventure game that was released, I think on like MSX, I think originally, something like that. But it came out again on Mega CD and was localized and had like voice acting added and stuff. Not very good voice acting, I will add. I have played this. I used to have a naughty PSP that could run this. And yeah, that’s how I played it. So yeah, kind of like a mashup of Blade Runner and Terminator. It’s very much like if you’re kind of familiar with either of Snatcher or Policenauts, those early Kojima games, they are like, you know, just taking 80s and 90s films and kind of ripping them off wholesale in a way that like, you know, Metal Gear Solid obviously lifts the Snake Plissken character from Escape from New York. But obviously Kojima never got sued because John Carpenter said that Kojima was a nice guy so he didn’t sue him. That was like a great story that came out. But Snatcher, yes. I think a game that lots of people will be curious about was technically released in the West and would be a great thing to like shout about having on the platform. Thoughts Matthew? Yeah, I must admit I actually haven’t played Snatcher so I would happily play this. I didn’t have a naughty PSP nor a Mega CD. So yeah, I would be up for it and a good cult favourite for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess it’s kind of weird to have a kind of a game pass competitor that has Snatcher on it but not the original Metal Gear Solid, but what can you do? You just got to live with these things. I think so. So let’s recap so far Matthew. So I’ve got category one cult favourite, I’ve got Snatcher, category two licensed game, I’ve got Rogue Squadron 2, Rogue Leader, game with all expansions included, I’ve got FF14, Lost Game, I’ve got Silent Hills, an entire game series, I’ve got Zelda and the entire library of a single console, I’ve got PS2. What about you? I’ve got game with all expansions included, The Sims 4, scored 90 on Metacritic, Breath of the World 1, game that isn’t out yet, GTA 6, Lost Game, Project Ragtag, an entire game series, the Mario series, an entire library of a single console, Xbox 360. Very good. These are good services. I’d sign up for either of these. Yeah, I’d have to have both. Maybe both. I’m cursing it. What are your next two picks then? Oh god, we’re really getting into the don’t blow it zone. Oh, I actually missed one off of my recap, sorry, because I didn’t have it underlined, but that’s a game that isn’t out yet, Breath of the World 2. Sorry about that. Yeah, just have to remind everyone that you got that. That will be the final words of this episode. Goodbye, and just to remind you, I’ve got Breath of the World 2. I probably would rather slightly play GTA 6 if I’m being honest. I know you! I’d love to fucking see GTA 6 in action. You’re like, oh yeah, I guess GTA 6 is interesting. I would love to see what GTA 6 looks like. I’m excited for that. Next year in GTA. For license game, license game I think is quite a hard category in this. It’s a chance to rescue one cool thing, isn’t it? Well, that’s the thing. Do you rescue a cool thing, or do you just keep something that’s modern and popular that you otherwise don’t have access to? Yeah, I suppose it says something that could be described that way. Like, you know, people, most people have access to, like, Spider-Man or whatever, you know. I was about to say fucking Spider-Man. Well I guess, like, for me, I didn’t want to pick something that was, like, too recent, that people would have just played and therefore it wouldn’t be seen as a sexy choice, but that thinking may be wrong. It may just be, again, that people just look at this and, like, oh yeah, Spider-Man, that game rules. Well, that’s, again, like, this is just with business hat on. I was currently thinking, well, Spider-Man’s, like, the biggest thing on the planet at the moment, because of the film, like, this is more just an indicator of where I am at with drafts and how scared I am of, like, embarrassing myself, but I think I am going to go Spider-Man for the, for the, I should point out for the PS4, not one of those ropey-ass PlayStation ones. Surely you want the PS5, right? Oh yeah, I could have the PS5 version of it. So it’s got ray tracing, so you can really see Spider-Man in those windows. Ha, that, that version of Spider-Man looks fucking amazing. Well there you go, you know, then it surely as my single current graphics showcase, apart from GT6 in the future, we assume. Yeah, listen, it maybe doesn’t satisfy the criteria, or a criteria of sort of rescuing something interesting from the past, but it is good. People love Spider-Man, but I’ve got Batman covered by Xbox, so I’m not too, I’m not too worried about that. I was honestly looking at Arkham Knight thinking, oh yeah, I’ll get all the Batmans together there. And I was like, is that really, does anyone really care, like, if I bring the fricking Bat-Tank that everyone hates into it, would that really do it? Yeah, are you going to gamble the entire draft on people liking the Bat-Tank? Yeah, just because I like it, yeah, I thought, but Spider-Man, like, there’s nothing like wild about Spider-Man, which people, most people like this game. I’ve yet to meet anyone who didn’t enjoy playing Spider-Man. I’m not embarrassed, let’s say Spider-Man. Okay, yeah, that’s, you know, I love Spider-Man. I think it’s like, probably my favorite of the PS4 exclusives that came out. Can’t wait to play the next one. I should really play that Miles Morales games at some point. Got it sat on my desk right now in front of me, actually. I should really get on that. But yes, great, great pick. And yeah, probably the best version of Spider-Man, a better version of Spider-Man, the Tom Holland version, honestly. So yes, good pick, Matthew. I was tempted to do my psychological warfare thing of coaxing you into picking Arkham Knight. But Matthew, the Bat Tank is so good. And you’re like, yeah, you know what? It is good. I’m going to take Arkham Knight and then you lose the draft, like 70-30. Because I’ve done that before, definitely. Because I think people have said that I let you tie your own noose in the Weedraught. And I think that is true to an extent. I wasn’t doing out and out warfare. But I didn’t question you when you picked Hydroventure. I still don’t think that was a bad pick. It’s up against Metroid Prime Trilogy. Against that, nothing is better. Nothing is going to look better than that. But as a standalone thing, listen, my only crime was respecting our listeners’ intelligence too much. So let’s not do that again. Yeah, we don’t need to re-litigate that. Cult Favourite is an interesting one because again, you’ve just approached this quite differently to me. You’ve gone down the route of things which are very, very hard to get access to and you were using it as a gateway to the past, which is usually a big castle tactic as well. Is this what you pick Uncharted 2? It’s not a cult favourite. You picked one of the biggest selling games of all time. 8 million can still be a cult. This is going to be a pure heart pick, heavily influenced by the fact that I have played it more recently. He’s about to shit in the bed. 3, 2, 1. 428 Chibiya Scramble, which is the visual novel I have celebrated on this podcast before. Maybe not brilliantly known to people currently, which I guess is part of the discoverability. I think if more people had access to this, more people would love it. It’s so funny, it’s so deserving of celebration, it’s so weird. I had a really, really great time with this game. I absolutely loved it. I did think about dredging up one of my Nintendo cult classics, a bit like Last Window or Zack and Wiki again or something, but having a really, really good visual novel, that ticks off a certain thing. That genre is not represented by 360 at all. I’m not saying that one game comes close to satiating people’s need for that genre, but better than nothing. Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. Okay, yeah, I like your thinking there, Matthew. I think it’s interesting because I don’t know if all our listeners will know what Snatcher is, so this might end up being a bit of a tie, this category. I agree, but you have certainly sold a bunch of copies of it to our listeners, so well done. Well, they’re the last people who need it on a game pass because they already own it. God damn it. I wonder if I should do some last minute messing around here to respond to some of the choices. I’m so fragile. I felt so bad actually saying he’s about to shit in the bed, three, two, one. Or just this idea that everyone just waits for me to hang myself, this idea that you’re just letting me tie my own knees is so depressing. I do worry I’ve got a bit too hard on retro games as well. I start thinking people will want more modern stuff. I will say yours is surprisingly old school leaning. My little brother, who’s 19 and only plays Call of Duty, he’d be like, ugh, old games. I doubt he’ll vote in this poll, so that vote absolutely doesn’t help me at all. Well, that may change some thinking at the last minute, but for now, I’m going to stay the course. Let’s go with never re-released, categorized. Okay, I’m interested in this one because I was struggling a bit. I’m going to take God Hand. So I’ve gone a bit retro again here, but look, Shinji Mikami 3D brawler game. The game he made after Resident Evil 4, even he admitted was too niche in that Archipel documentary, basically admitted there was one person in the office. He asked, what do you want from a game and built the game entirely for that one person and like ended up creating something super bizarre, funny, hardcore, really, really fun. It feels like games like upcoming SIFU live in this game’s shadow. You’ve got God Hand on PS2. Oh, shit, I have. Okay, that’s fine. But I’ve got a backup, Matthew, I’ve got a backup. Talk about taking your eye off the ball. I shouldn’t have let you do that and just waste it. Look, I’ve got a backup. Let’s pretend that never happened. Is everyone excited to replay Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII on PSP because I’m picking that for never re-release, categorized. Nice. You should have let me do it. That would have been like brutal. I’m keeping that in. You should keep it in. Yeah, because it demonstrates a lack of competence and people might want to vote against that and that’s fine. This is important for me. That’s really funny. I’ve just realized that that’s happened with another category that I’ve got coming up as well. So I have to shuffle that around as well. Oh God, it’s all going chaotic at the last minute. Okay, so whenever we release Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII, this is a PSP spinoff from Final Fantasy VII, the only good spinoff they really did back when they did the compilation of Final Fantasy thing in 2006 or 2005, something like that. Yeah, so this game emerged of full voice acting action RPG telling the story of Zack, the Mary Sue character who Cloud borrows his identity from in the game, spoiler alert there for a 25-year-old game, literally 25 years old at this point, but yeah, really, really good. Fills in some good gaps, makes Zack into a very sympathetic character, has some really interesting Sephiroth stuff in there, shows you Zack and Cloud’s friendship before the start of FF7, and has weirdly become very important to Final Fantasy 7 Remake. There is no reference to Crysis Core whatsoever in that game until literally the last hour, I think, and then there are massive references to it, so that’s really interesting. And Square Enix still hasn’t re-released it, even though it was clearly pivotal to that game. So I think it’s a good pick for this category. Thoughts Matthew? Sounds like a good pick. Again, I haven’t played it, I had to read up on it because I got very confused by what was going on in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, so I feel like it’s kind of a key text in understanding that as well. Yeah, for sure. And my next pick is going to be for short game. I’m going to take Sonic Mania. It could be on anything really, but like, yes. Sonic Revival game is four hours long. I think that still counts as short, right Matthew? That’s fine. Yeah. So I originally had Sonic CD for this category, then realized that you technically get Sonic CD on PS2 because it’s in the Sonic Gems collection. So shat the bed there once again. Had to move that around. Very good. So yes, Sonic Mania, probably the best 2D Sonic game, apart from Sonic 2, as we said on our best Sonic games episode. Some nice throwback levels, fantastic music, sort of like builds on Sonic in some cool ways, has some nice levels, this should just be what all future Sonic games are if you’re asking me. But hey, I look forward to seeing what Sonic Breath of the Wild is like. Thoughts on that one Matthew? Oh yeah, a good pick. I sort of struck with short game a bit because it just feels like there’s so many things you could potentially go for. Yeah, a short little thing that you can repeatably play over and over. That sounds good. Yep, for sure. So yeah, why don’t you go with your next two picks? It’s a bit tricky because I feel like I want to get a little bit more Nintendo in there. Nintendo have re-released most of their really good bits. I did think about, for re-release, you could just pick something that’s really modern and new and hasn’t been re-released yet, like a Red Dead Redemption 2 or something. I don’t know, I think I’ve kind of got that covered with GTA upcoming. I’m going to go for Heartchoice. I don’t think this is shit in the bed. You may disagree. I’m actually going to take Kid Icarus Uprising. Okay, yeah, I like that. From the 3DS, a game which simply will never exist anywhere else because it was built for the 3DS and that control setup and the 3DS screen and the 3D screen of the 3DS. I absolutely loved it. I think it’s a really weird attempt at Sakurai doing something a bit more cinematic and blockbuster-y in feel. Very exciting action game. You can play it and play it and play it. It’s got this huge scaling difficulty system. It’s basically got 99 difficulty modes, which is absurd. I did also contemplate along some lines, you know, like taking Smash Bros or Mario Kart, which hadn’t been re-released, but the best Mario Kart has been re-released, so I’d feel bogus doing that. Smash Bros. I never really feel like they do much business for me whenever I’ve had them in previous drafts. So, I’m going to go with Kid Icarus Uprising, I’m going to save that from the floods. I think, like, I’m pretty sure that picking Smash Bros. did do a favour for the N64 draft. People were, like, big on that one. And I don’t think it did a favour for me in the Wii draft, so I disagree with that, but I think this is a good pick anyway, because, yeah, I don’t think it was, like, a mega seller at the time. It came just before, like, 3DS had, like, that kind of avalanche of sales and became mega popular, so a lot of people would have missed this. And, yeah, a good choice in that respect. So, yeah, I’ll be excited to play it on your platform. Whatever device I have to plug into my TV to get this working. I look forward to it. But what’s your final pick, Matthew? Short game. Oh my god. Is this where you pick Minesweeper? Oh, I could. I did actually contemplate picking Wordle. Oh god. You can play Wordle for free on your phone. What do you need a game pass for it? Well, yeah, I know, but… Yeah. I didn’t say it was going to be Wordle. I said I had contemplated it. Yeah. The thing is, a lot of short games also tend to be indie games, which are everywhere. Finding an indie game which isn’t readily available is a fucking nightmare. So in terms of that element of game pass of kind of unearthing something interesting, that’s quite difficult. I’m just going to go with what popped into my head, the very first thing that popped into my head. I don’t really know why it did, but it’s an indie game. I love it. It’s a music game, so you can replay it many, many times over. It is a delightful audiovisual thing. I really loved it the first time I played it and I’ve gone back to it a couple of times because it’s so sweet. I’m going to take Sayonara Wild Hearts. I have not played that, but I do own it on Switch, is it good? It’s great. Yeah, it’s delightful. I think, I will be honest, this speaks more to the fact that I can’t really think of anything I would sort of rather have. I don’t think there is a knockout punch in this category. I think a lot of the things that are, you know, I thought of other short indie darlings like Edith Finch or Inside and Limbo, and you know, we talked about this I think on last week’s episode or a week before that about the role of small games or shorter games on a game pass as part of a mixed sort of diet of that game pass and I get it that they’re important and they’re part of that variety but there are also so many of these things sort of one and done and that to me doesn’t feel like it would have great value. It needs to be replayable in some way. Sonic Mania is a great example of that. I think a game, a rhythm game, a music game, often have room for improvement in them. So yeah, why not? Like I know it’s niche, maybe it’s hydroventure, who knows. Yeah, I think that this is like, this is a tough category and I do know that this was like celebrated. Maybe didn’t do, didn’t get as much attention as it deserved, but like, I certainly remember Chris Schilling and Jen going to bat for it on. If anything, I’ll have their votes. That’s what counts ultimately. Yeah, so a good, good, good choice. Yeah, I struggle with this category too, I was looking at so many short narrative games, you know, yeah, yeah, sort of like inside style games, you know, or like walking simulators and because I thought I do play short games on Game Pass, that’s the thing, that is like probably the main thing I play. So yeah, kind of a tough one, but yeah, good choice Matthew. So we come to my final pick, right? Oh boy, I’ve been going around the houses on this. I’ve scored 90 plus on Metacritic, and my thinking has come down to, can I solve a problem of accessibility for people where they might not want to spend a load of money on the hardware needed to play it? Don’t worry, it’s not Steel Battalion. Hey, if you go Steel Battalion, I swear to God. So I’m going to go with Half-Life Alex for this category. It scored 93 on Metacritic, very acclaimed VR game, considered the best VR game made by Valve. I have not played it, but I think a lot of people, particularly console owners who would have played the Orange Box, would be looking at this wanting to play it. And if I can solve the input issue for people where all you have to do is pay for the Game Pass service thing, and you get to play this sort after dazzling VR game, then I think that’s a good choice. I was looking at Graphical Heft, but I kind of like the fact that my console is quite big on nostalgia. It kind of sums up my ethos a bit of what I consider valuable nostalgia. And I can’t be bothered to fight like a graphics war because it’s a bit too hard to do that with some of these categories. So I kind of like the balance of things I’ve got really. So yeah, Half Life Alex, Matthew, what do you think about that? So are you suggesting that by subscribing to your Game Pass, they somehow get a complete virtual reality system? They have some means of accessing it, yes. I don’t know how we solve that, but I mean, the Kid Icarus thing is a similar issue, albeit without a headset. I think what we need to like, what we need to lay out is that by subscribing to this, you aren’t getting a hundreds, many hundreds of pounds worth. It’s not like you get a Game Pass and a VR system, which like, it can be used for Half Life Alex. Uh, yes, yes. That’s the way it has to be. Because otherwise we’d go down the realms of like, well I’ll buy it just to get the VR headset. Yeah, exactly. And we already did that with a Steel Battalion controller. I mean, that’s fine, because it’s not used for anything but Steel Battalion. But a really expensive Valve headset is a really like, valuable 3B. Yeah, I agree. So let’s just say, I can’t be bothered to figure out the specifics, but you get this Game Pass thingy and you can play Half Life Alex in its full, like, intended form. That’s it. But after you’ve played it, the whole thing dissolves or something. I don’t know. It’s a bit like when we used to review 3DS stuff, we used to get 3DS review units. I think DS as well, they came in like a metal clamp, which had the game cart. It was like a sort of like 3DS sort of chastity belt. It kind of locked the game cart in the slot so you couldn’t get it out and you couldn’t put anything else in there. So it was like a 3DS that only played Kid Icarus, Uprising or whatever. It reminds me as well of the… do you remember when EA used to send out review codes, they would expire after release for some reason. They’d be like, oh yeah, this code… maybe this didn’t happen on console, but it happened on PC where you’d get code for Star Wars Battlefront 2 and they’d be like, oh yeah, this code expires in 5 or 6 days. And it’s like, don’t you want me to keep covering your game after this? That makes no sense at all. When I get my Steam message saying X game has been removed from your library and it’s something you reviewed, especially if you didn’t love it, you sometimes think… I imagine they did this with every copy, but what if they just did it because they didn’t like my review and were like, fuck you? So that’s all 10 categories accounted for in The Game Pass Competitor Draft, Matthew. Shall we recap? Yeah, let’s do it. Okay, for category 1, cult favourite, I’ve got Snatcher. I’ve got 4-2-8, should be a Scramble. Category 2, licensed game, I’ve got Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2, Rogue Leader. I’ve got Spider-Man. For category 3, game with all expansions included, slash ongoing MMO, I’ve got Final Fantasy 14 and Realm Reborn. And I’ve got The Sims 4. Category 4, scored 90 plus on Metacritic, I’ve got Half-Life Alex. I’ve got Breath of the Wild. Category 5, never re-released, I’ve got Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7. I’ve got Kid Icarus Uprising. Category 6, short game, I’ve got Sonic Mania. I’ve got Sayonara Wild Hearts. Category 7, game that isn’t out yet, I’ve got Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild 2, or the sequel. I’ve got GTA 6. Category 8, lost game, I’ve got Silent Hills. I’ve got Project Ragtag, the Amy Hennig Star Wars game. Category 9, an entire game series, I’ve got Zelda. I’ve got Mario. Category 10, the entire library of a single console, I’ve got the PS2, which includes God Hand. And I’ve got Xbox 360. Those are, that was a fun draft, those are some really like wild, strange picks. Like, imagine either of these services existing, just how preposterous each one is. They’re like, here are two dog’s dinners, enjoy. You’re like, I mean, there’s a lot of good stuff in here, but there’s really no shape to any of this. It’s utterly incoherent. Interesting. Yeah, so, yeah, it’s just weird thinking that people can play, you know, hurdy-gurdy on my heart with my Game Pass, but then also play like, you know, Rule of Rose or something. Just very strange. So, okay, good. The people can vote on that back page pod, pinned tweets, you’re picking out, select which line up sounds the best to you. And yeah, go ahead, try not to take my lack of competence on the never re-release category into account. And remember that mine’s got Breath of the Wild too. So Matthew, should we take a quick break and then come back with some bullshit categories? Okay, welcome back to the podcast. So we have some fun bullshit to see out the episode. Got some good categories here. They’re just gonna give some branding and shape to how the launch goes of these Game Pass competitors from Big Sammy Holdings and Matthew Castle Productions. So let’s start with, what’s the name of your Game Pass competitor, Matthew? I was trying to think of famous things from pop culture that are like, this gives you access to something really exciting, like the key to the city or whatever. Now I thought of like, obviously the classic, the defining most desirable prize in all of pop culture is the golden ticket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So mine is called the golden ticket. Is there like you dressed as Willy Wonka on there or, you know, is there any- There might be someone dressed as Willy Wonka, but maybe we’ll get to that. So you’re not gonna make yourself the mascot for this one, like you did with your Disaster C3 conference. I plan to be present in some unusual ways, but not necessarily- I can think of better face for it. What about you? What are you gonna call yours? Mine’s called Big Sammy’s Big Arcade. So yeah, but they’re, you know, arguably sillier, but that’s what we went with. So yes, Big Sammy’s Big Arcade. Look forward to that. Okay, next category Matthew, the subscription comes with one other real life benefit. What is it? So I had to ask about this, like how ridiculous can you- Cause I was thinking like in terms of like what I’d want, like how like magic can you go? I would say it’s got to be like at least reasonable. I did, but just to give you an idea of my thinking, I’ve got two boxes here, one marked actual and the other marked joke. I kind of like had two preps depending on how you did it. But yeah, what have you got? Originally I wrote eternal life. I don’t think that’s in the spirit of the thing. I think that might be a bit much. Yeah. A free Xbox 360 game and eternal life. I can’t believe it. I’m playing a fusion frenzy 2 and I’m going to live forever. This is amazing. Eternal life. I thought you were going to say, oh, when it comes with Netflix or something, not like eternal life. Well, that’s magic, like how big can your thinking go? Right. Because you want a lot of time to play it. A backup, and this is so less sexy compared to eternal life, was that you get a monthly bag of Pick-A-Mix with it. Because Pick-A-Mix is like the sweet equivalent of Game Pass, right? Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I mean, you can argue that Revols are, but then no, because Pick-A-Mix changes over time, whereas Revols always changes. And also Revols are like Garcy. Revols are like the equivalent of the Nintendo Switch Online emulation library, basically. So it basically stays the same. Yeah, okay, good. So my one here is the, we’ll send one facsimile of an old games mag to your house of your choice every month. But you get that if you sign up to Big Sammy’s, Big Arcade’s, Big Platinum Tier. So that’s the bracket for that one. But look at you, you’re already gouging people on extra bullshit. I offered everyone eternal life as a baseline. Yeah. So yeah, if you want a copy of like, official PlayStation mag to arrive, like one month, sounds good. And then Matthew will just send you some cola bottles and black jacks. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, a huge variety there was floral gum, strawberry laces. It’ll be like high tier, no bullshit. I won’t be filling out the bag with the heavy sweets to try and like make it easy. It won’t be like chocolate covered Brazil nuts. I like a good gummy snake, personally, but yeah, well, yeah, that’ll be in there. We’ve gone from Eternal Life to Pick and Mix. I know it’s a drop. That’s why I shouldn’t have said Eternal Life first. I should have just gone in with Pick and Mix because that’s actually, that’s fun. Like you can get Pick and Mix on like delivery and things. People obviously desire it. So my joke answer, which wasn’t funny enough to use because it was just, it was stupid, it was that wherever you are in the world, at whatever time, whatever country you’re in, you get 30% off Parma Ham, like whichever, whichever supermarket you’re in. But like it just, when I read it back, I was like, what the fuck is that? Is that, that’s not really comedy, is it? That needs punching up some more. That’s just something you want. Yeah. Yeah. I think I just wanted Parma Ham and I read that down. So I did, I did think about like a food, like a, oh, you get a JC but a discount, I’d want the whole thing free. That’s a perk. Yeah. I would also say that J.C.’s kitchen discount isn’t much good if he’s not dependably there each day. It’s not like you can, you can’t reliably use that bone, that benefit, you know what I mean? The amount of money we’re talking about to set these services up. I imagine you could put a bit of that money aside to like make sure JC is there. Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, it would involve, you’d have to like acquire J.C.’s kitchen. Yeah, more like Microsoft style, like we’ve paid 7.2 billion pounds for J.C.’s kitchen. Gamesindustry.biz has to report on it. Big Sammy Holdings has bought J.C.’s kitchen in order to guarantee that J.C.’s kitchen discount is past his platinum tier of his big games of gate. Yeah, employees are reportedly very excited about the transition in management. Because you already, on current Game Pass, you get a discount, like if you buy a game that is on Game Pass, you get a discount. But I do like the idea of Microsoft saying, like, if you get Game Pass, you get 30% off Halo Infinity, also Parma Ham. Yeah, Parma Ham is very specific as well. There would also be a vegetarian option for people who want such things. But we’re going to go with the old games magazine of your choice. That is much better than a Parma Ham discount. Yeah, it’s arguably maybe a bit unfair on the pick and mix because it’s probably worth more in value. But nonetheless, these aren’t the categories you’re meant to be basing your vote on, so it’s fine. So one celebrity will be the face of your Game Pass competitor, Matthew. Who is it? I want a celebrity who captures the versatility and breadth of the library. So at first I was thinking like an impressionist, who is basically like a thousand celebrities in one. But I thought no. Oh wow, John Colshaw is the face of your own. No you see, that’s what old Matthew Castle Productions would have done. They’re like 80s cassettes, Matthew Castle. New Matthew Castle Productions has got its act together and isn’t going to make mistakes like Rory Brenner is going to be its celebrity face. I thought which actor fully transforms a true chameleon who is multiple genres at once? The face of my golden ticket is Daniel Day-Lewis. I thought you were going to say Peter Sellers, as you brought him back from the dead or something. A hologram of Peter Sellers. Okay, yeah, Daniel Day-Lewis. Wow, that is bold. Just what kind of mode is he in while promoting this? Is he in Phantom Thread mode? Different adverts. It’s different famous characters. It’s like Bill the Butcher shouting at you about Xbox 360 and then it’s like the very uptight dude from Phantom Thread is like big into Shibuya Scramble and then Plainview. They’re all classic. They’re all really memorable characters. There’s just like so much to unpack there. I like the idea of like that he has to reenact characters in order to sell a Game Pass competitor. Of him going along with that, that’s top. I like that. Yeah, very good. Also, like, it’s, he’s retired. So to get him out of retirement, everyone, you know, that creates a bit of industry buzz. Everyone’s like, Daniel Day-Lewis has come out of retirement to be the face of this video game thing. So that gets you, like, talked about in The Guardian as well. That’s it. Well, there you go. So Alastair McGowan, no, but Daniel Day-Lewis, yes. Very good. Yeah. Please don’t compare the two. I really struggle with this one, actually, even though it was a category I suggested, which is classic, really. I went with Evan Peters, Matthew. What? You only ever play like creepy serial killers? No, he does. He’s a nice guy. He’s like a nice guy in What’s It? Mayor of Easttown. He’s sort of sad, though. Yeah, and he gets shot in the head. Spoiler alert, actually. It doesn’t end well for him. Yeah, but you know, he is a very good charismatic actor. He’s an X-Men. He’s not a serial killer. He’s Quicksilver. Isn’t he? He’s an American horror show person. Yeah, he is. He’s also going to play Jeffrey Dahmer in an upcoming mini series. Oh, there we go. Great. I mean, by all means have the face of Jeffrey Dahmer as your game pass celebrity. Look, this guy is versatile too, okay? He’s a nice, happy face, a credible actor. A bit more youthful energy than Daniel Day-Lewis, which is admittedly a classy pick. But again, kind of a weird one for selling a service that’s got like Double Fine’s Sesame Street Connect game on it. You know what I mean? But what can you do? Imagine Sesame Street being roared at you by Daniel Plainview. Okay, great. I would also question… He’s versatile, but it’s not like he’s been in like a Will Ferrell comedy. I don’t know if he has like a super fun side, you know? We’ll find out. I’m scrutinizing this too much. Let’s move on. Okay, it’s E3 2022. You have to announce your Game Pass competitor with a bang. How does it go down? Basically, I hijack the Xbox conference. So, conference lights go out. We hear a winch powering up. And the opening bars of Randy Newman’s You’ve Got a Friend in Me, he begins to descend from the ceiling in the supercar that he descended from the ceiling at my conference, with Daniel Day-Lewis also in the car, like roaring out the window about the breadth of my library. It’s classic. It’s classic Matthew Castle Productions. I see, yeah. Okay, good stuff. So, my one, you know, Hideo Kojima comes on stage straight away, declares that Snatcher is back, and also Silent Hills is back, and the whole world’s like, oh my god, note that Matthew forgot to talk about any games at his. That’s… Daniel Day-Lewis is shouting them. Okay, fair enough, yeah. Out the car, over the Randy Newman. What’s that angry man saying? Yep, and then so, yep, Shinji Mikami comes on stage, declares that God Hand is back, everyone in the audience gets like, underneath their chairs, gets like a year’s worth of Big Sammies, Big Arcades, Big Platinum tier, to go away and enjoy. It’s out today, go enjoy it. And because some of my like, sort of corporate espionage agents had like, have been tampering with your vehicle, it ends with you crashing through the stage and your Porsche because you couldn’t break properly and you crashed into like the venue of the conference. So it ends with Matthew Castle lurching on stage in a Porsche basically. That’s kind of how it goes down. Well that’s alright because that’s valuable stage time for me to shout about the benefits of the golden ticket. Yeah, I mean there are several casualties but we try and we use a lot. Well that’s alright. I don’t care, anything to get my message out. Okay great, well there you go, that’s that one. There’s one final category here Matthew, after one year your subscribers will receive something fun in the post to thank them for their support. What is it? It’s me thanking them for their support. What like, you arrive in the post for every single subscriber? So you get shipped all over the world basically? Yes. Okay. Well imagine that though, you’re like, oh my god, it’s Matthew Castle from Matthew, like if Miyamoto turned up and was like thank you for playing Zelda you’d be over the moon. I thought I had a memory of like doing this category like and actually writing it down but I seem to have just written three letters which is REB, I’ve just written R-E-B and I don’t know what that refers to. So I think what we’re going to do is we’re going to send you, we’re going to send you a Steel Battalion controller, that’s what we’re going to do. Yeah, that’s what you get after you. You won’t be able to play it of course because we don’t have that on our service but you’ll be able to sell it on eBay and so that’ll be good. Absolutely preposterous. I would rather get me in the post than just a giant controller. I’d be very anxious about you arriving. Well people wouldn’t know that I was going to. Well they would because after the first one it would get out wouldn’t it? The president of this games company just arrived at my house in a box. It may happen to you. That’ll be on Reddit day one my friend. I jump out the box. The first thing I say is don’t tweet about this. By seeing me you acknowledge that you’ve adhered to an embargo. I rise out of the box holding an NDA that I have to sign. Oh very good. An NDA in one hand and that month’s delivery of pick and mix in the other. Oh so good. I’m so glad I asked these questions. And they’re like, wait, there only seems to be half the pick and mix in this bag. No there isn’t. It’s all in now, I swear. Oh dear. That’s so good. I’ll be surprised if you don’t win now off the back of that. That was fantastic. Yeah. Okay, good. So vote a Back Page pod on the best Game Pass competitor, the Golden Ticket or Big Sammy’s Big Arcade. Your branding is definitely a lot more coherent across your company. Yeah. I think you freaked out too much about being seen as a funny duddy, so you’ve removed your own name from all this stuff. But I am still a key part of it. Don’t forget, I am mailing myself around the world to millions of people. That is true. Are you on stage at the E3 conference, by the way, or has that been revised this year? Is it like Daniel Day-Lewis and then you’re off to the right in your armchair, like last time? Well, I don’t know. Well, according to you, I’m crashing through your stage at the same time. But yours is in the morning, mine’s in the evening, so it’s like later on in the day, basically. Maybe I’m in the back of the car. I mean, I’d be happy just hanging out with Daniel and Randy. In the back of the car? I thought you meant in the booths. That’s what Daniel Day-Lewis is saying. He’s in the booth. Ready to be delivered to our subscribers. Well, they wouldn’t know. That’s a surprise, remember? Oh, yeah, that’s true. I would stick my head out of the booth and I’ll be like, and something special will happen in a year. Like quite a biblical proclamation. In one year’s time, from one year hence, something astonishing will happen in your house. But no one can actually hear you because you’ve got a mouthful of pick and mix while you’re talking. Okay, that was really good. We’ve got two quick questions to see us out here. So as I mentioned, we’ve started a Discord where you can drop questions in, but you can also send us emails at backpagegames.gmail.com. We’re now getting quite a lot of questions, so I’m trying to get through them in a more regular pace. We’ll start with this one, Matthew. Hi, guys. Just wanted to say thanks for the podcast you guys have put out over the last year in a bit. I was a big fan of Matthew’s Rotating Platform Podcast and the Seminole Chet and John’s a few years back, and this seems like a meeting of those two worlds, and I love it. You have the knack of making something I’ve never been bothered about sound interesting. For example, I barely touched the Halo series when your show came out last year, but following that episode played the entire series from Combat Evolved to Infinite and had one of the best gaming months of my life. Absolutely fell in love with the series. I wouldn’t have bothered had you not recorded that show last year, so thanks for that. Thank you. We do take responsibility for the quality of Halo. That’s entirely on us. Over the course of the last year, Samuel has alluded to the fact that he’s a Comic Books fan for a few times, and I just wondered if there’s anything he’s reading at the moment that he would recommend, or if he has any all-time favourite series. Personally, Sandman, Preacher, Why the Last Man, and Scott Snyder’s run on the new 52 Batman book are some of my all-timers. Cheers both. Looking forward to whatever you talk about next. That was Alex D via email. Thank you very much. And yes, Sam, tell us of your comic books. Alex D, the main character of Deus Ex Invisible War. Very good. So yes, this is a bit self-serving putting this in. If you don’t give a shit about comic books, just go forward about 30 seconds or so. It’s funny because Matthew, on the Halo front, right, I don’t think I like Halo Infinite’s campaign at all. Oh, interesting. I was quite shocked by this, playing it. It feels really disjointed and quite, like, unexciting. And, like, I’m pretty deep into it now, and I’m not very impressed. It’s like, that’s sort of tallies with what you were saying, right? I think there’s a stretch of it I did enjoy in the middle, as I said in that episode, but, yeah, it didn’t quite do it for me. Yeah, a bit incoherent as an open world game as well. Like, a few too many kind of like tunnels, like, making it not properly open world. You kind of want to sort of, like, soar over hills sometimes, but you realize it’s so rigidly designed that you can’t actually do that. And it’s kind of like a bit too limited as an open world game. But, biased by the by. And comic books, yes. God, there’s loads I like. Lately, I’ve been getting big into DC Comics’ Black Label label, which is Black Label label. That’s a dumb way of putting it. It’s like an imprint, basically, where they do these kind of like one-off stories from, like, usually prestigious creators. They do them with quite fancy paper, and they put them out in these lovely hardcovers. So, of those, I’ve enjoyed Wonder Woman Dead Earth by Daniel Warren Johnson. That’s a really good post-apocalyptic book, probably the best Wonder Woman book I’ve ever read, honestly. I quite like Batman Damned, but the one I really liked was Strange Adventures, which takes the 50s pulpy sci-fi hero Adam Strange, kind of like a spaceman from Earth, or John Carter-y character, and basically turns him into, like, kind of someone who’s celebrated as a hero in the modern age, who’s actually committed genocide on this planet years ago, and it’s kind of like a reckoning with the sort of tropes of that colonial kind of fiction, which is really, really good, really interesting. I’m a big Batman guy, generally. Every year Matthew asks me, what’s a good Batman graphic novel I can get for my dad? And I’m like, buy this one. And that’s largely how that goes, isn’t it, Matthew? Yeah, pretty much. But you’ve yet to have any complaints, so… Yeah, so you’ve got some of my old timers there. I love Miracle Man by Alan Moore, V for Vendetta, of course. All the books you mentioned are extremely good. In terms of Marvel stuff, I was big on Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers run, kind of like epic sci-fi story, very dense for a comic book, but I think that kind of makes it feel maybe a touch more credible as a kind of comic book storyline. A lot of these kind of storylines are just quite rinse and repeat with the Avengers, and I get massively into them, but this was just like a multiverse-spanning epic sci-fi story with real stakes, and it went on for several years, and I found that really exciting to follow. And when he finished it with Secret Wars, which is like the cap off to that whole run, I stopped reading Marvel books completely because it felt like the finale of the Marvel Universe to me. It was like… Wow. It basically ends with Reed Richards rebuilding the Marvel Universe and healing Doctor Doom’s facial scarring, so he looks like a… He basically doesn’t have the deformed villain trope anymore, and can kind of like heal mentally, and I thought that was like a beautiful way to end the Marvel Universe, and I thought, well, okay, we’re done then. That’s good. So I stopped reading them after that. But yes, there’s a bit of a ramble, but those are my kind of like main superhero things that I’ve been reading lately. I’ve been reading Zenith by Grant Morrison as well, a 2000 AD book. That’s an old favourite too. So yeah, a bit of a long-winded answer there, Matthew. So, okay, this one’s from Seriphanox on Discord in the hashtag pod questions text channel. Going to charge in here and get the first question, thanks for the Discord. You mentioned Fire Emblem Awakening on the 3DS podcast with Screb, but just wanted to ask what your history or impression with the series as a whole is. I remember 90 scores in NGC as such for the GBA games. The Gamecube one made the top 20, and then the series sort of fell off a cliff for a while. The game seemed liked and considered good, but never seemed to garner the same affection that Advance Wars did in magazine circles. Wondering where you stand on the series historically, and in the present with Three Houses being a well loved game. This is a good one for you I think Matthew. I definitely came to the series quite late. I reviewed the Wii one, I want to say Radiant Dawn, and played whichever the Gamecube one was before that in the run up. I don’t really remember it dropping off a cliff kind of critically, more like just not a lot happened with it between then and Awakening, which we’ve definitely talked about this on the podcast before, but they talked about it as if this is our like last hurrah. So internally for whatever reason I think they’d reached a place where they were like, you know, Fire Emblem gets one last shot. I mean that tells you like where it was at for those sort of 10 years leading up to it. And then obviously they revamp it, spice it up, and it becomes the modern popular Fire Emblem. I like them, they’re not games like I’ve spent like hundreds and hundreds of hours, you know, I’ve not completely like lost myself in them, you know, I’ve got a relatively casual relationship with Fire Emblem. I only played a little bit of the Switch one, haven’t even played it through, which isn’t like a sign of like it not being good or anything, just more a case of time. And it’s like forever on my to-do list. Yeah, I, it’s a series I want to like dig into more, potentially do a Fire Emblem episode down the line, but it would require a lot of research on my part, because I’m not quite there with it. I’m more of an admirer from afar. But yeah, as for the Advance Wars thing, hard to say. I mean, they’re very different games. I much prefer Fire Emblem to Advance Wars, because even though Advance Wars is a really stripped down version of like a real-time strategy or turn-based strategy, but it’s got like base building and the like, and even that is too much micromanaging for me. I like in Fire Emblem that you have these parts on the board and you can kind of deal with them, and that’s the situation. It’s about managing that, the kind of how much each scenario can change and evolve in Fire Emblem. That’s in Advance Wars is like too much strategy for me. So maybe I’m not the best person to say why that is more popular than the other. Yeah, I think that like there’s a natural sort of ceiling on sort of how interesting Advance Wars can get. I even think that they wrestled with this themselves with like some of the tonal changes they made in that last DS one. And so maybe they kind of maybe there is a limit to how much you can do with that. Whereas it feels like people’s relationship with Fire Emblem has changed a bit. And it’s kind of like a bit of a sort of like pick your anime waifu game and then follow that path and developing relationships and stuff. Yeah, I think they’ve I think they’ve lent more into that. I’m definitely the most recent one is like big, big into that. Like most of the stuff you hear about Three Houses is more the relationship and kind of thirst over various characters rather than, oh, this is such a deep sort of strategic game where, you know, what I like is that it does have that side of it, but it all kind of connects and ties into benefits on the battlefield. It’s like the two halves of the game. They weren’t even really halves, I’d say, but the battle system and the kind of social system were really brilliantly intertwined. And now maybe it’s a bit more half half and that speaks a bit more to what people like. You know, I guess it kind of ticks a similar box as like a persona. I guess it’s sort of the vibe from the recent ones. Yeah, for sure. I think like, like you say, 2023 onwards, maybe whenever there’s a new Fire Emblem, we’ll just do an episode then and get an expert in to join us and talk through the series a little bit. Yeah, it’s definitely on my, you know, I want to dig into this and kind of have a better grasp of it. I had enough of a grasp to cover it for in-gamer basically. Well, that makes sense. Well, that’s it, Matthew. We’re done. So thank you very much for listening. If you’d like to leave us a review on the platform of your choice, we’d much appreciate it. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever. You can follow this podcast, The Back Page Pod, on Twitter. Like I say, backpagegames.gmail.com is the email address. Matthew, where can people get you on social media? MrBazzill underscore pesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts and we’ll be back next week with an episode about Uncharted games. Wonderful. Goodbye. Goodbye.