Hello, and welcome to The Back Page of Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. How’s it going, Matthew? It’s a sunny Sunday morning. I’m just installing Sunset Overdrive onto my Steam Deck to continue my life pursuing that sort of like hobby. How’s your morning been so far? I’ve just been looking at scans of 90s games magazines. So, you know, just as everyone dreams of doing on a Sunday morning. Yeah, it’s good. I watched Prey last night. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is like the one good movie that’s coming out, that’s come out on streaming services seemingly ever, you know? Yeah, it’s good. Yeah, it’s a shame it’s not in the cinemas. You know, fills the screen with good action. Looks like a proper film. Doesn’t have that weird veneer of streaming movie that, well, certainly a lot of the Netflix things have. Yeah, like legitimately good, you know, definitely the second best Predator film. Yeah, I mean, not hard, obviously. No, that isn’t much of an endorsement. You’re not a big Predator 2 guy with the sweaty Danny Glover and Gary Busey wearing a bandana. That’s not, okay, yeah, fair. That’s… And the last one, The Predator. Oh, it was diabolical. Absolutely awful. Yeah, I was like, I thought that combination seemed like it should work, Shane Black and… Isn’t Shane Black literally one of the stars of the original Predator as well? It felt like it had been really chopped and changed. There’s this whole strand through it where they keep talking about, there’s a weapon that will kill the Predator that’s in this kind of coffin-shaped box. And you spend the whole film going, well, this is obviously gonna be Arnie, but Arnie is gonna come out of this box. And that was definitely what they had intended for it. But obviously Arnie couldn’t do it, or there was some rights thing or whatever. And they open it up and it’s just, I think it’s just a suit of armor or a gun. It’s just awful. It’s such a, oh, terror. One of the worst reveals ever in a film is what’s in the box in The Predator. Yeah. I was a big fan of Dan Trachtenberg’s Cloverfield film where it’s just escalating sort of like John Goodman sort of mania essentially, which is what that film is. And then at the end there’s some aliens maybe. I just found it just muddled and kind of boring. But his Black Mirror episode, I think he did the one with the video games. That was obviously really good. The White Russell one. So that dude’s got some chips. He’s the pilot for the boys as well. Oh really? Well, there you go. He’s obviously very accomplished. So yeah, I’m gonna watch that after this. And the CG intro to Warframe. Hey, that’s a beloved game. I think he made it because he was a big fan. Probably a truckload of money taken to his house too. But you know. He was a huge fan. Cause I met him at TennoCon and we talked about it and we interviewed him for it there. And he was like super, super into Warframe. And I only had like a passing knowledge of Warframe and felt kind of schooled talking to him. But at that time, he was still directing The Uncharted film. Oh yeah, yeah. And the mad thing was we were actually on the same small flight out of the local airport, cause it was in Canada. And yeah, I ended up talking to him at the airport for like 40 minutes, just casually. Just about like games and films and shit. And him and his producer friend were like sitting behind us on the plane talking about the Uncharted film. Oh shit. And then obviously the film they did make was diabolically bad, so. Awful. Yeah, what a shame. Damn, that would have been a good, but then this never happens, does it? These, you know, you hear these dream lineups of adaptations of video games, and it ends up being the worst possible combination of people. Yeah, I don’t think anyone could have made Mark Wahlberg work. And he was always like the constant with that film. I think he was always gonna be involved in some capacity. Yeah, great news for everyone. I’m sure he was very invested in playing the character of Victor Sullivan. I’m sure he was really gonna bring him to life. Yeah, I’m not a fan of Mark Wahlberg, I must say. But I will watch prey after this podcast, Matthew. And this podcast is a mailbag combined with a quiz. I think our first quiz, Matthew? I think it is, right? We haven’t done this before. Well, if we’re ignoring my amazing Xenoblade crafting ingredient or 90s drug slang. Yeah, plus actually there was, I think it was the PS2 draft where I did that obscure PS2 games quiz for you. Oh yeah, that’s right. That was quite fun too. And I think you got one of them correct out of the whole table. Will this quiz be the one to raise a bigger reaction than just a shrug from our answers? We shall see. Yeah, because this is one that, as I was digging into the research for it, so it’s the 90s games magazine quiz and me and Matthew are essentially gonna read out a quote from a review or a preview or something from the time. And the other person has to guess which game is being referred to in the text. So the bits and pieces I’ve taken here actually only come from like three issues of two different magazines. So if this sticks, Matthew, this could potentially run a run. There’s a lot of mileage here, I think. So let’s see how it goes. But yeah, so picking quotes out from 90s games mags and turning it into a fun quiz. How did you find this process, Matthew? Was it harder or easier than you thought it would be? Harder actually, like weirdly, if you go back to 90s mags, they’re obviously like very like personality driven. But a lot of them, the actual game chat isn’t particularly strong. Like what’s good about it is the characterful like banter and all the weirdness of the writers. But some of these reviews, like early games master, if you ever go back to that, like these reviews can be like 80% just bullshit banter from the writer. And then it’s like, oh yeah, it’s a platformer, it’s got 16 levels and I thought the graphics were nice. And you’re like, well, that doesn’t really tell us anything. Yeah, it’s kind of, but even in this period, you can see the shift from, there’s like a lot of that. Like early 90s is particularly kind of like a lot sort of sillier and off the wall. And then I think by the time you get to like late 90s, like N64 magazine, they strike the balance better. Like it’s still very personality driven, but I think some of the writing about the games is like a lot more on point. So yeah, trying to kind of pick out things that kind of talked about games in an interesting way without giving up the game is kind of hard. Well, I’ve also like, I’ve got like a redacted when I mentioned the name of the game in one of the articles. Yeah, yeah, I’ve done that too, yeah. It was harder than I thought, but it took me about an hour of research to put together, which is not too bad, but like it’s longer than I thought it would take just because- It took me about five hours. Whoa, what, for 10 questions? Yeah, because I had stuff in mind, but I kept going to it and being like, oh, this is actually like, it’s not interesting as a quiz question and the review isn’t as interesting as I remember because of this slightly less colorful games writing. Five hours is probably overstating it. I hope so. I was trying to mix it up a bit as well. I was really worried because you normally, whenever we prep anything, you always prep it so much better than me. So I kind of freaked out and thought, oh, I’ve got to really find a great cross-selection of stuff. That’s just not true though. Like I sometimes think you just overestimate the amount of effort I put into my plans for these episodes. Sometimes they’re just written in 20 minutes, like the episode. Oh, you’re much more naturally cleverer than I am then. I just know what I like, Matthew, that’s all. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. So yeah, it’s not all of them are like hilarious or anything, like a few of them are. But some of them are just like, can you guess the game from the description and stuff like that? Some exist just to show how preposterously personality-driven 90s games mag writing was, as in you could waffle on, let you say, for half the article before the in-joke is over and the preview can begin. It feels like the game mags would like swing harder the other way at a certain point. Maybe by the time we were running mags, I felt like that in-jokey stuff had taken a proper backseat, particularly, I suppose, after you move on from the sort of 360 era and there are fewer mags. And I don’t know, everything was about trying to be more accessible than speaking to the same people, I guess. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong with that, but it feels like the kind of capacity for in-jokes here is just infinite. We will just allow it to take over the entire article if we wish. And I’m not down on it, and this is the period that made me fall in love with games magazines, but yeah. And also some of it just hasn’t aged well. Yeah, I’ve got one. There’s some pretty raw stuff in Games Master where you’re like, oh man, we were obnoxious in the 90s. Yeah, it was not a progressive time in a lot of ways. There is one of mine where I debated not reading out and cutting out entirely. I think it does fit the context of the game it discusses, but uses one word over and over again that is definitely offensive. And so I have to agree. I hope it’s like a horrible racial slur. No, it’s not quite as bad as that, but it’s like, it still makes me uncomfortable for sure. Let’s see what you think. Maybe we have to even cut out the episode, Matthew, and no one will ever hear my one. But I will say in praise of these mags, first of all, we’re not saying who wrote these articles because I think that everyone who wrote them deserves the right to be forgotten because no one thought an age of Twitter or podcast was even coming. They were living in the time they were in, fired it into the abyss and thought, well, that’s out, just move on to the next one. And so I would hate it if someone did this quiz with my writing and put my name on it. So I’m not doing that with any of these. These are just like the quotes by themselves from the pieces. I’ve named the mags. Yeah, I’ve only taken them from two mags actually. So it’s pretty straightforward. Like it’s play and PC Gamer I’ve taken them from. Oh, okay. Whereas you took some N64 and Games Master, I assume? N64, Games Master and Edge. Oh, nice. Okay, cool. So yeah, we’ve got 10 questions each here. Take it in turns and then we’ll total it up at the end. See who wins and you at home can play along. So I hope you enjoy this. Do you wanna read out the first one, Matthew? Yeah, okay. So I will say, I’ve edited some of these to remove like things which absolutely give the game away. So that’s a caveat. So first of all, the best game ever? Possibly. But then it’s so far ahead of everything that comparisons seem meaningless. You have never played anything like this. And only when you do so will you understand just what all the fuss is about. So buy it, play it, revel in it, dream in it, rejoice at the luck of being born in the right time to experience it. Well, it sounds like it’s got to be Crash Bandicoot, Matthew. It’s Crash Bandicoot 10 in Edge. So I think it’s got to be either Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time. Like that just seems like the right one to me. So I’ll take a punt on Ocarina of Time. Ah, a good guess, but it was Mario 64 from N64. Fuck, well, okay. Well, there you go. I didn’t read N64 as much as you, so yeah. Began the trend of, particularly in the N64, like lineage coming into that on NGamer. There’s this sense of, there are a few biggies that these reviews are kind of like legendary. And if you get them, you’re kind of, you know, you’re not just reviewing Mario Galaxy. You’re trying to write a Mario, a 3D Mario review that’s as good as the, you know, Super Mario 64 review or the Mario Sunshine review. It was super high pressure. Yeah. What did, a complete side note, what did NGC give for Super Mario Sunshine? Did they rate it at the time? It was high. Okay. I think it must have been like 95 or something. Oh, there you go. Well, I thought people hated that one. So isn’t that review considered a bit… No, people loved it at the time. Okay, I’m just trolling actually. I’m not even being insightful here. So let’s move on to my first one. Okay, so what’s the game? I feel sick right down in the pit of my burning nausea stomach. I feel an urge to let loose a torrent of bile powerful enough to rip through even the sturdiest of lavatory pants. You know Redacted, right? That wholesome company responsible for Redacted. Well, they’ve gone and produced probably one of the sickest out and out violent games this journalist has ever witnessed. So a lot of like pant shitting. I mean, every sort of like slightly scary game got the old soiling your pants jokes and then it just like… Whoever played Resident Evil and actually shit themselves. You need help if that happens. Yeah. Is that your guess, Resident Evil, Matthew? Unless it’s sickeningly violent, like it can’t be comedy violence. You know, like violence, I sort of think in this era, like Mortal Kombat and Carmageddon, but I don’t, it’s got to be more grody than that. I feel sick right down in the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach. I feel an uncontrollable urge to let loose a torrent of bile powerful enough to rip through even the sturdiest of lavatory pants. The idea that it comes from someone who hadn’t made something soft like this before. That is so difficult. I actually, I have no idea. Listen, I’m going to say Resident Evil. I know it isn’t that because Capcom don’t have this like cutesy soft touch appeal. What are we talking about? It is Resident Evil. I think the writers are just way off on Capcom and this game generally. That’s such a bad, like Capcom have not got a soft. Street Fire is not soft, right, by the 90s comparison. So yeah, it’s a poor comparison. Unless like some of their like cartoony, like they did those Disney ports. Maybe people are thinking about like they made one. I don’t know. I’d still say it’s like core gaming. Yeah, I don’t really get that one. What a dummy. But I did see it. Basically my brain scanned all of these PDFs and then saw lavatory prance and then it was like Deckard zooming in in Blade Runner just like zoom in closer, closer, closer and then this was the quote I took out. So, yeah. So, alright. One nil to you, Matthew. What’s the second one? This is the closest the Saturn has come to reproducing the magic that is Super Mario 64 and that’s the last we’ll say of it. Except of course that this one has buns. Err, I mean guns. Oh jeez. Mario 64 with guns on the Saturn? Was that a thing that happened? Except this one has buns. Err, I mean guns. God, I’ve no idea. Because you said Mario 64, I thought, well, Knights is the only real notable platformer on there but it’s not a 3D platformer. Well, you know, it looks 3D but it’s 2D. I can give you, I’ve got multiple quotes on this review so I can give you some of the ones but they do, they give it away quite quickly. Err, have you got a, okay, what, basically, let’s say I’m spending one Professor Leighton Hint coin, what have you got for me? Sega might already have a mascot, but perhaps the prickly blue guy’s days are numbered. Give me a mascot that can kick, box, shoot, perform gymnastic feats as well as having a fit body any day. God, I just don’t know that much about the Saturn. Huge game that you probably don’t associate with the Saturn. Oh, is it Tomb Raider? Yeah. Right, right, right, right, yeah, okay, cool, yeah. People must have reviewed it first on, did it come out on Saturn just before PlayStation? I think it did, yeah, or at least around the same time, so, yeah, that’s, okay, good. I’m pleased I was able to figure that out from your clues there, so, okay, that’s good. Every line of this review had a reference to her being a babe. Like, it was so horny. The first, this is really funny, Matthew. You know how, like, last week we talked about how the unholiest of light is when you’ve got all your lights off except for you, light from the monitor emanating. So, when I was scrolling through some PDFs, I did find that fucking advert of Lara Croft lying on the beach topless and, like, that was the only light lighting up my flat. And I thought, this is the saddest shit ever that I’m doing this right now. The sight of that image reflected in your eyes. Yeah, it was a low point for my Saturday, I’ll be honest. All right, so the next one, this is not funny, by the way, this one. This is just like trying to guess the game from the context, I guess. Yeah. Ironically, it harks back to that first classic adventure in some of the ancient locations used with the ruined temples and the like, creating a spookier atmosphere than the rather too bright second game. Even Antarctica is pretty chilling, brackets well obviously, thanks to some inspiration by John Carpenter’s The Thing. Despite a host of subtle improvements, there are no dramatic alterations to the classic gameplay formula. Is this Tomb Raider II? It’s Tomb Raider III, I’m afraid. The rather too bright second game, that was the hint that it was the third one. Oh right, sorry, oh yeah. No worries. The next name was also she’s a babe. The review wasn’t actually too bad for that. Which I was surprised by. Maybe they just thought it was a bit tired by that point. Where was that from? That was from Play Magazine. They were just like 70s games, that and Revelations and Chronicles was it? Yeah, that’s right. There was like four they did in total, that’s a lot of games. And then it all crashes and burns with Angel of Darkness of course on PS2. So yeah, okay, well it’s one all Matthew after two, so why don’t you read out your third one? This one might be a bit too difficult, I don’t know, it’s a bit vague. Everyone’s always claiming that their game is the very first to offer this or that new feature. After a long while, the claims can evoke, can just evoke a long yawn. But no one, not even the Pope, can deny that this is the best graphics you’ve ever seen in a console game. That is vague. I will say 1994. Oh jeez, 1994, this is before I really understand games and come online and essentially understand them in any meaningful way. 1994. And it comes to Games Master. This is Games Master, yeah. I basically picked this out because this was someone having their mind blown by, I would say a SNES game of like, I’ve never seen anything like it. And they were like, the whole review is gushing like this. Super Mario World a bit earlier than that. Also, that game doesn’t look that amazing. God, I’m going to take a punt on Super Metroid. It’s Donkey Kong Country. Oh, right. Oh, that does make sense, I suppose. One of the captions, this is how like deranged and horny Games Master was. One of the captions has got a picture of the female monkey character, Candy Kong. And it says, this is Candy Kong. And I’m embarrassed to admit that yes, she is fit. This little horny man is like, homina homina homina, like anything. I’m sort of, I like, I, you know, there are some things from 90s gamespags I love, but the hornyness, I’m so fucking glad it’s gone, because it was really cringe. It’s just Diddy Kong with boobs. Yeah. It’s really not sexy. Yeah. How like, how lonely were you at the time to find this? Oh dear. Maybe the guy’s wife had just left him or something, I don’t know. But, okay. Yeah, Donkey Kong Country, it’s one of those things as well. I think people liked those visuals at the time, but over time people have kind of sort of pushed back on them a bit because they don’t, it may be like nice sprite art holds up slightly better than that, whatever they did, the 3D models on the 2D background thing. Okay, still, that’s, that was, it was worth it for the extra note there, Matthew. Okay. A redacted game wouldn’t be a redacted game without his repertoire of gags and celebrity impressions. So this game has them crammed to bursting point. There will be over 1000 of them, so prepare to laugh yourself silly, or not as the case may be. This lovable lizard keeps getting better. Oh, this is Gex. Yes, but can you name the Gex? Uh, oh, they all had like, they were all like riffs on film titles. Was it like, something like Gex, like Enter the Lizard? It wasn’t that one. I’m gonna give you the point anyway, because, you know, you got Gex, but it was deep cover Gecko actually. So yeah, very good. Man, someone really liked Gex. Oh, I can’t wait to read you the next one, because it’s so shit. What’s your fourth one? In blandly comparative terms, this is fundamentally a first person shooter, an offshoot of the Seminole Quake and id’s Adopt an Engine scheme. But whereas in recent times id has been content to push the technology benchmark, these developers have concentrated on bench pressing the gameplay. In doing so, it has chased away the reek of stale genre with innovation and a sense of pure drama. Is this a game I like? Yeah. I wouldn’t be Jedi Knight, would it? Nope. I wouldn’t be like one of the Hexen games, like Heretic or something? This is Edge calling it a big step forward for the genre. Oh, it’s not GoldenEye? No. Oh, it’s not Half-Life? Yeah, Half-Life. Oh, okay. Well, there you go. I don’t get a point for that one because it’s my third attempt, but okay, good, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, interesting going back to see Edge reviews for seminal titles to see if they identified it as such. Yeah, of course, because when you look back at yourself, you don’t, well, I suppose it depends on your level of expertise, but I don’t necessarily contextualize Half-Life versus Quake. Do you know what I mean? I kind of see it as a completely separate track, but I suppose at the time you would, wouldn’t you? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Oh, very good. Okay, this one is just a caveat here that it is very embarrassing. So, number four, you want cars with tires so gripped they could have been sponsored by Superglue, or how about insanely quick big wheeled racers with low slung suspension and high G-forces enabling them to hug tunnel walls and ceilings? Do you want something more robust, a sporty model that’s made to last? Oh, suits you, sir. Step inside and see our full range of indestructible cars. Do you have a lady friend, sir? Does she go like the clappers, like one of our latest models that flips upside down and just keeps wanting more? That’s the first paragraph to a very interminable review. Oh, a car game where you can drive on walls and it’s got monster cars? What the hell is this? I think this one’s quite easy, actually. Oh my god. The only thing I can think of is that kind of cartoony destruction PlayStation racing game but I can’t remember what the fuck it’s called. Twisted Metal? Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking of. Stop that. Oh, okay. They made a spiritual successor to it about three or four years ago. Burnout? No, no, I’ll tell you. It’s a roll cage. Was that an N64 roll cage? I don’t know if they ever made it. I’m not too familiar with it. Yeah, it’s kind of like very wipeout-y but you can sort of go from the ceilings and stuff. Opening a review with an extended far show wrist. Oh god, yeah. That is powerfully 90s. They’re really embarrassing as well. I think just as someone who didn’t have that love for the far show, I was just a bit like… At the time, people must have been like, oh mate, you really nailed it. Oh, ledge. Yeah, for sure. So when I saw that, I was like, yeah, this has to go in because it’s the most 90s thing I’ve ever seen. What’s your fifth one, Matthew? The developer keeps bleating on about pumping realism into a genre gone stale, but it’s ended up with a backward-looking virtual reality environment that plays like a stroll in the country. Then there’s the extended, disembodied arm. It’s almost worth buying the game solely for the purpose of having a good ol chuckle at it. Well, I think this might be Trespasser, Jurassic Park. I did really hope that’s what it was in the first one. Bingo! 54% in Games Master. Wonderful. A draft-winning classic there. Okay, this one might be too hard, actually, but I did think it summed up the time period quite well. The Ultimate Beastie Boy is back in the house and ready to moonwalk all over the ass of any unscrupulous foe, stupid enough to gatecrash his party. Ultimate Beastie Boy. Well, that makes it sound like he’s gonna be some kind of monster, like a werewolf. Kind of along the right lines, sort of. Ultimate Beastie Boy. It’s more obvious than you think it is. Is this a Crash Bandicoot? Yes. It’s Crash 3 Warped. That’s the strap line. I did wonder if you could get it from Ultimate Beastie Boy, so yeah. Very good. He had so much 90s toad. Yeah, he did. This was the first Crash game that gave the Play Classic award, Matthew. I was there thinking, what else were people playing on PlayStation before this, if not Crash Bandicoot 1 and 2, but hey ho. So what’s your fifth one? Shhh. If you don’t make a sound, maybe the skinless baby will go away. Then again, pop that little mutant full of lead. You’ll often end up with the things chewing at your knees as if they were burgers. What the fuck is that? Err, skinless baby? Is this a game I’ve played? Skinless baby? A baby with no skin? Night… I mean, that’s how they’ve described this nightmare creature. Oh, it’s not, erm, they’re not talking about Andros Trueform in Star Fox. Lylat was, weren’t they? Because that would be a weird description for a monkey brain or whatever it is. Give me a clue. I’ll have a clue. PlayStation Horror. Okay. Skinless baby. Oh, it’s not, erm, Resident Evil 3. More abstract monster design than that. Silent Hill? Yeah. Okay, right. First Silent Hill I’m not as familiar with, so, erm, spoiler alert. That’s, er, that’s fine. Meat, yeah. I just, it continues the trend of, like, meat monster, you know. Meat monster. Okay, well, you’re definitely well ahead here, Matthew. I’ve lost count, actually, but you’re definitely ahead, so, erm… Oh, some of mine are really shitty. Are we having the old, regretting the bit in the middle of the bit on the podcast? Oh, no, my next one’s, like, next to impossible. I just, the quote, the quote in the score really made me laugh. Okay, yeah, so, erm, here’s the next one from me, number six. It’s time to open up a can of Whoopass. It might not be quite be in Duke Nukem’s League when it comes to drop-dead one-liners, but Bruce Willis, the follicly challenged Hollywood action hero, is the ideal candidate to slip on a sweat-soaked digital vest and take on an army of bad guys. Well, this has to be Die Hard Trilogy. Incorrect, it’s Apocalypse, remember, by Activision. That’s good, that’s, you know, I did put that one in there to try and catch you out. I walked right into that one. Yeah, I tried to catch you out there, a little bit. So, what’s your next one Matthew? Oh, this one’s super hard, and I’ve actually got 11 in case this one’s bullshit. No, I’ve got a bullshit one too, so it’s okay. The game plays very much the same as before, but it looks a lot smoother and faster, and the courses are as packed with imagination as my sandwiches are with lunch and meat, which is a lot of imagination, or lunch and meat, depending on how you look at it. The game is uplifting, a joy, just look at that score, which is 97%. That’s as high as I’ve ever gone. Codemasters are giving me a lot of money for this. No, just kidding, I was. Don’t look at me like that. Oh dear. Okay, so Codemasters probably means it’s like Tokka Racing or Colin McRae. Am I in the right ballpark there? Early 90s. Oh, early 90s. I have no idea what this is then. This is unbelievably Micro Machines 2. Oh, of course. Yeah, that makes more sense. That classic. They got 97 in Games Master. 97%. I mean, those were good games, but they were like, you know, good for the time rather than… So, the funniest thing about this is in that same issue, Doom 2, which the review is like, this is going to be like a seminal, you know, vital game for this genre, gets a 96. And it’s clear that this prick has just scored Micro Machines 1 higher to try and like after him. Because there’s like a second opinion where the guy’s like, this is crazy. There’s no way this is a 97. Like, I have no idea why we’re giving this this score. Like, it’s fine. Yeah, it’s so fucking hard to like, protect your scoring system from being broken by assholes. That’s like such a hard thing to do as an editor. Imagine joking now that you’ve taken a bung for a high score. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, simpler times. For sure. Yeah, yeah. Better times, quote, unquote, no. Not necessarily. Okay, this one is also impossible. This one’s more impossible than yours. This is actually bullshit, Matthew. But I had to read it out because… I’m going to tell you straight up, first of all, it’s a late 90s military shooter on PC. Okay. Just to try and narrow it down for you. Like Victorian girls in Jane Austen novels, games must, when they reach a suitable age, make their grand entrance into the world that is society. They dress up in all their 3D FX finery, pitch their cheeks rosy with the squeezing fingers of hard programming, and wear their tumbling locks of gameplay in wild ringlets in an attempt to impress the long-coated gentleman of the industry. Debutants’ appearances are often preempted by rumours of their beauty, but occasionally a member of one of the powerful families manages to do a Cinderella and steal the hearts of all present. That is the quote. I mean, this metaphor goes on for the entire preview, and it’s like, it is cringe, but it’s actually quite funny to read. Like, I can see why at the time it was like totally fine. Yeah. But yeah, it’s very cringe now, of course. So any guesses, Matthew? I think this is too hard to guess off the back of that. It’s probably too late, but Project IGI? No, you’re kind of in a similar ballpark. It’s Hidden and Dangerous on PC. Yeah. So sorry about that. That was bullshit. So yeah. But yeah, some of the previews for the front end of PC Gamer around this time were out there. What’s the next one, Matthew? If you thought Resident Evil 2 was tense, you better book yourself in for heart treatment now because this game makes the mighty REZ seem like kid stuff. Then it describes some story stuff that gives it away. Combine that with the gas-filled corridors where you’re racing against the clock to reach a safe zone and it’ll take more than those merry souls at a whole B-City to stitch your nerves back together. Well, this wouldn’t be Silent Hill again, would it? That would make no sense. Gas-filled and a horror game. It’s a tense game. Tense game. I don’t know if I even remember any games in the 90s that we had to run through the corridors of gas. I must admit, it’s a set piece that didn’t jump out at me when talking about this game. The bit I cut, 100% did. It’s not Metal Gear Solid? Good. I was quite proud of myself there for taking it. Yeah. It’s fun going back, seeing someone’s first encounter with this and seeing what they like honing on and what they talk about, because there’s no cliches at this point with Metal Gear Solid. Yeah. It’s really pure. I also like the fact they refer to Rezzy as Rez. That is, no one calls Rezzy Rez. Yeah. It’s R-E, or it’s Rezzy. It’s not Rez. It sounds like this person didn’t know what they were talking about more generally, but it’s all good. Well, I want to say it was. Yeah. Protecting the innocent, Matthew. Well, not innocent. Protecting the guilty. Literally. Okay. My eighth one. Far away over the sun-kissed undulating sea is a tiny island. Watch this space, says a grinning Peter Molyneux. The island emerges from the horizon, rapidly growing larger until it fills the screen. On a cliff lies a forest, complete with individual branches and a thousand shadows. We zoom over that, barely pausing to admire the tidy people scurrying on the outskirts before we swoop up a valley. At the far end, the river fades away and the hills blend into a plain. A village, complete with huts, temples, obelisks and a hundred little people, litters the plain. I mean, it sounds like Black and White. Correct. Oh, right. It must have been a preview, right? Yeah, because the game, I assume it wasn’t like this when it came out, or it was quite different or whatever, but I don’t know. I mean, that sounds like Black and White. I was thinking more like I associate with that, with noughties rather than nineties. Yeah, yeah. Well, at this point, it was scheduled to come out in late 1999, but didn’t it come out in 2001 in the end, I think. It was something like that, wasn’t it? So yeah. But I kind of wanted to put that in there, because I think a preview with Peter Molyneux showing off something really ambitious is quite a good time capsule. I may have seen an advert for that issue of PC Gamer in Games Master, because there was an advert for an issue which just had Peter Molyneux dressed up as a wizard, and it said like, he’s left Bullfrog, we reveal what Molyneux does next. Right, right. Yes, the court of public opinion did eventually turn, of course. Yes. Okay, so what’s your ninth one, Matthew? As a piece of narrative, however, it lacks the focal character with the sheer charisma and presence of Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth. Similarly, its many revelations and plot twists are sometimes badly scripted. Having not been suitably manipulated and prepared, it’s hard not to greet such Luke, I am your father moments with anything but indifference. Oh, it has to be Final Fantasy VIII. Has to be. Yeah, that’s Final Fantasy VIII in Edge. That sounds like some bad… I mean, you know, with bad plot twists and, you know, Luke, I am your father moments, it’s gotta be Final Fantasy VIII. Yeah. There’s a really big end to this review as well, which I’ll read to you. Ascetically astonishing, rarely less than compelling, and near peerless in its scope and execution, fans of the series will embrace this emphatically. Edge has long pondered the validity of the video gamer’s art, and this is probably the strongest argument for the case to date. What even, despite the Luke, I am your father moments and bad writing, bad twist. Yeah. What did I give it? Or a nine? Sorry, no, it must have been a nine. A nine. Yeah. A nine. Yeah. Funny, because, I mean, I love Final Fantasy VIII, but I’m quite surprised they were into it, just because what I would later associate with Edge, I suppose. So I think they gave Final Fantasy X a six, for example, which is, you know, maybe that’s because it was a certain era of Edge, you know, the early naughties era. But certainly don’t… It just seemed like it was a bit too juvenile to impress them, do you know what I mean, Final Fantasy VIII. So I’m kind of surprised. Yeah. There is actually something a little bit more wide-eyed about Edge in… It’s certainly in the issues I was looking at for this, in this 90s period. Like, you know, while they are strict with the old ten, they give a lot of nines and eights. You know, I’m not saying they were softer mad, but they’re, you know, and maybe they’re writing at a time where there’s so much revolution happening in terms of design that it’s like a… This is just a big period for big edge scores. Yeah, yeah. Besides, Final Fantasy VIII was a nine. I’d go to bat for that game any day, that game fucking rules. Yeah. The way they talk about… There’s a lot of stuff in that review about the, like, the divide between the, you know, gameplay and these amazing cutscenes that Final Fantasy had become famous for. And it was really sort of celebrating, like, gameplay sections that attempted to do more cinematic things that would normally be consigned to a cutscene. Yeah, like, when you’d have basically, like, a vibrating Squall, like, render pasted onto a CG background of, like, soldiers fighting in the background when, like, the garden’s invaded. And it looks… When you look at it now, it does look a bit rough, but at the time, maybe that did seem mind-blowing because they were trying to blend those two things together. Yeah, they were talking about having a fight hanging from a rope. Yeah, that’s right. That’s the end of, I think, this, too. Galbadia garden and… The two gardens go to war, essentially, and all those kids are fighting each other. It’s rad, that bit. It’s really good. Oh, well. Oh, that’s what Edge… Edge didn’t say rad, but they could make it. That wouldn’t be very Edge. That wouldn’t be in the Edge style guide, would it? Yeah, that’s a good little time capsule there, Matthew. Thank you for the extra context. Right. This is the one where I have to issue caveats. There is a word in this one repeatedly that is essentially like a double-zohobophobic slur. I’m not endorsing any use of the word, of course, but I did want to quote it as… It’s a word with two meanings, but the slur is mostly what it’s known for now. With that caveat out of the way, I do think this was the best paragraph for you to guess what the game is. Redacted is full of poncers, nonsers too, and slags, and filth, but mostly poncers. Poncers who are, by and large, in need of a slap. Poncers tooled up to nick some other poncers’ motor who have just blown up a couple of ponies on skirt, and a monkey on billy. Like English gangster-y stuff. Is this GTA London? Yes, correct. Yes. Yeah, I think we can keep that in. I think it’s fine. I know the word is, obviously I would never use the word, but like, it’s… Oh yeah, I thought it was going to be something, not saying that it’s nice, I thought it was going to be something like much more shocking and harder than that. Yeah, I just, I thought it was worth keeping because I just thought it’s proper, like, shout on a turtle, Austin Powers, Fatherland. And that is, I mean, that is what London is, I like. The other thing is, Matthew, is that like, I forgot just how many fucking Austin Powers references were everywhere in like the late 90s, so going through these bags, the amount of like, do a Mickey Horny baby, Groovy Bear, like all that shit, and like, obviously when you’re talking about GTA London, those references are going to come up because the game came out around the same time that that was happening and, you know, it was inevitable. It had the fucking Austin Powers car in it, GTA London, so yeah. I’m glad you were able to get that. A monkey on Billy, what the fuck does that mean? Like, that’s like, yeah, that’s incomprehensible. But if we come to your final one, right Matthew, or you’ve got a spare one too, but go ahead. The only blots on an otherwise flawless landscape are the occasionally ponderous bouts of texts which resonate with saccharine-rich Americanism that sometimes impose an undesirable element of linearity on the open structure. So an open game, American sort of like setting slash vibes, but forced into linear something or other. That’s fucking hard. It’s not something like Interstate, one of those games, is it? No, this is a biggie. Is it a game I like? Yeah, I think so. It’s a game you’ve already mentioned. On this podcast? I’ve got no idea, Matthew. This is the single criticism from Edges Ocarina of Time review. That’s so baffling to understand what the game is from that. The Americanism thing has completely confused me. That’s a very British perspective that is. Did that ever rankle with you when you played Ocarina of Time? I feel like I never noticed that. It felt like someone’s scrabbling for a criticism. Yeah, such as it is. My last one, Matthew. There’s not much to go on here, but I will give you the score to give you an extra clue. Shamefully appalling non-game, novelty odium with guns. I became sick to the soul and gave up 8 percent. I’m going to give you a clue because I think this is hard. It’s a game I have joked about being remastered at least once on this podcast. That may not narrow it down, actually. Does that mean it’s a PlayStation game? It’s multi-format, but probably primarily known for PC and N64. Yeah, that has a PC review sound. Yeah, it’s a PC game. South Park? Correct. 8 percent seems harsh. It’s a bad game, but it wasn’t that bad. Yeah, 8 is really harsh, isn’t it? I think that was positively reviewed in N64. It was another acclaimed game, right? So was it made in the Turok engine? Yeah, it’s just got the Turok fog everywhere. Yeah, but the criticism they used actually was really interesting, which is they started with saying, do you know how many levels, sorry, how many enemies are in the first level of Quake? It’s 15. Do you know how many enemies are in the first level of South Park? 255 or something. And they’re making the point that it was just not designed properly. It was just stuff thrown together. And compared to the elegant shooter design of Id, it was just like complete crap in terms of level design. But this was a game made for 10-year-old boys to laugh at piss snowballs being lobbed at each other in SplitSquid on the 64. That’s what was happening in GameSpot. That’s my last one, Matthew. You got one bonus one there? Yeah, my bonus one… not particularly funny, but I just picked out. Unlike previous games, it’s clear that the dinosaurs, not the humans, are the stars of the show. The most prominent character is the fearsome T-Rex. Taking the role of Mr X from Resident Evil 2, this monster reappears throughout the game, raising the difficulty and adrenaline levels substantially. Well, this has to be Dino Crisis. It is. A glowing review from Edge. Wow, Dino Crisis is legit, so I think just because McCarmy said, just make it like Resident Evil when they did. Yeah, okay, cool. Well, I think that was fun. Did you have fun? I enjoyed that. Yeah, I mean, I certainly had fun going back through these issues and sort of wincing at stuff. Oh, there’s so many anti-French jokes in Games Master. Yeah, there was anti-French jokes in Play 2. Really odd. Yeah. There’s like big Jeremy Clarkson energy to a lot of this, and this stuff was just thrown around a lot more. The human was just a lot more coarse. The today seems so gentle and self-right comparison. People have no idea. You just wouldn’t do it anymore, you know? But also just, I don’t get the impulse to do it either. Like, I’ve never, ever had a problem with the French, and I think British people are far more odious and awful than any other citizens of any country I’ve ever been to. So, you know what I mean? Games Master’s Tomb Raider review. Half of it is about how attractive he finds Lara Croft. The other half is about how much he likes killing the human enemies, because they’re French. Jesus. This is just, this is not good. No, no, that’s not. Like, I was, years ago at Future, I was very briefly involved with an idea for a project to kind of create like an online digital library of like every magazine, games magazine ever, right, like that you’d subscribe to, like a Netflix. Yeah. And at the time I was like, oh yeah, people would love going back to this stuff. That would be so good. But actually, when you flick through some of it now, you’re like, there is no way you could put this up in this day and age and not get absolutely destroyed for it. That is like one way in which I think probably edges to the test time better because the mags didn’t really have that sort of attitude to them, that tone to them. So maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think they did. The other funny thing is seeing pockets of what’s relevant at any given time. So like the frame of reference, like everyone keeps referring to like any sports game, there’s a period in Games Master where there’s loads of references or comparisons to like Brian Lara cricket. Right. And like, I’m not saying that’s a bad game, like it’s a beloved game, but it’s not talked about now, and just to see something that was so clearly like at the sort of forefront of people’s minds then, but not now is kind of funny. You’re like, oh yeah, like we do have, you know, I imagine with Al Max we’ll go back and be like, well, that game is just forgotten, but it seemed big, or it seemed like a touch, an important touchstone at the time. Yeah, for sure. It’s yeah, that is that is funny. Brian Lara cricket. Yeah. It’s like, I always think I know quite a lot about late 90s games stuff that I kind of go back and I do feel like I Oh, actually, I only really know half the story because I wasn’t paying attention to any racing or sports games. And those games were just so so massive at the time. Yeah, forces and they are now so yeah, but I enjoyed this anyway, like a by and large, I was reading PC Gamer, I was just really impressed by the writing, looking back on it and playing play was a bit more vanilla bit, bit blander, but the occasional slight bit against the French aside, it was fine. It was probably the same writer. It was probably the guy who worked for gaming sports to freelancing. That’s how a lot of this works. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, PC Gamer were excellent in the 90s. I was really thinking, oh yeah, this is why I fell in love with it, because they were just so committed to these funny jokes, but there were more adult jokes than you would find in some of the other mags. They’re just a bit more of an adult sense of humor because they were selling it to dads, you know. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, the tone or shifts between the mags were so much starker back then, you know. Like it was such a big industry, you could target completely different people, rather than a lot of mags kind of, as over the years, definitely in my period, was honing in on this is sort of the acceptable mag voice, or the desired mag voice, I guess. There’s probably as much in common with PC Gamer then and PC Gamer now as there is between PC Gamer then and Rock Paper Shotgun, what that would become, just because you see more of the in-jokey stuff, sort of that more emerges in Rock Paper Shotgun. You do get that in PC Gamer, like obviously I was there when the whole bathtub Geralt meme happened, which then got appeared in the actual Witcher TV show. So big was that meme. We did have those in-jokes, but we have a website that’s got like an American team who have no kind of real heritage of the UK version, because they had their own mag. And it’s a massive website made for loads and a general audience. The tone just, you cannot put that tone online and it work, but you do miss it when you see it again. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Okay. Well, enough pontificating. That was fun, Matthew. You won the quiz. I hope the listeners enjoyed that. Let us know what you think on social media or Discord if you enjoyed that or not, because we could actually do this again pretty easily. Well, it would take Matthew five hours, but theoretically. No, I know what I’m looking for now. Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. That was good. Did you enjoy yourself, Matthew? Yeah, I did. Yeah. All right, then. On to the questions then, Matthew. Should we take a quick break and then come back with the questions? Yeah. Let’s do it. Welcome back to the podcast. So, it’s a mailbag, more of the listeners’ questions to go through. People seem to enjoy these because they pull the subjects in different directions and you get to hear us being a bit more off the cuff and relaxed rather than being like here’s how the combat system works in Xenoblade Chronicles or something like that, which is very valuable podcast content, but it’s nice to have a bit of a mix. They like it because it’s all about them. Exactly, narcissists. Do you want to read out the first one, Matthew? I recently went back to an XCOM save game I started in September 2020. What’s the longest you’ve paused a game then went back to? That’s from Gildia 44. I think this for me would technically be Dragon Age Inquisition because I started this in 2014, still have a save file but I go back to a noodle away every now and then, even though I remember almost nothing about the story. In fact, I’ve completely forgotten the story. But the problem is I really love my main character in it, and I’m worried that if I start again, I’ll have to abandon him and I basically made Dragon Age David Bowie, and I was very happy with that. He’s blonde, very handsome man. I was like, he had the voice that was appropriate. I thought, okay, we’ll spot on this character. But to start again, I would have to lose him and create a slightly off-brand little version. But that counts, I think, because that is a safe game for 2014. But the choices in that game, they go all the way back to Dragon Age Origins from 2009, because obviously the whole Dragon Age Keep thing is that you import all of the choices you made from Dragon Age Origins and 2, and then you preload that into Inquisition in order to get the optimal experience. That at this point is a 13-year safe file, Matthew, technically. So that’s quite a good one. How about you? The start of 2021, I replayed the Fable games, and because of Xbox One sharing the ecosystem with the same ecosystem as the old Xbox, there is something magic about playing an old game now, and it finds and downloads your save from a decade ago. I had my Fable II hero from 2009 pop up, and it was a finished save file. I started another one. Yeah, just seeing my little bloke walk around and be like, oh yeah, I remember this guy. Very tall and slender. I almost stuck to using pistols in that game because that meant you didn’t put on muscle, which was if you used physical attacks, and you didn’t get magical runes on your body for using magical attacks. So I pretty much played exclusively with just a pistol so I could be really tall and skinny and not look all kind of magic and hench. But my face was all fucked up because there’s a bit in that game where one of the choices you can sort of save someone from this demonic council or sacrifice yourself. And if you sacrifice yourself, you get all aged and your eyes go all messed up and stuff. So he bears the physical scars of my kindness. Yeah, very good. I just on the Steam Deck episode mentioned my Metal Gear Solid save from seven years ago. I just picked that up again. That was cool. And at Christmas, I went back to my parents’ house, Matthew, and they still have my PS2 memory card from when I was a kid. So I booted up Silent Hill II and Final Fantasy X. And my Final Fantasy X save was literally from 2002. That’s when it started. So I still got that original save file, picked it up, had a few games of Blitzball, saved it. That’s pretty cool. I love that the memory card is like a living sort of symbol of this stuff, whereas I think all my 360 saves are trapped on the 360. Maybe there probably is a way to get them off of there onto my Xbox Series X, but I can’t be bothered. Didn’t you, like, after a while, Xbox has started uploading these things to the cloud. Yeah, they did, but maybe I just haven’t done the literal process of getting on there and uploading them. Like, I might just have to do that and maybe I can just send my Red Dead Redemption save forward in time. That would be good, wouldn’t it? Maybe I will do that. But that is kind of magic when you see a save from, like, you know, 10, 12 years ago without doing anything. Yeah, that is cool, yeah. My PS3 as well still has saves, going back to, like, 2007, 2008 and stuff on it. Your Final Fantasy save on PS2, do all the characters have just their normal character names or did you give them goofy names? Can you even do that in Final Fantasy X? Oh, it’s really funny you mention that. I was about to tell a story about a friend of mine. So I actually, like, did call Tidus Samuel, which is quite embarrassing. But you can’t actually name the other characters. You can’t call, like, Waka Dave or whatever. Like, it doesn’t do it because it’s got voice acting. But the whole thing is they never say Tidus’ name in it. They just say, let’s call him you or him. Like, it’s quite, actually quite elegantly done, I think. But the, yeah, the Samuel, regrettably, is the name of the Tidus in that save. I would never do that again. That was a very teenage thing to do. But this is really funny, Matthew. My friend, my friend Andrew, I hope you weren’t going to be telling this story, is that he has a Final Fantasy VII save from when he was, like, 10 years old or 9 years old. And all the characters are named after his junior school friends. And so, like, I think, like, Barrett is named, like, Daniel, because there was this kid called Daniel Ball who he was friends with. I think Tifa is called Dorsia, who is, like, another person he knows. And, like, it’s so funny because he can’t lose a save, because the save is he beat all of the weapons in the game on it. How’s Knights of the Round and, like, the Gulchakobo. Like, that was his save. But he is forever haunted by these names of people he hasn’t spoken to for, like, 20 years, essentially. And I find that so, so, so funny. Also the idea that… I also like the idea that you could experience a game with this other set of names that you don’t even associate it with their real names. So, like, when they show Final Fantasy VII Remake and Barrett comes on and you’re like, Ah, yes, Daniel. Also the idea of, like, Barrett, the character of Barrett being named after a weedy, nerdy white guy is really funny to me. Yeah, so every single character he had in there was named after them. I think he named, I assume he named Cloud Andrew, which is his name. Or maybe Cloud, yeah. So the idea of that makes me laugh. You have to hold on to it because too much effort has got into it at this point to give it up. What about you? Have you got any examples of that, Matthew, where you go back and you’re like, Oh, what was I thinking as a teenager or something? For some reason, and I don’t really know the origins of this, like, all of my characters in games, they were all called Silvio. Like, I thought that was just a really cool name for everyone. That’s really funny. So, like, all my links are called Silvio. Silvio’s Awakening. It’s not a Sopranos thing either. I just don’t know where it came from. Silvio. That’s really, yeah. Very, that’s really specific. Like, that’s good stuff. It tells me a lot about what was going through your brain once upon a time. OK, good. Well, I think Gildia 44 got way more value out of that than they could possibly have hoped for, so. You never know with these questions. Sometimes they sound juicy as hell, and then it’s just, like, RIVETA dry. And sometimes you’re like, oh, this is going to stink. And it just unlocks. Not that I thought that about that question. No. But it unlocks. You know, who knows what. Yeah. Shout out to the guy who emailed in about fanzines, by the way. We don’t know anything about fanzines. So we took your question out at the last minute. Apologies for that. But we wish you the best. I hope that helps. Okay. Next one. Hello, Massive Men. Samuel has often hinted at a wish to make a magazine called Millennial Retro Gamer, containing coverage of late 90s through to the early 2010s. My question to you both. If this happened, who would be your dream line-up, and what structural segments would make up said magazine? That’s G Jones, 86. I don’t want to do dream line-up, because it’s kind of like playing fantasy football with people I know. Just a bit too strange. So I just decided it would be me, Tony Ellis, the production editor on PC Gamer formerly. A giant budget and loads of freelancers. That’s probably what I’d do. As for the sections, I don’t know, actually. Maybe this exposes what a flawed magazine it is. I do like that Retro Gamer has a kind of news section, and it’s kind of related to news, news items related to Retro Gamer, which is obviously quite a lot. That might be more restrained with Millennial Retro Gamer, but you can definitely do that on this day, on this month in 2002, 2003, 2004 kind of thing. That would work. Would you review things again with hindsight? That’s not a bad idea. Like, re-review, but by its own sort of scale, essentially. So it’s like you have your own criteria that doesn’t mean you’re just going to give every game like a 40% or whatever. You’re going to give them like… Just really bomb everyone out. Yeah, you’re sort of like a standard test of time review score. That would work, I think. Would do that. Yeah, it would mostly just be features. The front end I would have to figure out, honestly. That would be tough. But the features would be a mix of making-ofs and revisiting and do stuff like rip all the pixel art out of different games or like 3D models and stuff like that and do analysis of different maps and things like there’s that awesome account VG Cartographer on Twitter. Probably ask that guy, can I have the complete map of Shadow Moses? That will just do some kind of annotated thing or another. I think what we’re exposing is I haven’t thought about it that much. Any thoughts, Matthew? One thing I really liked about Nintendo Gamer, I thought we did really well, is it had this huge directory. The directory was a considerable chunk of the end of the magazine and it covered every platform. But I really liked the idea of a really thorough thing which covers lots of individual platforms, which I think you’d need for this. It would have to cover all the consoles of the period. But also something we had in Nintendo Gamer was the idea that it was this evolving project and people could write in and pitch things for us to add to the directory or take out of the directory. So it was kind of like a what we felt at any given time. In Nintendo Gamer, the gimmick was, and this shows how limited I am in my imagination, a games court where people had to write in and appeal to the judge from Ace Attorney, who then decided whether or not he was going to add, you know, fucking plock or whatever into the Stairs Hall of Fame. But I kind of liked that idea of, here’s my favourite thing, I think it should go in. So it kind of reflected the kind of readership to the tune of two or three new games a month. Because directory pages, I think they’re really great. The first time you get them, fuck me, here’s a little bit of writing, about a thousand games, it’s crazy. But then they’re completely static and dead. So I like the idea of them shifting or something happening that kind of refreshes the directory every so often. Yeah, Play magazine used to have a playlist set at the back that was kind of similar. And it was a real bummer the time, I was working on the mag when we had to shrink down the PS2 one to like a hundred great games from the full catalogue. And the PS3 library, which was obviously nowhere near as good, had to take over instead. And it felt like a part of the mag had been ruined as a result of that. But yeah, you do like that. That big list of scores is like a useful resource. I mean, you know, just to get our own listeners, Matthew, trying to archive the stuff that we’re talking about. People do like to have these opinions in one place. I like the one-liners as well. I like the single line summary of the game. And sometimes it’s just a joke, and sometimes it’s like a legit defense. That stuff’s a lot of fun. He said in hindsight, at the time, huge pain in the ass to write. On NGamer, we made the problem of saying our directory was going to have every Wii game reviewed, which basically meant that every few months they had to completely physically redesign the directory to fit them all in. And Paul Tysol, our first art head on NGamer, and then Andy McGregor, I swear to God they must have spent half a week every month redesigning the directory just so we could cram in everything. Why did we do that? Just put a top 50 in. Who cares about the worst game on the Wii? No one cares. Yeah, we did the same thing. It was out of control, the number of PS2 games in there. We kept it in four pages. The entries kept getting physically smaller. That’s what I meant about it. It was madness. Yeah. Okay, well, there you go. I don’t think we’ve necessarily answered the question there, but we’ve certainly told you a bit more about making mags. Yeah, I don’t know. That would be the bulk of it, really. Two to three making-offs each month. I’d always try and get at least one interview with a Japanese developer alongside Western developers, just because I would like to have that as a signature of the magazine. You see stuff like Art Chappelle, that YouTube channel, and think, well, I would love to just have an interview with the art director of Final Fantasy XII or something. It would be a mix of stuff like that. I’m not expecting anyone to fund it, and yes, I would have to give it a different name of the millennial retro gamer. That was just a concept. Do you want to read the next one, Matthew? Hello, John Gents. Have either of you ever got it super wrong with a preview? Featured something and bigged it up, but it ended up as a limp noodle. That’s from Sam. There’s got two examples here. There was a preview I did at Gamescom of something, like an FTL style game called The Longest Journey Home or something like that. It was sort of FTL, but had loads of systems on top of it. And it did seem cool and sort of like a mix between FTL and Rimworld, but it was really complicated and so, so hard that when it came out, I felt a bit bad for bigging it up because I played it and didn’t really enjoy it. That was one. The other one, Matthew, is I felt like I got Mafia III wrong, which is I had no idea that game was going to be about 50 hours long with loads of different activities you would repeat over and over again. And I didn’t realize the PC performance would be quite rough with that game. And so when I previewed it on this pretty amazing trip in New Orleans, and I came back and thought, you know what, that game, like, if they get it right, it’s going to be like a GTA with immersive simi bits, because that’s kind of what they were talking about. Like there were different sort of tools you could use to lure out enemies and different ways to play. And I had this amazing kind of like music and the city did look amazing in it. Absolutely outrageous soundtrack. But it came out and just went to a thud, really. It wasn’t a very well liked game. I can’t say I disagree. So I think I got that wrong. I could have been more pessimistic there. How about you, Matthew? I saw good previews of that. Like good demos where like the vertical slice of that game is amazing. Yeah, yeah. Because it’s like the setting, the music. They show you like one of the few scripted story missions, maybe one of the little side tasks. And then it had like a like a moral sort of decision making consequence idea, wasn’t it? We had, didn’t you have like advisors? And if you sided with some, the others could turn against you and stuff. And if they kind of cut each of those things down to five minutes and cram them together in half an hour, you’re like, oh, this game is going to be amazing. But it didn’t include the hours and hours of like drudgery in between. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s it. Like that’s the thing is that there’s an art to making a great preview build. The one that really jumped out for me for this, which I was like really wide of the mark on, but also actually I didn’t write a preview, but I was a big cheerleader for this after seeing a demo at 2007 at the Leipzig Game Convention. So this is pre Gamescom in Cologne. I was absolutely blown away by the Alone in the Dark demo, the 360 PS3 Alone in the Dark, because it looked like it was going to be this incredible sort of survival horror immersive sin. That was the game where your inventory, you famously opened your coat and looked down and then you could like combine all these different bits of equipment. So you could make all these, not procedurally feeling, but like you could have a glow stick and hold it and that would just light up the room. But you also had sellotape, so you could cover the glow stick and sellotape and then stick it to the roof and stuff. And in the demo, that stuff seemed obviously so like in-world and cool. It felt very sort of cinematic. A little bit, I guess, like this is around a similar time. You had the kind of darkness that was treading that interesting kind of slightly immersive simmy feeling looking kind of thing. I was just really up for it and then it was absolute shit. I have no idea. They must have showed us the few minutes of it where it looked amazing. I have no idea what happened there. Yeah, it’s… Yeah, it’s that way. That game was like… I felt there was mega bucks behind that game and they were hyping it big time. And it did… Like it was on every cover, I remember. It just got like so much coverage and then yeah, it came out to a third. I heard they slightly improved the PS3 version of it, so it was a little bit better. But still not… To the tune of a 7 rather than like a 4 or a 5 or whatever. Yeah. So yeah, that’s a good one, Matthew. The game I mentioned, by the way, it was not Longest Journey Home. That was actually a… Long Journey Home I was thinking of was a game that Richard Cobb had worked on. The game I was talking about was Shortest Trip to Earth. That was the rough FTL like I was talking about. Any other examples, Matthew, that come to mind? Quick trip to the bargain bin. Any other examples come to mind for you? No, I usually get it pretty right. Yeah, I remember being quite cool on The Force Unleashed and I did a preview cover feature on that. I remember thinking, is it weird you got a cover feature? But yeah, you’ve got to be honest about it. I played it and I thought, you know what? This game isn’t quite as good as God of War or something like that. Or Jedi Academy, things like that. So yeah, generally speaking, I feel like I can call it. But yeah, sometimes the game really can put on a good show and then be hiding a load of garbage behind it. It can happen. Okay, next up. Hey guys, did you have any misconceptions about Games Mags that you didn’t realize until you’re working there, slash embarrassingly late? Whenever there was an editor comment like this, Ed in brackets, that’s really hard to explain what I mean. But old people in British Games Mags will get that. I always thought if it was some guy called Ed on staff who would annoyingly sign his name on any comment he made to feel important. I also thought it was the same Ed in different mags, like some guy called Ed who worked at Future had just a free rein over all the mags. Love the pod, keep it up, that’s from Jamie. Misconceptions, Matthew? The Ed thing, obviously I got the joke. I knew it was editor, but I must have, I think it took, I didn’t feel entirely comfortable adding them to my own stuff when I first started. Because I thought, oh, they genuinely are added by the editor. I think a lot of them are, but I think there is also the art of the self-Ed comment, where you’re like, oh, I’ve got a joke, I can land here if I use a fake Ed remark. But that’s the thing, there are real Ed remarks and fake ones. Yeah, I don’t think I ever did one myself. Like, I just maybe I didn’t feel like the… You’re too straight-shooting. Yeah, probably, that’s probably it. I’m just probably taking it too seriously. Well, I’m not the editor. I’ll do one in brackets that says staff writer. Misconceptions. I think I did think it would involve more playing of games than it actually did. That’s probably the big one. As a staff writer, you do play more games. As an editor, an editor-in-chief, you barely ever play games, work in games media. It’s all about making the machinery of the thing move forward, commissioning and editing and stuff like that. As he swans off to New Orleans to see Matthew III. That one was for me. I was going through a tough time. There are some fun pictures of me on boats there with JJ from GamesRadar. It definitely looks like something. Are you smiling or grimacing? I was having a great time. It was good. I was eating fried chicken and I was drinking cocktails that tasted like Tango but were actually incredibly lethal. I was having a great time. I think I thought it would be more fun than it was, I suppose. I think, oh yeah, that’s it. The tone of the mag, where they would sell it as this really fun, vibrant team, and you get there and people might be a bit surly or not talking to each other and stuff. You know what I mean? There’s a bit of that, I think, that goes into it. That’s what I was going to say. It’s more that a mag persona isn’t who a person is, and that seems mad saying it out loud, obviously, but in my head, I had a really clear idea of who Mark Green, Martin Kitts, Tim Weaver, Jez Gera. I felt like I really knew them, and I knew aspects of them from magazines, but working with them, obviously people are like, they’re a lot more sort of psychologically complex than they appear on the page. I think I was a bit shocked about a few bits of… there was a few bits of stuff where I assumed that because someone’s face was on it, like a particular joke or a thing, that they were behind it or endorsed it, which wasn’t the case. Right. Like I remember talking to Martin about Dr. Kitts in N64, being like, oh, it was so funny, I used to love your Dr. Kitts with those funny answers you used to write. And he was like, yeah, I didn’t really like that. And he was like, I didn’t really do any of that. I wasn’t really involved with that. I was like, oh, okay. Did you ever mention Dr. Kitts again after that, Matthew? No, maybe a couple of times. I mean, maybe I’m misquoting it there, but that was a bit of a… I remember that as an early wake-up call of like, oh, okay, maybe things aren’t quite as they seem in magazine land. And actually, when you’ve worked with Tim Weaver, he’s very good at like funneying up a magazine with that kind of stuff. And a lot of it is like even working on the mag, you know, like doing freelance for like Xbox World 360, you’d get a copy of that back and see that that, you know, sometimes like some of that layer had been added specifically by Tim. Right. Of like, here’s this kind of weird stuff. So like, yeah, who’s responsible for what was a bit of a mystery and a kind of misconception I had. And this is sort of similar to just what you were saying about like, you know, you go there and you realize actually is people working and how much stuff is kind of scraped together. Magazines present themselves as like all knowing and very confident, but some of it is really like by the skin of your teeth. And some of our previews were just cobbled together from like the weirdest sources of like, you know, Japanese websites translated and Google Translate. You know, we’d really had to piece some of it together. And, you know, maybe that was different in the older days where there was like a freer flow of like preview code and things like that. But yeah, kind of how in the know you necessary are isn’t, you know, you aren’t always as in the know as people assume. Yeah, there was other stuff to this too, like also not understanding just the disparity in access between different mags. So yeah, like the fact that, you know, when I joined Play Magazine, we, I did, I did interview Hideo Kojima, I mentioned it on that interview episodes, he got wrong and had to run out after 15 minutes because there was like, everything was running late and we went to leave for this flight. Then the flight was delayed, so I could have had more time with Kojima, but I had to run out on him, that sucked. I really hated that. That was the only time we ever got FaceTime with Kojima. And of course, Dan Dawkins came on here, Dan Dawkins and a rival mag, PSM, got to go to that bootcamp thing in Konami’s secret headquarters and spend days with Kojima and all that stuff. And Edge would interview Kojima when they did a Metal Gear Solid 4 cover, or so would APM. And we just, obviously Tim told the story of doing karaoke in front of Kojima. But theoretically, I was on a mag that should have had comparable access to them because we were selling similarly to PSM. But that’s not always the case. Some mags are just, for whatever reason, some mags get better access. Maybe it’s down to relationships. So maybe it’s down to something else. But you realize that this stuff is like, it’s massively variable. So when we did do a GTA IV cover feature, we did have some legit world of exclusive access. But then there would be a Metal Gear Solid 4 cover that didn’t have any access. And so that’s what I think you’re saying about how it’s much more thrown together because something falls through and stuff like that. So just because a game makes it onto the cover, it doesn’t mean they’ve necessarily got the best things they can get on that game. It might just be, we had to do something this month. But I can’t, now I can just see through any bit of magazine writing and I can tell exactly what they had based on how you start the piece. It’s kind of like, okay, if you’re already kind of killing time, filling time at the start, you’re like, okay, I know what the deal is here. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But if you have the goods, you get to run fast these days. Yeah, that is very, very true. So yeah, that’s kind of what you sort of pick up on. Yeah, it sort of debunks it. At first it’s a bit, I don’t know, maybe it’s a wall you have to push through and then you can start to enjoy it a little bit. I didn’t enjoy working on Play for the first couple of months. I almost quit when I first started because there was no team atmosphere. No one spoke to each other. One of the writers there was like not into it. And I just, I was on a desk by myself at the end of the row and it just, it was depressing. And I was like 18 and I thought, this kind of sucks actually. But then you realize some of the other teams were having a lot more fun and then you move around and then you realize you do find a team where you’ve got more of that sort of spirit in common and then that starts to manifest in the mag. And it can take a bit of patience, but you do get there and understand the relationship between the people who make the thing and the end product and how you can sort of bring that out of it. So yeah, that was a very rambly answer. Sorry about that, Matthew. No, I liked it. Okay, cool. So next one, do you want to read the next question? From the sublime to the ridiculous. Large lads, do you believe there are more fundamental crisp flavors yet to be discovered? What was the last fundamental flavor to be added to the pantheon? That’s from Zach Forrest. So funny thing here, Matthew. I’ve written notes for every single one of these answers. I didn’t leave any notes for that last answer, though. But for this one, I’ve written about three paragraphs. Go on, give me your crisp thoughts. I’m gonna do it quickly, because I don’t need to be as much detail as I’ve written here. I don’t need to be that granular. So I’m very, very wary of new crisp flavors, because 95% of the time, you open them, and it’s like someone’s just farted in a bag. Like that’s undoubtedly the smell and the taste. Like it’s just overly complicated, too much going on. I think that we should avoid as a species any breakfast rated crisps. They don’t work where it’s like cooked breakfast, and it’s just like, like I say, fart in a bag. I think lamb and mint is the last frontier of crisps. Has that not been done? I think it has, but then like, it gets taken off the shelves, basically. It’s like a temporary flavor, but that- Lamb and mint is the last frontier. I think it is. I don’t really know what else you can do with it. But otherwise, I personally just want to see more variants of smoky bacon. So if you go to our local Sainsbury’s, Matthew, they’ve got Piper’s crisps there, chorizo flavor. And that is like basically sort of the master sword version of smoky bacon. Like, it’s just like, you know- Is it noticeably different? Well, because it’s like slightly fancy crisps, they’re absolutely caked in flavor, just so much flavor. And then yeah, it’s a different version of smoky bacon. And just made me think that there must be a lot of latitudes to smoky bacon that is unexplored. If someone started selling just the flavor without the crisp, would you buy it and like take it? What, put it on my chips or something? Well, no, just like a little dab on your tongue, everyone’s gonna like snuff. No, that’s very cursed. Or just carry around crisp flavor in some kind of pot. Yeah, just a little dab, and you’ve got like a hit of like chorizo. And like snuff, you can put it up your nose as well. No, definitely not. I think that is a very cursed. I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened at some point in Britain, because this country is a bit cursed generally. But no, could be. Would you do that? No, like I will say, I like crisps. I’m not obsessed with them. Like you, I think you have deeper crisp thoughts than I do. Based on that last bit. The only thing I noted down is I wondered if you could have a crisp which maybe had the creaminess of like a cashew nut. Right. Yeah. Like nut flavoured crisps. Is this because you’re obsessed with cashew nuts at the moment? Well, yeah, this isn’t a bit. I’m not doing this just to get us back to the cashew nut thing. I genuinely think it’s a nice flavour and I can’t think of, you know, I was just trying to think of other, you can’t just put any flavour on a crisp. I think there are flavours, there are foods which are like crisp adjacent, which you are allowed to go into. Meats, for some reason, feel crisp adjacent. And nuts being like another bar snack. I just wondered if there was something there. There’s a bit of, yeah, it’s sort of like, I can imagine you coming up with your own line of snacks, which is nut flavoured crisps and crisp flavoured nuts. I can imagine you just selling those. There already are crisp flavoured nuts. If crisp flavours are like sweet chilli nuts, are they not the flavour of sweet chilli crisps? Sorry. I didn’t mean to go Oxford Union debate house on you. It tells me a lot about your uni days there. No, that’s good. The only other one I was gonna note, Matthew, is that I do miss the old Walker’s cheesy popcorn from the 90s. That’s pretty good. I used to quite like that. It maybe tastes slightly of sick, but just cheesy enough to win me over. A snack I love, which isn’t a crisp, but kind of looks like a crisp, were those things that Cadbury’s used to make. They were like chocolate Pringles. Oh yeah, those were good. Those are really good. They were like thins or snaps or something. What happened to those? I mean, I used to, in my peak sad lonely boy days, 2008, 2009, I could buy several packets of those at a weekend and just demolish the hazelnut ones because they were studded with different flavors. I think they were like mint and hazelnut ones. I could just eat packet after packet of hazelnut Pringles and I had the metabolism that that wouldn’t do any damage. It would kill me now. I do like the idea that this is somehow suggesting that since you met Catherine, you’ve been living a healthy life nonstop. You know what I mean? Well, the version of the life I live now is so much healthier than my old life to give you an indicator of, I mean, I was like a next level hog when I was like 22, 23. That’s a good, solid note to end on, I think. I will see if I can track down some kind of alternative to these things because I do miss the texture of them. They were pretty good. Okay, next question. You’ve had guests on who are writing books. So if you were both given the opportunity, what would your book be about? That’s from Daryl, who I believe is the same Daryl who I used to work with on TechRadar. Nice guy, and he’s written a Tomb Raider book. So Matthew, do you have an answer to this one? Specifically, like a non-fiction game book? Well, it doesn’t say that. So, truth be told, if I had the motivation to write the book, I’d write one of several murder mysteries that I’ve got in my head, but I am fortunately a lazy shit and forever just daydream about what it would be like to be at the Bath Festival talking about my book, which I’m very bad for. If it was a game book, again, on the murder mystery thing, I’d probably write a book about developers who’ve made murder mystery games. That would be the theme. So it would be like big, deep interview profile, like deep dives into like Chitokumi, Kazutaka Kadaka behind Danganronpa, Kataro Ichikoshi behind Zero Escape and probably Rika Suzuki, who is the writer at Sing on Hotel Dusk. Just like these people are like the masters of crime in the game space would be the kind of angle. Yeah, that’s good. I like that. That’s a good solid theme, very you. If, what’s that thing Andy used to fund his book? Unbound. Unbound. If Unbound are interested, there is a pitch for a book that will never reach 100%. I don’t know, with our listeners, I think you’ve got a good shot at that. I don’t know. You’ve got a good shot at that, I reckon. It would need all of the people involved to agree to do it. Including Chitokumi, that’s a tough one. The interview access would be key to it. I wouldn’t want to read a book of much as me wanking on. I bet old Ian Dixon would get you Chitokumi, Matthew. Should give him a shout. Ian, if you’re listening, let me know. Let’s do a lace attorney book. So I, yeah, like you, Matthew, I would like to write some kind of fiction. I’ve got actually a kind of slightly gamey book in mind for something that I’m sort of like kind of noodling away on a synopsis for at the moment. But yeah, just because it feels like something that I’m actually, I don’t know, I’ve actually got an idea of where it goes and what happens. Whereas a lot of my problem with it as a writer is I can often picture the end, but not really the journey that well. So I always find that that’s the art of plotting I don’t really get so much. So I have to kind of learn, but yeah. The only bit I can picture is me being famous after the book comes out. That’s my problem. It’s like I literally daydream about people talking about me on News by Review. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean though. That’s just, that’s this hard. It’s tough to find the energy when you’ve got, you know, full-time job and stuff. I just, why can’t we just skip to the famous bit? So I thought, I actually really liked to write a biography of Grant Morrison, the combat writer. Where I can fire like loads of interview questions at them, maybe over like, I don’t know, five to six occasions, and then build a book out of that. Just because at the moment on their sub stack, Morrison’s like going through the time they went to Kathmandu and took a load of drugs and like ran up these stairs and stuff. And just all this kind of weird stuff they did in the 90s, just after making loads of money from Batman Arkham Asylum and just being like, well, I’ll spend it all on doing loads of drugs and having fun. But then also wrote obviously, you know, seminal Batman, Superman stories and Doom Patrol and seminal X-Men run as well. And I feel like I’ve got a pretty good all round knowledge of Morrison in my head and that I could do it well, but admittedly not as well as Morrison themselves. So, you know, that’s tough. But yeah, that’d be cool. I’d love to do that. In terms of games, I think something I’ve not seen done in games media that I think would be really cool is, I would love to do a book where you interview devs every step of the way in making a blockbuster game over the course of like several years. So the idea being that you would check in and interview them once every week or once every two weeks and then build up this living diary of the games development and then like join in on like key meetings and stuff about the game’s direction and things like that. And that complete story of a game I think would make a really good book if a narrative emerges out of it. Because games being made are, genuinely interesting things do happen, ups and downs and stuff like that, but you only ever hear the kind of capsule version of them. So the idea of something that’s more in real time could be quite good. What do you think, Matthew? Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, I had the very briefest of things a few years ago. I thought, oh, should I pitch something like that for like the new fable? Because that’s a series I love enough to be kind of comfortable in the space. But also I think the story about that game, you know, that playground are, you know, known as a racing game studio, that transition from one to the other, I think must be fascinating. And it’s such like a British game series and a British success story. But again, like an idea that was in my head for 10 minutes and then I went and ate some fucking Curly Wurly’s instead. Chocolate thins, yes. Yeah, like that’s the other thing is that obviously the games industry is so secretive and everything’s set up to nine. So, you know, you could probably, you could do it with an indie dev probably quite easily. In fact, one episode I want to do is have Jay come on here and talk about the complete making of Cassette Beast when that game’s ready. Just because I think that’d be rad. And I’ve, you know, Jay first showed me designs from it in like late 2019 and stuff. So I kind of have some inside knowledge of how that came together and that stuff. And I think Jay would tell a great story. So that’d be good. You can get that on the indie game side, but the blockbuster side is where you’d really want to see it, I think, in terms of like, you know, it’s something that you hear about, but don’t necessarily understand. But this stuff is NBA for a reason. People need to be able to like conceptualize things, chuck them out. They need to be able to be human. They need to be able to have, like, ups and downs. And I kind of get it, you know, not everything is meant for public view, but that could be really, really cool. So that’s the dream book, I think, rather than writing something about fucking Star Wars games or whatever. Okay, Matthew, do you want to read the next one? If you had to write a based on a true story gaming-related HBO miniseries, what event studio period would you choose? That’s from Zach Forrest, again. Yeah, so this was really easy for me. I think the making of Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite just back-to-back as two miniseries with, I don’t know, someone notable playing Ken Levine. I think that could be absolutely rad. Steve Carell is Ken Levine. Oh, I quite like that. That’s good. It’s quite a physical match as well. He’s a bit too old, I think, to play him, but about 10 years ago that would have been spot on, I think. Yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah, that sort of comes to mind. The problem is it’s a lot of people sitting at computers, so the ups and downs of the drama, that would make for good dramatic fodder, but the actual optics of it, it’s quite tough to make this stuff look amazing. What do you think? Yeah, the only thing that jumped out in terms of, it’s quite a weird and blockbusterish story and the stakes are super high in terms of commercial success was the battle for Tetris. Oh, I was about to say that. That’s a great one, yeah. Because you literally end up with Robert Maxwell is in the mix as well, like pressuring Mikhail Gorbachev to give him the rights to Tetris because it’s the game that everyone wants and it belongs to the Soviet Union. I mean, it’s kind of wild. Didn’t they give it back to the creator as well at a certain point? Yeah, it’s like a long and hugely complicated, a lot of it’s told in that game over book, the Nintendo thing, is it David Sheff, I think. Yeah, there’s also a graphic novel about it as well that’s really good. Yeah, like it’s published by Self Made Hero. I think it is just called The Story of Tetris, something like that. But it’s just, it comes from such a weird place. There are so many weird people involved and it ends up being one of the definitive titles of the 90s. It’s just, that feels like you could have fun with it. Yeah, it’s a good one. Otherwise, more generally, you could do a kind of a Houghton Catch Fire type thing, sort of set in this, like I’d probably be more interested in something that’s a fictional thing that is set in the real life times. Something that goes through from like the birth of commercial video games up to present day that maybe charts the kind of rise and fall of a, you start with like a bedroom coder and by the end they’re something huge and important, quite far from the kind of creative side of it. I like the way Houghton Catch Fire kind of cast an eye over the kind of home PC market using kind of fictional characters. I think that could be a fun way. Rather than like, you know, I struggle to think of one group of people who’d lasted the duration that they were like, their story would be so good told across the whole thing. Yeah, it’s tricky. Sega versus Nintendo? That’s just a marketing battle. It’s boring, right? Yeah, it’s mostly fought in America, right, as well. Yeah, it’s tough. I think the Tetris one is good because like you say, there’s just so many ups and downs and strange elements to it. I think the Rise and Fall of Atari might be good, just because there was a lot of hot tubs and women drugs going down. Oh yeah, there’s some fun party scenes in that show. Killer license soundtrack. Yeah, Pac-Man and Pills, I don’t know, something like that, but less corny. Wasn’t there that terrible BBC thing they did where it was Daniel Radcliffe as Dan Houser and then Bill, which Bill was it, the one from Aliens Who Sadly Departed, Bill, what can I remember? Paxton. Bill Paxton playing Jack whatever it is, the lawyer who just went on about GTA over and over again. Like the Edge trademark person. Oh yeah, it’s so good when you forget an asshole’s name because you’re like, they have disappeared into irrelevance. Yeah, fuck that shit, I hate it hearing about that shit over and over again. So yeah, but I just remember the official Rockstar account tweeting at the BBC saying, what is this rubbish? Was Basel Brush not available or something like that when it was airing? And I was thinking, yeah, it was really corny. It was like an episode of that in-universe TV show in Arrested Development Scandal Makers. That’s what the Rockstar thing was like. Danny Radcliffe was like, what if we did this and this and this? It was all just really phony version of reality. The thing is, even if they’d nailed it, Rockstar would have still called it shit and made fun of it, I just care. They just don’t like being talked about like that, I don’t think. 100%. But, you know, maybe the real story of the Howser brothers and like the creation of GTA in 3D, that might be a good story, who knows? So, if you haven’t got a bit where someone shouts, get me the Benz! I’m not interested. Get me the Benz! Yeah, that’s so good. And then actually like maybe the Benz lawsuit would be a good one, like the kind of crumbling of all that. Don’t know when it went down there, but nonetheless. Okay, that was good, good discussion. Alright lads, hope you’re well. The boys over on the Computer Games Show Podcasts have recently asked listeners to send in any dreams they’ve had that involve the hosts. And whilst you’ve done no such thing, you did pop up in my dream last night, so I thought I’d share. There I was running around a house trying to fortify it against either a bear or a rhino attack. It was never quite clear, but the problem was none of the locks and the doors were working. I’d tried to lock the doors, but they could easily be pushed open and would have proved next to useless at stopping the immense weight of an apex predator trying to eat me. For some explicable reason, both of you, as in Matthew and Samuel, were also trying to help secure this house. I had fallen asleep listening to the Xenoblade episode of the podcast from last week, and it was obviously bleeding through into my dream because I was getting really frustrated that we were trying to protect ourselves from the bear or rhino attacks, and Matthew just kept telling me how good the music and the Xenoblade games were. Anyway, I woke up before the bears or rhinos ever managed to eat us, so we were all winners in the end. Thanks, lad. Love the show, etc. Alex79. So no question there, Matthew, but… A nice little story. Would have been funny if it was like the bear or the rhino attacked and you were there, say, in one hand. In one hand, you had some 90s drugs, and then in the other hand, you had some ingredients from Xenoblade. Neither were useful, but yeah, yeah. That’s good. Any thoughts there, Matthew? Nice to be dreamed of. I wonder what we look like in the dreams. That’s what I’m curious about, because you have limited access to what we look like now. So you don’t know how grey I am, how overweight I am, all that stuff. Like it’s, you know, how big my arse is. I wonder how many of these details were accurate in the dream, you know, but yeah. Do you want to read the next one? Hi guys. Love the podcast and always look forward to Fridays to listen to it. Quick question. Harking back to the good old days of Gamma-nee magazine chat. If you could go back in time and work on any games magazine, which one would you choose? If you choose a multi-generation mag like Edge, which era would you choose? Perhaps it was my age at the time, but N64 magazine always holds a special place in my affections. It just seemed that mag had such a charming energy to it, bolstered by the fact that the N64 generation was such an exciting time to be a Nintendo fan. I still remember the epic 2 edition magazine review they did for Ocarina of Time. Many thanks and keep up the good work. That’s from Charles. So I think we’ve been asked this on before, Matthew, by people. I think my last answer was PC Gamer in the late 90s. So I think I said that I’d worry they wouldn’t take me seriously. And so yeah, I do remember saying that. So I did admittedly get that same pang reading PC Gamer back for our quiz. I was just like, oh, that actually seems like a really fun team, just like Kieran Gillan writing all these quite fun previews and reviews. And I think Matt Pearce was editor then. Matt Pearce listens to this podcast, in fact. So out of that seemed like there were just so many great talented writers on there. The copy was really sort of spot on. And a lot of those people went on to go do some quite cool things. So, you know, that might have been a good time. I wouldn’t mind to work in Edge. I was curious to see what the inside of Edge would have been like during the early noughties period. Just because that seemed like there’s such a strong sense of voice to that mag and the cover features and stuff. I don’t think I would have been smart enough for it because I am a bit of a wally. But I would like to have seen from the inside what that would be like to work on, you know. What about you? Definitely like N64 at the outset, like seeing the age of like Mario 64 and Ocarina come in, like first hand must have been incredibly exciting. Like they had that amazing working relationship with Rare as well. Like N64 seemed to get way more rare stuff than official Nintendo magazine did. That would have been really cool just to have been sort of involved with that lot back then. Yeah, the same that, just that period, the kind of like second half of the 90s, just to see that coming of that proper 3D generation, whatever mag you’re on. Actually Edge back then is a little softer in its writing. Like I think I could have quite comfortably have slotted in back then. I think it goes a bit more kind of snooty-doo in the early noughties. There are a few other mags, when I was on NGamer, I would have liked to have been on, just because I really liked the people. Like being on Edge 2006 to like 2010, working with like Rich Stanton, Martin Davies, that would have just been fun, because I really liked those guys, and they got to cover lots of stuff. Also, well I guess that means I wouldn’t, would I be doubled in this office? Am I also on NGamer? I basically want to go back to that period and work alongside myself, because I was so fucking funny to work with. I want to work on a different mag alongside NGamer, just so I can see myself over the filing cabinets and be like, nice one, this guy’s so good. You just look over and see yourself going, oh, I used to love Dr. Kits for the magazine, mine just going, I hated that. But it’d be like back to the future. I’d spend five years basically telling my past self not to like fuck up, so I’d be like, don’t ask him about Dr. Kits on his first day at work. You’ve got an issue of XM with you for you’re fading from the photograph because you’ve changed the future. Yeah, very good. Okay, cool. Well, that’s good. I mean, I think as well, actually when I’m thinking about it, like the last period of Edge where I was reading it and not working at future I really enjoyed was 2008 to 2012 time, I read it pretty much solidly and I thought it was really, really good around that time. There was like that issue where they did a feature on the making of PlayStation where they had like a Phil Harrison interview in there, and he talked about like how he went to Namco’s office to see Ridge Racer for the first time, and then as he was about to leave, he said, someone said, we’re working on this other thing in this other room, do you want to come have a look at it? He went, sure. That turned out to be what would be Tekken, and I like, that was a story I just vividly remember reading in Edge and thinking, there is no other games mag that would get this access, like they just don’t exist. Really, really cool. So yeah, that would have been good. Yeah. I think we’ve been comprehensive there, Matthew. So, Hi S&M. I’ve been catching up on past episodes and two different guests have mentioned purchasing games consoles in the past with student loan money. Is this a common use of educational funds in the UK? Matthew, I never went to university. My brother did, and he definitely seemed to blow his cash on bullshit like Lego and stuff. But what about games consoles? I love the weekly, Samuel throws a family member under the bus. I should stop doing that, shouldn’t I? Because it sounds like I don’t have any respect for them, but I do. So yeah, do you think this is a common practice, Matthew? That first year, I only really remember playing loads of Mario Kart Double Dash on my GameCube, which I already had when I went to uni. So we just basically played the few multiplayer games we had. I definitely bought Resident Evil 4 in my second year at university. But again, there was a trade in deal. We could trade in any four games and get it for 99p. So technically, I only bought it for 99p. I rented games quite a bit from Blockbuster, was how I got around it. Some people do. I mean, my student loan was what I needed to get by. So not really. I’m very boring and sensible in that way. What about when you were playing too much Call of Duty 2, and you made people fail? What was that? That was my friend Cyrus, who had the 360 and Call of Duty 2. That wasn’t mine. That was his. He bought that and those were good times. We played a lot of games, but we didn’t spend a lot of money on games. All right. Good. That’s tactically done. But yeah, it’s true. I think we had a few guests who had been like, I was at uni in the early noughties and I just had to buy a PlayStation 2 and then play that instead of actually doing work. But they’re also talking about like the period they’re talking, you know, like Simon was talking about being in London and there’s always import shops and the import scene is a lot more exciting. And there’s always like now classics of the genres coming out. The period I was at university 2003 to 2006 was actually sort of a little bit like, it was fine. But like for a Nintendo guy, it wasn’t particularly exciting. Yeah, that’s fair. Also, these consoles weren’t that expensive. They were like, you know, PS2 by 2001 was 200 quid. It’s not that bad, really, you know. Yeah. So yeah. Okay, cool. I think we’ve taken that one as far as we can go, Matthew. But… Hi, Matthew and Samuel. Would you be able slash want to host a live event slash recording for The Back Page: podcast? I believe the London Podcast Festival has been mentioned, which would be a good venue slash event. Thanks for making these podcast episodes. I always enjoy listening to this from Ivan F. So I would really like to do this. The question is where and when. We want to make it good. So there’s a question of how much do we charge people to get a good venue? You know, we’re aware we would have a Patreon where we have, you know, listed contributions so we don’t want people to feel like we’re taking the piss with how much, you know, we’re trying to rinse them basically. We’re quite conscious of that. Then it’s a question of location. Do we do it in Bath? Because we’re kind of synonymous with Bath, but then that’s nowhere near the North for people who live in the North. So there’s like a lot of questions there, but I would really like to Matthew because I think we have the audience for it to do like 100 people in like one venue or something. What do you think? The other alternative is like getting on a Games Expo or something where they have a lot of guests, panels and things and just get like a slot there so someone’s got to set it all up for you, you know? Yeah. Like, I could have seen us doing like an hour rest, you know, old rest. It’s tricky as well because an hour slot is quite hard because we’re super indulged. When have we ever done an hour anything? Just the James Bond episode. That’s the only one under an hour. The one everyone hates. Yeah, the unpopular one. Because it’s short. Not because of the content. It was because of 52 minutes instead of like, you know. If we talk for another hour about From Russia With Love, maybe that would be one of our best ever. No, I would love to do it. I think we could… I note like the computer game show did the laser quest thing in Sheffield that their listeners seemed to really dig. And I thought it was really rare that they did that, their own event. Because you can do a panel at an expo, but then going to an expo can be an undertaking for people as well. So it’s like, it’s just really hard to figure out what the right sound is, you know. I’m a bit more like nervous in person though. I think the thing the computer game show have is they have in Dave like a real showman. Yeah. Who can kind of like rally that stuff, which I’m not saying neither of us can do that, but you know, it wouldn’t be a, it would be a lot more self-critical. Yeah. Side note, actually just, I was just ordered some toilet paper off of Amazon and one of the brands on there was called Splash and I could only hear that in Dave Turner’s voice in my head. Yeah. So I would really like to, I think what I might do is I might put out like a, like a Google poll where, or like a form that people can fill in and they can suggest like, where do you live? Where would you travel to? What would be a reasonable cost for it? You know, what would you like it to have in it? I might do that. So we can sort of- We can take it on tour for a week. Five locations all over. Like a pontins. Have we got a listener on a Scottish island? I think we have quite a lot of Scottish listeners, that’s the thing, but we, you know, going to Scotland is probably a no-go for us. So it’s kind of like a question of how far we can go. I like Scotland. No, I like Scotland too, but it’s just more, what is central in the UK? It doesn’t really exist. But people always pick London, but London is not central. London is just where the money is. And it’s just, I don’t know. I say five different locations in one 24-hour period. Yeah, Blackpool, Western Super Bear. Yeah, those kind of locations. Yeah, so it’s a yes, basically. I just, I don’t know the exact form of it, but maybe that can be a 2023 thing, Matthew. We try and do that next year. That might be a good long-term goal while we figure it out. But yeah, some kind of live show and then listener question segment might be good. Live Games Court, maybe you can bring a Games Court purchase with you, I don’t know. You’d probably want something a bit more gimmicky at one of these things. The only problem with live Games Court is the huge risk that we have every time we do Games Court, that it might land completely flat on its arse and we can’t edit out the bits, which are just like a huge bust. Yeah, okay, so yeah, stay tuned. London Podcast Festival, I’m sure it’s a cool event, but I don’t know if our people would be there, you know what I mean? I don’t want to do one of these things and then we have like three people in the audience because I know we can get more if we do it the right way. I have done panels like that at EGX. I’ve done like RPS podcast recordings, but there were more people doing the podcast than watching. I mean, they had to be very brave to sit in front of four people talking at them about bullshit. Yeah, for sure. Bath might be fun to do, but it would just be the right venue. It’s tough because we’re not big enough to fill the forum by any means, but also the top floor of the brew house might be too small, you know? So yeah, I don’t know. There’s a lot of questions. We’ll figure it out. But yeah, thank you for the question. Look out for a formal tweet out on Google, sorry, tweet out on Google Form so you can fill in. Let us know what you think and we’ll shape it over time. Coming to the Apollo, London! Oh dear. Let’s do it on the beach at Western Supermare like Fatboy Slim in the noughties. With loudspeakers. Yeah. Okay, so next up, hello large lads, it’s me, Blorko, the suggester of the least popular option on your recent Patreon draft poll for the uninitiated that was asking the gents to form a Smash bros-like mascot crossover game. This got me thinking, which franchise or company would you most like to see a crossover game from? And what would it be like genre-wise? Love the pod and had a great time with the draft that you ended up doing. That was the nineties piece of gaming draft. Despite not being a PC gaming person, and my own personal bitterness, the drafts really are hugely entertaining in podcastry. That’s from Balladeer. Well, lucky for you, we have the follow-up PC gaming draft coming later this month, so that should be fun. The other ones in that poll, I think the second most-smokey one was Game Boy Games or Game Boy Color Games, Matthew, and then the third one was PlayStation 1 games. That was one I thought would win. And then Smash Bros. crossover, that was the least popular. So we might do it at some point, but it didn’t seem to go down that well. The people have spoken. Indeed. So I must admit, I am at capacity with crossover games. Stop MCU-ing things. That’s how I feel. Like, that multi-versus game, I’m sure it’s perfectly fine. I also feel slightly ill seeing Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, Batman, Arya from Game of Thrones fighting. the corporate crossover thing… It’s Bane breaking Scooby-Doo’s back. But Smash Bros. already was the best one. They did it. They did it. They got all the, you know, all the picks, minus the Tekken bloke, were great, you know? So we did it. I just, yeah, I don’t get excited by the idea of crossovers anymore, I’m afraid. Maybe it’s like an age thing, Matthew, but I’m not, like, not jonesing to see any sort of… any more of these kinds of things. What do you think? I kind of got my dream crossover game when they did Layton and Wright together. That was like a real… I’ll imagine if they ever brought this stuff together. I mean, like, the only thing I could think for this was if you did, like, an Ace Attorney game set in the wider Capcom universe. So like Phoenix Wright doing trials from Resident Evil and Devil May Cry and Street Fighter. That could be fun. I’d like to see Shootakumi have more goofy fun with Phoenix Wright. I mean, there was that big mash, you know, you got Project Cross Zone, which was the Capcom Sega and Namco Bandai. It was basically loads of legends from Capcom, some slightly shitty characters from Sega and a huge load of who the fuck is this from Namco Bandai. Which I think is fair. I think that is slightly unfair on Sega. No, it’s not. It’s like, who’s this? It’s like, oh, this guy’s from… That’s Rundee from Randeea 5 or whatever, and you’re like, what the fuck? I’m with you on the Namco characters. That’s a bit more who are these. But yeah, it’s true that Capcom just seemed to have a stronger identity for that stuff. I would still like to see a really good modern Marvel vs. Capcom game. I mean, it is arguably Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which you can play on anything. That’s still really good. But they did that Infinite One that didn’t have any X-Men in it. It was just kind of disappointing. I would like to see a new one of those. Silent Hill, the only way I can play Silent Hill now is inside Dead by Daylight. Like Dead by Daylight is a good game, but that’s not the way, dog. Let’s do something else. I mean, it’s all that thing of like, I want Silent Hill to be available in a form that’s not a guest appearance to someone else’s game or NFT. That’s my very basic request. So, yeah, the crossover thing, I think has less value to me than it ever has. And I think the interest of people in doing crossovers that are meaningful and good, like the one you pitched there, Matthew, or indeed Professor Leighton of Phoenix Wright. That appetite doesn’t really exist anymore. So it’s more about a fucking IP pile-on and I’m not interested, you know? Phoenix Wright trying to work out who was responsible for the dino crisis. Or like putting someone from Umbrella HR on the stand or something like that, like Albert Wesker as well. That could be good. Yeah, okay, good. Hello to JC Kitchen’s number one patrons. I’m not sure this has been mentioned before on the pod, but what are your thoughts on digital versus physical? For me, physical will always win. The ability to sell it on or not lose it because the online service has gone down or being delisted trumps any benefit for buying it digitally. Most recently, despite not being out till a month after its digital release, I’ll be picking up the physical version of Turtles, Shredder’s Revenge, Turtles games and licensed ones for that matter have a habit of disappearing from live services so it will be nice to rub it in people’s faces when they hold a real copy in my hands after it inevitably disappears from the online store. I’m also going to be doing the same with Stray, the stealth game starring the cyberpunk cat lad, despite it not getting a release until September. So physical or digital, choose your winner, Adam. I like that this guy is motivated, partly, by vindictively lording it over other people. I was about to say, oh, a fellow turtle head, I see. Yeah I do like the idea of Spiked being a motivator, which you know, I get where you’re coming from. You’ve listened to the Draft episodes, you totally get it. So yeah, physical obviously, I love physical games. I actually briefly panicked because Nintendo just closes all of its online stores. I still think they’ll close the Switch one somehow and I’ll lose access to all the games I’ve bought on there and that’s going to hurt so much and people will be so angry if they do another store where you can’t carry across the same games to their next console. People will be so, so mad. I hope they have the self-awareness to know that, but I also don’t trust that they will. I’m sure they’ll listen to this podcast and your speech just then will convince them. Miyamoto is in on Monday. He’s like, listen, guys, listen, I heard something really interesting the weekend and then has to fast forward through two hours of bullshit to get to it. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. Not this bit where they use the word pons eight times. I don’t endorse the use of that word by liking this podcast. Yeah. So it’s definitely physical. I briefly pallid, Matthew, that I own like Xenoblade on there and the definitive edition and Link’s Awakening. I thought, should I have physical copies of those just in case one day they close this damn store down? Like is, I don’t know, it could happen, it has happened. So physical when it comes to Nintendo just seems like a must. Like I’ve got mostly physical 3DS games and DS games, of course, are only physical. So that’s it for me. I mean, it seems to mean less with consoles, but I still love the white labels on the PS5 games. It feels nice to have in your hand, even though I miss manuals as a thing, but… Well, that’s what I was going to say. A couple of things, I don’t really want to have more shit in my house. I actually sort of resent a lot of the physical games that we do have in our house because they take up space never ever being touched or played. They just sit there gathering dust. So a little part of me is like, eh, maybe I don’t need physical because of that. I will say most of the games I have, I throw away the cases and just keep the disc in a wallet for space because I don’t actually think the boxes and the cladding of physical games these days is particularly worth shouting about. There is no manual. It doesn’t feel like an event. But you’ve got so many physical DVDs that you could get rid of and… Yeah, but I’ve started throwing them away. Oh, have you? Yeah, but I’ve been really crushing the collection, Dan. We just took six bags of DVD cases to the tip the other day. Wow. You’ve just caught me at a particular moment where I’m like, I’m now sick of these boxes. Right. Did Nip Tuck survive the cold? Matthew, what about House? They’re gone. Gone. I kept the discs, but I threw out the things. Because you never know when I want to watch season three of Nip Tuck. And the other thing with the physical is I did a little period where I had some physical stuff on PS5 and I was trading it in to take the price off the next lot. But now all the things I did are part of the subscription services. That’s something else entirely. Now it’s not just a question of physical or digital. It’s like, do you even want to own it? If it’s this much, if it’s this cheap to have these many games as Game Pass or whatever, then I’ll almost risk not having that future access because a lot of things I don’t replay. I’m just recalibrating my mind to be a person who doesn’t really own anything and is fine. If we have anything physical, it is Nintendo games. I will agree with you on that. The risk there is too high, but like, stray? I mean, if stray vanishes, does it matter? Well it’s something of, I don’t feel like physical, if I bought a physical copy I can do anything about what will happen on PlayStation and Xbox because it does more than ever feel like you’re buying the license to the game in a box these days. So it’s a bit like, I don’t know, it’s a bit different with Nintendo because I feel like I’ll always be able to put a Switch card into something and then it will work and even if you can’t patch it to the most recent version, it will still work. I can still play that game, whereas not convinced that’s the case when I buy a PS5 game or an Xbox game. I feel like I’m just, let’s hope that Sony or Microsoft don’t go under and so these games stay available. That’s literally what it is really, isn’t it? It’s clinging on for dear life. But then the other part of this also is like, if you have what you would call a proper games collection which you have built and grown with intent, then I get that you’re kind of slave to that now and I’m not saying that’s dumb, that’s fine. People who’ve built, they’ve got hundreds of Switch games and whatever, I haven’t really got a problem with that if it’s the thing you collect. It’s just not the thing I collect anymore. I’m much more into my books now, probably a lot of books is they only exist in book form. There is no ebook version of them and they’re vanished if you don’t have the book. But then that’s exactly the same case you just made for Nintendo. So what the fuck do I know? It’s also in a case of what do you actually like treasure because for me, I’ve got… Do you know what? When I moved from Bath to Brighton a few years ago, I got rid of so many graphic novels and afterwards I was quite sad about the amount I’d gotten rid of. The same thing happened when I went from Bournemouth to Bath. So, what I’ve done now is I basically… I’m really selective with what I buy. I only buy quite fancy hardcovers of different comics, so I’ve got a really nice collection of really nice hardcovers, basically. And I vow, no matter what happens, even if I’m moving into a bedsit next in the middle of fucking nowhere because things have gone wrong, I will have these with me. I will not fucking lose these again because it sucks to shed all your stuff just because you’re a millennial who grew up in a time where you could just buy a house for fucking ten grand with like zero percent, sorry, hundred percent mortgage, you know what I mean? So I can’t, I’m at the point now where I would rather just get more boxes and fill them with stuff than give more stuff up because I feel like I’ve already done a lot of hoarding, then clearing, hoarding, then clearing. Now I’m like, I will slowly hoard, but not clear anymore. That’s kind of where I’m at these days, so too much information really there, but good. Yeah, well, I look forward to seeing your revamped flat, Matthew. I’m assuming that the Gunpla hasn’t gone anywhere, the little plastic model. Yeah, the Gunpla just sits there, so whenever I want to get a book out, there’s a very high risk that I’m going to break an incredibly ornate robot man, which is just like, what a thrill. Why don’t all libraries use that system? Oh no, I’ve knocked fucking Squall’s head off. Because I wanted to, you know, look at some fucking locked room thing. Oh. It’s a quick one. Not going to lie, they’re not my favourite thing, those statues. Sorry Catherine, if you’re listening. You know, take it up off-line with Catherine, with your marriage counsellor, Matthew. Hello Bath, Two Greatest Giants, can we get an update on Intermezzo? I forgot its new name. Have you been? And if so, do the sandwiches still have that special something? That’s from Iron Eddy. I’ve not been, Matthew. How about you? I went on its opening day, I can’t remember the name. I haven’t been back, but that is not any judgement on them. Well, the first date was kind of pretty rough. I didn’t know if the guy really knew what a baguette was. The way he talked about it, it was and handled the baguette, I was like, oh, I don’t know about this. And I thought it would be unfair to judge him. So I’ll come back in six months. But right now I’m not eating any bread. So I’ve got no reason to go. But I will return at some point. It’s got a funny name like Gray and Miller or something. It sounds like somewhere you buy like a 40 quid suit for your first staff writer interview. It really does. Yeah, it sounds more like a suit shop than a baguette shop. And you don’t want to confuse those two things because that would make for a very messy wedding. Oh, very good. When I walked past there, though, it did seem like it had quite a few people queuing. So I think they’re doing all right. So hopefully people have just been able to continue their rituals. But I’ve just been, I don’t know why reticent to resume. I don’t know. I see we can still order online. The reason I used to go to Intermezzo is you could just pre-book, pre-pay, then Tony just handed me my sandwich and I’d leave. And it was great. It was a standing around I couldn’t tolerate. So yes. But I went to JC’s kitchen the other day, though, Matthew. That’s been consistently open all summer, actually. It’s quite impressive. Well, it’s been no rain, hasn’t it? No, no. It’s just been fucking sun. So the guy making the chicken does look sweaty as hell because he’s in the meat tent and also it’s like 40 degrees British weather. So climate change and meat is going to like one day potentially kill that guy. But I hope you’ll be all right. The guy I always feel really bad for is whichever sweaty boy is currently working in the hot sausage company stand in the middle of the high street because that is just a metal box, which is so it’s an oven. And also you have to sit in a box sweating away with the words hot sausage company written like directly under your body. So everyone’s going to be like hot sausage company. That’s what I think anyway. Yeah. Because it’s always a quite a skinny, dweeby, studenty looking person. The last person who would want to have the words hot sausage. Yeah, I just I’ve never been there because I resent that pun so much. Like it thinks it’s funny and I’m just like absolutely fucking no way I’m going anywhere near that. That’s that’s how I feel about it. Just sort of like it’s got big 70s like pub comedian. That’s the thing. I haven’t got the like charisma to kind of pull off working in a place with like any kind of innuendo. I just I would look uneasy in it and everyone would know what’s going on. Yeah, I don’t think that’s where your career is heading you working in that the sausage company sort of stand Matthew. But I will say Jace’s Kitchen Food still excellent. He’s they keep trying to charge me the old prices because obviously they’ve jacked up their prices because it’s you know, cost of living crisis completely fair, but he keeps charging me the old price and I’d rather you just took the full money and stayed open. That’s more important to me than having a discount because I’ve been here a long time. Every place I go to in Batho now seems to recognise me Matthew. I’ve just been here too fucking long. Okay, next up then. Dear Samuel and Matthew, Oh no! After a bout of undercooked barbecue related illness, you’ve each been asked to fill in for video game bosses. Who could you most effectively fill in for? Also, what would your quote be when you were defeated by the main character? Love the pod from Games Chat to Games Court. That’s from Conkydonker. So, there is a boss in Kingdom Hearts 2, which is, you go into the Steamboat Willie level, and Pete is there, you know, Pete, the guy. There are two Peets in this game, there’s heartless Pete, evil Pete, and then there’s old Pete, who seemed like a good dude, just hanging around with Mickey Mouse or whatever. And there’s a bit where, as far as I know, all you do is, as sorry, is batter Pete while he runs away screaming, like that’s all that really happens, quite haplessly. I think I could fill in for that guy pretty well. Him, and I have a go at being Fat Man in Metal Gear Solid 2, but I would probably fall over in the rollerblades, so they just get shot in the head. Oh, I can’t roller skate for shit. Yeah, but maybe that’s the thing, if we can get rid of the blades and make them roller skate, I think I can at least like stand up, you know what I mean? So, that kind of comes to mind. I don’t want to be a boss who’s like jumping around all over the place. Like, you’ve got old school Super Mario Brothers Bowser who just stands on that bridge, like shooting fireballs. That seems like relatively low key. You just wait for him to like run under you and then drop you into some lava. Any number of Ace Attorney bosses, you know, I don’t want to give them away because they’re spoilers for the end of the games, but you know, the people that you’re trying to kind of defeat, I could sort of stand there and lie. I think I have that ability. That’s good. There’s a bloke who you fight in Final Fantasy VII who at a certain point in the boss fight runs away, then gets hit by a lorry in the background. I could be that guy as well. Like, just sort of like people where there’s like threadbare competence and they’re a bit cowardly. I could fill in for them. No problem. You know, I could definitely see myself getting like brutally quick timed event at the end of a quiz of fight. But as like an old geezer, like you fight everyone in my office and then you get to drop me through a desk. While I sit there going, oh, my eyes bulging. Yeah, or I kill myself in a cut scene because I know it’s fucked up. You know what I mean? Yeah, I’ve got big kill myself in a cut scene energy. Either with a gun or I cut open my belly with like a katana. That’s what would happen to me in a Yakuza cut scene. Very good. Okay, so last one here, Matthew, from Growler17. Sorry, Danny Man, your question was too long. We’ll have to save it for another episode. Hello, gents, long-time listener Lurka, first-time questioner. As we’re approaching the peak holiday season, we’d be interested to know which video game character you would most like to enjoy a relaxing break away with after a hard week of pulping defendants on Castle Island slash the peninsular formerly known as Samuel Roberts Peninsula. That’s from Growler 17. So I think like D-Dog from MGS5. I just had a week off with D-Dog. I think that would be great for my mental health, you know? Just like hanging out with the dog. If I go to a beach or something, hang out. If I get like some people see I’m a tourist and try and prey on me for my money, he can like jump up and knife them. That’s the thing that D-Dog does, isn’t it? He gets that little knife. He has to collect his dog poo. One of the pleasures of going on holidays is that you can put your pets in a cage somewhere. One of the pleasures. Amazing. Oh dear. Yeah, your psycho cats get put away, don’t they? It’s an added bonus. Yeah, for sure. I didn’t want to say like, you know, quiet or something like that. There’s again a lot of trap answers here potentially. Baby girlfriend. Exactly. That’s it. Or like, you know, I didn’t want to say someone who was like, oh, wacky. I don’t want to go on holiday with Larry Butts, the mate’s attorney. You know what I mean? Like that’s not high on my agenda or Wario. He’d be very annoying. So yeah, those kind of. So just taking a dog is fine, you know. Like in my head, I’m just quickly going through things on a trip where I’m like at my most awkward and who would sort of like mitigate that the best. Because I’m big and have to squeeze into an airplane seat. You don’t want it to be someone else big. Right. So they’d have to be small or skinny. Maybe like a Pikmin. A single Pikmin. A single Pikmin. That would probably count as a child seat on a plane as well. So I could fill up the row. I could fill up a row with Pikmin around me so I don’t have to sit next to anyone. You could pop them in your hand luggage just in the overhead compartment. Yeah, but I need someone who’s like small enough to be a child ticket, but big enough to take up a seat so I don’t have to sit next to anyone. Right, okay, yeah. I like how you’re only thinking about the journey and not what you do when you get there. What happens to your one Pikmin when you get to Barbados or something? I’ll just let it go and then when I come back to the airport I blow my whistle when it returns to me. So it works. Oh, I love this. You’re like, peep, I need you again. You wouldn’t try and lay siege to the foreign territory with your Pikmin, just controlling them? Well, no, because I’ve only got three of them. I haven’t bought many. Oh, I’ll tell you what though, Pikmin trying to bring fresh produce into another country, that’s a bit of a nightmare. America, they’d be like, is that a sentient root vegetable? Would you believe me if I told you it was my child? Have you got a green card for those Pikmin, mate? Whoever it is who guards America would shoot them and their little ghosts would fly up. Yeah, that would all invade tragically, then you wouldn’t have one to take home with you. Getting them in and out is the tough thing. I think hand luggage you could just about get away with it. Yeah, but I think that defeats the point. The other thing I was thinking, if you were sitting next to him on the beach and could be immediately helpful, Super Mario Sunshine Mario, but if his backpack was full of Rio, I’d just be like, spray some of that in my mouth. Are you not worried about the lack of precision on that thing? I don’t know. I’m hoping he’s… This is a Mario who’s got all 120 stars. He’s really good with it by now. And I’m just like, just jetpack some of that fricking Rio straight into my mouth. Like, hover above my head, shooting two streams of it straight into my gob. Also, did you ever consider, Matthew, that instead of taking a picnic on holiday, you could just like book two seats and then those two seats would be yours. Like, you could just book a row and that’s like the same effect. You don’t have to take a pic-min with you. Do you know what I mean? Did you think about that? Well, I don’t want them to fill those seats. I want there to be something in it. So if someone else is like, oh, can I sit there? I’d be like, no, there’s a pic-min in the seat, clearly. Yeah, and then the other row has got Mario in it. How would Mario get his, like, gun past the, his water gun past American authorities too? They would think it’s like some kind of… It’s kind of plastic looking, isn’t it? It’s like a water pistol. Yeah, but those, like, those people were, the power support check-in are just, like, complete time wasters. They would find any way to, like, make you stand there for another 50 minutes, and they’ll do, they’ll do literally anything to make you stand there. I’d say it’s not a weapon, it’s for powering a stream of Rio into my mouth on the beach. Yeah, can’t you see? It’s full of Rio. You know what I mean? Yeah, that is good. Your answers are way better than mine. I might take that the guy, the posh British guy from Final Fantasy XV on a camping holiday, and he can make me food. Matthew, that might be good. I think it’ll all get… I like that we just think of these characters as like slaves and what they do for me. Rather than like, I want to spend quality time with this person. It’s like, you would be my staff. This is basically how the British Empire got started, wasn’t it? Like, it’s the same vibe. Yeah, that is true. There’s no element of I think they’d be great company. That’s not even come up. Who would be good company on the games holiday? Tough, right? Someone you’d want to actually spend time with, who you’d like amuse you and not. And make the time better. Who would be the best Bioware companion to go on holiday with? Oh, that’s a great one. That’s a great question. That’s the whole podcast itself. Well, are we talking the real world? If I take Rex with me, I might get a lot of questions. Why would you take him with you? Well, I wouldn’t, that’s the thing. Okay, yeah. I wouldn’t take Ashley, because I’d be worried about her making remarks when we go away. She could have written for 1990s-era Games Master. Yeah, that’s it. She’s just slagging off the citizens of the country we’re in. It’s like, what the fuck? What’s your problem, Ashley? We agreed to go on holiday here. Why are you upset? Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s, yeah, I don’t know. You’re holiday to end in a difficult moral quandary where you have to kill Ashley. Yeah, that’s it. I don’t want to say Miranda because we’re trying to avoid horny content on this podcast. So I don’t want to take Tally because I’d be worried about, like, knocking her helmet off in her dying or whatever. She might get sand in her vents. That’s it. Well, I always saw Liara as a platonic friend in Mass Effect who’s, like, legit cool and could do that thing where you merge minds. I’d take Liara, Matthew. I’d take Liara. It’s, like, not… You know, maybe that’s a slightly horny-sounding answer, but it’s not intended to be. How about you? Who’s the sort of, like, quite plummy… I think he’s a wizard in Dragon Age. Why is this podcast so long? This is meant to be our short one and it’s somehow two and a half hours long. What’s Dorian’s do? Anders? You’re thinking of in Dragon Age 2? Oh, Inquisition, sorry. Yeah. Dorian. Is it Dorian? Yes, I think it is, yeah. He’s like a decent, nice, just wizard chap. Yeah. Probably be interesting. Like, know about stuff. So it’d be like, you know, if you go to Dubrovnik, you’d be able to tell you all kinds of trivia about the old town. Dubrovnik. Oh, I don’t know. That’s good. I thought you were going to say like, yeah, I’m going to go on holiday with Zaid from Mastavik too. Tough hang, I don’t know. Zaid is definitely like, in the headlines, caused a horrible bar fight. Yeah, like in a sort of Mallorca or something, you know. Yeah. Yeah, so that’s good. Yeah, Dragon Age, that’s an even, like Iron Ball’s pretty cool, but again, too tall to really take on holiday, like, you know, no seat’s big enough and who’s the like lady wizard in it? God, I sound like a grandpa saying that. Varik’s a pretty cool dude, you know. Wouldn’t mind going on holiday with him, I suppose. Some of the other ones, I don’t know, there’s Vivienne. She seems all right, you know, again. I think there’d be like a platonic friendship deal there, more than anything. Wouldn’t take Cassandra. I think Cassandra would hate the shit out of me. She would find me so irritating. She doesn’t suffer fools, so. That is the flip side to a lot of these, is I think this person would hate my guts. You know, like you could take someone who’s like young and cool from Life is Strange, but they would just, you know. That would be weird, me taking a teenager on holiday. I’m like, I retract that. I retract that whole thought. Yeah, Matthew and Chloe going on holiday is very, very cursed. I just don’t want to think about such a thing. That seems like a good note to end the podcast on there, Matthew. Yeah. Don’t know why it went on for so long, this mailbag, but I hope people enjoyed the quiz, and thank you, as ever, for your questions. If you’d like to send us more questions, backpagegames.gmail.com is where you can email us, and there’s a Discord sort of like thread as well where you can drop in questions. We’ll just collate those over time, and once a month, when we do our next What We’ve Been Playing episode, we’ll read a bunch more of these out. So Matthew, where can people find you on social media? MrBazzle underscore pesto. I’m Samuel W. Roberts. The podcast is BackpagePod on Twitter. That is where you’ll find a link to our Discord. You can also find our Patreon there, which is patreon.com/backpagepod. If you want a two-hour plus really funny Hitman re-ranking episode, you want to listen to that right now, go back to the Excel tier on Patreon, £4.50 or your local currency equivalent. That is a good episode, Matthew, isn’t it? That came out very well. Yeah, it was silly, but also a good Hitman chat. Yeah, I would say the section where we pitched, we each had to pitch the other person five different Hitman levels for a potential future game, I would say has big Gamescore energy, so people would definitely enjoy that. But yes, we’ll be back next week with a special magazine guest. Should be a good one, Matthew. So goodbye. Goodbye.