Comcastrodors, meet Nathaniel Hoover, AKA YouTube MegaMan super player Gemini Laser. He is a retro gaming enthusiast who edits Gamecola.net and a YouTube series exploring the accomplishments and limitations of retro platforms through Mega Man. Gemini explores the history of game design and the Mega Man franchise while Max attempts to make contrived and hilarious allusions to the Russian revolution, Pearl Harbor, Lao Tzu, and more.
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Well I don’t understand why they can’t just disconnect Good evening Internet. Good evening Comcastro around we have a lot of revelers you know I have Max Groves I’m Matthew Queen proud to bring you with Daniel who were at a Gemini laser the first and last and best statement on Mega Man all things Mega Man get ready boys and girls that’s right it’s all blue bar and X.. Nobody really talks about the bagman X. series on this episode. Max Groves. Seriously did you do your research for this episode. If you like. Heard of appreciate Mega Man in any capacity this is the episode for you. And without further ado I know this is Jim and I later. OK So tonight we are here with Nathaniel Hoover of game Kola dot net aka Gemini laser due to theme. Say hello everyone. Hello to everyone. Well of course all things are well known. Thank you thank you for coming on. So you are the acclaimed author of a pretty pretty successful You Tube series. Can you tell us a little bit about what prompted you to start making Mega Man videos on You Tube. Oh it’s a well known story so I started as a staff writer for video at the time video game humor website turned gaming outside the mainstream website came out and had seen our You Tube channel start to grow and one of my fellow staff writers Michael Gray was making a You Tube play three series of the six and yes Meghan and games and he was playing through them and I thought OK this is good this is entertaining but I would like to see videos by somebody who’s you know play these games to death he was basically doing a blind run of them and I thought I could do that and I grew up playing the Mega Man games they were really what. You’ve got me into gaming. Officially I played some other games before that but that’s really what got me motivated to be a gamer for life and I started to make some videos and at first it was really just this random side project like I’m going to make these videos until we’re done with the N.E.A.’s games and then our viewers will have Michael’s videos to watch on my videos to watch and that’s the end of it. And little by little they just started to get more attention. People were started say some really positive things about it and I was finding that I was really enjoying putting them together and was finding that you can play with the games in addition to playing the games. So I really started to take more time with it. Look for things that you would normally put on a standard let’s play video and then roll those all together and by the time Mega Man four rolled around which is my favorite megaman game in the classic series I had started to really hit my stride and had sort of found a niche and have been going at my own sweet pace ever since. That’s our man taking time the quality is all that really matters. Why actually what do you think sets Mega Man as a series apart from any other jump and shooting game from the end yes. But for one thing the original Mega Man game for the N.E.A.’s hit the ground running most series take some time to feel out what they’re going to do you know you look at Castlevania kind of takes a while to really get rolling and you look at the Super Mario games and they’re a little bit different every time but Mega Man kind of knew what it wanted to be from the very beginning and he nailed it beautifully. Precision controls a really great energetic soundtrack very colorful graphics you look at other games that came out around the same time the original Metroid came out you know if I’m recalling correctly in the same year as the original Mega Man you put those graphics side by side you’re like actually it’s kind of like grainy and blurry and it’s pretty eye popping for the time so you’ve got great graphics great audio great controls and a novel calm. Except you’ve got the ability to choose the order you go through the stages because at that point basically everything was linear unless maybe it was you know a very early R.P.G. and you had an overworld wander around so you got to choose the order that you thought the bosses and best of all once you beat them you took their weapon and they were just so many novel things that worked so well the first time that they barely needed to polish anything and you look at each of the next games in the series Mega Man two touches up the graphics a little bit touches up the music doesn’t really touch the controls introduces two more boxes you know just does a little bit more but just enough to inject some more life in it and each of the games recognizes that they really nailed the formula from the beginning they just you know they tweak it and they touch it up a little bit here and there. Except for the couple of ones make a mandate for example where they just go hog wild and it backfires. Do you follow any modern game design like are there things that kind of loss from the sort of era the problem is I’m usually about five years behind on any thing any technology any video games. You know people have smartphones I’m still using a dumb phone so how do you like Half-Life two. Oh I’m I’m I’m I’m up to their i have to tell you everything I’ve played is at least a couple years behind. But having seen some of the modern game design I don’t know that I’ve played as many platforms and the ones that I have have been really spectacular like the or v v v v v v tracker for gravity flipping a very simple graph of something more not adequate for retro games though it forces the throw back to the edge but to give you slightly more modern example so take more mass of the demon blade for the week which I think was a two thousand and nine game I want to say. And that’s that’s going to have a lot of the same kind of basic game design principles like you would see in the Mega Man games. That it’s a very difficult challenge especially as you get into the game. But there’s a smart learning curve to it and it’s very forgiving. You’ve got a lot of games that seem to mistake challenge for difficulty nowadays and you have that in the olden days you had things that you know people just slap together levels with no regard like the you know like glitching that’s has a feature to make it harder something. Yeah I mean and there’s I’m trying to think of other platform hours went into that I mean a lot of the time with you know old and new platform or sometimes you’re fighting against the controls like you just want your character to do what you’re telling him to do and he doesn’t and that’s half the problem with the game so I was playing it was a Christmas gift so I take no responsibility. But some rings a little while ago it was more difficult than it needed to be because I couldn’t get the controls to do what I told them to. At the point where I’m like trapped in a flying pot with wings and I’m shaking the remote up and down to make it gradually lift off I’m forcing myself just to make this stupid pot take off the ground like this is not a challenge this is not particularly fun and it’s barely responding to my motion controls. I’m fighting with the game not the enemies in the challenges in the game. You know it’s funny you mention that I was just thinking of the N.E.’s teenage Minaj Eternals game when I was felt to me like an almost perfect game as games released by I believe some softer ultra back in the late eighty’s and it was the first time the teams were injured turtles had cashed in and yes it was a sweet game overview as it could start off with over you and you won the turtles that are going to the sewers where it transfers into side scrolling and overall it was a pretty solid game yet for different turtles each of which had some strengths and weaknesses but in reality only down the telos like actually useful. But there were for every case in every Ninja Turtles game. I don’t know if I don’t know if you could say about turtles in time. I’m they balance that one out pretty well but I don’t know I think it’s telling when you go into any arcade in the time when there were still arcades to go into and they still had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the arcade game machine and inevitably Donna Tello was the one whose buttons were broken you’d have to mash them twice as hard to get the same response as any other characters buttons that it’s like you’re my brother man like he used to just like you got to tell I was well I never really like I get it he’s a cool title and all but I guess everyone who believes in the Power Rangers is probably Gail Knisley. Sorry don’t tell fans Samir Hood Well Max at comcast dot com It’s the Post staff man to reach whether or not he actually has any extra reach is irrelevant. It just looks like he can hit enemies from further away so I was part of the problem of the first on the ass game was he legitimately had a lot of reach and he had the only he had only one of any power so like you ended up having to use him exclusively toward the end of the game. But like small things that game worked were incorrect. Just like I guess you could you could You can also argue that small things were wrong with Batman one into it it seems to me like by Mega Man three they pretty much fixed most of the glitches in terms of well that’s not such a fix most of the things in the first eighty percent amazement really does Dr Wily levels that just got thrown on at the last minute and they put absolutely no thought into them whatsoever. I don’t the problem was they were a rush production schedule so if you look at some of the behind the scenes like the cutting room floor has some interesting tidbits about what might have appeared in the game and needle man’s stage was really the only one they got to do the proper treatment of redoing the stage for your second visit there. Everything else was just so we ran out of time sorry I guess what we arranged things a little bit while really because I thought the doc robot stages were were pretty well done your centers. There’s even some stuff left out of that. I’m talking about the castle stages. Yeah I can make a man three those last couple of stages just they give you a whole bunch of items and it’s almost like they’re saying you know whatever we’re down. Yeah that’s that’s also true I feel like that could have been I haven’t done all of the research that there is to do but I feel like I could have been the developers leaving those in so that they themselves could guarantee they could get through the stages and then they ran out of time to take out all of those debug mode that removed or quits. That’s our perception that’s why they are well out of that’s the battle going to games and it’s not just scheduling but it’s clear that there are necessarily I mean it depends. Now that I know anything about the game design industry but I would assume that you know if you’ve got big deadlines and big budgets and things like that you have assumed constraints but the indie game crowd you can make a game whenever you want and I would think that some of the more influential developers you know even for AAA titles they can push things off they can delay I mean you look at Duke Nukem Forever. That was what fifteen years. And not that it was necessarily a good you know I haven’t played it so I can’t officially speak to it but there are games that just keep getting pushed back and delayed for whatever reason so I don’t know that it’s necessarily a problem in general just some cases. Well ma’am maybe Goldeneye service example. Well yeah Goldman I was away for a while wasn’t it was like for a few years after the movie or to come out and maintain just too much head out of the park with Alan once because it was an iterative design so it ends up like that kind of cycling is the only thing we’re going to get to like a properly prototyped talent and like and making a game right. The only trouble is that like going from three development cycles could have made three shitty games in that time and you don’t even know if you want to buy it even because it’s not it doesn’t match the movie’s release. It doesn’t. There it seems like there’s almost no reason to go for it so it’s just like this giant leap of faith. I have to be able to try to make a game right because like everything’s working against you. I don’t understand why I’m so of the mindset with video games. As with anything else content is king. If you make a good thing if you make a good movie a good video game a good book if it’s if it’s truly quality content and preferably something that’s unique that does something people haven’t seen a million times before. That alone is good publicity for it. If you happen to sync it up with a major event when people are paying attention to it. If you’re really good at getting the word out on social media word on the street advertisements what have you so much the better for it. But if something’s truly that good and appeals to as mainstream if an audience has occurred it’ll sort of speak for itself. Have you been watching the mighty number nine. I am aware of that. I read up on it a little bit more when it was first announced but I haven’t been following it since. For those of you wondering body Number nine is a spiritual successor to Mega Man it’s created by the angry creator of a Mega Man he left Capcom due to its ongoing negligence with regard to all that intellectual property. And then he’s created a game that’s virtually the same thing but with his own independent studio and he’s changed it just enough to get around you know copyright and trademark laws. And it’s due out next month a whole bunch of people who worked on the official megaman games as well. Oh he sucked a whole bunch of talent. I mean when I was I don’t know if they’re still on board but when I was first looking that up you know you look at some of the music composers you look at people who are doing the graphics programmers and like these are names of people who showed up in the credits of any US Mega Man games and I think even the some of the later ones that brings us to your holy grail number four What next number four so special. So I have this this standing belief that your first Mega Man game and it’s probably true for other series as well. It makes a huge impact on what your expectations are for a megaman game and because the Mega Man games are so similar in at their core that most of them it’s just that the little differences that really make or break a particular megaman game because at least for me I like platforming. I like challenges. I like good music I like good graphics like Just give me more enemies more stages new weapons and I’m happy you don’t really need to do a whole lot to get me to like a new megaman game. So it’s most of the time the little nuances unless you really missed something up that just makes me say Ah why did you do that as well as Mega Millionaire. So basically making them four is not necessarily the best in the series but it’s the least bad it gives me everything I want out of the Mega Man game without messing it up and that sort of set the standard for everything else. And there are other games that have come really close like making them nine. OK so I very much enjoy Mega Man nine like four out of five helmets and I think it’s not the only one game. What holds it back is that it’s trying too hard to be make them into all over again because people look at my command too and said wow this is the game everybody talks about they like to use the pinnacle of the series. Or maybe it’s three but will completely disregard every other of the like fifty to sixty games that came after it because they’re all inferior and people really like to. Let’s just try and recreate the success of two and you just got the slide. But yes that’s mostly as you say very recently where they were actually they were telling the story of the Russian Revolution to the tune of Tetris as blocks fell from the sky and singing in the chorus about the plight of the worker being an ever escalating amount of pieces you can’t fit in the holes. It sounds intriguing I have not. Oh that was remarkable. I’ll show them you guys in a real way. One human is actually a metaphor for the revolution of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. Mega Man starts the revolution at Megaman X. takes it takes it he’s really meant X. in A lot of ways is like Lenin Well hey whatever Trotsky really a robot itself is Czech word for slave. Yeah why not actually that’s precisely the the plot of the entire X. series. So Mega Man is like Karl Marx and then going with our cum Castro theme Jesus I guess we are counting us so I guess Lenin or Trotsky would be making an X. but then Stalin is zero. Who’s this bad ass who just slaughters anyone who gets in his path and you can’t kill him just like real life. Or that perhaps while he himself would be Stalin if he initially now Lilias Winston Churchill will know why Lee supports the principles of the revolution initially and then leverage them to gain his own power while he actually gives birth to spawn so he spread his robotic society across the world this great communist nation of which all the people are oppressed under Actually no then in that metaphor while he would be Lenin because of Dr Wily creates zero who is as we know Stalin so Lenin created Stalin was in Lebanon the believer Wasn’t he the philosopher I believe there’s a history major somewhere out there who’s just just religious killing himself right now listening to this. What’s your take on it. You know my take on it is you shoot of the robots sword and sons of advocated for taking the resources of the enemy to use against them. My goodness that’s so beautiful. That makes Meghan I guess Meghan and little of the dark chill. Thank you I’m sorry please now I know it’s perfect Max belongs in the X. series that’s where that’s where you need to be like in the future it’s dark it’s dystopian. We have light sabers. No goddamn reason because they’re cool because you are a Star Wars reference alongside Foyle who is clearly both. Yeah actually I never really thought of that before although if they referenced the Super Smash Brothers splayed sword has to be a Mega Man one now that he’s a franchise member of the series there’s now no longer any intellectual property to be with Lucas Arts I see where you’re going there. So because zero for Mega Man X. uses a lightsaber that is then given to Mega Man vs Super Smash Brothers Star Wars is now confirmed for Super Smash Brothers on the next Nintendo. Sure that’s exactly where I was going to want to be if you see and I can’t remember what the website is but there’s a donkey kong fan site that basically constructs what the donkey kong universe consists of like a unified anthropological non-con character has appeared with any other character to the point where I don’t remember how far fetched it was but it’s like Barbie exists in the same universe as Donkey Kong because of the six degrees of seven they can factor Smash Brothers is the thing that unifies all worlds isn’t it. It’s he is the really yeah. So then I played my game and five and I kind of fell out of love with the series when I was a kid because I mean it wasn’t it wasn’t a bad game. But honestly like one of the reasons I can beat it without with my eyes cause is they give you a one up like every other every other I mean that dies and it’s there they give you way too many of those and that’s sort of a similar problem with six they give you way too many tanks to refill your health do not eat. You don’t need that many. I’ve seen a few releases of games where they were like OK this last level was never actually play tested because of our schedule we had to get it out immediately. So the reason no one beat it is because of this so if you get this far you have infinite lives than I thought that was the release of Psychonauts. If you get to the last level they’re like so have at it. Wow good luck children you know. I managed to talk like five hundred tries finally got him. Well here’s the thing psych and here’s the thing with Daniel Max’s played one Mega Man game ever it was the fan made game Mega Man unlimited point against forty seven rabidly play the game. I’m just not obsessed. Point where I know it from memory to the point where I will talk about more than one game that’s the only place I know. So like Meghan is known for being pretty devastatingly hard like what were some early games that you remember that were really really hard. Unlimited now or just like any game because when I’m looking at the games that I played as a kid everything was too hard. I was a terrible gamer when I first of all you have a supermarket Super Mario Brothers dot com and gratis and Chris solace those were my first three games that I owned I could not get anywhere in any of them. I was I still enjoyed playing it but it wasn’t until Game Genie came along that I got anywhere with those so I actually cheated my way into being a better gamer. Oh I don’t feel so bad about using that thing. By the time I started to wean myself off the Game Genie not by choice because the Game Genie manual that I had only went up to make a man three so I had to play Meghan and for the I couldn’t keep away. That’s when I really started to apply my skill and learn how to game. And that’s part of the reason I play the megaman games the way I do it is it’s all problem solving for me. It’s this is really difficult. I’m not good enough to beat it. How can I play smarter to get around my shortcomings as a gamer and little by little that turned me into a better gamer. So basically anything I played at the very beginning I was just awful and I’m still atrocious at fighting games and not so good at racing games but that’s just a personal thing as far as difficult games go. Yeah the gratis games are still tough. Basically anything where you can die in one hit. Why do you think. Do you think that talent to sort of identify the situation that puzzle solving thing is kind of benefit to you and the rest of your life going forward. Oh sure I mean that’s that’s where I approach work is I thrive when there are challenges to be resolved when it’s how can we do this more efficiently this needs to be done I don’t know how to do it but I’m going to figure it out. Those are the kinds of things that I really like. You know both in work and in my own personal life too. I like I like solving challenges is why I’m into adventure games too. You know you look at my channel it’s like all platforms all the time. But I love adventure games because I like that. That process of working it through and trying to outsmart the system. What are some great adventure games. The Space Quest games are still my favorites although I’m I’m a fan in general of the style of adventure games that Sierra does. Basically the big difference between the two big companies Lucas Arts and Sierra who did a lot of the adventure games that anybody recognizes Monkey Island Kings Quest all of those are that the Lucas Arts games are really focused on telling a story and just allowing the player to feel their way through it without too much penalty for failure. Where’s the Sierra games are more like video games. There’s a challenge to overcome you might die you might need to retry this again and let’s see how good you are at reflexes and puzzle solving and any of these other different things exploration that go along might not be true of the time share for games from the start. I mean there’s a few like Star Trek some like what are you thinking of specifically. Well I guess that remind me a little bit of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Text based adventure. And that’s like all the text adventures are a different kettle of fish. Well they are they are they’re not like in the same boat as sort of like the adventure put the pieces together you know try to solve the whole function. Well the thing about text adventures. I guess what extent the text parser is so you’ve got your point and click graphical interface that makes it all very streamlined and everybody’s on the same level when they’re playing. Worse if you’re manually typing things in you’re fighting your own typing ability your own vocabulary if you don’t know a whole lot of synonyms in the one word that you know for like take is not working if you’re you know game only recognizes get your pick up you’re going to be at a disadvantage. And there’s so much imagination that needs to go into it you need to be visualizing this you’re reading a book and solving puzzles at the same time instead of just you know watching a movie and guessing who the murderer is going to be. Work on what was involved. Well let’s say on the other side where you have the same criticism of the modern Telltale Games or perhaps the new Broken Age that was released. I really enjoyed Broken Age I play that I’ve played tales of Monkey Island. I play back to the future of the game. I have strong that’s cool game for attractive people which I have not played at school and that’s been my exposure to the tell tale series series’s says is what the whole is worth and combining this it’s with in the freaking Broken Age cloud land because that didn’t make any sense to me I had to freaking cheat to solve it and then they actually play an audio file afterwards it says I don’t know how I came up with that one. I think that was random clicking. I seem to recall that when I was stuck on I refused to use a walkthrough for that game though I’ve been trying I’ve been trying to get better about not resorting to walkthrough unless it’s clear that there’s something wrong with the game design and not with me is the play. I think there is something on that pricing are learning about and they were conscious of it they just left it in just to say hey remember back in the day when everything was like this. You mentioned Sierra games earlier. Did you ever run across one called phantasmagoria. I have heard of it it also sounded very creepy and scary want to. First time not so much one for four games in gross stuff so I stayed away from it. Well if you’re not then good choice because yeah that game is pretty gross. It was a straight up is the first game I ever played that scared the hell outta me. It was an interesting concept where they had essentially you were playing a movie and you had to move your guy around. The cinematic universe and now as a woman you move the woman around the Cinematic Universe and you’re watching your husband just continue to slide into madness and he just starts murdering everything because he gets possessed by a demon and it was a fantastic game but I think what caught me in that it was just I never played a point and click game before and I think it’s my only exposure to it. I got a question did you try God’s will be watching. Have you heard that one is relatively but extremely independent I should say it’s I don’t know how often sponsor I mean. Point being so it’s much like a double fine sort of adventure game and that kind of context except the stakes are remarkably high and it’s very much you always have to like balance like certain elements or else the whole thing will collapse the entire game opens on a hostage crisis situation where one guy’s trying to like hack the computer while you’ve got hostages and they’re going to freak out if you don’t talk him down to beat him up. Well you’ve got soldiers on the outside slowly approaching and if they get too close. They’re just going to storm you if the hostages freak out. They’re going to attack you may have to kill them or they’re going to go running and can either kill them or free them and if you don’t constantly reinforce the security attack on the hacking of thing it’s going to fry your guy trying to penetrate security. So essentially it’s nearly impossible to win a tower defense the adventure game kind of yeah but it’s got like the complexity of living on a puzzle solving like a Mega Man but like Pearse a tower defense and the notion of constant like threats from every side and not knowing how to balance all the plates I think would be your kind of thing. Well yeah. It sounded interesting. You know sort of talking about the needing to balance things and just pressure. I just finished playing Donkey Kong Country Returns So going back to the conversation before about modern level design versus older level design and I think what I’m what I’m starting to see in a couple of the newer games that I’ve seen is that they’re doing a better job about ramping up slowly like giving you a learning curve and they’re not just sticking in you and sticking in you to Torrijos it take that just jabbing you with the tutorials that they’re not getting you start on tutorials forever and they’re not also just throwing you to the walls like a lot of the early Any ask instance like I’ll figure it out and then get like oh your dad but so dot com country returns for a week has a really great learning curve they introduce a couple of elements at a time and give a chance to play around with them and then they ramp up the challenge but the problem is in the second half of the game they continue to ramp up the challenge of those same couple of things. So you’re just seeing the same challenges over and over again and they just keep getting more and more difficult to the point of insanity that it’s not worth throwing different elements together like you saw this one thing in the air you saw the bouncy tires in this one level and you saw the spikes and this level of thrown together and see what happens. Like that’s the old kind of game design that I really like of yours completely different challenges that you’ve seen independently throw them together and see what happens when they mix. What I’m seeing more with some of the modern games is here’s one challenge we’re just going to make it harder and harder and harder to the point where you need to be absolutely perfect to survive the scapegoat is another example of where this happens. Steam game if you’ve played it haven’t played and you know it’s on sale but it’s crucial. So I bought it for the name because I’m a sucker for bad puns. I stayed for music and the tight puzzles soundtrack and I. I love the simplicity of it that it doesn’t give you a whole lot to do but it does a lot with what it does give you. But you beat the game and there’s sort of that sense of well that was fun but I was really just starting to get acclimated to this and I think I could have done a couple more challenging puzzles and I say oh by the way there’s another dungeon for you to go through. Like All right new dungeon and then immediately there’s this gap in the learning curve and you’re suddenly doing the most insanely difficult things we need to be pixel perfect multiple times in a row just to get to the part where you need to practice a little bit and experiment. So I think we need to demanding all of a sudden. So it’s not so much about creative problem solving. It’s how perfectly can you do this and I’m well past the point where I can just sit there for hours on end and practice the same thing over and over again until I get it just right. When I was a gaming as an adult. Like now I mean sure you’ve got so many hobbies like investment but it’s not easy. Well the other thing that keeps me moving along I signed up for the PAC lottery which I talk about every so often. Several years ago and that is a wonderful little website that allows you to keep track of your entire video game collection and your backlog specifically and it lets you mark whether you’ve never played a game before whether you’ve beaten it whether you’ve got one hundred percent secrets whether you’ve mastered it and it just lets you keep your collection divided up by console and gives you statistics and tallies of how much of your entire backlog you’ve gone through and now I’m focused on oh I got to get that completed status I got to get that beaten status I you know I want to take this off my list. You’ve game a five game collections. Basically yeah. Do you find it interesting at all that you even exist online. Like the fact that generalize or is that thing. Comparing it I like the whole let’s play movement the angry video game nerd certainly deserves to be mentioned. Basically like Has it surprised you and all that gaming is like huge like Major. Saying on the Internet. Not in particular because you’ve got people who have an interest and the Internet is a great way to connect people with interests and the technology just happens to be there that you can play a game and show your friends if your friends happen to be in Wisconsin or Norway or Japan or wherever. Cool. It’s an international community. You know I look at you know myself I enjoy showing other people video games like my wife one of the great things is that she’s up for sitting down and watching me play through something that maybe she wouldn’t have any interest in playing on her own or maybe it’s just not her type of game. And those are fun I like doing that so the whole let’s play community let’s play movement if you will. Really it’s not surprising to me because I imagine there’s got to be other people out there who just say this is something I like to do let me share this with other people and then there’s other people who are just like I got a webcam I might as well do something with it. My view of classical music in the sense that you had these standards out there like you know whatever I mean like like Name your favorite piece of classical music and then you watch someone play it in a unique way. Do you see that sort of mentality kind of like being appreciated once again you know through the replaying of video games. Well the thing with the let’s with the let’s play movement if we want to go back to that is that it’s it’s tough to do something innovative because you know you’ve got to be the first one on the scene or you’ve got to have a game that allows for a lot of variation or some combination of the two. You know we’re looking at the kinds of videos that we put up on the game called You Tube channel G C dot net and one of the things that I was starting to find as the You Tube administrator is that the kinds of games that we should be focusing on are the ones that nobody else has really played which is why I did the play through of the Game Boy Color adaptation. Chris dollars because I don’t even think there was a play through for that on You Tube and simply by virtue of it being a novel it was interesting enough anyhow regardless of whatever the quality might have been the fact that it was there at all was a point of interest. But then you’ve got things like Super Mario Brothers like Mega Man to like we’re in a time where people just say I love this game. I want to play it but there’s not necessarily any thought about how am I going to do this to set myself apart. So it’s not so much the gameplay you know going back to the classical music example. I don’t think it’s really like classical music as it is anything with lyrics because we’re you know we’ve got the same basic instrumentation we’re switching it up a little bit but it’s the commentary that really makes or break a let’s play unless you really are doing something that nobody else is touching and there’s a lot of variety in the way commentary can go. Then how Mario can jump over that combo that one or two are always about that like what you think makes it special. Oh me personally sure. You’re saying I’m special. Feel like I have my head you know I’m just kidding. But you know what he thinks of the draw. At least I have discovered a niche that I didn’t know I needed attention because when I like I said when I got into this it was just oh I can do that you know let me just do this it was fun. But there seems to be a niche that a lot of people were gravitating toward of clean family friendly humor because a lot of let’s players will just you know swear up a storm for the heck of it and there’s a certain audience that you know that cuts off that there’s some deliberate practice that goes into it. You know I’ve been playing these Mega Man games for years. So yes you know there’s there’s an inherent skill and there’s a lot of practice but then go. But beyond that to try and show things like this is not something you would see during a normal play through like this has to be very deliberate. So not just watching somebody die over and over again or get lucky like I am I am deliberately crafting the game play as best as I can and sometimes it works out better than others because I still struggle with some of that. But that that sort of focus on rehearsing and making a performance instead of just we’re going to sit down and throw on the game console and see what happens. Same deal with the commentary that it’s usually scripted some of it’s improvised but I take my time assembling it so that I attempt to make every moment count with the commentary. There’s no heavy breathing into the microphone while I’m trying to get past a section and there’s no one trying to think what to say like I’m planning it out and also the approach that I take to the megaman games like I’ve seen before I play with the games I don’t just play the games. I love these games. Part of my childhood and it was so much fun to discover new things and I like bringing that joy of discovery to other people like here’s this random thing that I figured out I don’t know if anybody else has but it’s fun let’s go look at it and using the special weapons because I found not merely having seen a lot of videos you know people sent me hey could you look at my Mega Man to play through video or hey could you look at my Mega Man to play through video and I see those sometimes and I watch him like do you not using the special weapons is the best part of the game. So we’re really having fun with those is something that a lot of other people are doing you know that comment and so I think it’s interesting that all I mention Half-Life two earlier they were actually quite innovative with achievements and that you couldn’t unlock achievements and those would be the level in an awesome way but you might not have been conscious of a law school looking for achievements. So like the Raven home with only the gravity gun you send the barrel down to barnacles and make it explode. You know my absolute favorite and I just mention this. Again call article that should be going up soon. Is the little rocket man achievement is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever heard of. There’s a garden gnome in basically the very beginning of the game and also translates in some utility shed and you just you you will easily miss it and not know it exists and you drag it with you throughout the entire game to the very last level and loaded in the Iraq war and stop the rockets. I think that’s what’s called Noam Chomsky. I was told it’s little Rocket Man that’s what it is from the trial with Peter The trouble is that there’s not some possible hold on to arm and shoot things or quite a lot. Yeah and it’s about what I want and even drive the car you have to find a way to like jam him into the edge of the thing and I won’t even like do that normally you can’t like hit X. to storm so you also are you know that the editor of the staff writer for game color dot net I’m a staff writer and editor so I get the best of both. What is game call about that. So game call about now is a video game humor website turned gaming outside the mainstream website that evolved from a monthly newsletter online newsletter written by a bunch of high school kids and gradually evolved into what it is today which is a daily video game website written by high schoolers and also college kids and post college kids so we got a little bit of everybody but we came outside the mainstream so you’ve got you could talk to us and you’ve got your I G M’s and your you know your big name video game websites. We’re looking at all of the things that are overlooked that are under-represented that you know anything that nobody else is really talking about or nobody else is talking about anymore so we’re looking at games from a decade ago that were kind of popular we’re looking at brand new indie games that nobody’s heard of. We’re looking at all the weird stuff that the big sites really are covering. So. If it is an eclectic mix because we’ve got staff members from all sorts of backgrounds all over the world all walks of life and we’ve got a sense of humor but it’s not necessarily a comedy website but it’s really focused on the weird and the obscure and what I do for the website is I do occasionally write stuff not as much as I used to because I found that I’m a very slow writer. Like my Mega Man recordings why they take several months sometimes between videos is I’m I’m very deliberate on a bit of a perfectionist so I like to make sure that I’ve completely represented myself the way I want to. So then once it’s set in stone on the Internet and you know I don’t need to worry about people misunderstanding me or looking back and say oh I wish I would’ve said that differently. So I take forever to write stuff and I realized in the time that it takes me to write an average length article I could have edited like five or ten or twenty other people’s articles. So I’ve been helping to get some of the stuff up on the main site mostly focusing on the archives now. I’m I’m doing a lot of retrospective retroactive cleanup going through our archives from way back a decade and touching up all of the old articles that weren’t necessarily held to the same quality standards that we have today. And we’re also putting a bunch of our podcasts on You Tube that never got posted for whatever reason. And where do you want to take game call in the future. Well it’s not like it’s my website to take I’m just along for the ride but I would like to see us get a more dedicated. Well we have a dedicated fan base but it’s very small. We seem to have a lot of people who visit the site once and then go off and do something else. So finding a way to retain the attention of our readers is one big thing so that we can start to grow a fan base and then I think maybe getting to the point where our staff writers collect prolific enough where we can post maybe twice a day be crazy. What are you seeing on one of these overlooked minority games that you know makes you want to buy them. Like who or what makes one special. So it doesn’t matter to me if. It’s a game that everyone has heard of and played or if it’s a game that no one has heard of and played the notoriety of it the reputation means nothing to me. It’s Does this look like it’s going to be an enjoyable experience does this look like it’s going to be fun and with the indie games in the outside the mainstream games. A lot of the time it’s just because they dare to be different. They’re doing something that nobody else has done. And sometimes that alone is worth a look even if they don’t do it well. So I guess if anything if I’m looking at non-mainstream games it’s their their innovation that they’re trying to do something different than just crank out another Madden game another game that’s I think boldness should be rewarded especially because usually all the reasons. Ninety percent failure. What are some what are some interesting games you played over the years that just don’t really fit the traditional mold has ever been a game they were like why is the world not playing this so off the top of my head. One thing that I just finished playing yesterday which to a lesser extent kind of meets that criteria that you just mentioned. Lluvia the legend returns for the Game Boy Color. I’ve never played a Lluvia game before and it’s another one of those series that I know people have talked about and they liked it but it’s I know not one that I ever saw in a store and I mean it sounds like the saddest little shower sponge aloof. See I imagine like a little girl blue hair. See I think an aloof sponge in the shower that’s not being used. Just feelings that I think I don’t like a little sprite that has like fairy wings and she goes around and like turns kittens and unicorns. I think that’s basically the premise of the second game. Oprah’s not sure. Excellent OK It’s I got to walk there in front of me. So what columns that I. At least you straight I still tell myself I do write it but I haven’t done an installment in like a year and a half so I guess I’m technically not writing it anymore it’s called flash flood where I review a bunch of Flash games with a similar theme because that’s another thing that nobody’s really focusing on you’ve got some really decent flash games out there that are as good as if not better than commercially released games. And I am. I’m with my games sort of the way I am about my short stories about my fiction is that I’m big on high concept so stuff that tries something new. It doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be really well developed just that little seed of hate. That’s a neat idea just to get you thinking I really dig that kind of stuff. So talking about fire there’s a flash in light people on fire. That is the name of the Flash game like people on fire. I’m just looking through my list here which is why I bring this up and you are a tree and it’s like terrible low quality stick figure graphics. You were a tree that sneaks around and then suddenly burst into flames and then catches as many people on fire as possible and it sounds like to me and it is terrible but only because it’s like things like growing up. He’s like writing about addition for Adult Swim games that’s why he wrote that game he wants to move to Atlanta and develop frickin bible five or sixty seconds to kill yourself or that’s a game. Yeah it’s a horrible thing. Well it’s like finals kill yourself where if you don’t kill yourself you have to go to your office meeting and you have to use all the items in the office place to kill yourself like Lex Well that’s how computers in a similar Another one of my flash flood R.T. games that I reviewed was corrosion suicide salesman. Same thing it’s a former where the point is to try to kill yourself and I I love that turning it on its head. Yes it’s a terrible concept. I’m a terrible person but I love the. Game mechanics because it’s flipping it on its head of you want to try and hurt yourself but you can’t it’s so difficult. You know there’s just those those perverting expectations of what this game is supposed to be like just trying new things I like and instantly it’s inviting you to like ask what the mechanics of the game act like accomplish like personally you know it’s like you you learn a little bit about yourself from almost like a sadistic nature of it. They were not there that we need relief. And some of it gets like stupid silly violent end of the masochistic sounds you know hours. I thought when doom really blew up I thought part of it was that there is kind of like a pent up from frustration for a lot of people or aggression that’s being repressed and you’ve got to kind of take it out through the video game. Well it’s it’s also the culture. You know we as Americans presumably we’re all Americans here maybe possibly have become desensitized to violence because it’s just been part of our pop culture too. I was a Spanish major and religion major in college and I studied abroad in Spain for a semester and I found it was completely the opposite that all over T.V. Everything was a little bit more scandalous a little bit more sexy but violent stuff like No there was nothing violent at all. And those two would sort of swap positions as to where they are in the US so I know that at least in this culture we’re used to people blowing up and people killing each other and doing terrible things to each other and you need to be re disturbed about it for it to really strike a chord dichotomy you know the idea of sexual repression breeding violence like you describe that for an Islamic nation where they’re trying to do anything they can to like censor as much sexual imagery as possible Daryn. I’ll be honest. Oh yes that’s right. On a podcast or I can be controversial. I’m not that big a fan of The Legend of Zelda series. No it’s not you know if you’re going to get that off your chest like just saying it out loud like I don’t like it. I have I written a post or two before about Zelda but it’s not really my style. Like I recognize that they were puzzles in it but something about the top down action you know I feel like you know what it is what it is mostly the Overworld are unnecessarily large. I like the dungeons once I’m in the dungeon I’m having a fun time solving puzzles. SWAT that’s where the swords good time but everything else in between the dungeons usually feels like filler period of time I had problems with because you’re just writing across Hyrule Field for ever. Spirit Tracks I had trouble with because you were just training across fields for ever Wind Waker I had problems with because you’re just sailing across the ocean forever and nothing interesting ever happens. Well you’re right with the other the other two are way off base but when it comes down on well I don’t entirely agree with Max I’ve never played hockey arena so I can’t say anything about that. But when weaker when weaker was a schizophrenia game where there were parts of it that were just a lot of fun. Like I mean I really enjoyed like just like you Sanjoy the dungeons but tangle was extorting son of a bitch and he just ruined the entire game like I was having a great time since Matthew capitalism ruining a good time. I was just I was having but that wasn’t capitalism that was straight up theft Lang Lang as blackmail you don’t get to see the ending unless you just pay me off. There’s a monopoly on a chart of the season itself and if you want to enjoy that. That’s not capitalism that’s that’s monopoly I mean that’s the opposite of a good market that’s the ultimate success. We’re not cap when I come in last I don’t know. Everywhere Maybe I am so I know a tangle you made me communist. Thanks to Google I’m going to go I’m going to go see the Russian Revolution with Madman X. I feel like there’s. Yeah I mean if if there’s anything you can really fault the Zelda series for it’s its for releasing those those god awful c.d.i games like that they really didn’t do a very good job with this. That’s that’s one of situations where rare situation and tend to lent out it’s intellectual property and just got just destroyed by third party. Yeah so they don’t do that anymore just like with Netflix. Did you hear about this and all that you hear that Netflix was I think they were talking about making Legend of Zelda game and then they were talking about no we’re totally not making a ton I’m sorry Netflix. Yeah I actually saw the ad the press release were I guess in a while I was sitting there announcing that he was also kicking a puppy and punching a baby in the face simultaneously. Well I I read I can’t remember who it was but someone online there can’t be that many people writing about videogames stuff was saying that Nintendo has a history of saying oh no no no that’s not true at all and then a couple months later they’re like You’re right you got us it was totally true just like Pearl Harbor. That’s the Japanese to a T. man the shop with a peace treaty going hey guys everything’s cool everything’s cool everything school is not going to happen. Gold right in your face. Exact opposite boom. Netflix Zelda chest high profile just like program joy that society wrecked burnout. So there’s a game talking about inflicting violence virtual violence on other things in people and it being cathartic and fun. You crash cars in the other cars. This is the game. Burnout it’s you know it’s like a it’s like a dull Hot Wheels basically. Yeah and it’s fantastic. It’s it is I am not good at racing games. I’m pretty decent at Burnout three because you’re supposed to crash you know I know because you supposed crash there is a certain point where you’re not supposed to. There is also a point where you can go too fast I was playing the I think is like the Grand Prix or the Formula one race or something and had exceeded speeds that the game was capable of rendering where I was literally tearing apart the pavement there was just this hole in the map where they were supposed to be a road you know like little French cafe tables on this and it’s like and Einsteinian moment where you just discover the relativity of burnt out. Dan you must be really going to burn out. So I have a question for you. Gemini laser. I mean relation to Major Lazer. What’s in the IF YOU laser you live under a rock is it more than you know is it less than five years old. These kind of recent measurements and Major Lazer he makes big sort of dancing music videos and one of them a star Terry Crews as I sort of action hero killing people. OK Another one is directed by Eric from Tim and Eric and all it was was the scariest strangest torquing possible I think I think I’m a fan of saying yes they’re directly related. Well here’s a question you get into any design looking to jump into the developing world or so I would love to. I am currently in the sort of brainstorming stages of something completely different for Mega Man with my wife and maybe someday will sit down actually put thoughts on paper and start to assemble something I have always wanted to make a Mega Man fan game and I would love to do an adventure game as well I’ve had a couple ideas bring for that but the thing is I take on so many side projects and I I take forever to finish them. As a journalist I never get to share anything about this potential game it’s a dating sim. And that’s all I can say about it. A game I find dating Yeah OK I mean ten to ten you’re going to pretty well there’s no one what’s the one. When recently came out as like it’s like this ready for a tough boyfriend or Phillip in CO staff writers Diana Gray has been doing a radio play through that on her personal channel. So that’s been much time to come on You Tube but I I’m not really on You Tube like I was just there but I don’t often watch videos I usually you know I’m on Netflix or something. Well you know one thing I want to share with anything like upcoming that you know either Gemini laser game called and it’s like that we should be looking out for. Well as far as my participation game pole goes like I was saying I’m mostly doing behind the scenes stuff now. But there should be a couple of videos that are because coming up on the G.C. dot net G C D O T N E T You Tube channel We’re all be participating so on the play through things that could be fun and I am also looking at hopefully getting another video out for April fools. Now that I’ve ruin the surprise but it’s sort of a tradition for me to do it perforce video on or very close to April Fools’ Day So I have something out of style greatest page in the universe where he says he’s going to know perforce doesn’t do a lot of that a month later. April fools and releases are nice I like it yeah. So if I can get my act together it’s all planned I just need to record it and maybe that will happen and then of course the bonus video from a can and seven and then official hiatus for working on said dating sim with my wife possibly maybe and then I’ll get back to recording Maignan I wanted him out of breath. It took me three years to record megaman seven so I definitely want an official break and not just I keep getting distracted and delayed by other things now. We really appreciate you coming on here David. Again thanks for anything they can do and what has Gemini laser where should best luck with game call on all of your other side projects and. Please watch the major the best for me at the family reunion. I will put on the voice of major whatever I perceive that to be and I’ll have a conversation with myself. Wonderful and thanks a lot. I will say someone was happy.
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