Final Picks and Draft Recap

This summer, fanDool is the best place to bet on goals. Including equalizers. Uuh? Yeah, Petterers. Every goal is worth more on fan dool. So let there be goals. New customers get three hundred fifteenion bonus bets guaranteed when you bet five dollars for seven days. twenty one plus in presence and select states. First online real money wager only, minimum five dollar wager required for seven consecutive days, five dollars fif first deposit required. Bonus issued as non withdrawable bonus bets, which expires seven days after receivt. restrictions applies, see f term at fanDoolot com slash sportsbook Gambling problem called call one hundred gambler or one hundred My Ret. This episode is brought to you by Paramount Plus. In the world of espionage, truth is a moving target and every decision carries a dangerous consequence. In the AC season two, Martian has a new mission as a double agent, twice the liies, twice the risk. The lines between ally and enemy blur like never before survival depends on trusting no one. Starring Michael Fosbeender, Jeffrey Wright, Jodody Turner Smith, and May and Richard Geere Don't miss the agency season two, all episodes now streaming on Paramount plus Welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus speed for all things fandom. I am Benmin Bberg, senior editor at the Ringer button Mash host and card carrying N sixty four kid at heart for life We have a superersized episode in store for you today. Fortunately, this podcast supports a special expansion pack for increased memory capacity. So just slap that sucker in and you should be good to go. We are lucky that LLMs hadn't happened yet in the Nintendo sixty four era where we would have had to pay through the nose for those four extra megabytes Back then, we had instant messenger chatpots that plagiarize, destroy the environment or raise rAM prices. shhout out to Smarter Child. We have so much to discuss today. GTA preorders, steam machine pricing, Xbox drama, What else is new? Brief reviews of Star Fox for Switch two and the addventures of Elliot. Thoughts and hopes for Nintendo's Occarina remake. But biggest news of all. is that this week, the Nintendo sixty four turned thirty. The latest clue in a growing body of evidence that we must be considerably older than thirty, which doesn't seem possible, but dismayingly does appear to check out. So to mark the occasion, to wish N sixty four a happy thirtieth, we'll be conducting a draft of N sixty four games. and as a tribute to the system that popularized the practice of shipping with four built in controller ports We have a four player podcast No odd job allowed. with us, not as always, but as often is a man who is on top of the world notot only did his Kicks win a championship But he himself is a champion because this week att long last, he beat Crimson Desert Congrats on both counts, Mr. Matt James Life changing events, Ben. I'll never be the same. How would you order those in terms of their importance to you and your happiness? Yeah, I'm going to have to put the next championship above Crimson Desert, I think. Okay. It was about one hundred ninety six hours in Crimson Desert And let me just do the quick hour conversion to thirty two years of my life. Yeah, I'm not good at math. It's the Nicks though the Nicks Yeah, definitely Nick. Yeah. They managed to patch the Kicks finally, much as Crimbson Desert has been patched repeatedly. I imagine that this game played pretty differently by the time you finished it than it did when you started it. It's sort of aaceous situation. It's way better a new game. You have to start all over now I legitimately recommend it to people now notot just weirdos like me Hey, we recommended it pre release. notot Steve But we did. Anyway, it's on version twelve now, I think, not counting hot fixes. So really, start all over again and experience it anew. He may not be a Nicks fan, but he is still riding high from that glimpse he got of Kingdom Hearts four at this month's Nintendo Direct two weeks ago. Ringer, senior audio producer, Steve Sora, Alman, congrats on the trailer and the proof of life. It really is proof of life. And like like the world economy, I too am suffering from a memory shortage, but I'm always going to remember that Kingdom Hearts four trailer. Yeah. I don't like the new design, but I certainly like the fact that I've got a new main menu box to bang my head too I will remember none of what happened in the previous Kingdom Hearts games, including the ones that are no longer even really available to play easily, that still will play a crucial part in Kingdom Hearts Force plot, no doubt. But that's okay. You don't have to sweat the small stuff when it comes to Kingdom Hearts. That's Sora, the Kingdom Hearts character, not the defunct AI video app important distinction just to be clear. And finally, because it's such a slow news week in the NBA And we were worried he wouldn't have any other drafts to discuss. Chatter and senior staff writer, Rob Mahoney is here to do some drafting with us. Welcome, Rob. Thank you. No, I put in a few calls. I was like, all right, let's the Jonest trait done. let's get this business taken care of. I got drafting to do. The most important draft of my day, certainly. Oh, no doubt Full disclosure before I recruited you for this episode, did invite noted Ringer and Star Fox fan Glenn Powell to join this draft Unfortunately, he was tech unavailed to be on Buttmesh because he is in production on another project. But of everyone in the world who has not recently played Star Fox in a major motion picture, you were my first choice. So happy to have you. I appreciate it. Do we know if Glenn is doing any of the voice work in the new Star Fox remake do not believe he is because I have played it and I will tell you about it and the voice work. is memorable, but it's not Glen, I'm afraid. That's tough. Okay, let's start with some patch notes, our name for video game news you can use or at least be upset about GTA six is real It's possibly spectacular. It's still slated for november nineteenth And if you can't wait until then to buy it, you've just got to give Rockstar a take to your money as quickly as possible, you can put a preorder down the day after this podcast comes out june twenty fifth for an as yet unspecified price but as we record at least So we figured we would play a quick game. This has been the subject of much speculation And we will provide our best guesses here Name your GTA six price. I have asked each of you to write down How much you think the base game will cost? So forget about special editions and preordder bonuses and you get to play it three days early just the base game layStation for Xbox. What do we think it's going to cost? We have each We're all down our number and now we're going to compare figures. But I wanted everyone to write it down Keep you all honest You want to be first into the breach here? What do you think we'll be paying for GTA six? I would love to. I don't know if this is priceices right rules or not where if you overbid, you're immediately disqualified. I think it's going to be ninety dollars US for the base game because Honestly because they can, you know, they know they have people over a barrel. You know you have a drug and supply that the people desperately want and need And I think this is the time where they squeeze. Yeah. there is no generic equivalent to GTA six. unfortunately. there are many imitators but only one authentic article Steve Let's see your number Well, Rob might have beaten me to the punch, but I did go priceices right rules and I took seventy nine dollars ninety nine cents. All right. I'm just good whichich is again like the retail inclusion of like seventy nine. Yeah, exactly. ex my post it note that we're holding up for no one else to be able to see. I also have seventy nine doll ninety nine cents but Ben wrote it bigger and that's that's it and I'll give that to I think seven in ninety nine is like the absolute maximum for anybody to feasibly allow themselves to get it for the Gen pop, but knowing that the Gen pop is literally everyone, Again, this is when they squeeze. This is where they set the precedent for if there's any good there's ever going to be a game that they were ever to going to have the balls to charge eighty dollars and up for. It is this one. I think they can take that as a challenge. I think they can go higher. But Matt, will you go higher or will you go lower? I abbsutely agree with everything that Steve said, which is why I'm dropping a fat ninety nine nineyine. No You wr numbers I've ever se now, but it's that's the biggest number and the smallest lettering. Wow. That's right. ninety ninell niney nine. Give us the pitch Here's the pitch. they want to make money People are going to buy this game no matter what. It's a good pitch. That's the pitch. It's pretty persuasive. St president notes right now. He's ping up the preordder announcement. Wait, we can go higher. I just think people are like, you know, people are used to prices being absolutely out of control right now Why not just say Hondo Right Well, in the words of in the words of Logan Roy, congratulations on saying the biggest fucking number Yeah But I like imagine that that's actually like just above what I would expect like I can see a deluxe version for ninety nine, but I can't see a base for that. I can see Deluxe version for Yeah absurd responsible amounts. I You see Deluxe being like one twenty. We have thirteen years of development cost to recoup here. So Oh yeah.'t I can't physically Like imagine base being over one hundred If they include like a Vice City night lightight in that thing, it's five hundred dollars. Like you you could gouge so quickly. Yeah. Can we do popcorn buckets? Is that a thing? It's not too late. Yeah It has to. All right. So no one no one is saying that this will be anything below eighty do Steve and I are the optimist here that this will be within the realm of normal pre established video game pricing. and Rob and Matt are saying, no, we are raising the bar. And maybe the rest of the industry, I don't know if they want GTA to say, here's how high the ceiling can be And now everyone else looks like they're not gouging everyone. or hey, maybe this is a permission structure for us to raise our price at some point, off course, there is only one GTA. So look, if they do set it at ninety or one hundred People will pay. I don't think it's going to hurt the bottom line or the adoption too much, but I'm going to be an optimist. You know, I'm not going to say that they're going to come out here silk song style and say, here, twenty bucks. You can have GTA six. but I'm going to hope that this is not a paradigm shift, even though they could get away with it. They'll just They'll go for the populist move. They'll try to move the most units possible I think that's my hope. Can I have a quick question for you, Ben? Do you think this might be the one video game in this like probably decade or recent memory where actual reviews of this will not matter because I'm actually thinking about the fact that like, what if actually Rockstar really drops their nuts and just doesn't give out review codes at. That's been as a possibility. Yeah. And look, I'd like to think that as game reviewers, we are super important and everyone is just waiting with baited breath for us to pronounce our verdict before buying. But I think there are plenty of games out there that have already cleared that. I don't care what reviewers say. I'm going to pick it up including every shooter that comes out annually, every sports game that comes out annually But yes, GTA, I think people will be plunkking down their seventy to one hundred or more dollars this week and over the next few months Sight unseen Although, we might see some more sites seen soon, so if and when a new trailer does drop Mash will be on it So stay tuned for that pod at some point. I have a slack thread with some of you where every time there's a GTA trailer rumor I just like, stand by, everyone. This is it. It's happening this time. We might have to just swing into action for an emergency. trade a video g. like the O of St, there will be a GTA trailer at some point. And when it does, we will be so ready because we have rehearsed for this And we'll just we'll get right into action as soon as it drops. One of these days, I'm not going to be the boy who cried GTA trailer it won't be a false alarm All right, we will know more about that quite soon And speaking of things turning thirty this year, Valve will celebrate the big threez later this summer And by the time it does, it will be the proud parent of a new piece of hardware. june twenty fifth is the first day you can preorder GATA six. It's also the last day You can enter a lottery on steam posossibly place a preorder. for the steam machine. Unlike GTA six, the steam machine does have an announced price And you're probably not going to like it. The five hundred and twelve gigabyte model will retail for. one thousand forty nine US smackers twow terabyte version will run you three hundred dollars more if you want a side of steam controller with that. can tack on another seventy nine bucks to each of those prices So thanks to AI driven demand for RAM, we have seen hardware price increases across the board Steam machines price was increasing too. We just didn't know what it was yet And according to Valve, it was previously supposed to be priced at seven hundred and fifty bucks But no more. So C crunch the numbers. you've run the math is your verdict on the thousand dollars plus steam machine that we dreaded, but also sort of expected That's too much money, Ben price is too damn high. It's true. Pice too damn high. And you know what? it's not the sad thing is from a hardware perspective It's not completely unreasonable if you were to build out a comparable PC. based on the specs. I think you could come in a couple hundred dollars, maybe maybe even three hundred dollars less than this thing if you've really tried Now at that point, you're building a much larger PC with a larger form factor and going all g cube sized Right. Valv has done a nice job of managing the thermals and the know the noise level of this thing to be to be nice, but att the same time If you are paying that little extra to get your steam machine. the thing you're sacrificing is future upgrades because the GPU and CPU in this thing are locked in. Those are not going to be able to be upgraded. and the biggest problem the steam machine is is that yeah, it's expensive, but also It's kind of just a machine for now and not a machine for the future. It is comparable to a PS five in performance at a much higher price And yeah, it's a small use case There aren't many people who I think I can recommend this to unless you have a very tiny space for a computer And you haven't maybe played any of the games of past generation and you want to get into PC gaming and you have just more money than you know what to do with, then this is perfect for you Yeah, it's I mean, if price were no object, okay, I guess if price were no object, you'd just build yourself a supercomputer and then you could have All the the specs cranked up to the max. So it's sort of this trying to thread the needle. It's too expensive for just a casual adapter to pick up. But if you're a true PC die hard enthusiast, hey, you might not even be in the market for this thing because you don't need a living room PC, but also this might not satisfy your need for speed Rob, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, it's a classic case of who is this for. Especially, I would think that the best case the best case scenario for this kind of non traditional console is You're hoping it can be a gateway, right? for people who are not full fledged PC gamers who want a taste of that thing But at this price point, that doesn't make sense whatsoever. And Matt's absolutely right, Like you're not future proofing with this kind of hardware. You don't have the customizability of a PC It can't do anything beyond what a PC can do. And so then what are you really paying for other than a nice size box? I think that that's actually the biggest tragedy of this entire thing because the price point is actually going to be betraying the philosophy of what this console is supposed to do Because this is make no mistake, a PC. You are buying a PC here This is the openness of the platform that Valve has promised you that like you can uninstall the OS of this thing with ease and make this a desktop PC for your own potential use. You don't even need to plug this into your TV. You can make this your home computer if you want. You can do anything with this and the entire philosophy of like we joke about what like the PC Master race is. and the reason that we do is because inherently there iss a little bit more of an emotional buy in to making a PC because not only are you researching and like thinking up what your use cases for this PC are you probably built the thing yourself or at least looked up things that you needed for this arm. And when you get to the steam machine at the breaking price that it is the performance and things that it can actually do while comparable to the things that you have now betray what a PC box is now for every person that has one now Like again, you don't have to do this, but Valve has been telegraphing this painfully for months and it's so sad when Valve actually kind of has their tail tucked between their legs to be like Yeah, it's a thousand dollars. And one of the greatest and most heartbreaking things that I had seen in the price reveal is that there's like a massive Q and A notot only with the price point, but with like the pre orders and how these things will work. And at the very bottom, It says Qion If I don't get a steam machine right away, what can I do? And they basically in in paraphrasing terms said The beauty of the PC community means that there are a lot of resources available to you to like build your own and dancers live your life. Yeah aside.selves. They're like you can like we have this open platform of the OS. you can literally make your own. Nt your own price And we are not going to stop you from doing that. And I give I sit my hat to them for doing that to them tacitly being like You really don't have to buy this is like actually insane. And that's what really breaks my heart And supplies are limited because they couldn't even acquire as much stock as they wanted to due to the shortages. So it'll sell out. it'll be hard to get one even if you want one, But ultimately the long term sales, I just can't imagine this not continuing to be a niche product, which is unfortunate because I think the timing aside from the Rpocalypse was right that the market craves something like this that's I'm in that target market as someone who appreciates the convenience of console gaming but is regularly PC curious and would be happy to just have a pre built solution. For anyone who's intimidated by the idea of building their own thing and sourcing their own components just to have something off the rack that worked well and was convenient and no must no fuss It's a good proposition It's a bad price point and it's just going to limit the reach, unfortunately, at least for now and for the foreseeable future. So I'm sure it'll be a worthy product in some respects, but potential for it to be a breakout one and one that could kind of reshape gaming That's kind of out the window now and it's unfortunate And you know, this is happening the same time as what seems to be to be sort of an inflection point in just public embrace of AI, you know, film bros are reeling right now Eone's been betrayed by the A twenty four AI deal with Google Deepmind, but it's happening in gaming everywhere too. and been promoting Unreal Engine six And its integration with Claud and Gemini and other AI tools and even the current generation, five point eight real engine will have a plugin that will allow developers to just connect these models directly to the engine There's a longt timee epic veteran named Seord De Young who has served as an evangelist for Unreal Engine. That's been his job. and he just resigned because he said This era has come to a close We're reaching a pivotal point. And as much as I love the old way of working, I think it would be strategic to come to terms with where this is heading Even though he didn't specify that he was talking about AI It was widely interpreted as being about that. So This is not changing, if anything, the resistance being reduced and we're nowhere near the end of this shortage. So I just I don't see an end to the current crisis of hardware prices rising. And Matt, maybe you were right. to have built yourself a PC that was pretty expensive months ago, but not as expensive as it would be today. Yeah, I actually priced out what my PC would cost today that I bought, I think in January or February And it's up five hundred dollars. basically Oh my Godd Congrats to you. Yeah you're in inved on my steamgy off like a gnd and a half now with my memory head. Make sure makeake sure you popp your PF five lid off and suck the dust out of there Yeah, ye. make sure there's no roaches in that. Beuse you' gott to take care of that Baks. You're gonna need a new mortgage. I was joking about my N sixty four expansion pack, but here it is. I'm holding it to the camera This thing now, those four megabytes, it's appreciating this. You guys strip that thing like a railroad nail. You know, we're just gonna start going start going garage sale to garage sale, megabyte for megabytees. This is my nest egg. This is my retirement plan. I'm run into old gill from the s. I mean my parts Wonder what if anything Rockstar will say about AI when GTA comes out Straussnik of Take two has sort of downplayed the potential. but strikes me, you know, people are looking at GTA as not just a system seller, but really like an ecosystem seller, a platform seller. This is going to revitalize console gaming. If Rockstar comes out and said, yeah, we used AI to make this thing. You know, That's the end really. If they came out and said, no, we would never Well then everyone will say, well, no wonder it took you thirteen years. now they're going to openly disclose that. I think we're going to have to wait for the, you know whistleblowers to say that, but I highly doubt that That part of it is so funny, how it's just like an open secret in the industry that so many of these developers are using AI in various respects. It's just like you can't talk about it, but you can do it As long as you don't forget to remove the slap before you release the game, that you get' and just say you're going get rid of it later. Or thats, yeah, O just say, no, that's the new normal. Anyway. I guess Rockstar can't claim that AI has sped up development for them unless it would have taken fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years otherwise, Who knows Finally, this week's or last week's sign of the Epocalypse The fine folks at Xbox have made more news There are reportedly major layoffs coming to the Xbox division next month. A few Microsoft owned studios, including Double Fine, comppulsion, Ninja Theory, are being shut down or spun off. Ninja Theory just had a new game. Senua announced at the Xbox Game showcase, but it will apparently be a posthumous release, or at least a last gasp Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, gave stududios' head Matt Boty, killed the good vibes from that showcase by sending out the latest in a long line of memos This time to bemoan a paltry three percent profit margin and pronounce cannot continue and evidently for a good number of Xbox workers won't Anything new here or is just the latest update on the pile of bad Xbox newews I think the only thing new here is that, you know, we've had a recent wave of kind of good vibes coming out of Xbox and you know, this is the first pedalling we've seen of like, oh, you know what Yeah, nothings actually that ch. Yeah We can, you know, make the letters in our name lowercase or uppercase. We're still going to close studios that make good games that we bought Uh and yeah Not really, nothing nothing new. It's such a steady drumbeat of news coming out of Xox. I'm almost sort of everyveryone is sick of it. Everybody's just That's enough. It's like, you know, I feel like they're the friend who's just always mired in messy drama and at first you kind of You can't look away, you're rubber necking just vicariously. You want to hear about what did they get up to? But then eventually you're just like, look, just let me know when you figure your shit out. You know,ike I don't need to hear about every crisis of confidence here, every memo that's leaked They absolutely have shit to figure out because, you know, they've announced that Project Helix is going to be a premium device and we're just seeing steam machine that's very non premium device being e, you know, four thousandteen hundred dollars. Yeah Yeah. So good luck selling an Xbox for two thousand dollars plus Yes, especially when like they're cleaning up their shit, like This has been what a decade plus of some version of this now, just a slow bloodletting of everything that Xbox has ever been. It's so dispiriting to watch this all happen in slow motion and then suddenly in fast motion It's just, I mean, it's kind of like we've seen elsewhere with Embracer and Neties and Tenscent and others, just all these companies that went all in on acquisition spes or investment sprees when everyone was riding high during the pandemic revenue boost and since has divested and sold off, And that's what we're seeing here too. mayaybe Xbox bitaid off more than it could chew And now it's seeing that, oh, this is not profitable or not as profitable as we would like it to be You know, I think game pess stagnated and failed to scale because there just aren't enough mats out there You know, there just aren't enough people for whom that probably mean there's plenty of mats. There there aren't enough like me. There There's a census wise. Yeah. Yeah. there's a mat helping run Xbox, in fact, but peopleeople whose appetite for games is insatiable People don't need that many games every year because most people don't play that many and people don't care about the back catalog, I think, as much as they do in other media you know, music TV, you might check out shows or albums that you missed. In gaming, it's so often about What's new? And maybe most people don't really need a Netflix for games because most people are kind of you know, one or two or three games a year That'll do it for them. And so they don't need the steady diet. And just I don't know that the streaming potential there was as great as Xbox hoped it was. And so maybe that just sort of puts a cap on the ambition. So There's going to be an unfortunate here as the corporate types like to say, a right sizing We will see b it is and how many heads have to roll to pay for some of those mistakes that were made. But I do understand the full court PR press to try to change the narrative and hey, it's just been bad news and we're getting back to the basics and we're doing away with slogans and we're bringing back logos and everything. But now just I need to hear a little less from Xbox for a while until there's really something to celebrate. All right, let's talk about a couple newew games. We'll do a quick masher passass impressions reviews of new releases And one of them is very timely here. Not only does it come out, on Thursday, same day as you can preorder GTA It is very related to the topic of our draft today. There's a new Star Fox, but it's also sort of the old Star Fox Starfucks sixty four remake out for Switch two I got access to it. I've been playing it. I have played through it You guys are mad at least, you've played the demo. everyveryone's just sort of seen what this thing looks like. And I'm here to tell you that plays pretty much like it looks and like you would expect it to. So there is a review embargo. and so I am forbidden from mentioning certain specifics whichich is kind of funny because this game is more or less like you think it would be. It is a pretty fied Star Fox sixty four which is kind of cool and is kind of fun for a few hours, for sure. It is a lot better looking than I remember it looking in nineteen ninety seven or whenever that was It looks good It sounds good is extremely faithful. to the campaign that we all played back in the nineties. It is just a direct remake And there's new stuff. I don't mean to downplay it. There are new modes. there's multiplayer. you can play you know against each other in kind of a dog fight mode. You can play co op There is expanded storytelling There is new non Glen Powell voiceover work happening here. and It's very expressive. I will say that much for it. and there's you know new between missions briefings and a little prologue video and If you just wanted the story and the lore of Star Fox sixty four to be fleshed out, then I've got good news for you because there's much more of that here. But ultimately It is what you remember it being just looking a lot better and sounding a lot better than it did. So Is that of interest to you guys? I will tell you that it'll run you fifty bucks for the digital version and sixty for the physical version And that is where the rubber meets the road here because if this were a budget purchase I would have no reservations about recommending it and saying mash. Yeah. You have to really like Star Fox and and want to revisit the same Star Fox again. We got to stop doing this. You can't charge that much for an effectively reskinned game with worse voice work. Like this's just not acceptable. And I'm honestly shocked to hear you say that there's even energy in the delivery as far as like the little audio stings go. The trailer that went out Needless to say the response to it has not been great I would say Pppy in particular justust seems like he's become a full time alcoholic and since we last saw him, like the life is gone from his eyes and the energy from his voice. I'm like I don't even recognize this man anymore. Yeah. Yeah Starfuckx does not look his best in this game. There has been much criticism of the character model, which you know, most of the time you're just shooting stuff in front of you. You don't have to be looking at Star Fox's face. There' some questionable design decisions going on there, but Production values are good. It plays well. It controls well. You can use the mouse controls if you're so inclined I just sort of stuck with the joystick served me well, but The Arwing is as agile as ever. And everything looks great and shiny and pretty. But it it's still quite a compact experience. If you recall Star Fox sixty four, you can play through that thing a sitting and not a very long sitting. and that is still the case. You know, there's challenge mode where you can play through it and there are various goals and you can rack up points and medals and so forth. And as I mentioned, there's the battle mode and everything. There are some additions and some goodies and some new shiny bubbles here, but It's basically Starfx sixty four, which is a great game, but also sort of a dated one in its design if no longer in its looks. And as people pointed out kind of been remaking the same Star Fox game over and over and over again in various forms. I mean, going back to SNES, Star Fox The sixty four version rehashed the same storyline. from the SNS version And then you had Starfox sixty four three D for three D S And then you had Star Fox zero. which was sort of a reimagining of the same Star Fox. So be nice if we could have an entirely new Star Fox adventure and maybe one that was built from the ground up in the twenty first century? Is that too much to ask? Maybe if this does well between that and the movie and Mr. Powell's work Maybe there will be enough enthusiasm for Starfucks that we can get a new game off the ground So what I'm hearing is we're getting milk for every dollar on Consoles that don't have a definitive market on giant games that are, you know, a big expansive thing that's being thrown out there into the world and also on the rescanned old games that are being you know, repackaged and fed back to us. I don't know if you know this, Rob, but Nintendo did break the emergency glass and remake Ocarina of time And it is time to once again go back to the well and chill up another seventy dollars for that remake, which I know that people will Yeah I'm not I'm not above that. You know, I'm here for it. I'm interested. But also a little bit of what are we doing again Yeah because we've remade Star Fox five times now And we've refused to make anything new and Nintendo cannot get out of its own way when it comes to even stepping a little bit out of its comfort zone when it comes to their IP Yeah, I want to talk about arena in a second, but it, you know, it is kind of demoralizing to see the same games sold to us over and over, no matter how pretty they are. And you know, some things stay the same Fox' Wing men are of no use whatsoever. They're constantly wriding me for not coming to their aid, but they will never come to my aid. o is still a jerk And, you know, the very concept of all range mode remains ridiculous to me. It's like They're on cruise control, I guess most of the time. They're on the mode where you can only just fly forward and then they say all range mode and then suddenly you can go anywhere. It' like why would that not be the default? Why would you want to be on cruise control here while you're flying your Rwing It's still a fun, pretty endearing Star Wars rip off, you know, and our wings are A wings and we all recognize what the source material here is. And if anything, they lean into that even more kind of oddly Starfox is in this, maybe much like Nintendo for the money. in this remake because They very much emphasize the fact that Star Fox is a merk And he is just serving the highest bidder here And even though we are helping out Corneria and coming to the aid of the LilLAat system, it's just because they're willing to meet our price, basically. And so the distinction between Star Fox and Star Wolf breaks down because I guess, you know, he's taking Andras's money. I guess that makes him the bad guy. But I feel like this new Starfox If Andas would meet his price, he'd be change in sides. Yeah, you know, ob a bounty hunter huh? Yeah. Yeah. What I'm hearing is the most principled person in this game is is his name Andrew? Andros is like nephew who's flying against you like I mean, at least he's standing for something. the Nepo baby of the Star Wolf crew. Yeah. Anyway, that's Star Fox. I had fun with it, you know Could to if you want to p me up and f can you get too If you're willing to pay for the experience that I've described and maybe if the nostalgia is strong enough You will be. It's a fun time. It's just not a very long time and not a very inexpensive time I want to talk about Ocarina Matt very briefly. Give us your verdict on a new retro Zelda like that if we did not have so much else to discuss, we might have devoted more time to the adventures of Elliot's millennium Tales which is out now square Eix slash NX. It's out for All platforms Did you like it? I did like it. I think this is a game for a certain kind of gamer and very much not for other kinds of gamers. It is kind of like, you know, the the twoi overhead Zelda kind of feel to it in terms of the combat. There's a lot of customization with the weapons. There's some elements where you're traveling through time. I think you have to be someone who is Okay with a relaxing game that is pretty sacarin kind of cheesy. If you can stomach that kind of stuff, then this might be for you. if you like the DragonQuest games, if you want like to relax while playing a game. Sure. If you're looking for an inde if you can hold your nose and put up with all the sucky stuff, then this game is for you. That's what I'm hearing. No, you like it more than that. To degree. I mean I really I really like the gameplay. The music is incredible. I didn't think the story was as bad as some people online seem to think it is. I would have liked to see more integration with the time traveling I think one of the big problems with this that it has is your going over the same area in several different timelines And sometimes that's great and interesting. and other times you're in the same cave that you ' in a hundred years ago and Now much is chang in this cave, man. So that's like a common issue you come across. M like Star Fox sixty four. Yeah the Star Fox rembake. Also t it up with geology, though, like that's just a nature That's true. Yeah, that's Yeah, canan't blame the cave. Yeah. Yeah, I think's it's a relaxing nostalgic feel good kind of game that I definitely don't regret playing. I enjoyed it. but you know, there are there's some voice work in here that people are just going to cringe at. And if you're susceptible to high pitched fairies telling you what to do in a dungeon, then this ain't for you at all. But I feel like you know if if this game is for you or not. And if you are a square unix f with a lot of nostalgia for this kind of thing and you like that two D overhead Zelda gameplay, I can definitely recommend it to you. But I don't think that people from outside of that wheelhouse are going to hop into this and become out a changed person Yeah. ye It sounds a little less inventive than its its predecessors, right? Octopath, traveler, live, live It got sort of the same veneer, the HD two D, but a little less originality, perhaps Well I think it just doesn't have the story that Octopath has I think that's the main thing. And then again, some of the backtracking cant be a little bit annoying across the ages. But you know, again a lot of stuff to find in this map. There's secrets to uncover. there's Really cool weapons and modifiers and the way you kind of make your build and can switch between things on the fly, like the combat, the bosses are great.ike there really is a lot to like here. Okay, well, speaking of games with annoying fairy companions, let us briefly discuss The Legend of Zelda Ocarine of Time remake because we did our summer showcase reaction. prior to the Nintendo direct And this was the headliner, this was the closer of that presentation I was not blown away by that Nintendo direct in general, even though we did have a Kingom Hearts Fore sighting We didn't get a Dust Bloods release date. We didn't get an Ocarina remake release date We saw some new stuff, but mostly stuff that was already out there, more HD two D Final Fantasy square Eix stuff. N bad, something. Yeah. But Not a ton of breathtaking, jaw dropping new reveals. And Nintendo's thunder has been stolen, and I'm sure Nintendo's pretty pissed about this by leakers the hate and others who forecasted that the Star Fox remake and Occarina remake were coming And usually Nintendo likes to play things close to the bestest and likes to spring these surprises on us And so the surprise value was entirely lost. because those big reveals in a year when Nintendo is sort of slacking on the flagship titles that everyone has been waiting for, op that we're going to get pumps for Ocarina and Starfox Ocarinas is maybe the holiday headliner. and we kind of already knew it was coming And we didn't get much more than confirmation that it's coming in this trailer. We didn't get a great look at gameplay or anything or get a sense for the scope of the thing. D didnn't even get a release date So we still don't know whether Nintendo is going to take on GTA six head to head Of course, GTA is not on Switch two, so you'd think that they could just go ahead and do their own thing, but we still don't know. So basased on what we've seen with Starfuckx, what we know about Nintendo, What are you guys hoping this will be and what Realistically do you expect it to be? Rob. Realistically, I expect a version of the same thing, which is almost identical gameplay, updated graphics, I hope that like the voice over work is not updated too much. Like the kitch of a Hey listen is also not lost on me. So I kind of hope we stay true to it in some form with that. But What I wish it would be is I wish that there were a way to adapt Obviously some of the open world elements of what Zelda has become don't just map perfectly on Docarina anymore. That doesn't really work. but The sort of like lateral thinking of the problem solving of those games, if you applied them to the temples of Ocarina, I think would be really fun I just don't think we're really going to get that. I think it's going to be more or less a port with the visual updates, obviously, but I'm not expecting anything radical I agree. And you know it's the same sort of thing where we've seen various remakes and remasters of this game already and you can play it, of course, in its original form on Switch as it is. And so you'd think, okay, anticipating the price point, which will certainly be Starfox or higher. what are you bringing to the table that's new? And there are a lot of people who are saying, yeah, can we somehow meld cllassic Ocarina with boundary breaking Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. I'm not expecting that that will happen. And that's a lot to ask. And also, you know, you're revisiting an absolute classic sacred game. And so there would be people who would be pissed if you tampered with it. If you tried to breath of the wild Karina and sort of translate that feeling we remember from Hyrule Field. The first time we played it and now knowing that it wasn't quite as permissive and all encompassing as Breath of the Wild's version was, if you tried to somehow meld those, maybe you'd end up with almost a worst of both worlds where This is the deficiencies relative to modern Zelda would be even more apparent Steve, what say you Nintendo's borderline immature attitude towards these leaks that were bound to happen anyway aside. I think that the thing that I would have really, really liked to see and I'm almost certain that we will not get is kind of like what Rob is describing and something that I actually while not personally connect with deeply respect in the work that we're seeing from the likes The Final Fantasy seI remake trilogy And that is of like a philosophical shift in what they want to give story in that game Not only is there like slight departures from the story of FF seven that are like kind of ingenious, but also like the idea that they can make a modernized version of that gameplay give us a story fairly as we remember it It's a delicate balance and it actually speaks to the passion not only of the community that loves that game, but the people that want to remake it And if Starboxs is any indication of that, Nintendo isn't on that kind of time. They want to make a nice shiny thing that you remember and it's as pretty one to one as those mechanics can be. with some slight ease of use modern day states that we would have and that will be and people will love that, but it will ultimately be uninteresting to the likes of So Yeah. And you know, we don't need a new version of Ocarina that is different from the original the way that we need a new Star Fox because we've been blessed with a lot of Zelda in recent years. We have Breath of the Wild, We have Tears of the Kingdom We have echoes of wisdom, We have whatever iss coming next And we even have Link's Awakening and other remakes that have really re imagined games that did need that treatment And so We have been eating well with Zelda And so it's okay. if at the same time, you just want to give us a sprce step version cllassic. I'm not upset about that It's just I'm a little less excited about that than I would be for something new as was the market, which, you know, I'm not a Nintendo shareholder. This doesn't affect me either way. But after the direct, the share price plummeted again 'a everyone's saying, okay, can you at least confirm You're making a three D Mario. I mean, we know you are. It's not like you decided we're never making a Mario again, but you could just tell us just throw us a bone here, but they won't do it And people are hungering for that. So if this is the headliner And it's just more remakes and warmed over versions of great games then that's just not going to satisfy people. M Yeah. no, I agree with you. I just I really don't know to expect out of this. I I would like to believe that they're weaving a lot of, you know, modern modernity into arena of time to kind of update it in some of the ways that it might be stale. but I'm just kind of terrified because I mean, just looking at Remember watching that Star Fox trailer and they just cut to Fx and you're like, oh Yeah, like that's Starfuck. If they do that with like Link and Zelda and stuff, like Yeah, peopleople are going to be mad Yeah there was a reaction just based on what little we saw a lot of people were dunking on and, you know, gamers are always going to criticize no matter how great it is, but people were, you know compumping this to some sort of fan on realal engine remake. There was a along in the making fan remake of this in progress and the maker was just like, well I guess that's that then. But you know, if you've devoted a decade to remaking a Nintendo game, you know that the cease and desist was coming at some All right. So I'm sorry. can I interject real quick? to all the people that are remaking like modern day games like this for like all the Ocarina remakers out there, don't announce that you're doing it. Just release it Yes. we this you're going MCA every time you just drop it. like yes, you're already doing something that the company doesn't like So stop talking about it. J do it. But they need that wind in their sails, you know, they need the support to the hard free anyway. like youly. You need that wind in your sails, much like Windwaker, which play at least Now on swwitch to. finally. I think a big part of the appeal of Star Fox sixty four originally, it was so cool at the time because whoa, three D graphics. and all range mode breaking at the time And you know, if you just wanted the best shooter or shootem up or bullet hell game There might be betters out there even on N sixty four, but Starfox sixty four was kind of mind blowing in what it allowed you to do at the time And now it's not as mind blowing because we're accustomed to that kind of thing. And so you can kind of feel the constraints, whereas back then it felt freeing. Now Ocarina holds up So I don't think it's going to feel dated as long as it doesn't look dated It's still a game that we have all played many times before. And that will probably be mentioned at least one more time on this episode, just going out on a limb there We will see whether it's drafted by someone who says Occarina or in Steve's case, Ocarina. we will find out. All right, let us transition to our draft. 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Thisound is approved as a two point five, five, seven point five, ten, twelve point five, or fifteen milligram injection Zepound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepotide containing products or any GLP one receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if zound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medulary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type two Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop zetbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If your' nursing, pregnant plan to be or taking birth control pills Ticking Zbound with a sulfonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. T to your doctor. callall one eight hundred five four five five nine seven nine or visit zppbounds. Lily. com This episode is brought to you by Nas Energy Every ounce of dirt sweat and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard fought place They're all jammed inside every can of NASA energy High performance energy for burning the midnight oil in the garage and pedal to the metal, human horsepower For the streets, goo ahead, crack open a can of Nas energy and get after it Happy birthday and sixty four at least The Japanese release of N sixty four june twenty third, nineteen ninety six Not sure anyone noticed because N sixty four kind of bombed in Japan, but nonetheless, that is the official thirtieth anniversary. didn't come out until september twenty ninth here in North America and even later elsewhere in the world What a wild time that was console and V for months or years at a time, depending on where we were and what region we were in. But I acquired myintendo sixty four for Christmas of nineteen ninety eight My twelfth birthday And it's all been downhill from there I mean, it really has never gotten as good for me as that moment was. And I've had a good life. I've been blessed in many respects. I'm not complaining. It's just that everyone has a high point. And that was it for me. when I got Ocarine of Time and Rogue Squadron for my twelfth birthday And in many respects, it was a cutting edge system In others, namely its use of cartridges over discs, it was exactly the opposite. But it is extremely fondly remembered. And granted, that is because of the age group that we're in. And everyone remembers the games they got when they were twelve and thinks they were the greatest ever. And also because we're in North America where the M sixty four was disproportionately popular. It did kind of flop in Japan and elsewhere. PGs may have played a part in that Nonetheless, even though you can't argue that it was the most successful system of Nintendo's or even of its console generation for those who were there known that any system is more warmly remembered Nintendo sixty four. So Feel free to millennial all over me and share your versions of how happy you were when you got in N ' sixty four and how happinner first before a millennial Brab Tell us about this system and what its legacy is to you and to the wider gaming landscape Part of the reason it is so warribly remembered is the N sixty four is to me like the first truly community building video game console or video game apparatus of any kind, other than maybe like an arcade itself, you know A Super Nintendo, a seegate Genesis, all the way back to Ittari. Yeah, you go over to the person's house who has it and you take your turns But the idea of like four person cooperative play, four person versus play, four person party modes I think just exploded a lot of people's minds as far as like what a video game could even be and certainly revolutionize the slumber party market as I understood it at the time changed my life overnight. And I think that's why it's it's so easy to map on Oh, I love playing Golden eye ono, oh, I loved hanging out with my friends. and That's so much of what video games have become in terms of the online functionality, in terms of, you know The clan you've been playing wow with for twenty years now, like I think a lot of it is indebted to like this particular moment in time h Yeah, And I do think a lot, this was the era when every new console release was absolutely mind blowing because the graphical leaps were just incredible, whichich I think about a lot with GTA because you know people are scrutinizing the little bit of footage we just got. And why doesn't that ferris wheel have a reflection in the water? And you know, people are expecting This evolutionary leap really technologically, visually, graphically, which we've always gotten from previous GTAs, but that's a tall order in this era. canan even Rockstar satisfy us by pushing the medium forward in terms of interactivity or just aesthetically speaking. When the M sixty four came out, there was no question about that because it was completely new and different. And I know it was not the first three D system and you had your Sega Saturns and you had PlayStation in your heads You're Jaguar, you know, donon't want to leave out the oldtari Jaguar. but Just, you know, the N sixty four sixty four bits was meaningfully different from thirty two, even if that is partly markarketing and technob babble. It just, it looked different. And it was not just the visuals, but also gameplay possibilities that it really opened up. I mean, you know, talk about a few of the games that are about to be drafted very early in this draft, I imagine They just reinvented genres. They reinvented the medium. They defined how you would go from two D to three D. They set the template And they wouldn't have worked on any other system at that time It's at the beginning of the era where Nintendo's like, no, we're going make this controller and you're going to like it because every time that they've made something since the end sixty four we're like, what the hell is that? And all right, we're going to play it on that thing now. but I I think that my relationship with the N sixty four. Again, like like Robbs was When I got mine And when I subsequently had played it with the rest of my friends around the neighborhood This was very much the oh, we're going to play this together or we're going to like share our experiences in gaming together with one on one because I had originally gotten a PlayStation and I thought that that was like an adult It feels it felt so much more sophisticated and a lot more of an acquired taste, the very art piece type of thing that you have in your home that looks very sleek and elegant. This was made for kids and this was made for play and Every time that I would interact with the things that Nintendo in particular was coming out with it had that philosophy in mind. and I couldn't have argued with how pivotal it was to introduce kids to a communal sense of gaming that early age because it carries on through generations. Can I ask a quick question about the controllers as you brought it up, Steve. A quick poll of how do you hold an N sixty four controller? I feel like there are a lot of varying schools of thought on this. Where do you guys come down It depends hand. Oh, well Ben please illustrate for the people at home because of course you have one on your person. No one else can see, but I've got my left hand holding the central prong with the thumb of my left hand over the thumbstick just below the start button. and then I'm grasping the Rich Prong Not sure if this is the the official terminology Tal I've got my right hands with my thumbs up by the C buttons. So what I'm hearing is you're on the right side of history as far as I'm concerned Are there people who are ing like the sidew depends on the game reaching It depends on the game. That's why the design was such. they were like, It was basically a Nintendo in my interpretation of it is, you know, the N sixty four was Nintendo kind of guiding us all into the three D games era And that controller to me was them saying like, We think we know what this is going to be like, but And then listen to maybe the side does the dual shock and we're like, oh no, we did this wrong So it was just kind of it was just kind of like you can hold it like with the control stick like you would in Mario sixty four, you can You know, you could still play your two D fighting games with the the D pad if you hold it The other way. And I think there might have even been a couple games that were crazy enough to do the middle and left ong grip. Truly crazy. Yeah, absolutely insane stuff for sure. It prepared us all for the Joy Con era It's making me think that even in like the swwitch era that we have now, I feel like they just reluctantly made the Switch Pro contontroller. Like if they really had their way, they wouldn't they would make us like pop that little tiny thing out and then flip it over and then play with those littleud. I'm jelly sized buttons all the time. And yet I feel like I'm disappointing Nintendo every time I pick up my pro controller because it's just like the pro. You're just a person is I am a pro, but it's o you' like, oh, you're a pro gamer now. buy likell controller now It's sarcastically labeled pro controller. but no, it's, you know, it feels unimaginative. It's not wacky enough for me to be interacting with the system in such a standard way. But it's funny, if you go back and play in ' sixty four, which I still often do to this day It feels like, wait, where's my second thumb stick though And yet it was this crucial link in the chain from zero thumbsticks to two. and I do think two is better. but one may be better than none And it definitely opened up some possibilities there. And so it was the first system or popular system to go in that direction to give us the thumbstick. as you guys were alluding to, it's the first ular widespread mainstream system to ship with four controller ports No no offense to the multi tap adapter for the Playsttation, but it just it hit different to tab four out of the box It was also the Rumble pack was technically a first at least in the West. you know, there some innovations here really did kind of reshape the default for gaming going forward and even some tentative steps towards online connectivity with the sixty four DD, you know, Japan only hardware. but it was very much this kind of bridge between eras, which is somethingomething I also say about my beloved Dreamcast all the time, but and sixty four was earlier and also felt that way. And I mean, you know, it's partly that it's a product of the period in which we were exposed to gaming and the N sixty four was there. Wan to acknowledge that, of course myopic perspective, Nonetheless was a landmark system for one that in terms of just units moved and lifespan and everything, not among the most successful, but Among the most influential. Yeah absolutely. Yeah, definitely one of the most influential. And a lot of things that they tried like didn't work. And I think that's why you know, if you weren't alive around this moment and part of it as it was happening and you try to revisit the N sixty four catalog I think a lot of people have trouble with a lot of it because it was a time of wild experimentation. Like how do we make these games in three D? L what are best practices for moving a character around in three dimensions. And Control schemes were sometimes crazy and the graphics were Not that great for three days. they look like today compared to almost anything. but know, I still remember walking into a toyser us in September of nineteen ninety six and walking up to the little Nintendo sixty four station they had playing Mario sixty four and just being absolutely blown away by what was in front of it before. I even hit like start to get into the game, just pinching Mario Maro face on the screen Yeah That's all you needed. They could have just sold bad. we would have like Con O'Brian Hippps thing with hises. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah And you better have liked that because there were only two games at launch in North America, which was part of the problem. That was sort of a sign of things to come. Both the expense and the options. you think games are pricey now. inflation adjusts those nineteen nineties cartridge costs. And also ten times more officially released games for the original PlayStation than for N sixty four. Yeah It's not the deep librarary as you might think. moreore than three times more just in North America So the options were more limited, but although the bench may not be as deep, the starting roster can compete with any consoles And that is what we are here to draft today. We are drafting The best slashed our favorite Nintendo sixty four games in honor of the system's thirtieth anniversary. The four of us convened about a year and a half ago to do the same for PlayStation one And so We're sort of pursuing the same idea here, but we have mixed up the format a bit We're going to be breaking this down by genre However, we have had to change the genres a bit. And this is interesting. nowadays, we think of certain consoles in terms of, okay, Nintendo systems have Nintendo games and there are certain other exclusives and everything. But tend to think of systems because there's so much more multi platform now and less exclusivity. can kind of get anything on any system And back then that was not the case. you know? If you wanted certain kinds of games, you had to get a certain system or you were kind of had of luck So when we did our PlayStation draft, categories were shooter RPG platformer, fighting game, vehicle game Stealth slash sururvival horror and wild card We had to throw out three of those categories for this draft because slim picks when it comes to RPGs To fighting games and to stealth slash survival horror on sixty four. Yeah, our draft boards were not deep The race to the Resident Eil two port would have been fierce. Yes So know, Nintendo was obviously more kitty coated than even now than it is today. And you know between that and the lack of third party support There were some shortages in certain genres, but also some incredible riches to be had in others. We have some stacked categories here. We once again have seven categories and they are shooter. And we can take a broad definition of that. could be first person shooters, it could be other kinds of shooters. Fformers which we could do an entire draft of N sixty four platformers, probably and go several rounds ion adventure And that's more action slash adventure than action hyphen adventure. We'll be pretty liberal when it comes to what qualifies as action, what qualifies as adventure. racing. another incredibly deep category for this console no shortage of happens there Then we also have one just to recognize the multiplayer focus of this console, we have a multiplayer slash party game category And obviously, as is always the case with Rringer Drafts, There are entries, there are selections that can fit in more than one category, so we will have to specify Obviously there are racing and sports games that also could qualify as multiplayer party So we will have to consider the positional scarcity and announce not only what we're picking, but where we're picking it And then of course wild card where anything goes And our only limitation here. We considered going console exclusive N sixty four only. We're not going to be quite that restrictive. What we settled on is only able to draft games that made their console debut. on N sixty four So if they were ports from PC, let's say, That's okay. if there are multip platform releases that came to other consoles later, That's kosher to It can't be a port from a previous console to N sixty four. In other words, no resesident Evil two. As great an accomplishment as it was to cram that thing onto a cartridge somehow. We drafted that in our PlayStation draft. We also drafted the first two Tony Hawk games in our PlayStation draft We didn't want to rehash that here those are PlayStation games that are also available on N sixty four. So we do kind of want to put the platform forward here. So I'm probably going to be going mostly exclusives here and I will judge anyone who doesn't. But you are able to select some games that are available on other systems, just no Playsttation prior to N sixty four And we have a draft order to determine and to be announced by producer Devin Ronaldo who is going to hop on the mic now to tell us the order we will be snaking it All right. So number one goes to Steve Number two goes to Matt Three has been and I'm really sorry, Rob, but you are number four De, that's just colossally fucked E is makeat this for me. heat this for me I don't know what to tell you. It wasn't personal. It's tough Rob because much like in the NBA draft this year, there's kind of a big three Yeah And even if there's a dip. There's a pretty hard dip. Yeah. look there's a lot of good begins, y'all. That's the that's that's where really re she enters. Yeah. We will find out. You know, I brought some props even though we're not on video. I got my my four controllers here and some of them are better preserved than others So my red and green here, I'm going to give those to Steve and Matt because those are the most limber They feel like they were just broken out of the box And then we've got The grace And these thumb sticks a little stickier, a little stiffer than they were back in the day And Rob, I'm going to have to symbolically hand you the one here that It feels like, you know, it's just, I mean, who among us is as flexible as we were in right in nineteen ninety six. So you know, I have set these aside for us And we will do our drafting And we will have one entry a piece in each category And Devin hopefully can record and recap the pickics at the end of this exercise. As usual, we will pass these along to Jomy Deneron. He will get a graphic going or Matt will, maybe as graphic expert. Yeah. Jomy will publishat Matt's work. and then perhaps people will be able to vote or at least and criticize. when they are collected So Let's get to it. This has been a long enough prelude, Steve The best, the number one on the board Nintendo sixty four game. you are on the clock. As much as it pains me to say, I'm going to make this quick and simple. as much as it pains me to say that I can't personally call this one of the greatest games of all time I certainly have to acknowledge that it is probably one of the most important video games of all time And that's going to be an action adventure, I'm picking Legend of Zelda Ogreen of timeim. It's literally unignoreable that Legend of Zelda Ocreen of Time is probably the thing that gets people of our generation into video games itself And there are storied and L L legends that people made that we as kids made with both ourselves and other people of the things that we could do and discover in that game The differences in where we found ourselves because we chose to not like look at guides or tips and tricks or other things just like enable that level of self discovery was beautiful. and the amount of times that I literally wanted to see the spectacles. of kicking up the master swword and Link aging into a grown man from a child, like was actually thrilling and I wanted to just see how the world changes and seeing the things and storytelling that video games could do Nobody can deny that it was a masterful leap forward in the world and what video games can do. And I have to pick it. I absolutely have to pick it. I've got good news for you, Steve, they were making this thing. I. Oh, great How topical, what a timely pick from you No, it's it's I don't know. There are a few games here that could go number one without making anyone bad anye. but can't criticize this pick at all. It is an incredible classic. Matt? Well, there's only two games that I think would go on this slot and it's not going to be a surprise based on the story I told you that I'm going to choose Super Mario sixty four, the game that that had dragged the ent toys RSri Yesk players into three D and a game that still holds up today. It does. It's insane that was a launch title, by the way. Like that's the first game that came out. Yeah Well, I mean, both of these, honestly, the idea of following up linked to the past and making Ocarin of time and the idea of following up, I guess technically maybe there were like some like S Mario all stars Yeah, if you want to include that, but Sum Mario World with sixty four There was a time where it was kind of a can' miss generation of games, and you're just going from one of the best in the world to another of the best in the world, simply in the same franchise, we saluteed. You know what I have to do here? I think a game that was groundbreaking in its own right. What category though That's a good question. But I can't go wrong with any of the categories that this game would be eligible in We got to golden ninez zer seven. Obviously, it's, you know standard expected pick. It it's kind of the cliche pick, but cliches become cliches for a reason We all spent many happy and sometimes frustrated hours. glued to Gold knnife and, you know, in a sense, it's 's trruer to the ethos of this system that we were just singing the praises of the multiplayer component of N sixty four. no better expression of that. then Golden Eye and the extended Goldenye sessions that we all had obbviously, aside from Nintendo Pper RaRres contributions to Nintendo sixty four second to none other, at least and had to have some rare representation early on here. And I know a lot of people will give halo credit for helping popularize the first person shooter on consoles and it certainly deserves some Like Gold Kight came first And Goldenye, you know, it's to flashback to the first time you played it we've all just memorized the layout of every single level You know exactly. I know those levels better than like my high school Oh yeah. ye, you know on a dark day, you can still find me in the air vents on facility. you know. Yeah likeike know the directions too. It's a right down that hallway and then l and then the bathroom stall We'll get right there. Yeah Goldenye is not a rogue like. It is not procedurally generated. Once you' played a Golden eye level you can anticipate where that NPC will be standing and when they will be doing a very awkward Somersaults in order to then spring to their feet and immediately collapse because you have shot them midsomersault. We've all been there countless times and the memories are great. This is another game that keeps coming out and being available in all platforms. And you know, you go back and play it now doesn't hit the same way. And if you play frame you'olutely it's actually like so bad. It's probably one of the worst things that you probably can remember. It is not the worst frame rate for a rare first person shooter on Nintendo sixty four. I will say that much, but yeah, it's not great. And when you go back and play it with one thumb stick, you are constantly feeling like a phantom limb where is my other thumb stick? but Nonetheless. incredible game. Got to go Golden eye here and Rob. Wait, what category? Oh yeah, good question. All right. Gess I will go I guess I'll take it and shooter. It just it feels worse It's a really deep category, but it feels like that's where it should be. All right Rob You can get strategic now. Yeah, y'all have really screwed me over here. I mean, there there is a Quite a significant dip at least in terms of category value. I think there's still a lot of great games on board. I'm going to start this is a pretty deep category, but I just want to have this game on my roster. In party game I'm going to take Super Smash Bothers. Okay, He's a good one I'm upet. Oh, that's a first round for sure. Definitely first round value, un impeachable. againgain, the only argument against is there's a lot of good party games still on the board, but right. None of them did I invest so much time and so much anguish and have I developed lifelong rivalries and enmity then Super Smash Bothers. Yeah. Yeah.'s it really would have been my first pick, but I know that I would not have been respected if I got the very first pick of this draft and didn't and didn't pick Ocarino Time I would have loved it. I would not like it's it's so so not the first round.. So not the first pick. I know as much time as I sank into Golden night P prettyty sure if you had my playay count combined on every console, every game, No game would surpass supermash p.. Do you imagine if the hours counted when we were kids and like we could just see that that those like tickers, it had to have been super smmash. I mean, the cartridge it does track the number of matches you played, which I'm holding the cartridge in my hand and this a whole box of what is just the same thing about it before This a scrap lookook pod Hell yeah. I mean, N sixty four has never not been with me. anywhere I have moved, anywhere I've lived, the N sixty four comes with me and will continue to come with me as long as it lasts and I do. And if there were a fire in my apartment You know, I'd check, okay, wife, daughter, dog, all present exching for steam machine. where smmash. I have to save smmash And it's not just the original cartridge I also I have this fancy black cartridge whichich is the A drive sixty four. Yeah which I purchased At some expense solely for the purpose of being able to play the fanmade mods for the original Smash which have now expanded it to the point where You got every character, you got every stage combines the original smmash gameplay with what we have become accustomed to and spoiled by in most recent smash releases. Sacge. Sacrge. We're smash moogged us right now And the thing is People will say, okay, it gets points for being the first and it blazed the trail and we wouldn't have all the other and Rw and ultimate and melee and all the rest. This is still my favorite Super Smash brothers. Amen. as great as all the others are and they look better and they are so much more expensive in ts better and they're better. Yeah, sure.. No, okay, you Mlee purist donon't give me that. I mean, look in terms of yeah, pure competitive tournament play, okay, but just the feel of original Smash for me, the kind of floatiness of it can't be beaten. and maybe that is just because we're all products of our times. but somethingomet about the way that game played and plays has just never been equaled for me. Another tenament to my childhood is this was the game when we I was just outright lied to about the things that I could do where it's like, oh my God, if you could if you like beat a certain this certain level at a certain time with a certain character, you can play as the master handand. Yeah. And I was like doing that for like weeks and weeks and trying to figure out and was like, no, you never could. never no never. You could play as Glover in Glover, the N sixty four platformer who kind of looked likeil draft pick. Sorry that's Rub's next pick. I know. but but no, and it was also incredible at the time to have this mash up of N sixty four characters, which was absolutely. an extremely non Nintendo thing to do and obviously ruffled some feathers at Nintendo HQ because it was like This is not our brand. We can't have our mascot characters beating up on each other. You know, there's no blood or anything, but nonetheless to have all these characters from different franchises coming together in one game. Wow. So I think we took the obligatory top three and yet the amount of time we've spent talking about Super Smash Bothers, you've done well with this. I appreciate it. And I have to say for that reason, the surprise factor of this game even existing in the first place I mean, just hit me like a like a fucking meteor. and I first encountered it, hadn't read about it in I guess like a Nintendo power would be still going at that point in time. I went to a blockbuster video and for some reason, my local blockbuster had a Japanese copy of Super Smash Brrosers on the showit US release. And I was like, what on earth is this? That's the coolest thing ever. The simpler times before we knew release dates and we knew delays like there was somethingless I mean it was sweet and pure for sure. But I'm happy to have Super Smash Bothers Now I am faced with sort of a philosophical dilemma. I would say there are two other Great games on the board that are suspiciously close to two games that have already been selected. Right. Are those worthy selections for the second round I would say in one category maybe so. And so I will be selecting the Legend of Zelda Majora's mask. I for you buddy. I don't have as profound a relationship to as Occarina of Te. But I'm simply gonna do it because it's basically Occarina of time. Listen, By. I'm playing to win and I literally think that Major's mask better than Ocarina of Te. Why didn't you take Majora's mascause yes. You're you can'tin'ering to the popular mas. Well, thank you for the praise of my pick. It sounds like I made two great picks that Steve would could have made Is that action adventure for you? I will take an action adventure Yeah, look. I mean, sometimes being blocked with those first picks, it forces you to get clever to get creative, to dig deep and come up with Well remembered picks. Now you've put me in a difficult position here because as you alluded to There's another game on the board If you had not taken Majora, I would have taken Majora. But now I can't. And so I face the dilemma of do I want to double up? un rare first person shooters. C I corner the market? That would be vicious. I gotta say. I mean, yeah, it would just to block you guys because There are a lot of great shooters on Nintendo sixty four, but I do feel like there's a top two And if I collect both of those top to I have sort of sealed that category for myself. I mean And I have plenty of other categories where this can go So You know what? at the risk of Hicapping myself in other categories. I'm just, I'm gonna double up. I'm taking perfect Dark. This is a goad nail. I'm takaking perfect Dark and I'm going to put it in multiplayer party game And Perfect dark was so ahead of its time that it was almost unplayable on Nintendo sixty four, which is not a great argument in its favor, I will admit This game was was so demanding play like maybe a third of it without the expansion pack. And obviously there were some games that required the expansion pack this one in order to be able to access all of it and to have anything like playable frame rate was not just sort of, you know, strope light kind of gameplay You had to have it This game, you know, obviously there are a lot of games that pants to these two and their're other shooters and you guys may have to draft some It's so futuristic both in its setting And the fact that was an original, it was not some license game, you know, And we had aliens and we had so many multiplayer options justust like you want a sneak preview of the online era of multiplayer shooters and just the way that you can customize the matches and everything was that And unlike some of these other greats, it has not really been remade and followed up on that much. I mean, a little bit, obviously. They tried Yeah. They tried and there was a perfect dark effort that was scuttled in recent years And maybe you just can't recapture the greatness that was that game And look, there will probably be some haters here who say that I've cornered this category and I've cost myself in other areas. And I'm here to say that I have options in those categories too And so I'm ruthlessly selecting what I would believe to be the consensus tap to and also twoo shooters of my heart as well. for this system I gott to do it. I feel like we neglected a very important question when Golden Night came up in the first place, which was and we can kind of broaden it out here. Do you have a weapon of choice in either of these gamespaning? I mean, you strike me as kind of a club guy and don't say that. How could you? How dare you say that I'm kind of a club guy? Can't think of any We're off divid than that. That is That Yeah. I meanctuous I'm sure you know, RCP ninety. RCP ninety ribs. Yeah, tough to top just the pro mine Yeah, throw those things all like gota get my laptop gun from Perfect Ac. Oh sure in the action here. Yeah. I don't know. Anyone else want to shout out our favorite weapons R ninety is the c. RCP ninety is great. slappers Slappers only slappers only. I mean, this this really is a slappers only podcast in Ethos, I would think. I think so. Yeah. Okaykay. All right, well, back to man spepeaking slappers I got a game that slaps I'm going to take Margo part sixty four. Y. All, it really does slap. Yeah. it does. it does. What can I say This was really the moment where Mario Card arrived. like sure it was on SNES Mario Kart with the four players and the three D and Man, this was This is a genre defining game. And, you know, Mario Card eight Deluxees best selling games of all time now. And that all traces back to right here with Mario sixty four Yeah, I mean, there are some who will say that this Mario Kartsuse among the best Mario Karts if we look at it kind of dispassionately, objectively. without the halo effect, the Glden hue of youth justust in terms of, you know, I guess the single player experience or the level design It was about the multiplayer experience. So ye are you taking this in racing or multiplayer I'm taking this in racing which is an incredibly deep category And yet Yeah, in terms of the funndness folks feel for Mario Kart sixty four, just the number of multiplayer modes I think the battle mode, battle mode is so good. So so great. Yeah, I enjoy that more than the racing itself, I think, whichich maybe that's just that's how it speaks to my not being a big racing guy, but yeah, I to w to hit those balloons, knock those balloons off people. That's what I'm here for All, Well back to you, Steve. All right's back to me pick Okay. Mario Kar getting off the board is a bit freeing for me because now I have a racing category that I'm more or less going to just play jazz in This is going to be a bit contentious for shooter But I would probably call we go tryrying to get around four ye No, that's o good. Yeah. All right, cool. Yeah, sorry.. You know, the game's so nice, they made it five times. Yeah. I mean, it's a classic for a reason. It was Absolutely incredible to again, do this to play this with two player was kind of insane. to get to like play this with my buddy and then like explore different secrets and like do different runs As a team was kindind of insane And it's a thrilling experience to have gotten to do this when I was a kid. I don't think that I'll ever get past being the selfish person to always insist on getting instead of like the toad, but it's not it's it's not my it's not my preference. I got to say it, but no, this is a again, One of the more important games of my childhood because everybody loved it and I can't possibly imagine And intntimate time with like my my best friend in the world, JT and not play this game. It's like I'd be doing a disservice if I didn't draft this and had the time to it. It's like, it's that important to me. I love it. You can barrel roll right into your next pick. I shall barrel roll right into my next pick orr you can be like a stupid little human running around using a rocket launcher for some reason. I never could. Why was that in this game? I don't get it. No one want be on land Starfox. Come on. land Fx. Starfox adventures. That's another case,. Exactly. All right. H I'm going to zag a little bit and I'm going to hit you with sports because this is this is a it's a deeper bench, but I think I got to like I got to claim something that's that's still big for me as well And I'm going to take Mario Tennis.. Okay, elite game Aually like I think this might have been one of the games that I played the most when I owned a Nintendo sixty four I like I cannot tell you enough how much I fell in love with the idea of tennis. I sucked at playing tennis, but playing Mario tennis was like ecstasy That level of gameplay and it's still probably one of the best Mario Tennis games ever made. The game that gave us Waluichi Exactly Ore Luigi stillill has yet to get his own game and we should campaign for that hard. Yeah, Mario Tennis is like an absolute arrow to my heart for great gameplay Yes. And you could pair it with the, in my mind superior game Boy version of Mario tennis. whooa whoa who, whoa. Well no there's another Mario sports game on this list that does have a superior gameboy version.io tennis. Yes. Well, Game Boy games not eligible for this draft. We miss that anniversary, I suppose. But yeah, this was great and it just sort of set the template for innumerable Mario tennis games to come that that franchise has perhaps become a bit stagnant. but you know, maybe it was perfected the first time out. It might have been. I mean, truly, I've become a real life tennis player and when I play, I just am trying to channel my innerberirdo out there. So there is a truth to this game that's I think transcends the genre, transcends the in sixty four the just become like a philosophy of life, to be honest with you. Okay? All right Ben I'm sorry Oh Im sorry Ben Cutch your expans pack What's happening in Shooter I am selecting Star Wars Ropepe Squadron How are you? That's tough. I'm upset. Boke Squadron felt like a dream come true at the time. If you were a Star Wars fan, You had suffered through so many bads. PC games that you tried to tell yourself were good to emulate like what Broke Squadron actually accomplished. Rebel assault, get out of here Ty fighter Ky fighter is well Yeah I'm not going' not. No ex it can get out too. What's Roe Squadron is here, we can put away childish things You're you're going to make me draft episode one Battle for Naboo just to get some proximity to You're making my inner twelve year old on the best day of his life cry on the inside. I hope Is't there another bond game on in sixty four you can draft or there There is. Isn't there another episode one game you could draft? I just name checked it. but yeah. no, I mean, even though Rogue Squadron was Pest. on the GameCube, of course was at the time, yeah. I mean as a Star Wars fan and even just for the flying for the actual action and the story based incredible games. just anythingything that uses the expansion pack is gold in my book Which means that I have to draft. I can't draft Roke Squadron. This is very upsetting. All right I think I'm going to go sports now And I'm going to draft Ten, eighteen Yeah, noope nice, which nice. You know There are a lot of good options out there in this category, but know that I have fonder memories of any sports cameame on this system than ten eighty It just felt so good I've kind of been searching for the feeling that ten eighty gave me ever since there are good snowboarding games out there. you know, I'm not not downplaying SSX or any of the other sort of spiritual successors to Tan eighty And ten eighty just felt so good. I mean, it's it's the Tony Hawk of skateboarding, right? So says it right there So just to be clear, you trapped that in sports, right? I did. Yes. Yeah, I mean, those other g the SSXs don't exist without this. without this particular moment, ten eighty, you know, walk so they could Ollie or whatever. That was the That's where I would have had to diverg in and say that I was a cool borders guy because this is where I had to say that I was an ex six for Allegiance because I'm like, yeah, they don't have the snowboardalum snbard that they have Yeah this was about the tricks. and you know I'm not such a racing guy in general, though I have many excellent racing options available to me here. and Yeah, just the peieace of being on that mountain. I want to go back every day in my life. Rob. In platformer, I'm going to take Banjo Kazooi All right love it. Also I think in part because of the scarcity. I know there's a lot of beloved platformers on N sixty four I sunk all of my time into either Super Mario or Banjo Kazooi. Like I just need every little golden music note I can get. Oh yeah. Banjo Kazi, a truly strange game. and I feel like one of the appeals of the N sixty four for me is like I want it to be a little weird. I want the controls to be a little bit janky sometimes. and Banjo Kazooi is just the right amount of like platforming magic that feels right. and also you might just like glitch out into a corner for a little bit. Thank you N sixty four. Thankk you, Banjo and Kazooi. This might be one of the most like beloved games that has carried on through generations that they could never get right again even with this with its sequel. I don't think that they did It's close. It's close enough, but again, it's it's reaching for the same thing you already had. Yeah brring back Banjo contingent out there one of these years, one of these decades, maybe, but It's a great pick I mean, if you're not going to get Super Mario sixty four, it's the next best thing. I think now I have a choice of also reaching for something close to one of these other alternatives. I'm gonna say are third person' shooters considered shooters? Oh sure. o shooters in it I'm gonna to take Shadows of the Empire in June.. A game that means a lot to me and speaking I mean, speaking of jankkiness Also a relic of an era gone by, and you know we live in a scourge of yellow paint in our games and of like cs people chiming in being like, no, you can't go in that door. go back to the start I miss a time where I had no idea what the fuck I was supposed to do. And I would describe a lot of shadows of the Epirment as part of that experience, but you know what? I get a little bit of free Rogue squadron. flying of, you know, like a snow speeder, for example. like I get a taste of what's to come. But also with my guy Dash Rndar. you know, like I'm I'm really living it in the now non canonized Star Wars universe. Yeah we love our off brand han here and you know, the asteroid field level, That's like schoolool, all right? He's more than off brand Hanlo even if he is off brand Hanlo. all right? He's like one of the better decanonized characters that we've got. I just need him back so bad. This is the game that needs to be remade. L can you imagine like the Jedi fall in order treatment, but for shhadows of the Empire? people is legitimately freak out to know if Dash Rendar was back I mean he is Dash' canon, I believe now s not He's not a glo, should no. No he is he is canon because you know, I mean, not the full leegends experience, but Des has at least been mentioned in various places in the current canon. He counts. We don't have to rescue Rendar. is he is back It's B beloved outrider, not enough friend Lam Falcon at all Wh, wh dash, loveo that game Yeah, it's, you know, like It's remembered fondly by people who were there and to be there, I think probably had to. Yeah.. And and you know, this is mostly a draft for people who were, I guess, we were, we were lucky. And The reviews were not glowing or, you know, maybe it doesn't hold up that well, but the whole Shadows of the Empire initiative was super exciting at the time. justust, you know, that was the closest thing. We had had to a Star Wars movie while we were sentient beings and alive And once Thron brought everything back and then suddenly, we have this whole multimedia push and the centerpiece for me. was that game. So Good pick Didn't see it coming Another Star Wars off the board, Ben I know. I know A run on Star Wars, I really better pick up Battle for Naboo if I'm going to, but I don't think I am, at least not at this stage. All right So it's back to me. Uh gosh, this is tough Gess I'm gonna go with a racing game evenven though there are a lot of options available None of them makes my heart sing quite like Wave race sixty four Wow, I genuinely didn't think you were going to go with that. Really? That's incredible. Yeah. Why would anyone pass up the chance to ride a dolphin over a wave? That's true. What are we talking about? That's true Waver sixty four, even though this is a deep category That was one of those games that just was graphically mind blowing at the time When that came out It was almost a launch title, close to a launch title. and Wave, water Graphic slash physics andac adjusted. never looked better. The music and the music is so good. It' so great. Yeah. And this is this is like a Nintendo developed and published game. This was, you know, Miyamoto was all over this thing. And so it has that Nintendo charm I have not gone back to see how the graphics hold up, but I think in my mind's eye, pretty good looking water that has ever happened in a video game, certainly ever its era. Also legendary arcade cabinet Yeah. likeike it's the full blown jet ski and the like Cinema right there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the music, just the The island, vibes, just everything about this game just pulled you into its world And it was just it was really about the experience You know, it was about the journey, not whether you won the race. We all won the wave race I came home when I bought my N sixty four with Super Mario sixty four and Wave Race Yeah this was. No question the first cartridge I reached for. I was like, you know, Mario can wait. likeike I need to ride these waves immediately. This is a gaming experience I've never had before. And dont I don't regret a thing Another thing that sets the system apart, which became very apparent as I was prepping for this draft I don't think any console ever has had more games that included a reference to the name of the console in the title of the game It's not just wave race. It's wave race sixty four There are so like percentage of the three hundred something and sixty four games had sixty four in the title You had to say sixty four, That's how strong the brand was And maybe in some cases it was to differentiate it from another version of the same game for another system. but you just added sixty four to everything just because it conveyed something, right? Like if you knew it was for sixty four, you were bragging, right? You know, if you had sixty four bits Say it with your chest, tellell everyone, it's sixty four It doesn it doesn't ring as true as for the three hundred and sixty era. It doesn't. No. I mean this is not sixteen bit. this isn't that wave race eight Yeah This is not we've raised sixteen, This is not we've raised thirty two. This we've raised sixty four I would say the only thing that could give it a run for its money is all of the super games on Super Nintendo. There were a lot of super games. It's true. Even Star Wars was super Star Wars, you know? It's true. man not eligible in this draft unfortunately. Okay. All right wave race that is All right, let'sop fucking around.'m gonna pick WrestleMania two thousand. Bother I'm going to pick it in a multi slash party A mean Okay, this is Divisive because like We could have had a wrestling category. Yeah, So you have could have picked You could have picked end WWW overW over avenge. could picked No. So could.ait Steve might still take another re. I'm just gonna ahead of time explain why spot. This is the best one Okay. It's debatable, but ye you can argue that, you know, no Mercy has some more game modes than WrestleMania two thousand, but right the gameplay is better in two thousand, it's the speed of it down like no mercy And W W though and W. Wow. We are about to have a cage match between N so where wrestling games, I can sense it. As someone who hasn't played any of these games, what are the variety of game modes provided? G off map. Well, there's like a gauntlet mode in that wasn't in WrestleMania two thousand. Anyway, if you missed out on this Basically when I think about N sixty four multiplayer, for me Obviously Golden Eye comes first And I think for a lot of people, Smash Brothers comes next But for me, it was these THQ wrestling games for Mario cart These these THQ wrestling games that that hit the N sixty four The way they had like a countering system, the way that could you could have four people each like design their own characters and flesh out their move setets And then you can wrestle each other in various gamoutes, whether it's Tag teeam or Royal Rumble or the chaos, the absolute sheer chaos of these wrestling games on N sixty four couldouldn't play these games in your friend's house without like a parent coming to check to see if everything's okay Like it would get loud. Yes And right Like if you if you wanted to make kids all borderline like get into fistic cups themselves, it was these WWF games. like especially this one. likeike it gets insane and very, very competitive. I've had the exact same experience It's it's incredible So this is the peak. Use the broom handle to tap the ceiling to tell your kids to quiet down up their game. what I'm here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, hard to argue with that Or tap the floor because we were in the basement. probablyrobably C be. Yeah. Okay. All right, well, Steve, are you going to have no mercy on M? No because have just took Matt just sucked up all the vibes for this and I don't I don't want to do it now. just conceding the entire wrestling category to Matt. I am actually. like that's fine. Like I know I genuinely think that there's more room to get some more representation of the things that I would like here. So I mean, you could take NW revenge and no mercy if you want. You know, you can be like man just right now But no, I think for this is this is going to go in I know that this could also go into sports But wait a minute. again, my my multiplayer partarty board is Very deep. Yeah So for multiplayer party, this could also go have gone into sports, but this will be a multiplayer party for me. I'm picking Wayne Gretky's three D hockey. What do you Bastards know took one from me. If three D hockey. This is like bar for bar like almost as loud as the like in the basement of my friend's house as this could have got. This was when I was absolutely like entrenched in playing hockey for like the better part of like fifteen years of my life. And this I got this like the first year I started to play hockey and Picking all of the teams that I loved with all of the players that I loved. with this incredible three on three arcade action, like this is the precursor for all of the EA big series for NBA streets, NFL street, et ceter. like Wayne Christky three D Hockerey is the blueprint or Arcade sports cycles And this is an incredible exper Wing the gameplay of this today still makes my heart sing cannot deny how amazing this game has been in my life Such as its power that I do not and have never given a damn about hockey. And I'm just like, this is the greatest game I've ever played in real time when I would pop that cartridge in. I don't know why, but the making the puck like multicolored and highlighted like they did in the nineties in broadcasts Like I don't know why it just activated like neuron activation to a child and making it all the more thrilling. I don't know what it did. And you got the fucking NBA jam commentator to still do the he's heating up like that stuff. incredible Yeah. I absolutely was going to take that So we basically had the same here Yeah, We want to about tomar. And you know what respect WWF and respect to Wayne Gretky A man who I do not actually respect. I's to goirector. How. All right I think is another stam now. Yeah, you can go again. Oh yes, yes. I still have Wild c platform wild c. Yes and racing Okay, so I guess for racing from One excellent vibe to another. I've got to go with F zero X for racing. A title that to me started the genre of like racing so fast you actually can't control anything, but it doesn't care because you don't care because it feels Incredible. When I played Supermash Brrosers, I'm like, what's this guy Captain Falcon from And then I got his game, which is F zero X. and I'm like, Oh, Captain Palcin's awesome We need to have more games with him Nintendo We need to have more games with you. Where's our new Hell are you doing? Yes. inccredible game. Great racing. I've only play this was this is a thing that I actually didn't play that much multiplayer in, but I loved it so much Okay. well, great, great pict there. Steve. I mean, the racing category is just absurd on N sixty four It's so deep. It's so, so fun Yeah. Okay, well, I have a few things left to do and I think that the best move for me here is to go to the wild card category and to take paper Mario O Good everyone good stuff Yeah, fantastic, fantastic game You just thought that like Super Mario RPG couldn't get any better and then Paper Mario hits on N sixty four. And for me, absolutely. abbsolutely was It's a good thing we didn't have the RPG category because y would really be hurting right now.' Race. Mat, I would have taken quest sixty four three rounds ago. I've never made it out of the first twenty minutes of that game, but I'm told it is a game There There's another RPJ that I also considered here And it's not Cosics intenders Yeah. Okaykay. All right. well, I still need a platformer. And I'm just gonna to vault right over Banjo Tui. And I'm going to take Conquer's Bad forur a day It's just a run on rare. I'm collecting rare games. That seems to be the theme of my draft here. It's a great game and it also was transgressive at the time that we would have a hard drinking Cursing squirrel on a Nintendo platform from a Nintendo affiliated developer and, you know, it kind of originally was more of a Banjo Kazooi type game and then Banjo Kazooi came out And they figurered twelve We sort of got our lunch stolen here. We better pivot And who would have expected the pivot into an adult themed Cute mascot character. and that's what we got with Conquerers pad for a day, which came out a little later in the life cycle and probably didn't have the same sales figures and everything, but was really fondly remembered. I think we don't have enough humor in video games in general and just The whole idea of kind of taking the piss, you know, just a little spoof, a little satire and poking fun at the conventions of this category that' really sort of cemented solidified during this generation I really appreciate for that. Bring back Conker while we're bringing back Banjo and F Zero and everything else Let me I the next pick, right Yes I'm just gonna take up the mantle right there, Ben. Andm gonna take I'm going to pick Conquer up, and I'm gonna select Diddy Kong racing in racing, a game in which Conquer, I would say, is largely unrecognizable from the version you just described You know, why settle for Mario card gameplay when you could also be in a little hovercraft and you could also be in a little plane. you know? I'm just I'm diversifying the modes of transport. I'm expanding our cast of characters. I think I've cornered the banjo market as well. So I'm feeling great about Diddy Kong racing, AKA Kiny Kong racing. Wow, never do that voice again. But yeah, no no you got to do it every time. This came out like holiday season ninety seven which was a tough time because a lot of games had gotten delayed, like Ocarina and everything was pushed to ninety eight And they were just like, what do we have on hand? Dyon racing And maybe it was miscast as the flagship holiday title, but There are people out there Ditty Kong trruthers prefer it to Mario card So you know, I'm not defending that point of view, but I'm kind of upset that you stole a rare game from me because I was working on a lineup here, but it's a solid pick. I know how you feel about just being faithful to corporations in general. So yeah. mayaybe there'll still be an opportunity for you to do that I not I feeling okay about sports and I think my sports pick is still going to be there for me on the turn. So I also am going to jump to Wildcard and I will be selecting Pokemon Snap in Wildcard. Hell yeah. ye. Yeah. For one, just for diversity of gameplay. You know, we got our shooters, we got our racing games, we got all the cute archetypes of what we thought a video game was What if we just throw apples at a charmander and just like lure it out into a little crater and take pictures of it? And then somehow I go to blockbuster video and I print out a tiny sticker version of the photos that I haveve taken on my video game. Changed my life, Pokemon Snap, incredible stuff I love prance. That's good Yeah. what a great idea of an application for this game. And I mean, maybe that's another another claim to fame for the N sixty four two, It' just like the idea that you could do something in a game that could transcend into a physical object Then again, like you all don't know about the marketing things that were deployed on us as children in the nineties to get us to go to from one physical location to another for the sake of a video game to again participate us again in renting that same video game. Like it was some it was some nasty c. It was I will say Yeah. And you know, this was the era where the flagship mainline Pokemon games were on Game Boy, but N sixty four really experimented You know, not just snap, but stadium, puzzle League, etcetera really redefines what Pokemon could be in this era.. Okay, back to me, man Ugh I am really torn. by what to do here because I still have ion And I still have Wild card and My goodness, there are a lot of games that I could cram into these categories Oh, what am I gonna do? I kind of want to think a little bit more about my action addventure pick And so You know what? I'm gonna go Mario Golf in wild cart Hell you can Marry a golf You know, it's another one where the Game Boy game is incredible and I still wish that they would go in that RPG direction and they just will not quite give me what I want muchuch like Mario Tennis kind of nailed it right out of the gate This is what Mario Golf is and ever shall be. Great game. Yeah, no arguments there. That's a good one Yeah, no, the Game Boy Cord version of that is quite superior will I will have to admit. Yeah All right Okay I got a little bit of a That choice here about what I'm going to do. there's a Chance I might make Rob up said here But there's there's a chance I might not. So let's see I'm just going to do it. I'm going to pick in the sports category I'm going to pick a game that is near and dear to my heart NBA courts side too Faturing Kobe. Godddamn it. Universal ballnower Matt Jane. How was NBA courourtside not safe? I thought this would be the safest possible pick. B, you're not safe against me. come on. noobbody's safe but see my last pick. Wait do you see my last pick that I know is safe. This franchise changed my life because at least in my memory and my experience, this was the first basketball game that ever had an intentional foul button And so the degree to which every game became hackershack in my house was uncanny Absolutely. Yeah I mean, there there were definitely plenty of great basketball games before and after this, but There's something about that particular mechanic that that really opened up a can of worms when you're playing against a real life toular player. correct me if I'm wrong. this also incorporated like some Bkes. H hardard and fast rules in the NBA because like intentionally fouling does result in a free throw, right in this game? Yeah, yeah, you do shoot free throws. It just you completely like NBA jam and you can just like absolutely waail on people and like there's no foul at all. Yes. That's just the steel button in NBA Jam. Right, yeah, exactly That's an incredible pick because it's also one of those things where like graphics were getting like kind of more realistic as they got on. And this was one of those where I was just like, oh wow, they got like actual little Jpegs of Kobe Bryant in here and and I can like play against Michael Jordan and all that stuff. Like it was it was a really like well, well we can't play against Michael Jordan for likeness reasons, but you can play, I believe against player number ninety eight Yes,, correct, correct. No that's it's an incredible pick. Okay. Steve. U If I'm not mistaken I still have platformer and then Wildcard Wild card Okay So for platformer, I know that we've been focusing a lot more on three D platforms, but the N sixore actually still hasn't good amount of Ty platformers that We're actually kind of like really Beautiful and innovative for the time. and I'm going to pick Yoshi story . Wow. Okay. An incredibly fun game and really like one of the best Yoshi games that has ever come out. I love collecting the eggs. I think the art is beautiful I think the environments are great and the story is very cute and fun. and I had played this in one of my friendriends basements before I would go to school And this was the game that like people would get mad at me before because it was only single player And not that many people would want to play that and then they would just want to play other games. I love YS story, and I'm going to pick that for platformers So you monopolized the console and made people watch you play Yoshi. I was I was okay, you probably y'all probably would have hated me. I was a very selfish gamer when it came to my time on the couch. It was like I learned my lesson in time, but, you know Things had to be learned the hard way sometimes And then for wild card It's like half of this is like playing with my heart and then half of this is like The hell is not going to pick that I could possibly take from him. You can't. You're not going to get it. You're not getting gotob. It's possible I wont Like you're not to, you're not going to f Sperman the new Superman adventures. No that is that is horrific Final pick. Wild card something that I got to I got to represent a bit more of is party game. So I'm going to take Mario Party two. M Okay, Mario party two classic like the invention of these games and like of themes in the boards that were againgain, like introduced in one, but really kind of perfected into made for hours of gameplay. This this was the In the same house that I played Yoshi Story and Monopolized that time when we actually had fun as a team was playing Mario Party two. I was going to attempt to take this in sports. Would that have been an allowable thing? I imagine I would imagine like, you know, obliding a giant knitting thing as a sport. Yeah. It is the most physical game on the system because how much you Rind spin the your hand into the control stick. The release of the mandatory, we have to give you this glove to avoid liability. What a time to be alive. Yeah I'm glad to you that Mario partarty got invited to the party game category because it would have felt wrong to snub It's literally called party. I was worried. Yeah Okay All right to Matt, your final pick. My final pick in action Adventure and a deep cut And one of my favorite games on the system that gets enough It's enough talk It's a mystical ninja starr in Goeman That was not Okay. What the actual hell are you talking about? I'm talking about mystical ninja starting going on ight Yes. Yeah, yeah, I know this guy Yeah. ye o. The sound you just heard is three adult men been going on Yeah. This game is so much fun. There are multiple characters. It's you're walking around beatating things up. It's like extremely kooky. you fight his giant silly robots occasionally is like so Japanese that you wonder how it even got an American release. And as such, the translation is horrendous u for the most part, but this was just one of the most memorable and unique and joyful experiences I had on N sixty four. And I feel like A lot of people have never even heard of this game as you can tell, but shout out to all my mystical ninja starring Gormman fans who might be listening to this you're just know no tryingsre not trying to win these drafts. Okay. No And I love it. I respect it so much peoplee appreciate your sincerity. So that's me that's like me pcking brave fencer Musashi in no in PlaySation. This is I like this is fringier than that. It it might be, it might be. Okay. I'm going go with one that I think is also underappreciated, though, perhaps not as underappreciated as that And in my quest to collect all the rare games, I'm going to go with the first one for the system. Blast core. which I'm pretty sure I pronounce blast corpse for the first, I don't know, twenty, thirty years of my life, but now I know better. Blass Ct and this was the first of I think seven. raare games for this system It's like Rob Reiner's first seven films, Rare's first seven games For N sixty four, just unimpeachable run Some of the bestver worse Gemini. Oh Still out there, consider taking that one too I'm going to go with Blascore, the one that started it all on that system single player game, which I guess you could ding it for, but It's all about blast and stuff. It says it right in the name. You know, you're controlling vehicles You're just knocking stuff down Everything's blowing up It's from this kind of isometric perspective, you know, three quarters overhead a little bit should go satisfy incredibly, I think, you know, not as big as Matt's pick, maybe, but yeah, this this is a great game A big game for me personally too. I would say this for me was the first truly open world game in that I know there are objectives you're supposed to do. I couldn't tell you what they are. I just kind of drove around the map demolishing buildings as was my whim. Thats. And then when it was ready to turn the game off was ready to turn the game off I will not be taking Agame that it's quite so big in Japan. In fact, it's quite so small in Japan, they didn't even release it there. And that's NFL Blitz two thousand in sports. Yeah. My favorite entry in the series What is there to say about arcade football? If you know we have Wayne Gtky, we have the hockey representation, but I want to full body dive at somebody in the end zone and then stunt on them, returning a fumble by just sliding all the way back down the field. And so long as I can do that I'm I'm going to sleep well You know, we've learned a lot about concussions about CTE Player safety in the NFL ''re enlightened in certain ways, but Have we improved as a society if we do not have NFL blitz, you know, if our football games don't have ambulances driving onto the fields to pickups. Pone prostrate NFL players who have been floored and flattened, I suggest that perhaps we have lost something personally. I'm glad that the players have betteret helmets now and safer rules. but the games? Won't anyone think about the games Seriously? Yeah. Yeah, this was the are that we of just being able to like, you know, have violent AcD sports games, obviously, they're, you know and blitz and just all the different varieties of that So That was very much of its time, and I missed that aspect of that time Another odd evolution of the Blitz series. Do Do anybody remember Blitz the Lag I do. They really tried to make it happen. Thats that's like a genuinely like offensive like entry in that football seag, where like you have to give people CTE and steroids and like there was a very edge lord time that the Blitz League took the turn in that series. Yeah It was like, let's take this amazing as Bens at Arcady game and like give it a gritty like a gritty reboot. Make it for no reason. Like Yeahah, why are we doing The X ray visions of like the like spinal injuries that you can give your tight ends. No, thank you. All right, have we come to the end of this exercise? We have We have. okay. Well, we have snubbed many a great game. So I'll just I'll read out a few from my draft board that I considered merited consideration in that stacked shooter category about sin and punishment, you know, spepeaking of on rails shooters, We snubbed Turq entirely. No R for multiplayer. The other Bond game, The world is not enough, which was solid. It was just it had the misfortune of being compared to Golden Knife and Perfect Arc, which was tough. but good game right. Win back, win back covert operations, trarailblazing cover shooter You know, third multi playayer too. game. Yeah, we we all owe a deep debt to to win back Doom sixty four, you know, which was not just a port. It was an original doom game. It was still a doom game, so it might as well have been a port, but it wasn't Jeetff Force Gemini, as you mentioned I thought about another bullet hell kind of shootem up Banggai O, which was another, you know, big in Japan probably, but I didn't go there. I have more anyone else want to shout out some? I've got some honorable mentions, yeah. Oh yeah Ge three deep cover Gecko, that was a good thing that was near and near to my heart. and veryer, very so g. Yeah boy. Ges three in particular, A because it was three D and you would go into like different TVs that would spoof different movies and he was really into like spoofing like Austin powers, which was a bit of a hat and a hat, but still I loved it. Yeah. Kangraphy Junior S slug fest. Yeah. That was another great one andajor League baseball featuring Kang Graphy Junior. Yes, yes. NBA hang time Love hangt time. which was like my course side. Yeah, the NBA Jam of the council And then I had WWF no Mercy, but then my vibes were eviscerated by that. Pokemon Stadium one and two Rampage World Tour and then Toy Story two I really that because my sister loved it. And it was actually a fun little adventure as we playays Buz Lightyar N played that Some other platform rocket robot on wheels from from Scker Punch. There were some other great some from DMA design, a little company that would one day be known as Rockstar and would go on to make GTA, sppace station, Silicon Valley, body harvest against body harvest. Ducky Kong sixty four. I know computationally has not aged well, but No more bang for the buck and banana for the buck than Donkey Kong sixty four, which is, I think what people remember about the purest expression of the Cectathon You know, it was impressive technologically, but it was a grind. for sure. It does have the wrap in it, right? The Donkey Tong wrap. It does So that it contributed to the cl bearing. Y. Kirby sixty four, the crystal shards. Sure, Rayman two, great escape. What else? I mean, the racing category We could do a whole redraft. Oh shhout out rebolt. love that one. Yeah. Yeah, It's really not good, but I played it and that was good enough for me. What about Beatle adventure racing? Yeah game where you just race folks Beatles.'s really good. It's really what a time the nineties were extreme What extreme Beatles extreme. Yeahre G was very good. Both were aboutancisco rush games Star Wars episode one racer. Yeah. I al selected it. I mean Sulba can't always win. like you got to take him down. Listen, if we were if we had an arcade cabinet draft, this is a first round draft pick because that's got got to be one of the most legendary arcade cabinets ever. Yeah. Well, have we have we said the words Cruise in USA? like I think they absolutely speakge why not Cruise in worldor. Yeah right. If we talked about snowboard kids. All the sixty fours, Ridge racer sixty four, exxcite Bite sixty four, wipe out sixty four, Ridge racer sixty I just said that. There's so many sixty we could have done a racing games with sixty four title and I still would have taken wave race. What else People forget that Ready to rumble boxing was on N sixty four. I definitelyt cast. didid not realize that. Yeah. that happened. But you weren you weren't around for the for the PlayStation version that had Michael Jackson and that was the better one. First like a box. Yeah ye Yeah. A few more sixty fours Dr. Mario sixty four Destruction Derby sixty four Ogre Battle sixty four. That's the one for me. I almost drafted Ogre Battle into it' a thin RPG category. Wings sixty four I just want to hang glide. Who doesn't? An viings. incredibly vibbepaced. Yeah. ye. Yeah.m also I'm sort of surprised no one took Harvest Moon sixty four Classic Animal crossing, right? Originally came out for N sixty four under a different name. No worry. but It did come out. No one played it really here until Gpecube, but nonetheless, it existed Oh, and battle tanks. Battle tanks global assaults Great games. I consider that in multiplayer two, some of my favorites at the time Bomberman sixty fourberman. An incredible multiplayer was so good. Yeah. Yeah We've now named every game released for Nintendo sixty four. Except exxcept for the Castlevania games. which we don't mention those. I can't forget Thays are bad, but I like them. No that evil. We don't speak that evil. Superman sixty four. No. All right Dev. Have you been able to track this mess Can you recap our picks for us? Let's run it back. So in our shooter category, Ben, you picked Goldenye zer zo seven. I did. Steve, you had Starfox Matt went with Star Wars Rogue squadron and Rob picked Shadows of the Empire We moved to Platformer where Rob took Banjo Kazooi. Ben had cononquers Bad Furay. Matt went with Super Mario sixty four and Steve picked Yoshi Story ion adventure, Steve went with L. Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time Matt went with mystical ninjas starting G on. Rob, I can't believe this is my job. Rob Dpping from your voice as you said. You know you know. We don't Nobody knew. Rob went with Legend of Zelda, Maadora's Mask. should win for that alone. And Ben went with Blascor Racing, Matt went with Mario Kart sixty four, Ben Wave race sixty four, Steve went with F zero X, Rob with Diddy Kong racing and I'm not going to do the voice spports Steve Mario Tennis Ben ten eighty snowboarding. Matt NBA courourt side two and Rob went with NFL Blitz two thousand We make our way to multiplayer slash party where Rob took super smash Bros, Ben with perfect Dark went with WrestleMania two thousand and Steve went with Wayne, Gtky three D hockey And last but not least in our wild card category, Matt went with Paper Mario, Rob went with Pokemon Snap Ben went with Mario Golf and Steve went with Mario Party two and that closes us all the way out. Wow What a wealth of gaming goodness We truly, we had a good We didn't even know how good we had it. Actually, we did. We were well aware of how good it was and it really was good Well, please do write in if we omitted anything, which seems impossible because I think we did name. There's another Gon game on this system actually. People are going to write in. You drafted the wrong Go on game. No, no. right idea. wrong game. Yeah. Well If we somehow omitted anything desespite drafting a high percentage of the M sixty four library, do let us know at Ringaverse gaming at Gmail dot com d Look on the Ring ofverse social channels eventually. Matt's beautifully rendered graphic in when she depicts all the games that we picked and you can weigh in on how we did Guys, this has been a joy. It has brought me back to a more innocent time and it may be a more civiliz time