Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio, the video game discussions podcast where we do deep dives and analyze all of our favorite games and some of yours too.

My name is Rick, and today takes us to an eventful night in the City of Edge with the bouncer Square's first offering on the PS two.

Upfront, as always, I've got to thank the patrons.

Without the patrons, this train wouldn't move on through the City of Edge quite as steadily as it does.

Patrons are a fine group of folks that leave in the show.

If you would like to be like these fine fine fellows, you can head on over to patreon dot com slash pixel Project Radio and you can see what a couple bucks a month get you.

It's just some special stuff.

We can talk more about that later.

For today, I've got a guest with me.

As always, today I'm joined by returning guests to the show.

Phil from Deleted Saves.

Thanks for joining me, my friend.

How's it going?

Thanks, It's going well, and remember that train is carrying rocket fuel.

I am excited to talk about this one.

This game is somewhat infamous, and you know for good reason.

For good reason.

Upfront, if you're new to the show.

First of all, welcome, We're glad that you're here.

The way that it works on Pixel Project Radio is we start with an overview discussion of the game that we're talking about, things like mechanics, personal histories, music, things of that nature, and then we move into story discussion where we break things down beat by beat.

We don't spoil anything before we get there, so things in chapter five won't be spoiled before we get to the story, or in chapter one, et cetera.

And for this game, well, that's just going to be a real blast.

It's going to be a real blast.

Let's move on to talking about the bouncer.

So, Phil, when did you first play this game?

Were you aware of this upon release?

Were you've playing it back then?

Did you come to it later after it earned its reputation?

What's your history with this game?

Well, I actually did get this I know it was a PS two launch title.

I didn't get it at PS two launch.

The first real games I had for my PS two were, as I've said, Final Fantasy X, Silent Hill two, Devil May Cry.

I didn't come to this one until probably maybe a year or two after it released, But I didn't really know anything about it.

I somehow missed this in the the cycle of the games media at the time, and all I knew was going to be a beat him up.

I'm like, I love beat him ups.

The genre had been dead for a number of years at that point, so being a sucker for I'm willing to go for it.

And it was Squaresoft.

I'm like, it's the final fantasy people, how bad could this be?

And I bought it and I played it and it went, oh, oh no, we have problems.

It gets that kind of reaction, and we should say this up up top too.

You know, I've been vocal on this show about not shitting on games for the sake of shitting on them, you know, and being a bad sport about things.

I think back to the Detroit Become Human episodes.

You know, that's the game that I, personally I don't think is that great.

But we gave it a chance, and we talked about what it does well, we talked about what it didn't do well.

We're gonna do the same here, you know, We're gonna talk about what this game does well.

And there are some things that are genuinely good about this game, but we're also gonna have some fun.

We're gonna rib it a bit, We're gonna jest in good fun.

It's gonna be a blast, because this game is hilarious in more ways than one, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not a lot of the times not on purpose, though very true.

I was not aware of this game whenever it was current.

This game, by the way, came out in two thousand and one, if you're in the States, two thousand and Japan.

I was not aware of this whenever it first came out.

But I can tell you pretty confidently that if I were which when will that how old would have been, I would have been in elementary school.

I would have made this game my entire personality.

I absolutely would have been obsessed with this game, especially you know, at the time I was also and this would have been a little bit later, but I was very into Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X at the time.

There's a game on PlayStation two called EOE Eve of Extinction that reminds me of this game kind of that I was super into.

I would have eaten this game up, but alas I had no idea what it was, I didn't play it until this episode.

This Fateful episode that we're recording, and you know, its reputation preceded it a little, but I had I had fun, and I think I'm gonna have even more fun talking about it with you today.

Yeah, this is this is a game I also, in the sake of transparency a couple of years ago on my own show, I did an episode specifically about this in my now completed series of games called We Need to Talk.

This game does have good points.

I'm not gonna say it doesn't, but those do not outshine the remainder of it by any stretch.

I will say.

I will say I feel more positively towards it than I do with something like Detroit, you know.

And I don't mean to keep using Detroit as a punching nag.

It's just, you know, it's semi recent to Depixel Project Radio.

By the way, We Need to Talk as an excellent series title, and this is an excellent contender to be in that series.

When this game stumbles, it does so in a way that, you know, it feels like it's laughing with you in a lot of these areas.

It doesn't feel like it's trying to be something it's not.

You know, I when I think of the bouncer.

I think it knows that it is just an hour and a half long action flick that you catch on cable across a two and a half hour time slot with ads commercials is what we used to call those in the old days.

It knows that that's what it is.

It's not trying to be profound.

It's not you know, Tetsuya Nomura, who was involved in this, isn't trying to pull some profound story over on the players.

He's not doing any of that.

I think they knew that this was just going to be a fun romp on the PS two and you know, credit where it's due.

It accomplishes that.

I don't know if it's always in the way that they had hoped, but they accomplished that.

It's a it's an entertaining two hours.

Yeah, this is exactly like what you would expect from a nineteen eighties action flick starring Brian Bosworth.

This would have been a sequel to Stone Cold.

In fact, in my own review, I specifically went out of the way to set this game plays a lot like if Roger Korman directed Three Men in a Baby, So you know, schlock up to the hilt.

If I were a film guy, I'm confident that I would have loved that comparison.

But instead, I'm okay, politely.

That's okay.

I'm not really a film guy either.

It just so happens that I've watched enough reactors reacting to other films that I kind of picked up a little bit of the lingo along the way.

I get you, I see what you're saying, and that's what we hope to do here.

We hope to react to games, so you can react to us reacting to games, and so goes on this beautiful chain of ours.

That's what it's all about, right, reactions.

Speaking of reactions, how about that segue.

We've got the Community Forum.

If you're new to the show.

The community forum is a channel in the Discord server where folks can contribute their thoughts, feelings, opinions.

Haikus on the games we are playing on the show.

They write them, I read them with great power, et cetera, et cetera.

And we do have a couple of responses today for the bouncer.

First up, we've got Chris cope Lean from Retro Hangover podcast.

Here's what Chris has to say.

I could talk about this game's awkward gameplay, nonsensical plot, incredibly stilted pacing, or incredible graphical presentation.

But instead I'm just going to laugh.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

And then Chris followed up with another one that said, also robot lolli sex, and uh, I don't remember that being in the game.

I'm I'm not sure.

Maybe Chris was distracted.

Well, there definitely is a lolly bot, but there's no Lolli sex.

But you know we will, like they say in the song be like that old man in the book by Nabrakov.

Uh.

Next up, we've got Matt Storm.

Matt Storm again from the Fun in Games podcast.

Matt is a little more positive on it than Chris was.

Here's what Matt has to say.

I have such fondness for this game.

It was one of the two games I got with my PS two when I first bought it.

The other game was Devil May Cry.

Oh Man speaking of stilted voice acting that that's got one of the Alzheimer's.

Which has been the one to fill your dark soul with line line.

Well, it's been a while since I've played it.

I remember loving it back then.

It's basically a Squaresoft beat them up game, a thing that just doesn't exist anymore in modern squares repertoire.

It feels like an anomaly to look back on it.

It's also one of the few physical games I still have for my original collection.

And Matt followed up with a beautiful CIV picture of their copy of The Bouncer and it's wonderful.

I don't have this in my collection.

It's not an expensive game.

It's like fifteen twenty bucks.

It's not that bad, but I haven't picked it up yet.

Yeah, it's I think, still pretty easy to find for reasonable prices if you're a collector.

And Matt is right, this game is an anomaly, especially in squares catalog for different reasons, and.

We'll get into whenever we talk about the mechanics why it might be better to play this on original hardware as opposed to emulation.

There actually is a very good reason for that, but we'll get there.

Let's talk some hard facts and figures first.

The Bouncer.

This was released in December of two thousand in Japan March of the following year twenty twenty oh one, two thousand and one in North America June of that year.

In the EU, this was Square's first PS two title.

My understanding was that they were intending this to be a launch title, but things just got kind of pushed back.

It only got pushed back by a little bit the PS two came out.

What I want to say, July of two thousand.

Is that right?

I believe so?

Yeah?

I think so too.

That sounds about right.

It's only a couple months off, not too bad.

The full credits you can find those on the wiki or the id IDMB.

Oh, my goodness, look at what the bouncer is doing to me IMDb.

Or you can just beat the game and it's only like two hours long, so you certainly could.

But of note, this was developed by Dream Factory and published by Square in Japan, Square Enix, Square Electronic Arts, Excuse Me in North America, and Sony Computer Entertainment for the PAL version directed by Takashi Takita, who I mean talk about a weighted name was on Krono Trigger, Parasite one and two and Live Alive, as well as co directed by Seichi Ishi, Fighting Game Royalty, Virtual Fighter Tech and one and two Total Number one Into Street Fighter Ex Two plus and Erguys, God Bless the Ring, God Bless That Ring produced by Shinji Hashimoto, art by of course Tetsuya Nomura.

Take one look at it and you can see it.

Composers.

There is a duo of composers here, Nariko Matsueida and Takeahito Iguchi.

They seem to work together quite a lot.

They also work together on Racing Lagoon.

And I clocked this immediately upon hearing this soundtrack Final Fantasy.

So the team on this had some serious weight behind them.

This was set up to be a hell of an experience.

Yeah, this was, and I have a fair idea there may have been sequels even planned.

In fact, strangely enough, I picked this up from YouTuber sensation Matt mcmuscles.

He did a video about this game and originally when it was planned, speaking of air Geist, God Bless That Ring was actually supposed to be either a semi squel or a spiritual successor to Air Guys in its initial inception.

I did read that.

Yeah, when this game was being teased at the time Square, it was known that Square was working on three games.

There was a JRPG, an unknown game, and then a fighting game and a lot of folks thought that this was based on the early advertisements, the early what do you call it press releases, they were thinking that this was going to be an Air Guys sequel.

But then Square said, no, no, this is an original ip.

This is a brand new thang.

And like you said, it's also you know with the way behind us.

Some of the characters even fight in this game, like they came from the Tech and Move set.

Oh yeah, and you can.

I mean that's why they brought Ishi on.

I mean, for I for as much as we're gonna rib and kind of joke about this game, laugh with this game, I think it's fair to say it's not that they weren't trying to do some really unique things.

And in fact, let's talk about some of the more positive things that this game does.

I kind of front loaded this in a way to be very very positive.

One more thing before we move on to the visuals, which are honestly very very good.

The early impressions of this game from like demos and like I said, the Tech Tech demos presentation kits were very very positive.

Like you said, Pill, a lot of folks thought that this might be an Air Guy sequel.

Square was boasting their seamless action battle system, which in theory, was going to prevent any FMVs or loading screens from this game.

You would just walk around to different areas fight, fight, fight, story, story, story, which at the time at the time was not something that's super common.

Nowadays you see that everywhere.

That did not happen, which we'll talk about once we get to the gameplay, but let's talk visuals.

This game looks really, really good, and at the time this was top of the line.

Oh yeah, no, my PS two When this would load up, what you would hear the fans start to kick on this thing was gorgeous.

It still is.

It's still a pretty good looking game.

It's very i mean played well even on CRT TVs, which is what we had at the time.

The graphics are there's square, there's square graphics.

They are exactly the next step up of what we would later see in a slightly more clean version in like Final Fantasy X or something like that.

In the PS two and beyond, they were They're good, they're good, and there's a lot of them, So I hope you're goddamn like them, because you're going to be seeing them.

Yeah, this was basically the best the PS two was looking up until like Final Fantasy En came out a couple months later, really really did look quite nice.

And the cinematography too.

I didn't take any notes on this, but it bears mentioning.

Yeah, sometimes they do go for the really cheesy action flick kind of cinematography.

But I mean, like you said, this is square we're talking about.

They do this stuff really well, and from a presentation standpoint, the cinematography two, it's quite nice.

They're not slouching here.

I don't know about you, Phil, Are you like a heart would you call yourself a hardcore graphics guy?

Like, do you get into the nitty gritty of fidelity?

No, I'm literally like, as long as I'm interested in the premise, I mean, it could be uh, stick figure graphics at this point.

I'm cool with that if it looks pretty great.

But I'm also one of those guys that, the more I think about it, I'm beginning to wonder if these lifelike presentation graphics are really going to hold up in the decades to come.

Oh, you and me both, man, I mean we've I think we've talked about this off MIC or on a different show before.

But I'm very much in the camp that you're in with, Like, like we had talked about Pentiment, a game that I think we both really really love.

And well, yes, absolutely.

Visually that game was a feast and it's going to look amazing and beautiful in decades to come.

Yeah, into perpetuity.

Yeah, I'm with you, man, And like I'm playing Claire Obscure right now, Expedition thirty three and.

Oh I can't wait.

I so want to play that one.

Oh brother, Oh man, dude, I we got to stay focused otherwise I'm going to go off on a tangent about that.

But I built my PC a couple months ago, at the very end of last year, and now that I can, you know, handle games like this, it looks amazing.

However, as amazing as it does look, and believe me, it looks amazing, I still look at games like, you know, like Pentiment for example, and think, golly, that looks good.

You know, Detroit Become Human looks very very good.

It's a great game.

But then I see games like Haities and I'm like, oh, that looks good.

You know what I mean.

Well, I'm having a similar thing right now.

I'm kind of what I'm playing is I recently started playing Banishers Goes to New Eden, which is a great game.

I'm loving the story, it's very lifelike graphics, spiritual sequel to Vampire or Vampire the people who made don't Nod and stuff like that.

And right next to it, I'm playing Darkest Dungeon two, which is heavily stylized, sort of more cartoony, and I too the two side by side, very different products, very gorgeous graphics.

But in the end, I do feel Darkest Dungeon, because of its heavy stylization, may hold up in perpetuity ongoing from this point.

All this to say, I'm about to list off some stuff.

I am not one to talk jargon.

I don't talk turkey when it comes to this kind of thing, but I did want to mention this because this game looks really, really good.

This game used in early version of light Bloom as well as some depth of field of effects to produce a more cinematic atmosphere.

Now this is common now, this is kind of expected, especially in the Triple A sphere.

But back then, remember this was one of the first games on the PS two.

It missed the launch of the PS two just by a few months.

This was before Final Fantasy ten.

They didn't do that back then, not really so seeing the bouncer today, it doesn't look novel.

But back then, like we said, this was the cream of the crop.

And Takashi Takita said in an interview, he said, quote, no matter how many polygons you use or how realistic the textures are, without filters and lighting, CG pictures will be of a quality lower than that of a figurine.

In order to create atmosphere, we spent much time on filters and lighting end quote.

And I don't know about you, man, I'm guessing you're gonna agree with me, but I think that really helps this game.

The way this looks and is presented is one of its strongest suits.

Yeah.

Absolutely, the extra time they put into the graphics again it was square.

I truly would expect no less to help it look the best it could is.

You know, whether it's from the cut scenes or transition back into the actual action of the game, is its strongest suit.

There is nothing, at least at the time.

I mean you could even again, let's compare it to Devil May Cry, which, by comparison, side by side graphics alone, I'm not talking gameplay.

It looks Devil May Cry looks a little stilted, whereas the graphics alone from the bouncer look lush by comparison.

Now, these again, we're talking two thousand and one standards.

So anyone out there who's like, bet my modern GAMEOK, like, shut up, we're not talking about that.

We're talking two thousand and one graphics.

But yeah, it's the the bloom, the lighting, beautiful, great stuff.

And this is an area too.

This is one of two major points that I'll say in favor of CRT gaming.

When you emulate this, yeah, it's gonna look really good, but I think some of that magic is going to be lost if you're not playing this on a CRT.

It's still gonna look good, and you're still gonna notice the bloom, the depth of field.

On an emulator, I don't know why I phrased it, why I stressed it that way, an emulator.

But terminator, just like the emulator on.

A CRT, this would just look like like this is gonna be some of the best CRT gaming in terms of graphical presentation that you're gonna see.

I'm not saying it is the best.

I mean, the director worked on Parasite Eve.

That's one of the best looking PlayStation one games.

If you ask me, uh, but you know the bouncer on a CRT, I bet that would look amazing.

We had mentioned briefly before the seamless scene transition that was their intent.

They had the best of intentions, and like all good intentions, that paved road leads straight to hell because this game kind of does the opposite.

You are going to go through one to two minute gameplay experiences with very few exceptions thrown in there.

The shortest of them that I remember is literally I think forty five seconds, but you'll go through that.

After each and every play session, you'll get to save, and then you'll go into a cut scene, and it just the experience of going through this game is very herky jerky.

It's very stilted.

But hey, to its credit, you get to save often, which is pretty sweet.

I guess yep, as seamless as falling up the stairs, that's about how seamless this was.

It's god almighty.

Anyway, before we yeah, I don't want to spoil anything, so.

Hey, no, no, no, that's totally fine.

We'll get there so we're gonna go compliment sandwich style.

We started with something positives, we're going to save the other positive section.

So now let's get into something that's a little uh, maybe maybe you could use some TLC.

Let's talk with the mechanics.

Let's talk about how this game plays.

This this is where the game starts to raged all all over itself.

That's not a good joke, but it's true, man, it's true.

Ragdol physics are very very pronounced in this game.

And boy howdy does it lead to some unintentional hilarity.

Yeah, I mean to be honest with you.

In the combat sequences in this game, the best way to get through enemy groups is to do one of the various fighters that you can pick have like it just a deep uppercut or very low kick maneuver to knock them.

And Jesus Christ, they fly around the screen.

You think it was the flying none.

They bounce off walls, they fly into each other, and it's not even like a fighting game juggle.

They just soar through the air and away they go.

And you watch one of the computer enemies kick them and pick them up, and you know one of your computer pals kill them.

And you don't get experience and you go shit.

Oh buddy, well, oh believe me, that was a sticking point that stuck in my craw this entire game.

You are going to get juggled, and enemies are going to get juggled.

Juggling is a key mechanic in this game, well basically anyway for those that might not know, and actually perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit.

That's on me.

The way this game plays is it's a third person beat him up, as Matt and Chris alluded to, as you alluded to, Phil, but it's not a beat him up like you would expect with like River City Girls for example, or you know the Power Anger games.

It's not a final fight, it's not a streets of rage.

It's I mean, one of the funniest things in the game you will see is the one character Co will do like a two legged flying kick.

An enemy will straight punch them like right in the dick and Kuo just crumples right out of the sky.

You're gonna be going around in third person and generally in like small arena ish styles.

I mean, not a little literal arena.

It'll be like a room a street, but you know there are those invisible barriers, and you're gonna be fighting enemies.

It's gonna be you and two of your comrades.

We'll talk about the fountains here.

Pretty soon, and the three of you are going to be fighting various kinds of enemies.

Generally they are people, robots, and dogs.

You get to do a lot of You get to dip a lot of fucking upper cutting dogs into the air and just juggling them and yeating them across the room.

It's it's pretty funny.

My strategy against dogs, since they can't block in this game, was to just sweep kick them NonStop, basically stunlock them into into losing all.

Of their health listeners.

I will tell you this, if you ever fantasized about punching a mall security guard, this is the game for you, because you're gonna be doing it a lot.

Who's among us hasn't truly truly.

Juggling is a key part of this game.

You are going to want to juggle these enemies and you are going to get juggled yourself.

If you've never played a fighting game, juggling is where you get knocked into the air or you knock your opponent into the air, and you use your combos to keep them in the air for maximum damage.

The main character of this game fella named seon aka Temu Sora.

He's got a pretty basic one to juggle combo two uppercuts that will juggle them, and then you can time a roundhouse kick like in Roadhouse to get him in the air.

Pretty pretty common.

But and when we say it like this, you might be thinking like, oh, wow, the mechanics sound really cool.

But it doesn't.

I mean, playing this game, if I can be so bold as a chore, it's not very fun.

No.

Unfortunately, for as good as it looks and as great as those mechanics may sound, it's very slow.

I mean, everyone feels like they have like lead weights in their pockets.

And there's cheap shots of plenty.

There's there's even that The problem is I'm gonna I'm gonna bring this up too.

There is the possibility that you can get a team attack on one specific opponent.

UH.

Generally, you have to listen to one of the other AI control characters yell out a phrase, and then there's an attack button you can hit.

I forget which one that will launch into a another cut scene FMV of them pile driving some poor sod and if it's a dog, you're gonna feel real bad into the ground, Like I mean, I'm not kidding.

The one you get frequently, you'll be the character of Kobe will grab somebody, break their arm, shove them forward into vault your powerhouse, who picks them up bodily by the neck, slams them into the pavement and see On comes by like Charlie Brown and kicks them right in the teeth.

And I don't know about you, but I could very rarely.

I rarely got this to work.

I think maybe once in my entire playthrough was I able to pull this off.

It's not intuitive, you know, you have to listen to them and do their taunt, and if you miss the time window and do yours, you just kind of taunt and nothing happens.

Also, it doesn't do very much damage.

For as bad ass as they made it look, it's kind of tiddly winks.

It's kind of not worth trying to do.

No, it's actually not very powerful.

Your basic attacks do more damage.

And we'll get into spoilers.

There is one enemy in the game that this attack will not work against.

Oh no kidding, who is that?

That would be the final boss?

Oh really, Durragon.

If you attempt to pull this on Durgon, he slips out of all three of them and they all stand around stupidly as he disappears.

That's kind of cool though, like, given given his lore, what we know about his lore, that's I mean, that's kind of cool.

I don't know you had mentioned your normal attacks.

Let's talk those for a second.

You get medium attacks, light attacks, and heavy attacks or I think it's maybe low, mid, and high actually now that I think of it, and those are relegated to your face buttons, your squares, your triangles, and your ex's crosses.

If you're from across the pond, your circle button is going to do.

It's kind of like a heavy, sort of like wind up attack.

You know, a vault does just a fucking body slam.

I think Code does that to that flying kick that you had mentioned, and Seon does like a sort of wind up roundhouse kick.

It's a heavy damage dealer, but it leaves you very vulnerable.

It's high commitment.

And speaking of high commitment, the combo system in this game is one of the reasons that makes it kind of frustrating to play.

Do you know, Phil, do you know the term dialo combo?

If I said that you does that mean anything?

I believe I do.

Yess.

That's a common criticism folks will give to Mortal Kombat one that I don't have any negative feelings towards it.

But all dialo combo means is you've got to punch in your combo as quickly as possible for it to take effect.

In other words, it's not like Street Fighter, where a punch punch kick has to be timed out, so the second punch comes after the first and the kick comes after that.

It's not quite like that.

You just press stuff as quickly as possible.

The problem with the bouncer is those dialo combos have a large commitment.

Your characters move kind of slow, and you have to commit to this combo three four hit combo before you know if it's gonna work, and if the enemy blocks it, well, you can't cancel out of these combos.

You're stuck and you're very committed.

And being that that's a core part of the toolkit, it makes this game feel more like you're sort of just always guessing and flailing, flailing because of the ragdahle physics of course.

Yeah, and it's it's just not fun to play.

It's it's you know, this is kind of the definition of like a cousin game, you know, a cousin party game.

It's not about skill.

You just kind of press buttons until you win.

Yeah, and they go away.

The other major mechanic of this game is that it is a hybrid light RPG.

Every enemy you defeat, if you're the if it's your main character, whichever of the three fighters you picked, and they defeat the enemy, you get experience.

You get experience points racked up, and at the end of the combat scene, the screen in between save transitions will tally it and you can actually pick do you want to increase your health?

Do you want to crease your defense?

There's a block button.

I did not know there was a block button until I watched another YouTuber do it.

And you can also pick various special moves that you can add to your combo.

And you better commit to one character because if you try to spread it out, you're gonna get stomp towards the end of the game.

That's true.

That's true.

And speaking of you can select a different fighter at the beginning of each round, you know, and there are seventeen ish rounds, twenty maybe, so you can experiment.

And you might be thinking like, oh, okay, if I can you know, if I can an experiment, I can choose different fighters, I can level them up differently.

You kind of don't want to do that this game.

It doesn't explicitly tell you, but it wants you to play through one route per character, partly because the fights can get a little difficult and difficult both in terms of the enemy skill and just you're fighting against the system itself, the mechanics, and you know, having as much as many points into one character as possible is generally advisable, but also because of story reasons, and we'll talk about that soon.

You mentioned the bouncer points, Phil, and you alluded to this earlier.

Do you want to say what happens if your teammates try to help you win?

Yeah?

Again, In this game, all three bouncers will be on the stre at the same time.

No matter who you pick, everyone will be there.

You're not left alone and they're like off fighting a couple of dudes in a corner.

This is not a Bruce Lee film.

But they will assist you, and they will kill steal and if your AI companions get the final blow, you don't get any experience.

So if you stand back and do nothing or get your butt kicked, um, you're not gonna get any advancement that round.

And it's not even about just standing back and letting them take care of things.

You could take care of the entire fight.

If they get the last hit, you don't get any exp at all.

And for a game that lets you play as each character and build them up however you want, that seems very counterintuitive to me and extraordinarily frustrating.

I had, I think two bosses.

One of my teammates stole the kill and I got nothing.

Zilch ip butt kiss.

I got nothing from that fight, and that sucks.

Man, What a perplexing choice they chose.

Somewhat horrifically ironic considering this is a Pedigree studio who does RPGs, to just fuck that whole system right in the ear.

Yeah, Yeah, it's very perplexing.

You would think Square would have made a better decision with that.

I don't, and especially I mean the director parasite Eve.

I mean, there was some unconventional.

Well, I don't want to say unconventional, but that was a different kind of RPG chrona trigger.

I mean, what more needs to be?

Something more do we need to say?

Really very perplexing choice here, very frustrating choice.

What this led to was me just kind of getting in their way and spamming as much as possible.

Spamming was kind of how I got through this game.

At a certain point, I was just like, I don't remember what move I was doing with my guys, but I was just repeating that one move over and over again to sweep as many enemies as possible to get the points.

You know.

I mean, it's one of these games where I hate to say, it's sweep the leg is your best attack, dude.

You gotta sweep the leg.

Sweeping the leg is how you win, especially against dogs.

Dude.

This is a podcast that will teach you how to beat up dogs, and the answer sweep the legs.

There's four of them.

Oh, the as is going to be on our asses now.

Yeah, we're canceled by PETA canceled us.

Oh fuck, you know, speaking of we would be remiss not to mention this.

The second reason that I think playing this on original hardware is preferable.

Is that this is one of the few games that makes use of a dual Shock two and Dual Shock three feature that I think not a lot of folks know about.

Those controllers had pressure sensitive buttons, and this game uses those, And you might be thinking, well, hey, golly g that sounds terrific.

Pressure sensitive, that's so innovative.

That's not how fighting games work and why they chose this.

I mean, think about being at a fighting game at an arcade.

Think of playing on an arcade cabinet with the Sanwa buttons.

Those are not pressure sensitive.

You've got to do some acrobatics to get your to get your three hit combos.

In on street fighter or virtual fighter, you've got to be pressing those buttons.

Pressure sensitive, especially in an in the moment genre like a beat them up or a fighting game, is just so counterintuitive.

It's totally against the grain.

It's cool on paper, but in practice this was just bizarre.

And I don't know.

I emulated it for this playthrough.

I again, I don't own it, so I played it on my computer in an emulator, and I think the pressure sensitive attacks and combos were just kind of random.

You know, I don't think there was a rhyme or reason to it.

I mean even in the original PS two controller, and I know they did utilize it, and a lot of times it just didn't really feel like it was working as intended.

Maybe I'm wrong about that.

I'm sure someone out there will correct me about.

You know, how they played the bouncer with their ass cheeks ever so lovingly and gently managed to get all the way to the end.

But it for me, again, it just as you said, felt random.

It was needless.

I do believe in the end, needless would be the word I'm looking for.

And I want to say it's Seon.

You get combos listed out for you in the instruction manual of the game, and I think Seon's is like, you know, square square square, but the middle square has to be pressed hard, so it's like light square hard square light square.

And in the moment, especially with the dialo combo system where you've got to push things fast, fast, fast, I mean, it's it's just there's too much going on to make things cohesive.

Everything's working against each other.

And one other thing that's working against everything is the lock on system.

It's automatic yep, and it don't work.

It don't work.

So good.

No, you can't, And it's very frustrating because your character is walk speed and gait, and you know, directional autonomy changes once you lock onto somebody.

It's and I don't think you can.

Can you block whenever you're not locked on?

I actually don't remember that.

I don't know.

Like I said, I didn't find out there was a block system until I watched Josh streife A's and doing like his video on the bouncer.

The bouncer, the bouncer.

Was it any good?

And I'm like, there was a block button that whole fucking time is they never tell you.

That I was getting tossed like salad for no reason?

Can Yeah, exactly a sexual context.

I don't know.

I just did.

I guess we're doing it.

We're fucking doing it live.

Yeah, but no, And turns out one of those three goddamn meters you can increase is your endurance in blocking, and once you wiped out, you can't do it ever again for the rest of the stage.

So don't get hit.

Oh that's right, I almost forgot about that.

Another perplexing mechanic.

Yeah, there are some things that are not clearly laid out even and I don't believe in the instruction manual.

There are a lot of things that aren't explained in the bouncer.

Yeah, just the bouncer.

I mean, there's just a lot going on with the mechanics that are actively working against each other.

It makes this an interesting game to sit down and play.

But in terms of like, you know, anything that's fighting adjacent or yeah, you know, I mean, Jesus Christ, this one the co director Virtua Fighter.

That's one of the most mechanically Uh.

I don't want to say complex, because that gives the wrong idea mechanically intense games out there.

I mean, because it's so simple, you've got to have a deep understanding of startup frames and commitments and I mean frame data in general and things like that.

You would think having somebody on there with that pedigree, you would think at some point he would have said, hey, actually these don't work so well together.

We're petting the cat backwards here.

But no, you get this weird gumbo of mechanics that kind of fight with each other, and then you fight with them, and Mugetsu juggles you and you just get the why does your legs flail through the air.

Pretty much again and just as coming as an outsider, you know, watching the you know, fighting game genre as a thing.

The technical experience at this point most not even like the professional level players, but even like somebody at a home sort of console who does well.

You have to be, as you said, cognizant of startup frames, intermittant frames, actual like timing mechanisms, when to press the button, how to press the button to be able to do a lot of the combinations we see in so many fighting games, especially as they've gotten more complex into the modern day.

And this system is trying to include.

It's it's almost a cult in its level of sort of arcane academic background.

It's weird.

It's why the hell did they do this?

And there's mister Tomorrow in the lot of it, the whole center of it going.

We need more belts and we need more chains.

He can't be stopped.

This man, you know.

What, he cannot be.

He's a wild animal.

I could forgive the pressure sensitive buttons, I could forgive the auto lock on.

They don't even need to make this in well, a more innovative fighting experience.

The one thing that would have fixed this for me would have been the ability to cancel listeners.

If you don't know what canceling means in fighting, in terminology is being able to go from one attack to another very quickly.

And the way that you do this is by entering in the command like immediately.

This happens in dialo combos all the time.

You know.

The classic example is light punch for well, maybe that's not.

What's an example that I just did earlier today, crouching medium kick into a Sure you can, you enter them one after another and you cancel into that special attack.

That's what that's called.

Or you press a fight button an attack button and jump immediately.

That's called a jump cancel.

If you could cancel out of the ridiculous commitments in these in these sluggish combos, like into a block for example, or even a backstep like a side step like in Yakuza, that would have made this game one faster paced and two you know, there would have been some skill to it.

But no, instead, we donkey kick and we leg sweep and we ragged all baby, that's how we do it here.

And I mean even in like the two point five D you know fighters of the old arcade days, there was still least some technical skill.

Yes, their frames may not have been as fantastic, they may not have cancels and these sorts of things, but you could still use the environment to your effect.

The fucking game you spend so much time in bare ass corridors or in wide open spaces.

You can't use an environment to your assistance.

Your allies are getting thrown around like hamburger at a goddamn fat festival.

The enemies are just flying through the air like the you know, the greatest of ease, and there you are trying to figure out, like am I hitting the right punch button?

What's going on?

Yeah, it's it's tough.

It's not the best gameplay experience.

You know, Cheese is your friend in this game.

I think at a certain point you just find what works and you kind of spam it until you win, or at least that's what I did.

Yeah, that's in a lot of cases what I did after a while.

It's just especially with some later enemies when you're fighting the robots, they are so tanky and they have so much just they absorbed so much damage.

Oh yeah, keep in mind the one mental disconnect I always have in fighting games like this is when you're a very human fighter with flesh and bones punching a metal monstrosity.

Yes, if you're a black belt triple degree martial artist, you can break a certain amount of boards, you can break a certain amount of cinder blocks, you can break ice.

Nobody's punching through steel has never happened in human history, will never happen, but.

It does let us live out our innermost desires to hit computer.

That's true.

Who among us doesn't want to hit computer?

Yeah, and that's probably what I did to my PS two.

At some point, I had an uncle, like way back in the early days of computers, like I'm talking doom on computers, I had an uncle that got mad at it for some reason.

I don't think it was doom related.

It was probably just computer and he just fucking punched it and ended up breaking his knuckles.

Those things are tanks.

Yep.

It's kind of like that scene from the movie Off of Space where they take the printer with keeps jamming out into the field and beat the shit out of it for a while.

Yeah, we all felt that deep in our soul.

We've all felt that.

Yeah, So let's move on to something in this game that I think is a little more positive, or at least I think you might feel this way.

I certainly do.

Let's talk about the music.

You know what, It's not bad.

I quite like it.

I'm not gonna lie.

There are some pretty bumping tracks I have that I remember positively.

One of the one of the esthetics that Matsueeda and Eguchi used a lot in I think this was in Final Fantasy ten two.

That might be remembering wrong, but they use a lot of this like jazz overlaid piano doing a lot of jazz sort of angular figures, like a lot of stacked forts like diminished, sacked, fourth augmented runs over top of like you know j RPG kind of chord progression music, and that happens a lot in here.

It is really really cool.

But I'll tell you what though, it's not that it's not the bumpin kind of intense like you know, club bouncer music.

Excuse me, club the bouncer music.

It's like there are some scenes that are trying to be dramatic, kind of like an action movie, and the scoring behind it is like flutes using not extended techniques but playing in non traditional ways like flutter tonguing across the mouthpiece to give a more percussive effect, or percussionists boeing a symbol like taking a bow from a cello and boeing a symbol which produces like an eerie sound effect, or like a guitar using a pick scrape for example that you hear in like any number of rock music.

They use like noises quote unquote like that for tension effect.

Or they do other cool things like they'll have like strings high strings violins playing without vibrato to give a sort of eerie ethereal feel.

It is super cool.

I was not expecting to love the soundtrack to this as as much as they did.

Yeah.

Admittedly, as I said, not someone who has a great degree of music education, But there is a lot of cases where the soundtrack is surprising.

Even in the dialogue and line delivery.

As ham fisted as it can be, at times, the music stings the Again, it's just said the soundtrack use the moment to moment play of sound can be surprisingly intense and very on point for helping set a mood.

Oh yeah, they do a really great great job of riding the line between like a party brawler game and like a cheesy action flick and something kind of serious.

I think there's even one scene if I can think of it, I'll insert the music here.

There's one scene that's like emotional and you know there's a somebody gives a cliche line like can we leave the romance for later?

And there's like a lush string background that's like totally off of like a TV Lifetime movie.

It's it's very cool.

They did nice work.

Yeah, that's again speaking in a positive light, I will have to agree that the not just the soundtrack, but the use of the soundscape was excellently done.

Now you had mentioned voice acting.

Did you want to talk about that here?

Uh, there's one one voice actor in particular that is like fucking wild dude.

I was laughing at more of their lines than not.

There aren't some names in here.

I mean, for example, from the first line, the character co says, I pegged it immediately as like Spiegel aka Steve Bloom from Cowboy Bebop and you know anime Royalty.

He's in here.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

The second I heard him see, I'm like, wait a second, Okay, well, then fuck these guys.

I want to be cod because I get to beat deal, Steve Bloom, Let's what the hell I'll be doing here?

Why you wasting my time?

And I could never remember, but I know Volt's voice actor I have heard before in other games.

Michael Gregory.

Yeah, he's a name I've heard before.

Let's see here.

This is just giving me a bunch of This is just giving me a bunch of quotes from Volts.

That's not what we want now.

Whoever played Sion, I don't know if it was their first time in the booth or if they normally sound like that, if they sound like they work at the DMV, because they were Wooden wood End could have used him for kindling.

That looks like that was done by Paul Stephen.

Uh.

And I agree, Sion's voice acting is the most perplexing in the entire game.

I have some notes written down when we're going through the story it is.

He is very strange and stilted.

And meanwhile, you've got other voice actors like I don't remember Mugetsu's voice actor off the top of my head, but he's going kind of overboard and schmoltzing it up and hamming it up.

He sounds like an insane Uh, what's what's the system of a Down's guitar player Darren malackean.

He kind of sounds like an insane version of him.

Yeah.

I don't know what his exact direction was in the booth, but they must have just said go for it because he he is the best villain in the game.

He's not even he's like one of the side villains.

He's a lead up.

He's just going for it the entire time.

Duragon, who sounds like he should be in an English school, yet he is pissy about his life.

His voice actor doesn't really open up until like the very end.

No, he doesn't, and he he doesn't.

He is flat despite what the story is and he's trying to do.

He is flat up until the end when he takes too many punches to the face and decides that's his new kink.

I also have to compliment the woman who did a kidnap.

Oh sure, I thought she did an amazing job with a character who I don't know.

There's not really much to her other than she has two pink cones and a lot of jiggle physics and she really hates Voult.

It looks like Mary Elizabeth McGlenn.

Yeah, I think I swear I've heard her in something else.

Oh, it's showing her as let's see, she's in Mobile Suit, Gundam, Saileman, Crystal, Silent HILLT two, Oh, Nina Williams from Tech, Nina Williams.

That's who.

That's who she voiced.

Yes, that's yeah, that's it.

And now that you mention it, yeah, I think I heard her in Mobile Suit Gundam and Maria in Silent Hill te Yes, yes she is, you're right, yeah, yeah.

I mean the voice acting is a mixed bag.

I would like, if we're being charitable, we could say that some folks saw this as the you know, kind of cheesy aunt made for TV action film that it is and had fun with it, if we're being charitable.

If we're not, you know, it kind of sounds like they were handed a script that was you know, maybe their lines were in alphabetic order, they weren't recording with other people, and they just said the things and collected a paycheck.

I'm not saying that's what happened.

I'm saying sometimes it sounds like it though.

It does, and you know, from my understanding with voice acting, it really is best to be recording in the room with the actor that you should be having the conversation with in game, because you can bring a lot of subtlety to the role, a lot of mood depth.

No matter how shitty the script may be, you can really bring a lot to it.

If the actors can bounce off of each other.

If they can the bouncer off of each other, please.

Yeah, they can bounce off each other all they want.

They'll bouncer again.

You're just gonna hear that a lot.

Sorry, it's in my fucking brain, But yeah, they can.

Really they can work off of each other.

It's better and you can tell that, like I said, I mean, Steve bloom Is at this point that the man might as well be on the pantheon of voice actors.

You could hand him, you know, stick him in the middle of the Anarctic with two penguins and he'll come off with a great performance.

And he does Sion.

On the other hand, it's awful.

Don't know if he was trying to sound like a bored teenager.

If he did, holy shit, did he pull it off in spades.

I think he's supposed to not edgy one, which it doesn't really come off that way.

But like, yeah, I guess if you squint your ears.

Yeah, he's got edge.

All right, he's all square.

HEO, you fucking got his ass.

There's a lot of fun to be had with this game.

And speaking of a lot of fun, let's why don't we dive into the story.

So again, if you're new to the show, we're going to talk through the story beat by beat from the beginning to end.

It's not a long one.

It's only at about two hours long.

If you are playing leisurely, and we're going to talk through it all of the fun high jinks, this one wild night on Edge Street as we go through the story of the Bouncer.

So let's do it.

This game begins with a woman in a hotel room.

She's watching a broadcast about some satellite project headed by a group known as Mikado.

Seems to be energy oriented.

The broadcast is sort of explaining what's going on the woman though, she's doing some sick nineties hacker shit on her laptop, targeting and tracking.

This young woman who we can see on screen is named Dominique.

She has a moment of realization.

She says, damn it, they beat us to it.

This woman is Leanne and unless you play as the character named This is the last you ever see of her, surprisingly important character, though.

A whole lot of the story doesn't make sense without her.

That's maybe something we could just say right up top.

This game will change depending on who you play as, which one of the bouncers you play as.

You get different scenes and different endings depending on who you're playing, and you're expected to play it three times to get a full picture of the story.

But we're gonna let you in on a little secret.

Even a full picture doesn't really give you the full picture.

It feels like they ship this game in a bit of a hurry.

There's a lot that's left to the imagination.

Absolutely a lot of this even when you're trying to piece it all together if you're fast enough and can read the in between loading screen story bits.

Okay, but I think they confuse more than they clarify.

It's basically three separate main characters trying to work through their trauma as independently as possible while beating up every security garden.

Town, which is pretty badass.

And I guess these are the lives of people on Dog Street because this as you hear a lot too.

Admittedly, that sounds pretty cool.

You are right, that's kind of I'm glad that you brought up the loading screens, and I'm glad that you said that they go by too fast.

I thought this was just because I was emulating.

These loading screens will have critical lore and backstory to each of these characters, explaining why they are here and what their deal is.

But they go by so goddamn quick that I could never read them.

No, even in the original PS.

Two and again, if someone tries to correct me, I'm sorry.

Maybe I don't read as fast as you, but I thought even on the original hardware, they pretty much skipped by it a sprightly pace and I missed a lot.

Yeah, me too.

I am an admittedly slow reader, but I could not keep up.

It was tough.

But as we'll see, I think even having that information is not going to help with this story.

So who to this woman Dominique.

Well, we're gonna find out right now.

This group of armored mercenaries diving down from a helicopter as this game's ost makes a grand entrance, crash into a young woman's room, a young woman child.

It's kind of unclear.

And this is where Tetsuya Nomura character designer credit flashes across the screen, as if we needed that cleared up at all.

But anyway, and keep in mind, these guys crashed down in armored out fits.

Headfirst, ass up, and then the suit's unfold.

That's true, and we get we get a good glimpse at the main guy, slicked back, spiky silver hair with stitching across his mouth.

Lips.

I should have just said lips.

Don't like what I just said there stitching across it.

It's and this isn't even as Tatsuya Nomura as it gets.

No, he's actually sedate and fairly fashionable.

I don't know if I would use that word man, but comparatively, yeah, sure, why not.

I'd wear that outfit.

I mean, if we're talking early two thousands goth club, then yeah, he's probably boring.

Oh dude, hold that thought.

We'll get to the early two thousands fashion.

Hold that thought.

These folks that just crash down, you shouldn't ever call ninja's folks.

I don't think they've earned it.

These ninjas that just crashed down.

They look at the pictures in this room, it is that woman Dominique.

When they see this, they naruto run out, smashing the windows in the process.

This is where we see that main guy this slip back here.

We're just gonna get his name out now.

His name is Mugetsu.

We're gonna be seeing a lot more of him.

Mugetsu and his goons do some sweet ninja runs across the building tops pursuing Dominique, who it just so happens, is running to a bar called Fate, And this is where we.

Meet the bouncers Volt.

Seon and co.

Let's all right, buddy, let's let's unpin that two thousands fashion.

These three, these trio of bouncers, these bouncers three, they are the epitome of two thousand fashion.

I would have thought these guys were so cool back then.

I still think they're kind of cool, to be honest, kind of yeah.

I mean they are an unusual bunch of multi layered pastel on black pleather denim weirdness, giant chains that would put uh what's his name from public enemy to shame.

Volt literally bought pants for a seven foot tall man.

He's already pretty big, and he rolled up the cuffs to his knees.

He's not showing any calf he just rolled up the cuffs that far.

And I'm glad that you said that.

That was the first thing that I noticed about him, were the cuffs of his pants going up to his knee caps and the pants still reach his ankles.

It is wid wild And of course, well, I'd be lying if I said I didn't notice the horns.

This guy not only does he have tunnels in his ears, he's got tons of piercings, nose piercings, lip piercing's, ear piercings, cartlage piercings.

He's got horns coming out of his forehead.

He does now they at least if you dive into the lore.

There's actually a reason he has those piercings.

Yes, everyone else, I can't say why because it doesn't make sense.

Uh do you remember offhand why?

It's it's to conceal his identity after a past, past thing or I don't quite remember.

One of them is concealing a bullet wound.

Oh gotcha?

Okay, yeah, and he just said, well fuck it, I got more piercings.

Oh and by the way, for the eagle eyede out there, you may have noticed the back of volts jacket does in fact feature a kactar.

Yes it does.

Just in case you forgot, this is a square product.

In the middle of a no sign.

It's pretty it's pretty cool.

Yep.

And technically the dog on the back of seons jacket is modeled after your pooch that comes with Renoa from Final Fantasy eight.

Yes, whose name is escaping me at the moment.

Angelo is the dog's name from Final Fantasy eight, Renault's dog Angelo.

Can't believe.

I couldn't think of that.

He's the best dog that you can shoot as a projectile at the enemy.

Good job, Angelo.

And speaking of eighth Volte does kind of look like Zel if Zel were like a little bit cooler.

I don't know.

Yes, Co I feel bad for because he's got a manly vist.

Dude, Co is the most two thousands.

He's wearing like and I'm not looking at a picture at the moment, He's wearing like cargo pants, kind of a vest shirt and just has a load of tribal tattoos on his face, arms, and body.

And since we're in we're in the story territory, spoilers abound.

Those were put on surgically.

If you're wondering how that plays into the story.

Well, it kind of doesn't unless you care about the background.

They were done all at once as a surgical, permanent maneuver.

Let that sink in a little bit.

Sorry, got off in a tangent there.

No, You're fine.

And then, last, but not least, is Seon kind of just looks like Temusra.

He looks like a prototype of Sora.

If Sora we're a little older, a little less Disney him, shoes not too big for him feet, He basically looks the same.

He's got a band aid under one of his eyes, which I associate with Nelly to this day.

Wasn't Nelly the one that did that?

Yes, yes it is.

And again, that giant chain he wears around his neck is such a fight hazard because it would take somebody two seconds to grab it and strangle him.

Well, I mean, if he were that's how cool he is.

If he were an amateur the bouncer, maybe.

Oh yeah, absolutely, that's a sign of how good he is wearing all the bling.

He has my favorite line in the game about how seriously he takes his job towards the end, but we'll get there.

So it's Seon's first anniversary.

Being the bouncer.

But of course the Mikado Special Forces.

Those are the Ninja guys that were Naruto running.

They bust in and so we bust up.

We bust them up, is what I wrote.

They steal Dominique.

This is our first fight.

We're not going to talk about every fight because that would be a pacing nightmare.

But you know, this is our introduction.

We kick some ass, We ragged all around.

They steal Dominique, they run out, and we get the title card.

Absolutely, even if you beat them, which you have to, they still steal Dominique.

That's true.

So of course we're going to spend most of the game chasing her.

Actually, that's the entire point of this game.

Co is able to pull some strings here and get some info that there's a special train leaving for Micado HQ in a half an hour.

He takes a phone call here, and if you're not playing as CO, if you didn't play the previous mission as CO, you don't hear the phone call.

But if you are playing as CO, you hear him speaking with Leanne, that woman from the beginning she plays into COS story.

CO has a quote unquote day job where I'm gonna be honest, I did not play through Co's story.

I played through the other two, so I'm a little fuzzy on the details.

But he's working with Leanne.

I think he's keeping an eye on Dominique if I remember correctly.

Yes, Coe's day job is that he's a detective with an international detective agency which is bankrolling him.

And the reason he has all the surgery to fit in with the Bouncers.

And if you're wondering how much that has enriched my understanding of the story, the answer would be.

Not at all.

Yes, not at all.

Oh, it's crazy.

I strangely and perversely love this game in a way.

We're off to Mikado HQ.

This is where we this is my second favorite line of the game.

This is where we're running down there.

We see a black panther, like the animal, not the cool group from from back in the day.

We see an actual black panther, and Volt says, to see on.

You recognize that black panther.

No, let's get going.

We're gonna miss the train.

It's the most casual thing in the world.

I just can't I just can't believe that that And it's the way that they say it too.

Do you know that black panther.

No, yes, no, this is you know, this is an introduction to how flat a lot of seance dialogue is.

Yeah, and some of them, I swear they cut out of other sections of the game and put them in earlier parts because they're kind of like out of nowhere.

That's a good point.

I wonder if they did that, or you know, like I had wondered earlier, maybe they just like did that thing that a lot of early script writers did and sent off the script in like alphabetical order and said, all right, just record them, you know, m hmm.

Absolutely, shit sucks.

But after we see that weird black panther, we head off.

We get to the train station.

There are some rental cops that we have to fight and get through.

This is the first time I made a note in the in the notes, which is typically where you take the notes, is that the music is pretty sweet.

This is the ambient sort of non orchestral, well not non orchestral, but uh, non typical.

Sounds very cool.

But we take care of them.

Again, not much to say about these fights.

We get onto the train.

They're already onto us.

They make it a point to say that this train is hauling rocket fuel, so we can't be using guns.

We have to do sweet kung fu moves.

Looks like we're on a tanker car.

This thing's probably carrying rocket fuel for that shuttle launch everyone's been talking about, which is how I like.

To do it exactly, because in a fighting game, nothing works like a firearm.

Except these guns that I have tickets to do.

You have have these?

Yeah, let's see these guns all night, baby.

Yeah, that's what we're doing.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I mean, it's the kind of game that'll do that to you.

It's I tell you, man, you spend enough time with this and you come around to it in a sick kind of way and invade your brain.

I mean, look, I played the game multiple times just to see like if I was crazy, and after a while it's like, I guess I am.

We jump on to the top of the train and this is where we're introduced to Echidna.

We're introduced to Echidna, her goons, and if you don't mind me saying so, her titty physics, because it's front and center when she's introduced and they be bouncing.

Yeah, and she's the only one.

Keep in mind all the other females, like adult female characters are on lock.

They do make it a point too, Like when she's introduced, she walks towards the camera and off screen, and it's they make it a point to put the camera where they do.

Is I think a good way to say it.

Yes, a kidna has a background with Vault.

We learn more about this if especially for playing Vault, we learn more.

She and Volt do not get along anymore.

He says a super badass line, but I'm.

Not the Vault.

He wants to do now what you are turned to take a trip to.

Hell before you fight her.

She she fights like Eddie Gordo from Tech and three.

Eddie Gordo win how.

And she's, like I said, if sweep the leg is what you've been going on so far, you will actually have a little trouble with the kidney because she stays low to the ground and will pull the same shit.

So when I played it, she was my first stumbling block.

Oh s.

Took me probably a couple shots to get through her, but that's mostly again because she's doing for a little lady.

She's doing very wide, low sweep kicks and I don't know if it's those hot pink heels.

She's got on to an extra damage or what.

But if you're not prepared or willing to fling yourself at her physically, like in power bomb style, you're gonna have a little trouble.

She's got her hairdoo, she's got two like cones coming out of her head that I associate exclusively with V tubers and jet set radio the game.

Yes before well maybe not jet set radio, but long before v tubers were a thing.

Yes, it's like the the not the rave culture, but like that that kind of rave culture that would be listening to.

Oh, I associate the music with roller rinks and I'm blanking like sweet Little Bumblebee Cotton Eye Joe, like that kind of music.

Teen.

Yeah, what genre of music is that?

I love it?

Like, don't get me wrong, I love it, but like it's not would.

You, I don't know.

It's not like techno, it's not house music.

It's sort of almost the kind of yeah, kind of a little bit more on like the European side of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I actually I think Barbie Girl of course classic.

I think a lot of those were euro groups now that I think of it.

Yeah, a little bit like early what what's the guys who did the song fire starter?

Oh?

My god?

Uh the twin Mohawks.

I I can picture it.

I I shit, man, that's driving me nuts.

Yeah, it's it's a it's a little bit more like the European style club music than like say, American club music at the time.

All right, all right, these TDWO don't know what they're talking about.

Let me step in to set you straight.

From what I could tell, from what I could find, yource is the most common way this genre is referred to.

I've also seen techno, techno pop, bubblegum techno, bubblegum pop, which I don't think bubblegum pop is quite right, bubblegum techno but basically a menage of all of these descriptors.

But I think eurodance or eurotechno dance is probably the best way to refer to it.

But of course, in my heart, I just always think of it as the roller rink.

Music, and I love it to this day.

We're going to be seeing a lot more of a kidnap after the fight, she says, I'll teach you a thing or two about a woman's wrath.

The next time we meet and immediately dives off of the train into the ocean.

Yeah, the train's doing sixty to seventy, by the way, and she just leaps off of it.

And they mentioned how cold it is, and she's not wearing a lot of clothing and just dives into the ocean.

Sure why not?

Yeah, volts like, yeah, she's pretty much did.

We don't really have time to discuss their history, though, because just then the brakes get cut and we're under attacked by helicopters also.

And carrying rocket fuel.

Yes, let's let's bring that back up.

What ends up happening is we jump off at the Mikado station and the train just crashes into a wall coblamo, and then you know, seawater rushes in, so we have to get out of there.

What happens before that, though, is this game makes a very bizarre decision to have exactly one gameplay section that is not combat, and it lasts like forty five seconds, and it's entirely you were on the train, whoever you decide to be.

You search three chests for a key card to uncouple the train, you know, so you can get off a little safer.

And I'm pretty sure the key card is always in the last chest you check, no matter what it is.

Absolutely it is like, why is this here?

Well, it's not the only time the game does a non combat exploration scene.

You didn't go through the co mission.

Oh yes I did, Yes, I I the SI the Simon.

Simon says one, yeah.

That that can be on that believe me, I got it wrong.

If you screw it up, yeah, oh my god, that's a trip.

We'll get there in a little bit.

That Also, this section I think can change a little bit.

I think there's a time limit if you don't find the key card.

But either way, you get out of there.

You run through the building with crash bandicoot angles getting out of there, and you end up at the top of the building in some sort of air cargo loading dock.

The three of you do you jump onto a passing.

It's like an air skiff kind of kind of thing, like a like a round flat air mobile.

And this has always perplexed me because if the Mikado Corporation again squaresoft, ultimately using a major corporation as the bad guy.

So we're repeating, you know, storylines here.

The people out in the regular world have helicopters and aircraft carriers and you know jets.

But inside Mikado they're literally have gravity defying ships that can hover.

Why did no one not militarize this?

I'm not sure, man.

I think the Caudo is kind of set up, even though they don't explore it.

They's set up to be this like big corporation, kind of like modern day Amazon, just like more money than anybody knows what to do with, to the point where they're becoming a military force kind of deal.

Yeah, it seems like kind of like Amazon run by Elon Musk.

Basically, oh boy, I love it.

I love the world we live in, So we commandeer this thing.

We jump on, we commandeer it.

Seon sees Dominique knocked out in a room in this dome like building.

But before Co can say, hey, driver, let us off, yo, driver, drop us off over there, the driver jumps ship.

This is we get the most hilarious Looney Tunes close up of Co making this.

Yes, he horribly uh guffawed face.

Uh this is like again, this is GRPG.

Their eyes are already big.

They take up Co's head.

But like, I don't I think they wanted this to look more dramatic.

But it just because of the era ofics.

This looks fucking goofy.

I laugh so hard.

Oh it's it's it's amazing.

It's a pure crystal of just how dumb this fucking game is.

At times it is unadulterated, it is pure.

It should be protected.

That moment Volt is going to try to drive this thing.

Hey, you passed it, damn it.

But he can't.

He crashes, and we crash into a forest and we wake up.

There are dogs with these weird electric collars or harnesses around their guard dogs and more pressing, the special Micado Forces agents are here.

They ninja run in.

But one of them climbs down headfirst, climbs down a tree headfirst, with the bone density of a jellyfish.

He just kind of squirms on down in a way that looks really gross to me.

Oh, those thus and ash cheeks are working that trunk, babyes.

He climbs down, and we should mention we just did say forest in the middle of a major corporation's head quarters, not a park.

Not we put up two trees.

It's yellowstone.

Yeah, I've got this noted a little lower.

I must I think I wrote something like, I don't have a sense of direction here because I don't know where the fuck any of this is.

Like, I'm just kind of I just have to say yes, okay, I believe you to everything they're showing me.

Mm hmm.

This is it's like improv.

It's a yes and moment Yes.

Yes.

The key to understanding the bouncer is yes.

And that's it.

Speaking of yes.

And this leads to a fight with Mugetsu again.

This was another tough fight for me.

I died a couple of times on this.

Yeah, he can be if you haven't been leveling properly.

This one can also be a bit of a roadblock.

But we beat him, of course we do.

We're the good guys.

Afterwards, we got to get into that dome building.

That's where Dominique is.

This is where I wrote I have no idea where the fuck we are see on season tree there's a moat around this building.

I think I think it's a mote, I'm not really sure, and seas a tree, so he is.

His solution is to climb up, and I guess he thought we were going to jump across.

I'm not sure.

We don't see it play out because he gets distracted.

He hears a piano and a song that he seems to recognize.

It's being played inside by a beautiful woman.

She stands up and after she finishes this lovely reverie, she anamorphs into a panther.

I've listened to a few youtubes and podcasts talk about this game, and everybody uses anamorph as a verb, and I think that is cool.

Phil.

If you could anamorph into any animal, what would it be?

Oh my goodness, Well, my favorite has always been the wolf.

Unfortunately I am not built for wolfishness.

But if I could liquid sex panther my way into something, it might be the wolf.

Sixty percent of the time.

Yea anamorph every time?

I think?

So was Cassie in Anamorphs.

I wrote in here that I would be a hawk like Tobias, only I wouldn't get stuck.

I think I would do it owl instead kind of feeling an owl.

To be honest with the owls are a good one if you actually look into owls.

They are a frightening little predator.

Aren't they also really dumb?

Yeah?

Yeah they are.

Unfortunately, just like me, I'm frightening and dumb.

I think I would probably go with Mountain Lion.

Oh, that's a good choice, economical.

Uh.

Downstairs, we're gonna get introduced to two important players here.

Downstairs in that building, there is a a character of not a caricature, but kind of of what you would expect the archetype of a Chinese mystic to look like.

His name is Wah.

This is Wong, and he's talking to an orange haired guy named Duragon.

And if you remember, you might remember him from the opening television broadcast.

This is Duragon Mikado.

He's chastising Duragon for his actions.

He's saying, Wong, transfer Dominique to the Galileos.

You will proceed, according to Platt.

But the second like control center is been repaired since yesterday's explosion.

Not your mean Wong.

Dominique has returned.

It is now possible.

But as a chief executive officer, I order you.

Wong, I like too different.

Where allegiance belongs to your predecessor.

You are only using the Mercado group to fulfill your own selfish agenda.

What would Master Mercado think of your abuse?

Please, for your sister's sake.

Their goal is to transfer Dominique to something called the Gallios, which again entirely unclear at this point in time and even to me now in twenty twenty five, what that means.

The Gallios ends up being well later on in the game, you'll find out it's a it's a flying wing.

Basically, it's the design I can closely think of.

It is really actually older airplane styles, like a little bit of like the Howard Hughes the Spruce Goose, but also trying to combine that with the SR seventy one Blackbird.

Oh no, no, I understand what it is.

I'm just more so and I understand what it does later.

I just don't understand what any of his motivations are outside of oh well, we'll get there.

I mean, he's got a singular motivation, but like it does, I don't know, man, this, I'm not trying to make sense of this of this story.

I just want to have fun Wong.

Wong is chiding him.

Doragon basically says bring it on and seon looking on with the other the bouncers.

The bouncers watches Wong, who he calls his master, does get socked by Duragon.

The scoring here the soundtrack is honestly pretty good, but Duragon says this, this ham of a line.

He says, in Eastern cultures, they say there's only one way to repay one's master by surpassing him.

This is my payback to you, master.

And this is followed by the obligatory master fades and puts all the trust into his apprentice.

Scene because Seon rushes in and he is ready to avenge his master.

He says it even and this leads into a fight with Duragon, who, by the way, before you fight him, drops the bombshell that Dominique is his sister.

Yeah, just casually, like literally, like, oh, I'll take care of her.

No, we'll take her back.

No, she's my sister.

She belongs here.

And Duragon does this, I will give myself another handicap as he drags out this long chain that he just has draped over his shoulder for some fucking articulate reason.

Yeah.

See, he ties one hand behind his back.

Yeah yeah, while fighting three people, and then he gets his ass whooped.

Yeah, exactly the bouncer and then he's picking himself up.

He's rubbing you, wiping the blood out of his mouth.

Like next time, maybe he should try fighting with both hands.

Wow.

That's a fun little thing is everybody will have a unique dialogue at the start of a fight and at the end, and it's always like a one liner like that at the end, like sometimes Volt will say something kind of reverential like that was for you, Master Wog or Master Juragon or something like that.

But like Sion and Co.

Are always going to be like given the given the kitchy little like one liners.

You know, right, And like I said, I don't know, have you ever seen the movie Kung Paw Enter the Fist.

I actually have not.

Okay, basically premises for those of you out there who have not seen it.

I know some of you have, but those who haven't.

Steve Odekirk, the comedian, re dubbed and inserted himself as a character into a really bad old Shaw Brothers nineteen seventies kung fu film.

Now, at some point in the movie, there's one of those traditional things where the master of the dojo is telling his students about something his master said in relation to the plot.

Well, the plot's all been wiped, so the master of this one in the movie, who is basically a weirdo, has these flashbacks and they're talking about Steve Odekirk's character the Chosen One in which they will go, in which he says the line my master said there would be a chosen one.

It fades out, fades in on a different guy surrounded by candles, who then says there will be a chosen one.

It fades out again.

We go back to our current guy going then he told me of the significance.

Fades back out to the other dude, who says it will be significant.

Fades back to our current guy, who then goes and then he killed the dog.

Fades back to the other guy, who has this awful look on his face and blows this tremendous fart, and you hear this dog go er in the background.

That's what a lot of the long characterization stories remind me of a lot.

Is that particular long drawn out joke from Kung Paw enter the Fist.

Well, I'm gonna tell you it was particularly funny hearing it described play by play.

I'm sure comedy has always best in long descriptions with exact detail.

I'm just playing, buddy.

I'm glad that you didn't take that personally.

No, no, no, it's all good.

Of course, you you win the fight, but you lose.

The cut scene, Durragon gets up, he kind of slams into Seaon gives him a real good punch or a kick or a punch in the bread basket, and he snaps his fingers and the floor just straight up collapses underneath all of us.

Yeah, like just like total like fantasy lizard ship.

Just the floor disappears.

Everyone goes and he snaps back and just prepare for the gallio.

Can you want to explain that shit?

Hang on him minute?

Yeah, he's taken Dominique.

He's got plans.

This is where we get a quick flashback that kind of gives his background a little bit.

This is admittedly, this is kind of cool how they did it.

There's like a film overlay and it moves not in stop motion but kind of like frame by frame.

You know, that's kind of sparse, parsimonious animation.

The gist of it is this Duragon as a kid, had Dominique.

She's very, very, very sick.

He took her to a hospital.

The hospital turned him away.

I think they.

I think the reasoning for saying that he that he had to find another hospital was that the doctor was on a house call.

Yes, one of those really old school hospitals.

Yeah, which you know makes makes something that he does later very funny.

It's very It's clear that he they're they're trying to paint Duragon as a sympathetic villain, like he cares for Dominique almost as much as he cares for his own bodily autonomy.

He wants to do everything he can to save her.

It's just not clear at the time of seeing this what's going on.

And you see him get adopted by the Mikado Group by Wong, actually a young Wong.

He says, He says.

This Master Mikado wishes to adopt you as his son under one condition.

Condition you must become worthy of inheriting the Mikado Group.

Obviously you must excel scholastically, but.

You must also train your body and solo.

I understand, I would be more than happy to return this favor in any way possible.

You will learn all disciplines for your sake and for your sisters as well.

If Durgon wants to become the big shot CEO, he's got to have actual skills and be good at stuff, which is just like real life, right, You know, CEOs are.

Skilled he has to be skilled at literally everything.

He has to be the best.

That's totally like real life CEOs are not just worthless positions.

Yeah, that's I mean, when you get your degree from the Wharton School of Business, after you spend your undergraduate MIT and Harvard, you then of course must spend ten years on a Tibetan mountain side learning how to punch through stone.

I'll tell you what, I would respect our CEO if he did that.

You know what, Yeah, you know, if there was just some like, you know, fucking the guy who owns Virgin aiir lines.

If it turns out he is like some seventh degree fucking mystic who can float through the air and like really sell you on Virgin air lines.

Okay, your portfolio has increased in my eyes.

We're just kidding.

We love our jobs.

The next section.

The next section is kind of a really neat gimmick.

I love when games do this.

It is a different play section depending on who you choose.

So I started with Co my first playthrough.

By the way, I should say, I was kind of doing a little bit of everybody.

I picked Coe for this one, but after this I stuck with Seon.

So I'm pretty sure.

I got seons ending.

Coe's version of this is actually the coolest.

I think we could probably get Volts out of the way pretty quickly.

Volt is basically just going through hallways and set pieces and fighting like that's kind of it.

Yeah, that's what he knows to do.

So, yeah, it's a punch.

Man Sions has some stuff in it, so we'll say that for a second.

But Co's you can get through this without fighting at all.

Co dresses up, however, he ended up where he ends up.

He gets a uniform, he dresses up as a special agent, and you go through doing this fucking weird ass.

Simon says, mission where you're walking through and to avoid suspicion, you have to do these codd gestures that they use as like Hello's, and what this entails is they will do one of technically four, but they only ever do three gestures that correspond to your face buttons, and you just have to Simon says, the meck Now a couple of times this turns into a guessing game because they will just roulette until you press something, which is fucking ridiculous.

If you get the it's wrong, you have to fight.

If you get it right.

They just say, oh, okay, you're one of us.

Uh And it is bizarre.

It is hilarious.

I laughed.

I love this onnronically.

This is so funny.

There's one if you get it right.

I swear to god this was just Steve blumming the booth, just riffing.

Because at one point, if you reach one of these dudes and you Simon says you get the right thing, Coach just start taps him on the on the shoulder and goes hardly working and keeps going.

Oh it's at one point Coe's pager like phone pager thing will go off lead leading, yeah, leaving, leading you to do some charades, and they just buy it.

They give you a thumbs up like okay.

Pal.

Kohleafo, superspy it is.

It is wild.

This is the funniest one to do.

But if you want any kind of background or story, you've got to choose Seon.

Seon's route starts off the same.

You know you're just fighting.

You run into the black panther again who and you hesitate when you see them.

You have a moment of kind of like recollection where you realize maybe Sion actually knows who this is.

But the black panther can face through walls and it runs away, so you don't get any resolution there.

But but but you find a whole data logue in the next room with Seon with Laura that feels like it really should be explained in the main game and not just hidden behind one of the paths.

But you get a lot of a lot of info here.

You get some info on the Special m Forces who have had their bodies modified by robotomy, which is where you gets to it like kind of deteriorates their mind at the expense of their body.

You see a file on a woman named Kaldia who you immediately remember it's a childhood friend.

You learn that she was going undergoing experiments that kind of age her body cells.

And you also see Dominique, who is under a password protected section type Agilos Anastasius the A two project the computer before you kind of just stare at it because you don't have the password, and the computer gets destroyed by goons as you're wondering how to get into it.

That follows up with a panther fight, and that follows up with the following scene.

But I know, we kind of rush through that sort of, but it's kind of crazy.

I like that they section this up into three different play sections.

It makes it almost makes you want to play the game three times.

Almost, yeah, yeah, almost.

I do like it though.

I like when games do that.

I think it's novel.

It works for me.

Yeah, I mean, really, to get the whole kind of scope of this it was designing, really do have to play each one story path all three times.

And while realistically that's not actually a chore given the games run time, it's just what it is with this game.

And some weird shit happens along the way.

Speaking of weird shit, everybody reconvenes in the next room.

Seon is getting choked out by Mugetsu, who comes in Coe sneaks in.

Dominique is in the room unconscious by the way Coe sneaks in, but he's immediately picked up by Volt, who doesn't realize it's him.

Yeah, he gets thrown into Sion and Mugetsu by Volts kind of breaks him up.

You take off the outfit, Volt says, like, you're looking pretty spiffy there.

Co, he look pretty spiffy in that outfit.

Whatever, and that leads to another fight much easier than last.

Time, or at least that's what I wrote.

Yeah, this one actually is pretty easy by comparison.

I don't I don't know why what the difference is.

Even if you've been doing nothing but leveling your health and defense points and no taking no special maneuvers, somehow this is still an easier fight.

This is also where I noted that Mugetsu reminds me a lot of Darren from System of a Down, Like, like he's screaming here about how he doesn't care if he loses his mind.

You would like, I don't care if I destroy my mind as long as I flutter.

As he pulls off his face mask, which I guess unleashes his powers or something, he gets more unhinged as the game goes because of the whole robotomy thing.

I don't care if I lose my mind as he's pulling his fucking glasses off like he's the psychic villain in a nineteen eighties fucking Ski movie.

It's also pretty funny that we're fighting around a sleeping dominique who is just stone cold on this couch, just unperturbed.

We're getting fucking, you know, donkey kicked and body slammed and ddted all over the room.

Yeah, and she's just chilling.

Yeah, couch doesn't get disturbed at all.

The like they're a I'm not even kidding.

It is like drowning pool.

The bodies are hitting the floor, people are flying through the fucking air.

No tables get broken, No furniture gets smashed somehow, which would be great if they had destruction physics, because you could do a hell of a lot in this game.

You do beat U GETSU though, as you would expect, Dominique wakes up.

There's there's clearly something building off of Sion and Dominique, Like there's a backstory that we don't have.

It's this is where the kind of like not a sappy love scene, but like this is where the music gets all kind of nice and co gives the whole uh uh?

Can we skip the love scene kind of line?

I don't remember what it actually is.

Maybe I'll put it in here.

Keep in mind cos twenty seven.

Oh is he Yeah, so he's a little old for that isn't.

Wait, isn't Dominique like fifteen.

Fifteen or thirteen?

It's not really.

Clear thirteen what No, no way, it's.

You know, I it's depending on when you talk.

I think technically she was like thirteen when she met Sion, and then in the year she's like almost to her fifteenth birthday.

Little weird, little weird.

Yeah.

Where now that she's up, though, we're gonna bounce her out of here.

For your escape, you get to choose one the bouncer to go with Dominique while the other two fight the guards off.

I chose Sion.

This is where I started choosing Sion for everything, because it seemed obvious here, but this plays out largely the same.

No matter who you choose, you're gonna be escorting.

It's kind of an escort mission.

You're gonna escort Dominique out of there.

Dominique does have a health bar, and you will lose if she gets KOed.

She can also get ragged alled, which is pretty funny.

But this is where you fought those robots that you had mentioned, and it sounds like you dislike them as much as I did.

Oh it is there so fucking stupid.

There's a very small it almost likes it looks like a Roomba level robot that has a little claw that shoots out, and the only way to hit it is if you're you're doing standard like stand up punch attacks.

You're gonna sail right over this thing.

You have no choice but to do all of your low kicks and sweeps at the same time.

It will usually shoot out a claw, so you're getting thrown through the air as you hear tunk punk punk and watching this thing's lifebar go down by millimeters.

And then you're fighting what look like polygons basically the thing out of balls the video game, just in square form, oh yeah, coming at you.

And then you get big fucking like the front loader from the movie Aliens, like the Powerloader sort of robots come out.

This section two is very long, like you're going through multiple, multiple sections of this, and your health care doesn't replenish.

So I just started cheasing this shit because when you hit these robots they kind of like freeze for a second.

So I just unlocked them by continuously sweep kicking them or jab punching them, just NonStop so they couldn't move.

And that's the only way that I could beat this.

I lost like five times trying to do it honestly, and then I said no, no, cheesing machines is okay.

Honor is not in the conversation for this.

Yeah.

Now with Seon, one of his moves, as you pick it up, is basically a rolling spring kick where he sort of like curls himself up into a ball, spins over, and thrust forward both of his feet.

You can use that for a decent amount of damage in place of a sweep.

You can also knock them back and stun them pretty well.

But as you said with the robots section, it's overly long, there's multiple levels, your health doesn't replenish, and and sweep kicks are really the only way to do it.

Speaking of robots, we're gonna run into another gentleman named p D four.

It doesn't matter who you took with Dominique, you're gonna run into him PD four.

He's got like this crazy spiky white hair, with an arm that can extend like an infinite sort of like mechanical whip, and a voice actor that is criminally low in the mix to the point where I can barely hear him.

Ever, he grabs Dominique, sort of whips her up into the air, squeezes her and knocks her out and says an amazing line, don't worry, I only put her to sleep, allow me to put you to sleep permanently, which is just incredible.

Yep, well perfunctory.

Dick four here is just got again.

That arm reminds me of what's her name from Soul Caliber with the oh ivy sword that comes apart, yeah ivy, Yeah, that's it reminded me very heavily of that.

And I literally could looked at the two and went and he's also wearing like a crop top and shit, and I'm like this two thousand fashion.

I mean, we in the club, but which club is we at?

I guarantee you, dude, I would have picked PD four as the character that I was when I played for ten with my friends as a kid.

I guarantee it this game, man, I would have been all about this shit.

Yeah.

And again I'm not saying if if you loved this fucking game, awesome, but I just I just had to just you know, I was in at this point.

For Jesus, would I have been in two thousand and one my early twenties.

So I was like, this is sart coming from a different thing I'm not involved in.

I'm just I'm just somebody.

I just draw comics, man, I don't know I'm not cool.

The other two, the bouncers that you didn't choose, are gonna come in and make a badass entrance here, and you're gonna fight PD four three on one.

He's very clearly stronger than we are, but you know, three on one we win pretty easily.

Surprise, surprise, There are four I think PD four clones.

But it gets even weirder than this, because at this point, Dominique is like holding her She's awake.

Now, she's holding her head in her hands.

She's struggling with something, and she yells here and then we see her her She goes into profile like an actor on a dark stage.

You know, it's just black except for her.

We see her in profile.

She's communicating with this satellite in space, and I swear to God this is true.

Her face pulls off of her face to reveal that she's a robot, and you see the gears working underneath of her.

This isn't a metaphor, this is literal.

She's like she's activating her robot mode.

Her face goes back onto her face.

She's here to download cyber updates and kick ass, and she's just downloaded her last update.

She kicks all all of the PD four robots asses.

She just whoops them in an unprecedented way and then overheats, like literally steam starts pouring out of her Seon can't believe this shit, shout out diretrograde amnesia.

He doesn't know what's going on, But we don't really have time, I swear to God, like at every moment, like somebody comes in and steals somebody else because Mugetsu comes in here steals Dominique, and you know, we're back to not knowing what the hell is going on.

It is honestly, it's like a fucking Scoopy Doo cartoon after a while.

But yeah, I mean seriously, she goes see on and then falls over.

Her face comes off, her ears pull out.

The gears are worrying, and she stands back up in perfect horse stance and just begins whoop an ass.

And the other bouncers are there like that's Dominique.

Dominique whoa cot.

It was like, huh, well, shit, I guess she was a robot all along.

And that's also kind of a mystery if you haven't been playing his side.

And yeah, she is a fifteen year old robot.

She will never get older than being a fifteen year old as a robot.

Which is an angle to the story that can be very sad, right, And they mentioned this in passing later, like, you know, we're gonna have to tell her one day that she's going to stay the same as we grow old.

That's a very tragic thing.

But they don't.

They don't play into that at all.

No, that is not a point that comes up.

That's a passing line, which means that that earlier flashback scene you saw she died.

They weren't successful in saving her, and Durragon is now the adopted son of this corporation and has to be the best to be worthy, as he says later in the game, and I'm like, what the fuck are we doing here?

And to their credit, they're making Duragon a compelling villain.

If he were in a better written game, like this is a compelling battery, I think, yeah.

I feel like if this were a Final Fantasy game, he actually would have been a pretty damn good villain.

Oh, he not main villain material, but he would have been up there on the sidekick panel.

In this it's just clownish and the beats don't land.

You might be wondering what's going on?

So is seon so?

And I don't, I don't.

I don't bash Volt's voice acting much in this, but here his model faces straight ahead like he's reading a Q card, and he's speaking like he's reading off of a school report in front of his friends.

He explains what's going on.

She is Dura Guy's dead sister.

What you're awfully well informed?

Vault.

Durk On, the president CEO of Micado, had a younger sister who lost her battle with a terminal illness.

Using his position as the head of Makado, he spared nothing to bring her back to life your life.

I was a personal guard to the previous Marcanda.

Again like the tragic backstory, good backstory.

Volt knows this.

Co is kind of suspicious of him.

Volt knows this because he used to be a previous Master Mircado's bodyguard.

So like and and to your point, Phil, like you said earlier, that's how he got the bullet holes.

That's why he's got the piercings, the horns to hide all this, all these scars.

So you know, he lays all this out, but then they pivot really hard and he's like you know she needs you right now, turning this into kind of a love bent for Seon, who has the least amount of character in this game.

And also, romance is the last thing on my mind right now.

I just saw her turn into a fucking android and whoop ass there are clones everywhere.

I'm not thinking of romance.

Man.

Yeah, this is a whole I know kung fu sort of moment here, and like Volt just finally, Lot dumps the entire story on us basically has known this the whole time.

Oh that's right, Yeah, that's right, he does.

And he's just now telling Seon that the person that we're led to believe is like his love is a robot.

Why didn't Volts say something sooner?

He's kind of a bad friend.

Yeah, he's a bad friend.

And I mean Vaults the oldest of the three and is like you know that that sort of Japanese he's in his early thirties, therefore is one step away from death sort of thing.

Yeah, the old man who should know better now I could understand given And again, listeners, I'm gonna do a little bit of a deep dive in the lore here.

Volt was a former Mikado bodyguard he was the former Mikado's bodyguard.

He didn't like the way things were going, so he decided he wanted out.

Someone in the corporation tried to kill him.

Didn't work because apparently he's got a thick skull.

But he knew this whole thing was going on the background.

He knew about Duragon, he knew what he was planning to do.

He knew Dominique died.

He knew that he'd tried everything to bring her back, and this was this thing, and he just has been hiding as a shitty bar bouncer all the time, Which kind of brings to my thought, well, considering how this game is going to end, where you're just like not gonna tell anyone and just like sort of skip town for a little while when the shit went.

Down, it's the seeds of a cool story are here.

I mean, it is a cool story.

It's just executed in the most haphazard way possible.

Yes, and again, as we said, you know, we have all these great minds behind this game, and these amazing pedigrees in various fields coming together, and usually you get something amazing.

In this case, we get wacky hijinks.

That's all we get.

It's one of a kind.

Man.

It really is a condensing this next part just a little bit.

A kidna comes back.

She's trying to whoop our ass, but no, dice.

There's only one e using capuo era that I respect, and that's Eddie.

Guerdo Eddie Gordo Wi.

A kidna was going to stop us from getting to Gallios, but after we whoop her ass, she immediately tells us how to get to Gallios.

She also tells us that Duragon and Dominiqu are already on board.

And this is where we see Gallios for the first time.

And like you said earlier, Phil, this is like a like a ship of some sort, like a plane ship.

It's weirdly like crescent moon shaped.

It's an amazing design.

I love the look of it.

It's just okay.

It takes off here, it takes off into the sky and then some dog fight goes on like this ship and several other ships are dog fighting in air.

If you're playing as co, I think you hear from Leanne or it's not leu Ann No, it's lean that This is a group named Lucas.

What is I wrote in here?

What is going on?

I'm not even sure.

Unless you've been following his story path.

This is her this they're a detective agency.

They listed as a detective agency.

They might as well be the CIA, because Leanne has.

Been doing are they Lucas?

Yes?

Yeah?

Oh oh she's she's been doing lead hacker shit at the beginning.

She's been keeping in contact with CO and now she's flying an attack fighter, just just leading the charge, trying to take down the galleos.

Oh so she was she was helping behind the scenes then, and I'm guessing if we were playing as CO, we would have seen the help that she was given us.

Is that right?

Yeah?

That In that early scene where he gets that phone call about the train, there is a timer Fold turns around at him and goes, how the hell do you know that?

Seon has no idea because he's thinking with his lower head and testosterone is charging him forward, but CO basically kind of brushes him off.

But if you play as him, you hear that side of the conversation and the explanations thereafter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, that makes that makes sense.

So she's she is the one that's initiate or helping initiate this dog fight.

In the air to slow down the Gallios, which is what's happening here.

We hop onto another one of those flying skiff things and we pursue them.

We pursue the Galios and this gets us into yet another fight with Mugetsu, and he's gone a little crazy.

He's a little wacky because of all the robotomy that's been that's been done on him.

I've been waiting for you now that I don't have to worry about the.

Duragon or the girl.

Who's gonna pilot this thing.

Okay, you guys, deal with move Getsu.

I can't wait to put you all of you.

Yeah, I'm not gonna be satisfied until I finish you off.

You choose this one throws you a little curveball if you don't know that it's coming.

You choose the bouncer that's gonna pilot the ship thing, and then the remaining.

To the bouncers fight Mugetsu.

So if you're trying to go through an all vault playthrough or something, you might get thrown up here a little bit, or at least I did the first time.

Yeah, exactly, if you're not careful, because you may end up with the wrong bouncer because they don't announce it.

They just give you the option to pick one.

While I'm in charging through, suddenly they're piloting the ship and you're stuck with two dudes.

You may not have powered.

Up, right, Yeah, Yeah, and that's that's a problem because one mugetsu is strong and two since you're fighting on this like air skiff thing, there's not a lot of rooms, so you can't like you can't run away super well.

You could get stun locked or juggled really easily here.

Yeah, it's it's almost like a trap fight really that it's just the two.

It's again, it's one of the times where you're not going to have your full party.

It's going to be two bouncers versus mugetsu.

It is most insane.

Well, the third one is trying to catch up on this air skiff that is not built for this kind of level of pursuit.

And if you picked the wrong bouncers, I mean it doesn't matter.

I feel like your fourth or fifth play through, everyone will be powered up and it'll be pretty easy.

But if you picked the wrong bouncers, you're gonna have a hell of a time.

After you beat him.

This is the last run in with Mugatsu that we have.

He gets a SlowMo falling off the ship scene, like he gets yeeded off and he falls off the ship.

I wrote quasi SloMo at first, but as I was typing, as my fingers grazed the keys, the SlowMo went full bore, like with Mugetsu making a crazed, hilarious face at the camera as he gets sucked into the ship's turbine and makes a very short yelp as he gets ground up.

He just his his, he takes his, he gets develops this perfect o face as this thing's after Berner goes off.

It's very wily coyote.

That's all I can say is literally, it's if you put wiley coyote with the tiny umbrella as the shadow of the boulder and grows and grows.

That's the look of Lugetsu in this the moment.

We're going back to Duragon now and we're about to see like this is Durgon's one at least from what we've seen.

This is the one villain thing that he's done so far.

He's piloting that ship, the Gallios, and what he does is he goes back to that hospital that denied him and Dominique entry as a kid, and he like shoots a beam down Independence Day style and blows it up.

Yeah, quite literally.

They caused the death of his sister because the doctor was on a house call.

I too want to retaliate against medical institutions because of bureaucratic red tape bullshit.

It's what I oh.

Yeah, No, this is probably Durragon at his most sympathetic.

If you've ever had to have yourself or a one go through the American hospital and medical system, yeah, this is Deregan is his most sympathetic.

Totally.

Yeah, there's there is an interesting character in there.

There really is.

Speaking of interesting characters, the Black Panther is back and it's a mini boss fight.

You know fine, I think this is the fight where in the middle she changes back and forth into a woman again and then back to a panther.

And afterwards this can play out two different ways.

If you're se on, she'll say, you don't recognize me, now, do you now that I'm so much older?

And this is where he finally it clicks for him, Like we as viewers knew this a while ago, But this is Kaldia the one from the files.

You don't recognize me, do you now that I'm so much older than you?

No, that's impossible.

Kaldia Mikado staged my death and he raised my existence.

You're saying it wasn't an accident.

They experimented on me using bayanoid technology so that Dominique could become more human.

What happened was Nikado staged her death and erased her existence.

The experiments on her were basically done to supplement the experimentation on Dominique so it would be like more efficient.

I think, you know, making Dominique's experiments better.

I'm pretty sure that's what happens.

But as she's explaining this, she gets speared through the fucking heart by Duragon.

With that chain again.

Yeah yeah, yeah, and I'm pretty sure it's here.

Now that I'm reading it out loud, I'm maybe thinking I might have wrote this in the wrong place.

But I think on the Vault and coplaythroughs this doesn't happen.

Seon will simply say she resembles someone who was once very important to me, and then they just run off towards Durragon.

I think, yeah, yeah, they blow that they passed right off.

And there's a reason I said liquid sex panther earlier because now that you actually get to see her animorphing, she very much like ripples like a ball of tar in between her transformations.

So it's it's very kind of it's unnerving.

It's honestly unnerving to witness.

Yeah, she's got like a sheene that looks like an oil spill kind of on her on her coat.

I guess her for her coat.

We uh, we finally get to confront diurg On here.

This is like the boss fight.

Uh, And it's just like it's cliche villain shit.

As cool as his backstory kind of is he he gets a little cliche here.

He says this, with this.

Satellite, I will provide unlimited energy to those who will follow me, and I will demonstrate what happens to those.

Who will cross me.

You're going to rule the world with the satellite.

Human beings want to be controlled they for sake.

Those who have are no benefit.

The Lord does the power.

They can do nothing but themselves.

Mankind's true desires to be dominated by absolute power.

This is just cliche villain shit, you know, as cool as the stuff we learned about him is now he's just being a comic book guy.

Yeah, this is this is just the writing on this.

I don't know if it's the writing or the delivery or something like this, but it is.

It's certainly not you know, I am inevitable snap of fingers.

It's definitely more like you know, ah, you have faced me, Superman.

Now face my second brain, Like, what the fuck are we doing here?

And he goes on to do the dumbest badass thing I think I've ever seen the video game.

This entire time, Durgon has been wearing this large, floor length pimp coat with a chain over one shoulder.

He flips it off and there he is in his Oshkosh overalls ready to brawl.

Well, well, it's even more badass though, because he doesn't take them off until the second stage of his boss fight.

Like that's when you know shit's getting real because he's wearing his overalls with no.

Shirt exactly, and a mystic tattoo appears on his back.

Why you back out?

I think that's only if you get the special fight, because I don't think that's every I think I again, I supplemented a lot with YouTube playthroughs, but I think that's only if you like meet certain conditions.

To this game's credit, like to get certain fights, you do have to meet conditions, like play certain missions as certain people, you know, like I think, isn't there a wrong fight that you can do?

Yeah, you have to do like a switch between I think Sion and co uh somehow to basically end up getting a fight with Wong yourself, which is you know.

And again, like I said, the game's credit, they do try to give little bits of divergent paths and little easter eggs, but in the case of Durragon, it hardly matters.

It's all bullshit.

It's all bad for you, and we're here for it.

Eating bucketfuls of popcorn while fucking watching this disaster.

Oh that was a great pool man.

I fucking love Carbon He's all time favorite.

Yep, absolutely one of my favorite lines by him.

You know, I would say that this is a tough fight, but at this point I am just doing the same moves over and over again because I want to win.

And it works.

No, you can, yeah, if you know what you're doing.

Durragon is the final fight and you could curb stomp him in seconds because he doesn't do anything beyond like a couple like literally tech and style, like flavored fiery attacks.

And as long as you just keep sweeping the leg, you become the world's best janitor, not a bouncer, a janitor.

You sweep the leg, you win.

Yep, yeah, pretty much.

If you meet those conditions, you get that third fight that you mentioned where the tattoo on his back, the dragon comes in.

He's he's like a temp temu yakuza, kiriu cosma, which admittedly the fight does look pretty hard, but you know I didn't.

I didn't get it.

Otherwise, you beat him here, you know, you're the stud You're the hero.

Sion says the greatest line in this game.

I'm a bouncer.

I make a living putting my life.

On the line.

I love it so much.

It's so good.

See but it's fucking Stephen Segal levels of bullshit.

But you know, why not, look out, everybody, We're about to collide with the satellite, you know, the one that was communicating with Dominique speaking of she's awake now.

She tells us that the back of the ship is going to return to Earth.

Galios is gonna fall apart like a like dislodge.

In in Coe's playthrough, I'm pretty sure Leanne will tell him that, like it's supposed to do that.

Yeah, Basically she tells them, everyone, get to the back of the ship now so we can get you.

And if you're not in his play through, your Dominique says that Sion will say and the flattest, flattest affectation possible.

In your dream, it's true.

I'm gonna trust Dominique.

We get a special scene here in Seon's playthrough, Kaldia will be here.

She'll guide us out through the through the doors.

You know.

We're running out of the ship before it like detaches and hits the satellite, you know, and she's help helping guide us out and we need to get out before Gallios pulls itself apart.

And we get this full on cheesy action scene where the music fades, it's totally silent and in slow motion.

Kaudia pushes Seon, who's carrying Dominique, through the last closing gate, so he makes it through and but now she can't get through, and then she's like, oh, Kaudia, and she's like, I'm not the one who needs you now, and the door closes and this is where I knew the title of this episode was going to be absolute cinema cinema.

This is so wild.

I'm so happy I did a seon play through.

And you know what, it only gets fucking weird from there because the satellite collides with the rest of the galios and in one sequence, it's not just it blows up.

I think if you get the final battle, you see Durgon's dead body floating in space, yes, for all time, like it's two thousand and one, a space Odyssey, and Kubrick is just off camera going.

Again and it'll uh.

You get a close up on his locket that he's wearing.

It's a it's a picture of Dominique.

So they're they're letting you know, like he's he's not He's not a bad guy.

You know at heart he was doing he had motive.

We didn't explore it as well as we could have, but he's got motive.

Yeah, he wanted genocide, authoritarian murder for a good reason.

We get a cliche epilogue here that goes back to the bar, and we get that bar of music, that kind of jukebox piano music.

Co even references quote that one incident, you know, like like every movie has to do in the epilogue.

M hm, exactly.

Whoever's ending you get here, it's their shit.

So like Vault, for example, will be standing outside.

Dominique comes up and she's like, hey, you've been looking a lot kinder lately, and he'll say, well, that's not good for my job, which is kind of funny to be honest.

Yeah.

In volts ending, Echidna comes up and she says that she's looking to become a the bouncer, which, you know, kind of a nice little ending.

They kind of make up a little bit, pretty nice.

A little bit.

Yeah.

Uh.

Sion's ending is kind of my least favorite, Like he's standing out there.

Him and Dominique have some of the most perplexing voice acting in this section I've ever heard.

He's basically he's wearing a pendant that she got him.

You're wearing it?

Isn't that what appendant's for?

I'm so happy, Thank you, sihun.

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you what is it?

Thanks for what?

Thanks for the pendant.

Coe's ending is the most different, though, I think, right.

Yeah.

In his ending, Leanne calls him and says, you need to come to the park now, and he's like, but I'm working.

She says, this is different.

Come now, so he basically leaves.

He leaves.

The bouncer shows up at the park, which is one of the ones you fought through earlier in the game, and she says, I have to fight you now to prove you're worthy to continue this job.

Well, no, no, no, no, she doesn't even say that.

The quote is I wrote this down.

She says, I've got special orders from Command.

I'm here to fight.

Okay.

Yeah, and that's it.

Yes, you're right.

Yeah.

She does say that it was a test afterwards, but that's what launches you into the fight, just like, let's go, dude.

The more we talk about this game, the more I love it.

I really do.

Now, I will say there's speaking of like asides and whatnot and the bar and whatnot.

There is a weird thing that Volt does early on where in the right before the action kicks off, it starts snowing outside.

He looks up the sky goes strange.

It's snowing in spring or something akin to that, And they never mentioned it.

It doesn't snow throughout the game.

It's not winter.

They don't ever come back around to that, like, that's one of the one of the many like dead ends of this game that I'm like, was this supposed to mean something like did something get cut here?

I don't know, it's it's just it's just this game is just a lot for a two hour playtime game, It's a lot.

I think that's got to be the case, like, not necessarily cut.

But I think this game shipped with a lot of missing puzzle pieces.

I don't think this was the finished product they intended.

I don't know that for sure, but I would bet.

I think so.

I I think there was maybe to make because of what it was already behind what should have been a launch title.

Maybe to get it to market, they may have made some hard cuts and then had to sort of frankenstein this thing back together.

I'm not really sure.

Speaking of a speaking of dead ends, if you did Seons play through, you get an epilogue scene where it's raining and he's wearing his hood, Sion is, and it shows him meeting Dominique what I assume to be the first time, because you know they they're like, what's your name?

I'm Dominique, Who are you?

I'm Sion Barzad and that's it.

Uh, I'm assuming this was when they first met.

Like, this scene really confused me.

Yeah.

They put it right at the literal tail end of the game.

If you play through Sion's levels the whole way.

She is hiding under an underpass while it's raining.

She looks like a bum.

He just like runs up to her.

Caesar there and they introduce each other and then cue to credits.

I that's so bizarre to me what I thought at first, because you know, at this point, we know Dominique is an android, she's never aging, and you know, I was like, maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me.

Is Seon just older and like Dominique has forgotten?

But that doesn't make sense because Seon doesn't really show that he knows who she is.

It like, why would they put this here?

This is so strange.

I I just don't know.

It doesn't make any sense.

Why Why it?

Why?

Is the only thing I can say, because it truly does not make sense.

I really it makes me feel like I'm dumb and I'm missing something like that they were trying to do.

Yeah, I don't feel that way.

I mean, if that's the case, then I am too, because this is one of those open, sort of weird dead ends that I'm sitting here even years later, I've sat here and gone, did I miss something?

Did it?

Was there a key piece of the plot that somehow got lost?

Did something come up when one of the loading screens that.

Was you know, I bet, I bet, I bet.

Maybe it did.

I don't know.

I just don't no.

All these years later, I just don't now.

And like that's that's the end.

Uh oh, But the ending we got to talk about the ending credits theme, which is sung by uh oh, who is it?

Shenie?

Is that it?

I think so?

Yeah?

Oh, Ray Ray from our discord would be all over this.

He's he's all about the era of music.

And I mean, it is the I don't know that.

I don't want to put this in a way that is insulting to listeners, because this very rouch reminds me of like the ending credits song you would hear in a movie like Lethal Weapon or something like that.

You know, oh, you know she's she's singing about like the times we were together and and the love and the strength of unity and friendship and all this great shit.

And I'm like, I guess This is the perfect capstone to a game like this that tried so hard to ape that eighties movie action movie aesthetic.

Oh dude, speaking of eighties action movie the song title love is the answer.

Yes, there we go.

It really does sound like you'd hear something over like, not like Mel Gibson or you know, one of the really big names of the time.

It would be like a Brian Bosworth or somebody like that who was like an allsoul rat, like a Dolph Lundron movie or something like that.

It would end on that one.

This this was wild.

I'm so happy you agreed to do this on the show.

I've heard I've seen this game memed all the time, and you know, I'm of two minds.

It is this game a hidden gem?

No, not in the sense that it's like a must play, Like it's like really really good, but I don't think it's bad in a fun way, like in the way that a bad movie is, but you don't really care because it's so much fun and you would never say, like I hate that movie, Like that's kind of what this is.

You know, Detroit Become Human.

I know I was using it as a punching bag before.

It's trying to be this big, profound thing, and it's making big swings.

And that's why people say, like, I'm not so sure the Bouncer it's not trying to do that.

Like I know, it didn't.

It didn't get to be the game it wanted to be.

But at the same time, it knew that it was going to be a sort of you know, Saturday Afternoon on cable action film that's divided up with commercials for Taco Bell and it t Tech creditor for test.

Holy shit, it t Tech.

I haven't thought about them in forever.

I know, dude, right, Oh my god.

Every so often I like to go on YouTube and just watch like two thousands commercials.

It tich the Phoenix University before it was Phoenix University.

But yeah, that's kind of what this is.

And I mean, if we're talking absolute cinema, I'm gonna throw another one out there.

In a lot of cases, The Bouncer is like Tommy Wissou's The Room.

Oh okay, sure.

Blatantly a low budget misstep, a lot of high minded shit that never came together and is bad.

But over the decades it has had a cult following, and even the creator has had to attempted to relitigate his bad movie, as we intended to do that as a satire.

I feel in some ways the Bouncer is kind of that.

Now again I'm talking a little high minded.

For the Bouncer, it is not that, but in a lot of ways it does kind of give me that let's take a second look at it many years later and have a little fun.

The creators were trying something they swung for the fences and for Square, this is what I would call a rare miss.

Square has usually had a string of hits for a reason.

They've had a couple misses.

They've had a couple also rans.

You know, I liked when I played a little bit of it Einhander, which is another Square game.

They're entry into the shop, and it was not well received.

Not many people remember it, but it was it was okay for its time.

The Bouncer isn't bad, or the Bouncer is bad, excuse me.

It's definitely bad.

It's but it's bad in that let's look at the room years later and have fun with it.

Sort of bad.

I think that's a really app description.

That's actually a really terrific description.

It's I think it's worth your time.

I think if nothing else, like seeing what a good early PS two game looked like, I think this is worth your time.

If you're a Square fan, it's certainly worth your time.

And honestly, I mean at most this is two hours.

You know, maybe maybe a little more if you're not, like if you're dying a lot, which, by the way, I don't think we said if you die, this game kicks you back to the title screen, which will always say the bouncer at you.

Yes, won't even play that intro cinema which is epilepsy inducing.

It'll just go the bouncer.

I'm like, yes, I know what I'm playing the bouncer.

Yes, sir, I get it, Thank you very much.

I've died three times in a row.

Now the bouncer shut the fuck up.

I get to know.

Two hours Like, that's not that's not a big commitment.

You can knock this out in one sitting.

And even if you just laugh at it the whole time, you know it's gonna be laughing with you.

It's it's fun.

I think folks should give this a play.

Yeah.

Now I will add a little bit and I'm gonna do a little bit of a shout out here to a man who will never know we exist and has never heard of us.

But if anyone out there has ever watched the YouTube channel produced by a man by the name of Josh Streithe Hayes, he will do a series of things on old video games that he played called was it any Good?

And he did do the bouncer in his first thirty seconds he says no.

In fact, if you watch some of his streams, he will stop playing the game he's playing on Twitch of his twitch chat as being a bunch of assholes, and he will intentionally play the bouncer to punish them in his The reason I bring this up and I can see why the man's infinitely more popular than I will ever be.

First of all, he's British.

Second, he's incredibly handsome and thirties charismatic.

He actually timed all of the cut scenes versus all of the action scenes.

I don't remember every single timestamp he gave, but of the two hour total time of this game, between loading screens and cut scenes, an hour and a half of it is that, and you get about roughly thirty minutes of actual gameplay, including that lovely little forty five second searching for the key card on the train mini game.

Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right.

So, yes, this game is hardly a massive time commitment.

I can in retrospect of me looking at you over these many years, you're still a bad game.

But you know what, little buddy, it did good.

That was an excellent callback and is making an excellent segue because of course, now I'm going to thank you for spending so much time talking about this, and I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit about your show.

Deleted saves my understanding.

I was going to say, if I'm recalling correctly, but I don't recall social media posts.

I'm looking at your blue Sky.

Your most recent episode that you put out was about Dead Rising, a franchise that I have ero experience with.

But deleted saves.

Obviously listeners from the Silent Hill episodes know a little bit about it.

But for those that haven't heard that episode, if you wanted to tell them all about what you're doing over there, what your show is like, and what kind of games you like to talk about, by all means, the floor is yours.

Okay, deleted saves my podcast.

It's actually coming up on almost in May.

I actually will be have been doing this for about four years now.

Congrats, Oh thank you.

It is a show where I go back through like many of us, I go through back through the games I played, both old and new, that have stuck around in my brain long after I've stopped playing.

I finished the game, went so far as deleted the save files to make room on memory cards and within systems these days, but have for some reason, this has really been sticking with me, for good, bad, or indifferent, and I want to talk about it, and I really want to think it through.

I try to give analysis from my point of view, which sometimes is contrary to what people like to hear.

Sometimes it is me riffing, Sometimes it's me being high minded.

Sometimes it's probably me being an asshole, but it is my opinion.

I try to be as unique but as honest as I can, and some people like what I do.

Some people don't, and that's okay.

I welcome anyone who's willing to give me a listen, and I do appreciate it.

But it is about the games that I've played and that I know.

Well, that's what I do with deleted saves.

If you're wondering where you can find Deleted Saves.

I'll be more than happy to tell you.

I'm pretty much inactive on Twitter because I'm not calling it x because fuck elon Musk.

But I still have a connection there.

If you need to contact me, I'll go ahead and direct message me.

I make it back to you sooner.

I'm much more active on Blue Sky, where I'm at Deleted Saves podcast.

I'm around here in the discord forums.

I used to have my own channel, but there wasn't a lot going on with it, so I kind of shut it down.

I'm pretty much anywhere you can find a podcast, Spotify, Apple pod being all those wonderful little podcast or services.

And if you're so curious, I too have a Patreon.

It's not required.

I don't ask anything.

I'm basically about a buck or two a month if you want to give.

If not, that's okay.

I accept people who just want to hang out just see what's going on behind the scenes, but that's at Deleted Saves podcast on Patreon if you so wish, and yeah, I talk about stuff like that.

My most recent episode at time of this recording was my Foray into the Dead Rising.

Series listeners, you can find links to all of the deleted saves stuff in the episode description.

You can also find links to Pixel Project Radio stuff, the Blue Sky, the Instagram, the discord server, which is of course free, and the Patreon which is not free, but you can go there if you'd like.

It's patreon dot com slash Pixel Project Radio.

You can find all that stuff in the episode description.

We would be happy to hang out with you wherever you want to hang but for today, I think that's gone on long enough.

The bound probably too gentlemen.

Honestly, yes, ladies and gentlemen.

Give it a try The Bouncer.

It's a lot of fun.

I am Rick as always, I'm your host.

Thank you once again to Phill the Deleted Saves for joining me.

This has been an absolute blast, and thank you listeners for sticking around.

Go play the Bouncer.

Have a great rest of your day, and we're signing off for now, and take care.

We'll see you next time.