3. Is it time to panic over Microsoft acquiring Zenimax? (14:22)
4. Game director signature shots (20:29)
5. Helping video game characters with tax breaks (26:39)
6. Patreon Supporter Golok asks about the best video game cold opens (34:44)
7. Rearranging level order (41:11)
8. Saving the Mass Effect franchise (46:55)
9. Five best video game documentaries (52:10)
10. Musou games in other time periods (01:01:51)
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Additional notes:
- [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsH0s2_S_Ck) tim's end of E3 video referenced near the end of the episode
- to watch Brandon's documentary piece, check out the [Samurai Showdown Neo Geo Collection](https://www.snk-corp.co.jp/us/games/ssngc/)! (unless it's on youtube somewhere and I just couldn't find it, lol)
- apologies for the muffled-ness of Frank's audio this episode. there was a mad cracklyness to his audio, and this low pass filter was the only thing I could do to make it less annoying for long stretches of speaking. we'll get this fixed, I promise.
Brandon – the very first thing I did when I purchased the Samurai Shodown Collection on its day of release was to make a beeline to check out the video features recorded for the set. The video content just plain rules and I admit to getting a little misty watching these reminiscences of a past development age. Please consider including this kind of documentary content in any future archival collections you may be involved in – it was half of the reason I bought the SamSho Collection! The people DEMAND more documentary features!
Thank you @LynnMinmei! I‘ve heard so few people talk about the video bits that, well, you just never know. It was really cool to do though. I had the idea the year before while walking around with some original devs and working on the SNK 40th collection. The next year I had this idea to do it, but nobody on the US team knew what I was talking about really. But I’d hired this cameraman and for whatever reason the devs weren‘t told the right time to show up, so day 1 of interviews I only had one dev (adachi) for 2 hours, but I had the cameraman for 6. So for the first 4 hours I decided we’d go shoot b-roll of all the locations I wanted in this walking tour, and I brought SNK producer Laurent (who's french also) with us to help identify buildings and also communicate in french.
That meant the next day, even though we were supposed to only have time for interviews, we were able to do all the live human sections of the walking tour in under an hour because we had (almost) all the b-roll footage already. So I basically pushed through my idea because it was possible to fit in the time. We only had the cameraman for 2 days and had 4 people to interview, but we got it all in there and I was able to push my idea through.
A couple amusing things about the french cameraman - he didn't really speak english, and I could sort of understand when he said stuff in french but couldn't reply to him, so we needed laurent to translate. Also at one point he was shooting some stuff and an older woman walked up to him, and he was like a block away from us, and we were like uh oh, is she chewing him out or something!? Turned out she had studied french in college and wanted to practice!
Then at the end of the 2nd day he and I were both taking the train back in the same direction for like 20 minutes so we tried to talk to each other, but again, language was difficult. Turned out his Japanese was better than his English because he had a Japanese wife. So we were two white guys speaking okay-ish Japanese on the train to each other and the salarymen's faces were going wild with speculation, that's for sure.
@compositehiggs#6918 well; darn! i’m getting that here as well, which is extremely strange because it downloaded and played perfectly in my podcast app this morning. thank you for pointing this out!
in the mean time while we get this sorted out: here’s a direct download link. https://www.dropbox.com/s/f3iz9witi6l3zvt/ic152.mp3?dl=0
should be working in the streaming player up above! we’ve had a little hassle getting the archive.org stuff sorted out, but it’s looking better now. thanks again for letting us know! (worst case scenario, the Direct Download above should work fine no matter what)
Fun episode! @exodus#6921 another Blade II + Death Stranding connection that didn't get mentioned besides Norman Reedus being in the movie is that it was also directed by Guillermo Del Toro! Just something I thought of while listening.
Oops, I forgot to mention that!! I‘m not a huge Guillermo Del Toro fan, I think Blade II is my favorite movie of his, and I don’t like Blade II that much. I also just watched Cronos, his horror movie that won tons of accolades, and it was pretty boring! had a couple good cronenberg-y shots in it and that's about it.
re: Documentaries about videogames, i‘ve watched several. i’d say: that BBC Tetris Special, King of Kong (i know people have issues with what it includes and doesn‘t but it’s a well-structured, engaging movie!) and the Double Fine Adventure series. The Smash Doc on youtube was pretty good! NoClip things are fine. that Not For Resale Documentary was also okay i guess. Tim's thing Get Bonus from 10 years ago is highly entertaining if the most 2010 thing in existence. most videogame documentaries are really bad though.
here's the Smash one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tgWH-qXpv8
@espercontrol#6908 Is it time to panic over Microsoft acquiring Zenimax?
My immediate thought upon hearing they got bought were the words "the consolidation era" so if we want to call this Post-AAA or AAAA, or whatnot. I'd call this the Consolidation Era
Daytona USA's *rolling staaaarts* (as opposed to standing starts) are a thing in motorsport already, and are a totally normal way to start a race so I wouldn't consider them 'cold opens'.
**_HOWEVER_**, the beginner mode of Virtua Racing starts you out in the middle of a pit stop, with a race already going on in the background, implying that you're actually playing the last few laps of a race (the thing that every modern racing game now does) and that we're just joining the action at the last pit stop.