Ep. 203 - Tomb of the Unknown Gamer, with Mathew Kumar and Liz Ryerson
Leading game industry professionals and Insert Credit Show regulars Mathew Kumar and Liz Ryerson rejoin the panel for cryptid talk, Nintendo Direct, and pissing on gentrifiers. Original music by Kurt Feldman.
Questions this week:
Vincent Diamante asks: What’s the best money you’ve spent on a free-to-play game? (04:33)
How do you make blocking in a game feel as good as attacking? (10:40)
What ideas does Quantic Dream have for Star Wars? (14:37)
Which games were most interesting to you prior to their release? (21:04)
Improv Zone: Nintendo Direct (25:15)
Dirtbag PrivatelyAttack asks: What cryptids show up in an Altus JRPG set in the American midwest? (31:44)
Who are the heroes and role models in the video game industry today? (40:01)
Make a video game about Passion Orange Guava juice without making it entirely about POGs. (45:58)
What is the I Love Lucy of video games? (50:54)
Would the world be better off if there weren’t video games? (54:13)
LIGHTNING ROUND: Name Design: Old Cursewords (from Dirtbag Yeso) (01:00:14)
SMT does have a lot of Native and Mesoamerican cryptids, as well as more dubious pop culture stuff like not-Ghost Rider and so on. The wildest one is probably the chemtrail demon they added a game or two ago.
If you want a sillier take, Yokai Watch 3 is packed with "Merican" yokai that are mostly, like, food and fat people.
Yeah, I guess they‘ve got like queztalcoatl and such in there. Didn’t know that about yokai watch 3 though, that is amusing. Interesting how that game absolutely did not take off here, despite their best efforts. The battle system is just dull as bricks.
When Brandon was describing the weird hands claymation game I thought he was talking about an unreleased game for some reason and my mind immediately went to Dome-King Cabbage, so I was disappointed at the end when he remembered the name of the actual game because I thought I had guessed it.
@exodus They completely replaced the battle system for 3, not that a ton of people outside of Japan even noticed by the time it came over. I don’t even know what they did for 4, and I’m still amazed by how utterly dead the series is now, despite Level-5 having a well-worn track record of running things into the ground.
The other interesting thing about 3 is that the prior entries had been localised as if they took place in the US, Ace Attorney-style, so for this game which is explicitly about the original MC visiting the US, they changed it to him visiting his cousin who lives in the extremely real southern state of “BBQ”.
@hellomrkearns i say it all the time! another good name-based curse is “gordon bennet”, which probably came from sounding a little bit like “god damn it” (like “cor blimey”/“god blind me”)
I haven't listened through the episode, so maybe this is resolved, but I had to pause and post that as soon as Brendan started talking about those wibbly hands, I knew the game he meant was Hylics by Mason Lindroth.
I definitely recommend playing the first one. Mechanically it's a very RPG maker game, but visually and tonally it's completely its own thing, and doesn't overstay its welcome.
The sequel was a little disappointing to me. I remember it being a little more narratively straightforward, and otherwise was more of the same, and the inclusion of 3D spaces didn't add much to it. So if you just play the first one, you'll get the idea.
The Hodag
Bozo The Clown
Resurrection Mary
Ronnie Woo
The Billiken
Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope
Al Capone
Svengoolie
Mike Ditka
Jim Traficant
Prince
Bernie Brewer
Claudio "The Tamale Guy" Velez
I forgot about 1997 Jack Frost and thought 1998 Jack Frost was secretly a horror movie I had only seen family-friendly commercials for.
Also nice lightning round yeso, and you’d better include wrestler-form Abraham Lincoln in your SMT spinoff
(Don’t know where or when to make this known but I must tell you all I imagine Mathew Kumar and Patrick Miller looking exactly the same, and they look like Yakuza 0 Nishiki (same hair), but with glasses and a short-sleeve button-down shirt. Patrick wears those trendy (c. 2014) thick-rimmed black rectangular honkers and a black shirt, Mathew wears really narrow half-rim glasses and a mint-green shirt. I hope to never see what they look like so that this fiction may continue.)
(EDIT For the record I think they both look very handsome, this is not intended as an insult.)
Haven’t listened to this episode yet but one answer had better be Donkey Kong. Foundational work that influenced 40+ years of entertainment. A simple but catchy premise that enchanted different generations of fans. Outdated gender roles. Early positive representation of the successful American integration of an immigrant protagonist. The main female role changed her early stage name and later became a successful powerbroker outside of her acting career. The couple broke up but stayed in good professional terms. And the soundtrack outlived the show.
