The original panel reunites for Frank Cifaldi’s two point-and-click adventure game recommendations, the best kind of game for Tim Rogers right now, and Brandon Sheffield’s selection as the Whitney Houston of video games. Plus, Bennett Foddy designs a new game for the Steel Battalion controller. Hosted by Alex Jaffe, with Frank Cifaldi, Tim Rogers, and Brandon Sheffield. Edited by Esper Quinn, original music by Kurt Feldman.
https://youtu.be/bRajZPyB8mI
**Questions this week:**
1. What’s your favorite tribute to a video game in another video game? (WARNING: This question features minor Death Stranding spoilers) (04:58)
2. Categorize every type of mission in a video game. (10:01)
3. Narratively, what is happening to a video game character when they lose a life? (13:10)
4. What video game should get a new remake every year? (19:58)
5. Design a new game for the Steel Battalion controller. (25:50)
6. Design a new game for the Steel Battalion controller, Bennett Foddy. (31:27)
7. Soup’um asks: What is the absolute minimum length a game has to be to no longer be considered ‘short’? (36:48)
8. What is the Whitney Houston’s cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” for the soundtrack of the film The Bodyguard of video games? (50:18)
- [Demonschool now wishlistable on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1900250/Demonschool/)
**Recommendations:** **Brandon:**[Icey Jaye - Icey (She's Bad)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMew0CaRdto), [Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyrmwood)
**Anti-Recommendations**: **Brandon**: What We Left Behind - Looking Back At Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (2018) if you enjoy the Star Trek
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@“esper”#p99034 What’s your favorite tribute to a video game in another video game?
i had a hard time separating "tribute" from "callback" in my head. >!shadow moses!< in mgs4 is a callback, i guess. so is the >!castle!< in mario odyssey. then it hit me - it's ||the mario 3 block secret|| in celeste.
A favorite interaction with a video game enjoyer that pops up in my head often:
I went to the launch party for Silver Case's remake somewhere in Tokyo. At the end of it, Suda was signing things for a little crowd that gathered around him. I bought a copy of SDATCHER at Tower Records a day earlier for him to sign. While waiting, a guy walks up and says 「あ、スナッチャー！」 and I shook my head and pointed at the "D"「**スダ**ッチャー！」
He asked if I could speak Japanese, I said not much, so he whipped out his phone and began typing in Google Translate. We had a conversation in Google Translate. It was a Good Time. We followed each other on twitter after.
Fast forward a year later, I'm browsing around BEEP in Akiba, I'm suddenly approached by a worker, he says excuse me and points at his phone on my twitter profile asking if it's me. We both were like, "Whoa, long time no see!" He asked later while I was checking out if I learned anymore Japanese, I said "Slowly..." and he mentioned he started studying english. It was nice! I wonder if he's still working there? Would be nice to say hi again the next time I travel.
I‘ve heard a ton of references to the Steel Battalion controller through all my life, but hadn’t ever looked at a picture of it until now, and I gotta say I definitely was oversold on the size of that controller by all the game talkers of the world. I imagined it being like 4 times as big.
One cool tribute is in Left 4 Dead, you get an achievement for killing 53,595 zombies and it's called “Zombie Genocidest” while Dead Rising had a achievement “Zombie Genocider” for killing 53,594 zombies.
That joke was even present in later titles of these series each adding one required kill.
@“Samograj”#p99084 Hmm yeah, I forgot about the achievement tribute “genre.” that was happening for a while there, with achievements being references to specific things. Maybe that still goes on today? I‘ve turned off all achievement notifications and with the new xbox interface I don’t even know how to find them anymore!
@“exodus”#p99085 I‘m still doing it. When I have to make achievements, I just name them after or reference things I like. Our upcoming game’s achievements are just names of albums and songs that relate to the chapter. I hate achievements, but if I were an Achievement Liker, I‘d want something that’s more than just “1000 Kills.” and I like seeing glimpses of things a team likes or references in their game. It makes it feel like something more than a task I had to do to make my gamer points go up or whatever.
In Cold Blood was an adventure game on the original Playstation where you were playing through the main character‘s interrogation so if you died he would correct himself, saying something like "No, that’s not how it happened". It became sort of silly if you were stuck on a part and repeatedly died in similar ways. It would seem like the main character just repeated ways in which he had died to the interrogator.
@“undarlegt”#p99110 It would seem like the main character just repeated ways in which he had died to the interrogator.
Objection, your honour, the prosecution's cross examination of my client is unacceptably aggressive, there must be some consideration for my client's unique memory mnemonic where they make up a gruesome way they died when they forget minor circumstantial details such as whether they did a crime or not
Doesn‘t the first Ubisoft Prince of Persia do pretty much exactly what Tim describes in terms of game-overs, ie the game being framed as a story being told by the prince after the fact, with him saying "no, that’s not how it went" whenever the player dies?
RE: games paying tribute to other games, Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell had a few back-and-forths, culminating in Sam Fisher's brief moment of existential crisis in Splinter Cell Blacklist when he learns the other guy "retired" and he's the only guy still out there sneakin'.
I think the Deep Space 9 documentary is made for fans with the younger-brother chip on their shoulder about the show. There‘s not a lot of explicit ds9 hate (these days at least) but between the fawning love that gets thrown at The Next Generation and a lot of people being like "i just couldn’t get into ds9," some of us have developed a bit of a complex. The fake plot they developed was pretty bad, but the documentary is worth watching just to >!hear Terry Farrell tell her story of getting forced out by not-cool-guy rick berman!<.
And for video game homages -- surprised that tokimeki memorial didn't come up. Seems like there are a few cool ones there.