Love the limiting conceit for this episode! Really had me trying to grave-rob the cemetery behind my memory palace thinking of long dead games.
In the spirit of “not a great game but fun and weird you can’t buy it anywhere” I would say Sega Swirl. It was a very simple but pretty engaging puzzle game. It was on the Dreamcast (think it might have even come on the disk with the web browser?). It has a competitive 4-player mode that turned me and my friends into real a-holes. The “Sega. Smashpack” collection on the Dreamcast included Sega Swirl with the likes of Golden Axe, Sonic, and Streets of Rage (and Virtua Cop!).
maybe i shouldn’t mention this yet but we have definitely discussed the idea of streaming a few of the more talked-about-on-the-show games, and the first thing to come to mind was having Ash play Panzer Dragoon Saga maybe along with Brandon
I dig the idea in principle. I don’t know if Panzer Dragoon Saga is a great experience with someone constantly looking over your shoulder (or even a stream audience for that matter), as it’s a game that depends a lot on the vibes and how immersed you are in its setting. It’s a very “playing immersed all night until the blueish tones of dawn pierce through your window” kind of game. But I guess it depends on the person.
I also wanted to signal that one cannot buy No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! legally anywhere at this point. Looks like someone did stop Mr. Domino after all.
I just hit disc 3 on Panzer Dragoon Saga this morning. And Brandon is right the music in that game is incredible. I decided to play that game on original hardware and I’ll have to say not the soundest financial decision I’ve made. If the Saturn was unpopular in the US then it was super unpopular in PAL territories.
Really digging Ash’s perspective on this episodes I honestly did laugh out loud when she was asking the real questions around Lemmings.
Edit: and yeah Diddy Kong Racing is way better than Mario Kart.
I have been eagerly anticipating the first credit spend, so I was very excited when that came up.
Because I was really wondering what sound effect would be used! The buzzers have been very entertaining. Will there be more credit sound effects in the future? Maybe if somebody submits four buzzers they can spend their buzzbucks to dictate a credit sting…? No…? No…
As an aside - has an annual subscription option on patreon been considered?
It seems to be something that other patreons do. I don’t know whether minimizing transaction costs is a motivation, or if it’s just to incentivize a longer commitment.
This episode was fantastic. I agree with Ash’s self assessment that she brings a new and necessary energy - promoting the guys to unpack unfamiliar old sicko game references, and bringing her own personal set of obscure sicko obsessions.
I’m a proud new question-hole dweller and am listening to the most recent Extra Credit, which sounds like it was Ash’s first episode as a co-host, and is a fun complement to this.
Though this exchange made me wither a bit inside as a half-Czech person whose family comes from the Bohemia region:
B: I was visiting Bohemia interactive!
A: Is that in Bohemia?
B: No! It’s in the Czech Republic.
It’s not an age thing but an access thing! I was born in '87 I’m an 80s/90s child but because I didn’t own my own console (a PS 1) until I was 15ish and only had exposure to a limited number of Genesis/NES/SNES titles, there’s a lot I am just completely unaware of. Particularly PC/Dreamcast/Gamecube/Sega Saturn games and games on PlayStation that weren’t Final Fantasy
I got a N64 when I was 7 but I don’t think I was really playing games of my own appetite until I got my PS1 3 yrs later. I use to always be in bowling alleys for church youth trips and indoor amusement spaces for family outings so I tangentially had a pretty good awareness of Fighting games and the Sega arcade library. I also had cousins that were on top of everything that I would visit too! Eventually I learned how to pirate SNES stuff and got a boot disc to played disc I traded with a friend at school for PS1 in middle school.
I was left mostly unattended after school till dinner time so I went through A LOT of the SNES library. Sega Genesis selections didn’t have as many readily available Anime fighting games on most sites in 2000-03. Being able to play titles (that actually hold up now too!) for shows I was actively watching on Toonami edged over even my at the time equal love for Sonic and fondness for Streets of Rage.
I remember Chrono Cross getting in my hands the sunday after release as a late birthday present and my mom being shocked that this is the game I chose for myself once she saw me get to the battle bits. It was the first time I really liked something and she couldn’t get why.
Yeah, it’s interesting how we can grow up in a time and discover in adulthood entire parallel tracks of stuff we hadn’t discovered because we didn’t have access to it. The Saturn and N64 are both systems I only ever played second-hand, and my friend with a Saturn only ever played Tomb Raider on it. Everything else I know about the Saturn came to me as an adult.
Bowling alleys were also a key early vector for exposing me to arcade games. I’d take my quarters to play some after each week of league bowling. I played the sit-in early 1980s Star Wars arcade game that way. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it’s also how I got to do games like Prop Cycle (which would’ve been one of my picks), Crazy Taxi (inspired pick), and Soul Calibur (which was the one fighting game I got good enough to maybe beat another human being in).
