Ep. 381 - Gamer Water, with merritt k and Eric Silver

show
1

Ep. 381 - Gamer Water, with merritt k and Eric Silver

Writer/comedian merritt k joins Ash, Brandon, and guest host Eric Silver to figure out why Pokemon games look bad now, why Insert Credit doesn’t talk about Nintendo, and the LeBron James of Video Games. Hosted by Eric Silver, with Ash Parrish, Brandon Sheffield, and merritt k. Edited by Esper Quinn, original music by Kurt Feldman.

episodecard
episodecard1400×1400 182 KB

SHOW NOTES:

1: Will mainline Pokemon games ever not look like garbo again? (04:00)

2: What is the best sword or gun in video game history? (10:10)

3: Why doesn’t Insert Credit talk about Nintendo more? (15:06)

4: What aspects of Insert Credit Show have evolved to outlive other podcasts? (19:55)

5: If someone discovered a wellspring of video game water, what would we use it for in the real world? (23:24)

6: Alex Jaffe asks, are video games cool? Have they ever been cool? What is the coolest that video games have ever been? (29:17)

7: Does your interest in games reflect or influence how you feel about tabletop roleplaying games? (34:26)

8: What is the LeBron James of video games? (45:38)

LIGHTNING ROUND: Shoot, Collaborate, and Listen (52:21)

Recommendations and Outro (01:00:41):

This week’s Insert Credit Show is brought to you by patrons like you. Thank you.

Subscribe: RSS, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more!

10 Likes
3

Haven’t started listening, but this looks promising.

Screenshot_20250317_164744_Vivaldi
Screenshot_20250317_164744_Vivaldi720×188 18.1 KB

13 Likes
4

images(68)
images(68)640×480 43.9 KB

20250317_003319
20250317_003319452×502 47.1 KB

17 Likes
5

Yes

9 Likes
6

Just wanted to nominate the spread gun from Contra. The gun is OP as heck, it has a cool sound effect, but that’s not even the best part – the spread gun instigates fights between co-op players over who gets it. I’m all for gameplay elements that induce vitriol between players who are supposed to be working together. Even better, Contra is one of those 2P games where a player who’s run out of lives can “steal” lives from the other player. It’s an insidious game meant to ruin friendships, with a gun that is worth that ruin.

3 Likes
7

Honorable mentions in sword and gun:

GUPE8P-5
GUPE8P-5246×112 7.22 KB

TailsFire&Ice_2
TailsFire&Ice_2460×460 54.5 KB

6 Likes
8

What a great episode. Eric had some big shoes to fill and did a sterling job, and merritt was a brilliant guest as always!

Also curious about which 12ish N64 games Brandon has on his shelves.

6 Likes
9

One of my biggest gripes about Baldur’s Gate 3 is actually how much spectacle it makes out of the dice-rolling. As a CRPG enjoyer, I like dice-rolling as an underlying success / failure resolution mechanism, but one of the best things about CRPGs is how using a computer to handle the calculations can obscure some the artifice of the rules system to focus on the roleplaying (as opposed to roll-playing)

Baldur’s Gate 3 instead puts a spotlight on the dice, and I found that to be such a distraction. Maybe they’ve added this since the game’s original launch, but I would have loved an option to disable that element of the UI/UX entirely and just have rolls in the combat log as a way to check what the result was if I’m so inclined at the time

7 Likes
10

Typing as I listen.

Pokemon:
Pokemon’s environment needs graphical improvement, and better performance. In Scarlet/Violet, the water looks PS1, maybe early PS2 quality. Also when more than like, 3 models are on screen the game dips to at most 20 FPS.

Best sword or gun
Best sword for me is Ultima Weapon from Final Fantasy 6, simply because it gets longer and stronger depending on level and current HP compared to max HP. Was always a favorite of mine to get.

Talking Nintendo
Brandon finding a SNES in the garbage reminded me of when I found a Colecovision the same way in the mid to late 90s. It worked for a while and provided some fun! Can’t even remember the games I found with it as it was so long ago.

Video game water
Pull it from the 2D Mario series. People can swim infinitely without having to breath. (No, Mario can’t hold his breath infinitely, as we’ve seen him breathing on land. It must be the water.)

Question hole

Obviously rigged! Recount!! I demand a… HOLE new question.

Eric’s joke about “FM Towns plays Power Forward on the Timberwolves” was great. I love the trope of sports players having uncommon/unique names. Reminds me of that roster from Fighting Baseball for SNES.

Tabletop vs Video Games
I’ve been involved in a Pathfinder 2E campaign for about two years now. I separate tabletop from video games because they are two different mediums. I don’t think about video games while doing tabletop and vice versa. While there are plenty of video games with tabletop elements, the behavior of dice and overall RNG in video games is well outside what happens in real life with real dice and a human DM/GM leading the game.

The closest I got to wishing we could translate a Video Game to Tabletop was Citizen Sleeper. Loved that game, would love that universe in a Tabletop world, then realized D20 future and other systems likely have that covered. I need to go find one.

Also, I’ve never been into watching Dimension 20 or Critical Role, or really any board game shows. I never understood the appeal of watching a group of friends do a tabletop game. I always feel like I’m an outsider, or even voyeur, as people hang around a table. I guess to me, doing tabletop rpgs or board games is a personal thing between the players, and watching others just doesn’t feel right.

Lebron James of Video Games

Everyone missed Kratos having a son who was forced into dad’s career… (I haven’t played the new games this is assumption based on gameplay I’ve seen.)

The main Final Fantasy series is a Lebron James. Started on Nintendo, moved to SONY Playstation, then kind of went back with re-releases, and is now on PC, Playstation, and Xbox.

People say it’s a great series with some of the best RPGs, but each game always happens to fall short of a previous entry in its own series, or a game Squenix made previously (aka Chrono Trigger), or even another RPG series.

Also just like Lebron’s career PPG per season (I do not follow the NBA I just looked this up), the series as a whole is the same, with ups and downs across its career

4 Likes
11

Awesome episode! Esper is the best host, I think Sonic is LeBron because he’s got some progeny that got more chances than they deserved, and also LeBron fans KNOW they’re right even though they can’t seem to convince the general public. Am I crazy to think this?

My favorite gun is the double-barrel from Metal Hellsinger and sword goes to plasma sword because it was my first exploit. I would also like to defend Halo 3 as a cool video game because it brought custom games to an entire generation of console video game players. You guys who made your own video games out of RadioShack transistors may not be impressed but we were. Being able to make your own mario party games is sick.

1 Like
12

This comment made me realize that no one mentioned the shotgun from Doom. Extremely iconic. Could even argue the BFG.

1 Like
13

I haven’t listened yet, but the best gun is the Heavy Machine Gun from the Metal Slug Games. It’s iconic, and it feels like such a tremendous upgrade over the basic pea-shooter that it’s almost the default gun itself. It can shoot much faster, and gives you diagonal coverage. The firing of it feels so good, and mowing down a bunch of nazi-proxies with is a better feeling than even the more powerful weapons like the “rocket lawnchah”.

They even give you one when you use another quarter to continue.

Plus, that announcer…swoon

For the uninitiated:

1 Like
14

great energy in this episode! re. the best sword, I think it has to be the red saber from phantasy star online because it looks like a delicious popsicle :) (in general I love the sabers in PSO. They have such pleasing colours and swooshy bwooshy sounds)

BB-RED_SABER-TEKKER-1
BB-RED_SABER-TEKKER-1640×480 48.3 KB

6 Likes
15

I really hope “That Makes You Bisexual” was at least in contention for the episode title

4 Likes
16

Best Sword:

1-24
1-242000×1000 301 KB

Best Gun:
images
images225×225 2.06 KB

9 Likes
17

from my notes:

IMG_0726
IMG_0726685×394 47.4 KB

Gamer Water won solely because of the serendipity of last week’s episode being Gamer Oil

22 Likes
18

Small cheer over here at the El Cerrito mention.

3 Likes
19

I have this box that I can plug into my TV. When I do it, it makes it look, sound and feel like I’m racing a car, or fighting a monster, or flying a plane. That is, objectively, very cool. In fact, they have other boxes that don’t even plug into the TV - you can just hold them in your hands and look down at a little screen right on the device! That’s even cooler!

Video games are very cool.

HOWEVER, the people who play them, make them, talk about them on the internet, sell them to you and make games part of their very identities? Those people are mostly NOT cool. Games themselves though? So cool!

6 Likes
21

According to me, the guy what plays a lotta Doom, the best gun is the Doom shotgun, and better than the best gun is the super shotgun from Doom II.

3 Likes