Idle Thumbs 134: Sports

[Chris]

Idle Thumbs 134:

 

 

Sports

Patrick "Sports" Klepek joins the team for a quick huddle about the events of the day. Nintendo knocks it out of the park with Super Mario 3D World, and Jake is prepared to come out swinging for Luigi. But questions remain. Can Valve maintain full-court press in support of SteamOS? What will become of the no-holds-barred world of Steam hat trading? There's only one guaranteed slam-dunk: sports.

 

Games Discussed: Super Mario 3D World, Super Mario 3D Land, Super Mario TI-86, SteamOS, Spelunky, XCOM: Enemy Within, Star Citizen, insidious underground Steam hat-based economy, Tank 2004, Find Doctor

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[Golden Calf]

Speaking of weird CEO videos, you have to check out

 preposterously weird thing, if you haven't seen it.

Also, I had to try to move my abdomen as little as possible whenever I laughed while listening this week because my cat was taking a nap on my back. I can't tell whether that made the show more or less enjoyable.

[tegan]

 

 

 

My single favourite Iwata moment is during the Wii U unboxing when he couldn't figure out how the gamepad stand worked five minutes into this video.

 

[tegan]

So now that I'm finished the episode I've got two things to say:

 

1. Jake, take a look at one of the Zelda trailers in the 3DS eshop. The art looks really weird in screenshots and really good in 3D.
2. Regarding the Russian mafia anecdote at the end... Remember the Gizmondo? The failed console ostensibly meant to compete with the PSP and DS? One of the higher-ups was a Swedish mafioso and had basically been using the company as a front.

   In October 2005, a Swedish paper revealed irregularities in the business dealings of Gizmondo, and the criminal past of some members of management, including Eriksson.[4]

   [...]

   Police raided Eriksson's Bel Air home and on April 8, 2006. Eriksson, preparing to leave the US, was arrested on suspicion of embezzlement, grand theft auto, drunken driving, cocaine possession, and weapons charges stemming from a Magnum handgun encountered during the search.

    

[pyide]

F-Zero GX is crying in the corner.

[Henroid]

Chris' note about the new version of The Shivah is like my favorite thing. Amazing, I'll probably buy that just to support the awesome 90sness of it.

[Sno]

Worst thing about Eternal Darkness: If the game actually starts locking up on you, the error screen it shows you is indistinguishable from one of the ones it uses to fake you out. (The game itself isn't prone to crashes; my first gamecube had a bad, clicky disc drive that sometimes gave disc-read errors on certain games.)

That game had a lot of neat stuff going on though, it wasn't just the sanity system. For one, It had pretty fantastic control as far as pre-RE4 fixed-perspective survival horror games go, it even had a lock-on system that enabled limb-specific attacks. It also had a really cool magic system and that ambitious effort to tell a story across millennia with multiple main characters. Eternal Darkness is a rad game.

[BigJKO]

Has anyone found the video of Charles Martinet saying 'Idle Thumbs.net is great!' in a Wario voice?! I need to see that.

 

It's worth noting that Zelda A Link Between Worlds is a bit low-fi in a way, but it ends up making the framerate super-smooth. I don't think Super Mario 3D Land had this fast of a framerate, but I may be wrong.

[vimes]

BigJKO @ 12.58

Also, yep, you should populate Goty.cx this year too!

[tberton]

I haven't listened to the episode yet, but the description text is amazing.

[tabacco]

Oh man, a classic video. And the origin of the podblast theme.

[Nappi]

Holy shit, that hat scam email was amazing! More of this please. 

[BigJKO]

I guess I got sharked once, then. Some random person contacted me offering to trade something for something, and my something were the earbuds. I had absolutely zero idea that there was even a marketplace for this stuff.

Man, that E3 video. I remember it now. Classic stuff!

[Roswell47]

So that's why like half a dozen random Russians tried to add me on Steam this year. I have bunch of vintage weapons and hats in TF2.

[schepton]

Does anyone have a link to the tumblr that the girl created? I can't make out how it's spelled based on what Remo says.

[Jambe]

Does anyone have a link to the tumblr that the girl created? I can't make out how it's spelled based on what Remo says.

 

http://zoeevelynhart.tumblr.com/

[tegan]

Also, regarding Charles Martinet playing everyone in Mario:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HO5imsViKp0#t=373

 

(skip to 6:13 if it doesn't automatically)

[N1njaSquirrel]

F-Zero GX is crying in the corner.

 

So is Resident Evil 4, Killer 7 and Double Dash

[Sno]

It's been over ten years since F-Zero GX came out.

It is a Nintendo series that really, really needs a new entry.

[Justin Leego]

I wonder if they'll have an F-Zero unlockable in Mario Kart 8's möbius course.

[mikemariano]

I'm not done listening to the episode yet, but I would love it if you streamed Super Mario TI-86.

[feelthedarkness]

I also would love if Valve went ALL IN on their consoles.

 

I almost don't think position would be that hard. There is that element of "PC Gaming" that is considered finicky and expensive, but you could show Crysis running full blast, and say "This? $5. Bioshock Infinite? On sale for $10. Every Grand Theft Auto game until now? $15." Whatever money you front load on the machine is made up a year or two bargain games. 

[Flynn]

I'm not done listening to the episode yet, but I would love it if you streamed Super Mario TI-86.

 

Surprisingly hard to find youtube video of it, there's just snippets available.

 

I bought a TI-86 in 1997.  They were still selling those things, at almost full place, not that many years ago.  

[Latrine]

I wonder if high school calc/precalc classes still require graphing calculators. I suppose they'll eventually be replaced by smartphone apps. You can probably get a cheap smartphone for just a little more than the cost of the calculator.

[tegan]

I wonder if high school calc/precalc classes still require graphing calculators. I suppose they'll eventually be replaced by smartphone apps. You can probably get a cheap smartphone for just a little more than the cost of the calculator.

 

When I finished high school in 2008*, we still used them.

 

How fucking weird and terrible is it that technology that's barely changed in 25 years is in the same price range as a new phone?

 

 

*oh god I've been out of high school for five years I'm ooooooold