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Jake

Idle Thumbs 149: A Divine Exodus of Snakes

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Idle Thumbs 149:

 

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A Divine Exodus of Snakes

Nick can't give up Hearthstone, Chris is still playing Spelunky, Sean has handcuffed himself to a MAME cabinet and Jake makes some comments about video games. Next week: Idle Thumbs 150.

 

Things Discussed: Hearthstone, Titanfall, Halo 3, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sunset Riders, The Simpsons, 2048, Spelunky

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I have to go to bed, but first I wanna' blow Sean's mind a little: The Simpsons arcade game spoiled what was supposed to be the final episode of the show.

 

Back when Groening was still starting out on The Simpsons, Marge's character was supposed to be one of the rabbits from Life in Hell disguised as a human, which was the reason for her bizarre hair. In the final episode of the show, she was going to be unmasked. Though Groening was obviously talked out of it because it was such a stupid idea, the arcade game (which was made back when Marge's rabbit identity was still canon) gave it away by having Marge's rabbit ears clearly be visible whenever she gets electrocuted.

 

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They talk a little about Marge's rabbit ears in the DVD commentary for the season four classic "Last Exit to Springfield," but Groening probably doesn't even know the game exists.

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Did Chris get caught up on the Simpsons? I can't imagine a worse fate than to be born late Xer/early Millennial and have no grasp of the Simpsons at all. You can skip like, Monty Python & the Holy Grail or Ghostbusters or Jurassic Park and it's not gonna ruin your chances of communicating with your peers, once you learn the two or three things that get repeated... but Simpsons? That's like, bare minimum, one hundred different references or lines you need to know by heart to take part in a certain class of cultural conversation conventions

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I really wonder about who could claim to own what from the original Defense of the Ancients characters. As I've pointed out a few times before, beyond even the huge number of characters taken directly from the Warcraft 3 main campaign, there's a character, Lina Inverse, whose class is the title of the Japanese anime she's taken from. Her appearance in Dota 2 is no longer a dead ringer for her appearance in the Slayers franchise, but all her skills are still signature spells used in the anime. Judging from that, maybe there's just a general willingness for none of these companies to step on each others' toes? I don't know. I'm sure Kadokawa and Kanzaka Hajime both couldn't care less, but Blizzard and Valve have both borrowed a lot of their characters from all over.

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Did Chris get caught up on the Simpsons? I can't imagine a worse fate than to be born late Xer/early Millennial and have no grasp of the Simpsons at all. You can skip like, Monty Python & the Holy Grail or Ghostbusters or Jurassic Park and it's not gonna ruin your chances of communicating with your peers, once you learn the two or three things that get repeated... but Simpsons? That's like, bare minimum, one hundred different references or lines you need to know by heart to take part in a certain class of cultural conversation conventions

I've never seen most of the Simpsons. Maybe like ten full episodes, and a few snippets here and there. I feel I communicate just fine with my peers.

 

I'm 26, too, so it's not like I grew up in a time after/before The Simpsons was a huge thing.

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 Next week: Idle Thumbs 150.

 

Splendid!

 

:wtf:

 

 

 

That's also an incredible list of games to talk about in one show.  Well done. 

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Titanfall is amazing, Once you realize how freaking agile pilots are and wall running and mantling become second nature the maps become so much more dynamic. I think the only thing id like to see the game add at some point is a horde mode against the native creatures. After learning that the Titans were originally made to combat hostile wildlife I was sad they hold such a minor role in the game and it would fit thematically to the game instead of just throwing zombies in everything.

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Holy crap at that car chase story. Good job staying alive.

 

I got to a slight Calculords hump too, but it was on the guy with the 3d glasses who has all the control cards. Luckily he leads you to the strategy that kinda breaks the game. He can remove offensive and tactical cards from your hand with 2 different tactics, so I just filled my deck with mostly push cards, with as much armor as possible. With that strategy you pretty much just attrition every fight, since once you have enough push it just instantly pops the enemy's cards once you get to their base. You have to travel the entire distance of the map to win anyway, so you might as well make the enemies have 0 health by pushing, rather than depend on damage.

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I've never seen most of the Simpsons. Maybe like ten full episodes, and a few snippets here and there. I feel I communicate just fine with my peers.

 

I'm 26, too, so it's not like I grew up in a time after/before The Simpsons was a huge thing.

 

As another 26 year old who had little experience with the Simpsons I agree that its significance may be a bit overstated.  Obviously I wouldn't know many of the references but I also missed the majority of Seinfeld and felt that was brought up far more often.  

 

Curious as to what Will Smith was talking with the guys about though.  He talked about building his own cabinet on a previous Thumbs episode unless that actually happened on a Bombcast or something so I was hoping one of the guys would remember and they could add that bit.

 

Really looking forward to 150 and the Campo Santo announcement today though, exciting time all around.

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It's good to hear Chris is now speedrunning Spelunky; I was wondering if he was growing tired of using the exact same method during every daily challenge.

 

Plus I am morally opposed to the way he was playing.  Mass murder of shopkeepers!  Human sacrifices to Kali!  Canine sacrifices to Kali!

 

Is it possible to do well in Spelunky without devoting yourself to Kali's death cult?  I want to steal idols and save puppies.

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I think it's funny that nobody noticed the subtle expansion of Chris's Spelunky habit. It used to be "I only play the daily." Now it has turned into "I only play the daily and a few speed runs." Is it time for an intervention?

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I missed most of the early Battlefield and Halo games back in the day, but the discussion of them reminded me a lot of my experiences in Planetside 2. I suppose the comparison isn't surprising since it is deliberately recalling games from that era. Still, Nick's discussion especially reminded me of the times I jumped in a transport plane with a bunch of strangers and flew around having adventures or joined in on a massive base assault. Have the Thumbs ever tried it out? I can't recall if the game has really been discussed on the podcast.

 

The Red Orchestra games are also pretty good at making you feel like just a random guy storming a beach, especially Rising Storm. 

 

Oh and I'm 24 and have only ever seen a handful of Simpsons episodes. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much but then maybe I'm just used to having '90s TV references go over my head since all we had was an antenna that got PBS if it wasn't raining.  

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I really wonder about who could claim to own what from the original Defense of the Ancients characters. As I've pointed out a few times before, beyond even the huge number of characters taken directly from the Warcraft 3 main campaign, there's a character, Lina Inverse, whose class is the title of the Japanese anime she's taken from. Her appearance in Dota 2 is no longer a dead ringer for her appearance in the Slayers franchise, but all her skills are still signature spells used in the anime. Judging from that, maybe there's just a general willingness for none of these companies to step on each others' toes? I don't know. I'm sure Kadokawa and Kanzaka Hajime both couldn't care less, but Blizzard and Valve have both borrowed a lot of their characters from all over.

 

Also Phantom Lancer and some final fantasy game.

 

Pudge is called Pudge in dota1, except he had the job description the butcher as well. He used the same sound file as the butcher in diablo 1. He's still pudge and still has cleavers for butchering etc.

 

Leoric the skeleton king ( wraith king now :'( ) was Ostirionoth in dota2 then switched from bone to wraith. Based on diablo's king leoric who shows up in Diablo3.

 

Windrunner's name change to windranger. She was named after a character in WC3 Windrunner. Sylvanas windrunner?

 

Necrolyte was renamed to Necrophos for who knows what reason.

 

Obsidian Destroyed, named after two undead units from WC3, obsidian statues and the destroyers. Got changed to Outworld Destroyed on being ported then later into Outworld Demolisher and now Outworld Devourer.

 

Rest of the changes are here http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Changes_from_DotA#Items_Name_Changes

 

Most people still call nature's prophet furion.

 

I don't know who the names belong to but pudge having a hook wasn't a Blizzard idea. 

 

This is some old dota 1 lore tree, it's the best of fan fiction. I'm not even sure who the hell wrote this http://www.hostimage.tk/upload_image/7724d605afdc76d5b45bb9caae2aa807.jpg

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It's good to hear Chris is now speedrunning Spelunky; I was wondering if he was growing tired of using the exact same method during every daily challenge.

 

Plus I am morally opposed to the way he was playing.  Mass murder of shopkeepers!  Human sacrifices to Kali!  Canine sacrifices to Kali!

 

Is it possible to do well in Spelunky without devoting yourself to Kali's death cult?  I want to steal idols and save puppies.

 

I don't really get how you're "saving" the damsels, as much as you just kind of leaving them in a little hallway deep underground. I figure that they deserve a true escape from the mines, and, who's to say what Kali does for them in the afterlife? Also, shopkeepers knew what they were in for when they set up a shop deep in an ice cavern most populated by penniless aliens and yetis.

 

And if you think that his speedrunning leads to less mass murder of shopkeepers, you haven't been watching. Chris has gotten quite good at leaping at the shopkeepers, whip out, only to land on their heads and subsequently throw their entire bodies out of their own shop

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Man, whats with all the people here who've never watched the Simpsons? You're missing out on nearly a decade of some of the finest comedy writing out there (and about a decade and a half that you can safely skip).

 

I think the Seinfeld comparison doesn't really work. I tried to watch Seinfeld for the first time a few years back and just couldn't bring myself to because it's so horribly dated. Early Simpsons is practically timeless though.

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I've been watching Seinfeld lately and I think it's pretty fucking hilarious so there's that! (I have slightly more past-experience with Seinfeld than I do with The Simpsons. But not much more. Just slightly.)

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This was an excellent podcast, congrats guys! Fuck Nick!

 

The Jerky Boys discussion reminded me of some dumb shit I did as a kid. My dad used to work for a window cleaning business and whenever we stayed with him he would drag us to various jobs where we just had to sit there and wait for him to finish. One day I had a friend with me and we were stuck in the office of the company he worked for bored off our asses. So we found a phone that wasn't being used and we decided to start trying to call random 1-900 numbers to see if we would get lucky and reach an adult hotline. We hit the jackpot when we tried 1-900-FUCKING and the lady on the other end went on and on about how she was watching us through her telescope and then proceeded to say a number of other things that kids our age had no business hearing. We thought it was pretty hilarious and eventually hung up and went on with our lives, thinking nothing of the potential consequences.

 

About a month later, my dad approached us asking if we knew anything about these exorbitant phone bills that had been racked up the day we were there and, being kids, we tried to deny it but failed miserably because we were horrible liars. Needless to say I got in a lot of trouble and I never tried that shit again. Plus, I think we had heard all there was to hear from the telescope lady.

 

As far as the whole Jerky Boys tape being passed around, I had a similar experience with Adam Sandler's "Their All Gonna Laugh At You" tape. Somehow we obtained a copy of that tape when we were like 9 years old and our parents overheard us listening to a song about sticking a shampoo bottle in your ass (I think the song was called "At a medium pace" or something like that). So that tape was promptly destroyed, only to live on in our memories until I managed to purchase it again years later.

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And if you think that his speedrunning leads to less mass murder of shopkeepers, you haven't been watching. Chris has gotten quite good at leaping at the shopkeepers, whip out, only to land on their heads and subsequently throw their entire bodies out of their own shop

 

Whoa!

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I installed Hearthstone promptly after hearing Nick talk about it. The level of peggle-ness is truly incredible, and combined with enough strategery to also make you feel smart when you win, it is certainly a potent mixture.

 

But then I wanted to make some client-side texture mods to add more clothes to some of the skimpier outfits on the cards*; discovered that this is 1. probably impossible with my level of science knowledge (thanks Unity) and 2. against the ToS; uninstalled Hearthstone and threw it on the big pile of games I resent for their approach to moddability (also outfits). =T

 

It was, however, very fun while it lasted. And I agree that having the handful of preset voice commands instead of a full chat system is a good choice for a game like this. (I've played games where there's no chat option at all and it was kind of eerily quiet, but in Hearthstone being able to make your character say their line for "Thanks" or "Oops" or "Threaten" is a good degree of expression for playing a quick game against a randomly selected stranger).

 

* it's certainly not the most excessive of games by any means in regard to the outfits, but still enough to irk me if I were to get sucked into the vortex and play for a considerable length of time

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Wait how has it taken this long for someone to talk about AGDQ on the podcast!

 

You should definitely watch the

, but again, I also recommend watching parts of the
, or even the
. Just find a game you're familiar with from this list, and devote some time to watching a person destroy the game, and delight in the huge spectrum of (unfortunately, predominantly male) nerd culture that exists. 

 

ALSO, Chris' comments about games being "solved" is pretty naive, because while each individual speedrunner is really working towards some platonic ideal (the "tool-assisted run", or TAS, which I think is as close to the "solved" version that Chris describes, wherein someone goes frame by frame through an emulated version of the game to find the fastest possible method of beating the game), they still have to fight a lot of weird randomness (witness, in every speed run, the crowd bemoaning "RNG", the game's random number generator). Yes, spelunky has a random seed, which means that the speedrunner is up against a completely new scenario, but to decry most speedrunning as "solved" is a pretty hasty and  broad judgment.

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Man, whats with all the people here who've never watched the Simpsons? You're missing out on nearly a decade of some of the finest comedy writing out there (and about a decade and a half that you can safely skip).

 

I think the Seinfeld comparison doesn't really work. I tried to watch Seinfeld for the first time a few years back and just couldn't bring myself to because it's so horribly dated. Early Simpsons is practically timeless though.

 

Maybe it's an age thing? I think it's telling that the people that aren't that into it are saying they are 26. That's my brother's age, and while he appreciates the show, it doesn't seem to be that big a deal for him and his friends compared to my friends who are in their early 30s where the show did take on like a second language for all of us. Or maybe it is something else... who knows...

 

I also am with you on Seinfeld reruns, but for a different reason. I never found reruns of Seinfeld that compelling to watch just because the moment I recognized which episode it is I immediately recall all the jokes right away. This is in contrast with the Simpsons where there are so many random jokes that aren't necessarily tied to the main story line that inevitably I forget about some jokes, or catch things I never caught the first time around, etc.

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