Idle Thumbs 195: Business Guys On Planes

[Jake]

Idle Thumbs 195:

Business Guys On Planes

Jake goes back in time with Grim Fandango Remastered, Nick makes sure the trains run on time in Mini Metro, Danielle moves time forward in controlled and user-selected increments in Majora's Mask 3D, and Chris talks about a dead guy coming to life, limbs flailing, cursing at everyone. On a plane, a big guy in a suit plays some free to play game, and is satisfied with his choice.

Games Discussed: Mini Metro, Mini Metro 2033, Infinifactory, Game of War: Fire Age, Grim Fandango Remastered, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D, Tyrian 2000, Super Mario Bros. (film)

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[GraysonEvans]

I enjoy this

[Hermie]

I assume that Chris was reading about the British royal family for the same reason I did; Falling into a Wikipedia hole after reading how the Queen was a army driver in this cool excerpt about King Abdullah:

[Roswell47]

Chris ending the podcast with his little "bodoo boo!" diddle made me think of Nardwuar and how he always ends his interviews with "doot doola doot doo... doot doo!" makes me really want someone to be the Nardwuar equivalent for video games.

[Cordeos]

On games aging better or worse than movies. I feel like it really depends on if a more modern game has improved on older ones. It was really hard to go back and play Morrowind after playing Skyrim because the UI has improved so much. On the other hand I will play Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun over Command and Conquer 3, because I feel that Tiberian Sun was the better game. (Might be related to less innovation in UI happening in the RTS space). My favorite fighting games are still Bushido Blade and One Must Fall, despite those games being old. Modern fighters just don't scratch the same itch.

Improvements in playability is probably the major reason some games do not age well. Modern games have really improved on menus and controls. We were just used to bad UI in the old days, but going back now can be hard. Although old films can have bad acting, bad cinematography and hokey stories so maybe i'm wrong on that.  

Just like today tons of bad movies that will be mostly forgotten were produced in the early age of cinema. I remember my local PBS station used to show random old movies and TV shows, usually ones that were easy to license and as a result a lot of them were horrible. I specifically remember a film that revolved around a father who was complaining about the costs of his daughters wedding. He was upset because catering was ten dollars a person, which seems pretty reasonable now. These are the movies that will be forgotten.

 

Games are becoming the same way, there are a lot of throw away games from even the early days that are not worth going back for except on a nostalgia kick. Games that had bad controls or horrible stories don't need to be played by younger gamers and probably wont be. However games like Half Life 1 was well designed enough and had an excellent story that I feel it will stand the test of time.

 

Sorry this post is so messy, but I am supposed to be working will probably edit and post more thoughts later.

 

Also the Crusader Kings 2 thing. I have often married my heir to someone in the line of succession to another throne, then assassinated multiple other heirs so my grandchild will get both my kingdom and theirs. 

[matthew]

I hope there's a sick 200th episode special with steve gaynor to make up for the travesty that was episode 150. the name of the episode can be Episode 200: Episode 150

 

EDIT: I don't really play GTA, but those guys love putting urban legends into their cities: http://gta-myths.wikia.com/wiki/GTA_Myths_Wiki

[kickinthehead]

I just had a crazy thought. What if DAISY is actually "Warupeach"?

 

Using the Mario/Wario formula of turning the letter upside down, a "p" would become a lowercase "d."

 

The other thought I had was that in Super Mario Land, the first several times you reach the end of the world you meet Daisy and she turns out to be a fly or other enemy. What if they were ALL the "real" Daisy and that it's only at the end of the game that she decides to stay in human form when in reality she's a shapeshifter. 

[Chajusong]

Gamespot ran this article back in November:

Nintendo Reveals the Toad Gender Secret.

 

 

During an interview last week discussing upcoming puzzle platformer Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, producer Koichi Hayashida offered some illumination on differentiating between male and female Toads. Toadette is the most visible female Toad, so would that make her akin to Smurfette in being the only prominant female of her kind? There are other female Toads, as seen in the Super Mario Super Showcartoon and games like Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

 

As it were, Nintendo never really settled on a specific gender for the Toads, according to Hayashida. Toads are a genderless race that take on gendered characteristics. He also clarified that Toad and Toadette are not romantically involved.

“This is maybe a little bit of a strange story, but we never really went out of our way to decide on the sex of these characters, even though they have somewhat gendered appearances,” Hayashida said. “But I think what I can say is that Toadette and Toad are not siblings -- perhaps it would be more accurate to say they are adventure pals. And that’s certainly true here [in Captain Toad].”

 

So there, I guess. The Toad Gender Secret Revealed.

[Ravenlock]

Having listened to all existing Idle Thumbs episodes, I believe this to be the best episode intro done yet. Bravo. Wonderful. The transition to the theme song was exquisite.

 

I'll actually listen to the episode now. Just had to get that out.

[Salacious Snake]

Improvements in playability is probably the major reason some games do not age well. Modern games have really improved on menus and controls. We were just used to bad UI in the old days, but going back now can be hard. 

 

The controls issue is a big one, I think. Like, it's particularly hard to go back to the awkward early days of polygonal 3D stuff, where people were still figuring out how to have sensible navigation through a 3D space. I was way into games during that period, so I can generally handle it, but handing a 3DO controller to someone who grew up with Halo would probably make for some rough going.

 

That's not to say that I think the current conventions should always be used, but a baseline has been found that works, and there's a certain language that we all understand.

[Patrick R]

I think games and films probably age the same, which is to say the amount they age is predominantly founded in your own literacy. I just think, because film and video games operate in different cultural spaces, there is more social pressure to be the kind of person who can appreciate the Godfather than there is to be the kind of person who can appreciate Doom.

[juv3nal]

re tyrian, it was pretty awesome for a top down shmup. It had a ton of secrets including streetfighter-like special move entry to do things like repel enemy fire.

[tegan]

Which old video game would you guys say was so influential on the making of games that it remains relevant to this day?

 

 

The Citizen Kane of games, if you will.

[Bjorn]

Is Citizen Kane in the public domain? Can we just make Citizen Kane: The Game? It can have a sledding minigame, a newspaper management Sim, etc.

[Badfinger]

I think I agreed with Chris that games age more poorly than movies, up until about movies from 1995 or so, and then I agree with Jake. The introduction of CG was really amazing and innovative for the people who were awesome and subtle with it, and also make movies look like they're 50 years old when it was done poorly, which was often. Some of that hideous CG might as well have just been Curse of The Island of Scary Spiders from 1954 where each spider leg was just a dude holding a furry stick. Plus it enabled guys like (unfortunately) George Lucas, who had the most amazing technical production resources in the world at his disposal, to just have people playact in front of a blue screen. Actually, I think I would say CG had a similar effect on movies that polygonal 3d did to games. There were so many game designers pulling off amazing things with 2D who suddenly had to learn how to get with the times and use the new tools. The new tools are better in a lot of ways to the old ones to do the things you want, but it's a fundamental step back while you learn how that happens. In the meantime, 1997-2004 CG in movies.

 

 

Regarding the first time you thought critically about a video game, I'm not sure I have That Game. I know I liked Civ better than Civ II. I know I thought Master of Magic was better than Master of Orion for gameplay reasons (it certainly wasn't for technical ones. We had to load the game into himem.sys and never had enough memory to run the sound). X-Wing and TIE Fighter were much better than Rebel Assault, but I felt like I'd been duped into that purchase rather than thinking critically about the differences. Maybe it was TIE Fighter? I could compare that directly to X-Wing.

[Henroid]

Is Citizen Kane in the public domain? Can we just make Citizen Kane: The Game? It can have a sledding minigame, a newspaper management Sim, etc.

Maybe I'm more tired from work than I thought, because I totally had a freakout moment when I misread that as,

 

"The Citizen Kane of public domain" aaaaaaaaa

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm always of the feeling that games don't really have to age, that if someone is willing what was appealing to the generation first played it should still appeal to later generations. Oftentimes control schemes just aren't that bad unless it's like old flight sims or something. Console games are easy and simple, old PC games usually required more work to get them to run than to actually pay.

 

I suppose as Jake said, there is something to be said about a distinct art style though that will keep later eras interested because often time people making use of new technology to create better graphics meant they were going to make a mess and the game might be an eyesore until the next sequel. I think that's why it's easy to widely rerelease Another World for the 8th time.

 

However, I've always felt like that mid 90s era of shitty simplistic 3D graphics ages terribly. I kind of see it as a dark spot of games no one who was not an original fan ever checks out unless they really have to. I'm mostly thinking about large chunky polys displayed at 320x240 from the N64, PSX, and Saturn. At least sometimes if you were lucky you would get a PC port and the game could run at a full 640x480, but geez.

[N1njaSquirrel]

when nick talks about the GTA Ghost, I think it's about Jolene Cranley-Evans.

 

The more commonly known rumor is the presence of a Big foot in San Andreas, something that is mentioned in GTA V

[SecretAsianMan]

When I heard Jake say "FUCK YOU" at the end of the podcast, I was really hoping that they implemented an idea that was previously brought up where one in every 10000 or so downloads would secretly redirect to an alternate version of the podcast and that I was the one guy who got the FUCK YOU ending.  Unless that actually happened in which case this is the best podcast of all time.

[BigJKO]

When I heard Jake say "FUCK YOU" at the end of the podcast, I was really hoping that they implemented an idea that was previously brought up where one in every 10000 or so downloads would secretly redirect to an alternate version of the podcast and that I was the one guy who got the FUCK YOU ending.  Unless that actually happened in which case this is the best podcast of all time.

 

What are you talking about? Jake didn't say "FUCK YOU" at the end of the podcast.

[feelthedarkness]

During the Mini Metro talk I just kept thinking about what a good bad idea it would be to reskin it as Mussolini's Pride 

[SecretAsianMan]

What are you talking about? Jake didn't say "FUCK YOU" at the end of the podcast.

 

Best podcast of all time confirmed

[Inferno313]

Great podcast! You guys have sold me on getting Grim Fandango Remastered, I missed the hey-day of PC adventure games (both due to being too young, and being primarily a Nintendo kid.) so it's going to be totally new for me. Danielle's comments about Majora's Mask have me so excited for that game too. I'm a huge Zelda fan but somehow Majora is one of the like 4 games in the series I've never finished. I'm really amped to cross that one off the list, since Wind Waker is my favorite Zelda and I generally find Zelda fans are either way into MM and WW or way into OOT and TP.

[Salacious Snake]

During the Mini Metro talk I just kept thinking about what a good bad idea it would be to reskin it as Mussolini's Pride 

 

You can say a lot of things about Waluigi, but he made the Wreck Train run on time.

[Zeusthecat]

The reason Nintendo hasn't made a Waluigi game is because it would have to be 'M' rated since he is a serial killer. Just look at those evil eyes.

 

      :waluigi:

 

If those aren't the eyes of a murdering psychopath then I'm not a cat.

 

Also, I think movies that heavily involve technology typically age just as bad as games. See The Net with Sandra Bullock. The only good part about that movie now is that rad Mozart's ghost stuff.