PixlBit

Wow, that editing and voice work on the last podcast!  Great job!

Stage Select:
1. How are you doing?
Ignoring all the obvious like COVID, Long COVID, and the environment disintegrating... pretty okay!  I've been speedrunning a season of one of the chillest games ever this month (I mentioned it in the relaxing Stage Select), not because I'm good at it, but because I think it's funny to speedrun a chill game.  This last year I've beat every Final Fantasy from I to VII, most which I never played (which included VII believe it or not!).  Did you know Final Fantasy VII is actually okay?  At *least*?  Recently, I played this fun little obscure Japanese indie JRPG heavily based on NES Final Fantasy/Dragon Warrior and had a really good time with it, it's called Artifact Adventure.  In a couple weeks I'm going to start a late gardening project and I've been getting out of my comfort zone and reading some computer science-y things to exercise the ol' noggin.  So, pretty okay!

2. What are some YouTube recommendations?
It's pretty bawdy but I have a lot of fun with Internet Comment Etiquette with Erik.  I saw the weirdest boxing match recently that I thought was great so I'm posting that here too (just don't read the title because it spoils the result), Dad's Full Fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGzoeG7Fps8

3. In a fight to the death with someone your size and build you have the choice of a 6 inch knife or an aluminum bat. Which weapon do you choose, knowing that the one you don’t pick goes to your opponent?
Like, Streets of Rage style?  Or maybe equip a Casey Bat and SMAAAASH!!

4. What do you smell like (or think you smell like)?
Moon swamps and old Egyptian bandages.  Bee's feet.  Calliope steam.  Electricity.  Axe body spray™.

5. We’re going to McDonald’s; what do ya want?
A Happy Meal depending on the toy or whatever the latest promotional item is depending on what that is, extra large fries even though they'll never be great again, and a large chocolate shake or Sprite.  Make sure to ask if they have the McRib but only if they absolutely don't.

6. What’s YOUR idea for a Stage Select?
If every Stage Select got into the Cage and fought, which would win?  It's a new idea, but I'm thinking there could be a tournament of sorts that lasts months and months.

7. What video game fan fiction would you write (if you did)?
Apparently I write video game podcast fan fiction.

Video Game Cage Match:
Everyone that voted for Chrono Cross has committed an unnecessary and unprovoked personal attack.  No that doesn't have to make sense.  Shame on you!  Quest 64 wins and may God have mercy on our souls.

VIDEO GAME CAGE MATCH CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT MATCH: Here you go: https://doomgoon.itch.io/nwp

Just a last minute entry as I'm nodding off!

Opening match: Can we be sure that Super Mario isn't a character in Chrono Cross?  Can we really be sure?  Chrono Cross wins.

Closing match: Say it with me: "SUPER BOOTSPORK."  Chex Quest wins.

I've heartily kept up with the NWPs but just feeling a bit sluggish and uncreative lately.  You're right in that it takes awhile to get back into things after a break!

Oh, I did also want to mention I was very interesting in the Stranger of Paradise discussion particularly!  I find its poor release really fascinating.  As someone familiar with Nioh but not particularly good at it, I found the demo very, very different from Nioh.  I can't believe somebody would play say the White Mage class and then say the Thief class and then just go, "Meh, it's just Nioh."  It's wild!  I was blown away by it really.

Opening Match:
Imagine, it's the year 2122.  Nature is all but gone, but paradoxically it is worse when it's directly, unavoidably in front of you.  Your existence is existent.  You understand the complexities of survival and nobody will look you in the eyes anymore.  After years of dubious quality, you find a dwelling, long ago a luxurious one but now hardly a windbreak.  Inside, there is a whistling gray machine with a holo-emitter still attached to it.  Your reward?  "It is me, Mario," says Chris Pratt.  It flickers, and sputters out.

Imagine, it's the year 2222.  The atmosphere is all but gone.  Existence is existence.  Once, people dreamed of owning a full environmental suit.  Now the idea astonishes precisely no one.  A bubble, a wall, containing movement and greenery for a brief hopeful moment in time, lets loose a shrill, cascading whistle.  The ambient energy display is slightly off, as it has been hacked time immemorial to display blocks instead of helpless information.  There is no other directed movement.  Tetris wins.

Closing Match:
My reasoning here is simple.  Mario Golf only just *might* be the best Mario Golf thing, but Chex Quest is *definitely* the best Chex thing.  Well, outside of like Muddy Buddies or something.  But until Muddy Buddies gets into the ring, its gotta be Chex Quest.  Also, Golf may have six irons but it doesn't have six-shooters, so: gun.  And let me stop you there, since this is a Nerd podcast I'll give you a Nerd answer.  Yes, Zorchers aren't guns, but the official comic specifically states that the weapons used against the Flemoids are *modified* Zorchers tuned to a transporter phase frequency which implies that Zorchers are energy weapons used to combat other threats.  I wouldn't want to take a modified Zorch Propulsor hit to the chest, let me tell you.  And don't get me started on the Super Bootspork.  Now, I'll reposition my glasses, adjust my pocket protector, and be on my way.

Rygar PS2 I remember being super decent.  Actually, I went back and played the NES one not too long ago and was surprised how interesting that one was.  If it was just a little newer I think it'd be more of a cult hit.  Wonder why they never made a sequel to either of those?

Tony Hawk was good until Project 8 which introduced a really bad SKATE-influenced board catching maneuver and multi million point challenges in the first level, Proving Ground despite the bad name was also really good.  THUG was good but THUG2 was like the best, I think that's the one with the still insane modding community.  Weirdly neither of those are as bad as the later Wii/DS ones but then again SKATE had Skate It for the Wii/DS which were abysmal too.  I guess everything was cursed around that time!

The Warriors was great.  The movie has... issues but it's still fun.  I'll never forgive Rockstar for bailing on both the spiritual sequel to this (We Are The Mods) or the Bully ones.  Rockstar really doesn't do anything for me anymore and I hate that they continue to fail upwards (mostly in reference to their recent ports).

Honestly, not a ton I'd played this time but at least I didn't get stomach flu again right after!  (fingers crossed).  Thanks for The List!

STAGE SELECT:
I thought I originally heard this question as, "What's a thing in video games that relaxes you," so I'll answer that first: snow and water.  I could spend hours messing around with snow and water physics.  I even follow a couple shader programmers on Twitter that often do water programming tricks for indie games and the like.  Especially snow, water is great and all but sometimes how poorly it is done just irritates me to no end.  But snow?  Even a simple repeating pattern is all it takes to make me think of cocoa and candy canes.  Oh, and I have fond memories of loading up the old ZNES emulator and switching the snow option on in the GUI and just letting it go in the background.  I still do it occasionally.  And oddly I'm not the only, there's been at least 2 modern ports of it!  Somebody even recently took the whole GUI and adapted it to a different, actually updated emulator.  Not just for the snow of course, but I bet it helped.

Now, "What video games relax me"?  I'm a big fan of Picross and other logic games, just great games that get you into a good focused zen state.  Everyone has heard of Picross, but my favorite two are little indie games that I'll recommend: Hexcells and Tametsi.  Just chill little games where you're trying to color in cells using logic.  Sure they're occasionally brutally difficult, but they are pretty and the stakes are nonexistent, so who really cares?  Oh, one other game: Lonely Mountains: Downhill.  It's one of those simple low skill floor, high skill ceiling types of games but really it's just about coasting down a low poly, kinda paperish mountain on bikes while birds chirp and the breeze blows.  Unless you're doing the Daily Challenge (and, often, even then) it's all just a fun ride.

VIDEO GAME CAGE MATCH:
You know, I don't like the matchup between Alucard and Samus themselves, I just don't think there's much there.  So I ask the simple question, what does Super Metroid and Castlevania have in common?  Is the answer, "Metroidvania"?  Wrong, I hate you and I pity you.  The answer is "bats", of course.  They both have a great bat game going on.  Everyone hates Skrees, the bat-like alien that kamikazes itself and showers you in shrapnel.  And Castlevania is... well, it's all bats.  But here's the problem: Samus hates bats, but Alucard is bats.  I admit, not the choice of my gut, but Symphony of the Night is the choice of the reasoned scientific method.  Bats.

Argh, I got a good Stage Select but as we all know bookies don't make bets, we just take bets.  Doing so would be gross negligence of booky law.  Even video game booky law which is, oh boy, really scraping the bottom of the ethics barrel here.  I mean, I saw a baby Pichu get hit with an elbow once and just drop.  Didn't move.  Nobody cared.  Hell, a couple people cheered.  Oh well!  What can you do?

STAGE SELECT:
I asked my sibling this Stage Select question to spitball some ideas and without a pause they said, "Zelda, because if you need money you just whack a bush or something," and I just don't think I'm going to be able to top that.

VIDEO GAME CAGE MATCH:
Dragon Quest XI.  Sylvando.  Next question.

I didn't go anywhere, shut up.  Seriously though it was mostly just actually doing things for Halloween and my podcast reader breaking.  Oops!

STAGE SELECT:
I love a good, mushy L3 or "stick click" button.  The more unsure if you pressed it the better.  Does it perform an important function?  Probably!  Did you actually press it?  Who knows!  Did you press it accidentally?  All the freaking time.

Just kidding, Halloween is over, so no more horror.  Here's my list:

#4: I like a good backdash.  Whether it's Mega Man, Castlevania, or any number of fighting games, nothing is funnier than a quick, "Yoink!  Ya missed me!"  And moonwalking, that's great too.

#3: Kirby's "Suppin Beam".  What the heck is that?  It's one name of many for the ability Kirby has to turn his power into a Helper, and it also looks pretty funny when you do it as a little taunt.  On top of that, in games where you can get a star from it, it's actually useful sometimes to do so you can stack inhalable objects together to increase the damage of a star bullet.

#2: I was thinking about old Stage Selects recently and remembered about Secret of Evermore, which has 2 really solid actions.  I'm mentioned that there's a button almost solely for having the dog sniff out alchemy ingredients, but it's also good to pin your dog to a certain spot if you need him there.  The dash in Secret of Evermore is very good too, not the least because it has a very satisfyingly stylized look to it.

#1:  Mario?  Mario.  Mario!  Mario.  Mar-i-o?  MARIOOOO!

CAGE MATCH:
Is your name Turok 1?  Is your name Joshua Fireseed?  No?  Then go hop on a triceratops with cannons mounted to its back and get outta here!  Turok 1 is pretty great in a Quake-kinda way, no modifiers here.  Turok 2 has problems (most due to the limited ammo and save system, especially on anything harder than Normal) but I enjoyed my time with the remake and the original's multiplayer was heavily praised.  I've never played the rest but they are anywhere from "eh" to "horrible Halo copy, seriously, why did every FPS during that time have to be a horrible Halo copy".  So in my mind Turok Evolution is well passed the expiration date of the Turok franchise, and maybe even a part of why it died.

Serious Sam, the original, on the other hand?  Scrappy as hell.  A weird late 90s Croatian success story.  Also, it was apparently pretty poor but, hey, they just released one a new one last year!  And the first one or the second one are like the best in that series.  They just somewhat recently patched them, in 2021, to add rocket jumps if I'm remembering right.  So when you're comparing a game so successful it had serious progeny, to an aging dinosaur?  I gotta go with Sam.  Plus I think it's canon that dinosaurs hate explosions or something.

STAGE SELECT:
1.) Any gaming plans for Halloween? Any non-gaming plans? I always do a thing every year and I have already fully completed Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, one of the few Castlevania games I've never played.

2.) Did you ever have any weird traditions or rituals that you'd do in a video game? Maybe you had to beat a game using a certain character or beat a level in a certain way. I have a couple I can think of, my family would often select 2-Player and kill off the first player so we could play as the rarer palette. Luigi is a good example of this of course, but Donkey Kong Country also had a weird team versus mode where the second team wore a yellow tie and hat instead of red ones. The little pips on the map would change to yellow after beating a stage too if I'm remembering correctly.

Here's a couple from Mario 1 I remember doing a lot for no reason: when you climb a beanstalk you can rejump on it and do a kinda little "Mario dance" at the top, or there's that famous sliding glitch where the running animation messes up for a few seconds if you press the jump and fire button when you come out of a pipe at just the right time. Dumb stuff like that you take time out to do.

3.) A yellow chocobo is leaving Crescent going 96 kilometers per hour going in a northwesterly direction. Meanwhile, a black chocobo is leaving Lix going 64 kilometers per hour going in a southeasterly direction. If there are 828 kilometers between them, and 2/3rds of the way in the yellow chocobo hits sand and goes 1/3rd of the speed of the black chocobo, what do you think is your most impressive gaming accomplishment?

I don't know what mine is but there were a couple I had to basically learn speedrunner tricks. The one I mentioned here awhile back was going straight directly to the end of the game in Breath of the Wild on Master Mode and beating it. I'm not really very good at video games but it's amazing sometimes what you can accomplish with stubbornness.

VIDEO GAME CAGE MATCH:
Imagine, it's the year 2011. You own a PC and unbeknownst to you a game is going to come out that will ruin your life. Your existence becomes a fantasy action RPG nightmare. You have dreams of glory wearing a full set of Daedric armor. You swear you understand the complexities of CHIM and nobody will look you in the eyes anymore. Alone, you've pickpocketed a whole dinner party's worth of possessions using nothing but time and a bucket to the astonishment of no one but a passing Khajiit. After roleplaying characters of dubious quality and source, and years of your life gone to a gray whistling Dell computer or whatever, you finally put the game away for good. Your reward? A Skyrim release again, and again, and again, and again. But it's still not as many rereleases as Tetris. Tetris wins.

Not sure how I missed last week's!  I had a couple wacko sci-fi and early dystopian books I wanted to try and spin too.  And I never heard of those other games which is pretty fun!

STAGE SELECT: While he's not a playable character I always liked when Johnny pops up in Chrono Trigger.  Your party goes into a battle stance and the battle music starts playing, and then this robot that's so disruptively cool his underlings just swoon over him breaks it up (and then you get a minigame why not).  They call him the MAN! but you lowlifes can call him Johnny.

I also like any Playable Character that shows up in like mid-battle or just kinda out of nowhere so I gotta mention Earthbound.  Jeff pops up when you're literally stuck, introduces a themed level that's far away from what you've seen before mostly, and slams a UFO through a wall to save you.  Poo is pretty similar with his Teleport command and the funky but short Dalaam area which you get after eating Magic Cake, but I kinda think he's even cooler because he has to destroy his ego with Mu training which is just a really bizarre scene of that game (which is saying something!).

VIDEO GAME CAGE MATCH: I ran the numbers and the odds are closer than you'd think for the average man, but, I mean, come on.  You ever read an old comic like Tin Tin or Popeye or whatever?  And the assassin is trying to shoot them with a poison dart and through an absurd but slightly familiar setup the dart they shoot when Popeye is picking up a lost can of spinach off the ground or whatever the hell Belgian vegetable Tin Tin needs to eat and anyway they are bent over at the right time so it goes overhead and the dark ricochets like 50 times and hits the assassin directly in the ass?  That's this cage match, just a poison dart in the ass.  There's just no causal rationality.  It's some edgelord or -lady mean mugging against everyone's favorite mascot.  Like Mario is holding their forehead at arms length while the assassin is swinging at the air and getting madder and throwing more and more tantrums because that's their only super power in their own video games.  They are like the Washington Generals but it's not just the Harlam Globetrotters but a Harlam Globetrotters made out of like Mickey Mouse and pure video game joy?  What is even happening?