PixlBit

Easter eggs? Are you guys a Walgreens? What about favorite video game couples? Well, fine. 

Honestly, I rarely find Easter eggs in games, so the only ones I can think of are ones I know about, like the map hidden in Arkham City the developers had to tell people was there, and the newspaper in The Last of Us that references events from Uncharted 3, or was it vice versa? I love Easter eggs that connect multiple games or universes together. 

Otherwise, I consider the entire game Yakuza 0 one giant Easter egg, basically thanking me for having finally discovered the series. 

Basically, I don't find Easter eggs, so count or don't count whichever of those you want.

My memories of the 1987 Metroid come from playing it on Gamecube after beating Metroid Prime and on the GBA cartridge of Zero Mission. 

Honestly, the game was too labrynthine and challenging in annoying ways (enemies glitching through doors)for me to spend much time with it, but I did at one point "beat" it using the Justin Bailey cheat code. So that's an Easter egg I at least used, even though the only reason I knew about it was reading Electronic Gaming Monthly. 

Stage Select

3. In Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic's final boss battle you can hold L, R, and Y at the same time on a second controller to turn the villain into a Twilek dancer and dance with her to skip the fight.

2. In Jade Empire you meet a British colonialist asshole using a bunch of made up words. When calling him out on one of those words, he will claim that it is "cromulent," a word meaning valid which was made up by The Simpsons. 

1. The first Five Nights at Freddy's has a newspaper that keeps changing, sometimes it will talk about how children were murdered in the pizzeria, other times it will be how the animatronics had blood and mucus around their eyes and had a foul odor, implying that the killer hid the dead bodies inside the animatronics. That made me a fan of FNAF despite not liking the gameplay at all.

Pak Watch

I never got far in the original Metroid. I played it first after unlocking it for beating Zero Mission and after finishing a game as fun and polished as Zero Mission it felt almost unplayable. It's my least favorite in the series, even behind Metroid 2, Hunters, Federation Force, and Other M.

Stage Select:

1. Unlocking Cloud in Final Fantasy Tactics.

2. "ZELDA" in the original Zelda, which allowed you to skip to the Second Quest.

3. A subtle but memorable one, for me at least: In Tales of Symphonia, in the slums of Meltokio, you'll run across a girl selling flowers. My favorite Tales game references my favorite Final Fantasy game.

Pak Watch: Metroid

At the time, it was almost as amazing as The Legend of Zelda on the NES. The huge world, the multiple power-ups that unlocked more of that world, the secret passages, and the hunt for the bosses, Kraid and Ridley, even if Ridley wasn't as impressive as his later incarnations. Kraid, though, was actually much harder on the NES than he was on the SNES or GBA. The music was some of the best on the NES, especially Kraid's Lair, Norfair, and Ridley's Lair. Once I finished Zelda, I went into Metroid whole hog. Unfortunately, compared to Super Mario Bros or The Legend of Zelda, it's probably the least playable of those NES classics today. So many massive improvements were made to Metroid's graphics, sound, game mechanics, and controls on newer hardware, that it feels primitive and clunky by comparison. Super Metroid alone rendered Metroid obsolete, and its GBA remake, Zero Mission, renders the original game somewhat pointless. Still, it was a groundbreaking game and deserves to be recognized as such.

I think the matchmaking may have gotten better in fighting games, because I actually won a few matches in both Tekken 7 and Injustice 2 recently. Then again, my favorite character in Tekken 7 is apparently super cheap (Katarina), so there's that. 

The Last Jedi was a mixed bag for me, because I also thought THAT scene just looked stupid if nothing else. I honestly don't care enough about the lore to care about whether it made sense; it just looked really, really cheesy and bad. Now the use of silence in that one scene later on, that was great. A recent episode of RedLetterMedia basically said what Angelo did about the director trying to subvert expectations more than tell a coherent narrative, and I can agree with that. 

BUT, as a casual fan of the series who thinks the straight good and evil narrative is a bit stale at this point, I think Kylo's "who cares" speech was the most interesting thing in that movie plot-wise outside of the Luke and Rey scenes. I also thought the movie was visually entertaining, if way too slow at times. 

I understand "It was lit, fam" and a decent amount of other social media slang, but it is funny when I teach my Intro to Social Media class and all my students think Facebook is for old people. SnapChat seems to be the big thing for them, along with Twitter. I kinda tend to like hiding things from people, which those platforms are not very friendly to (although I do use all of these, if not only so I know what's up when I teach the class) ... 

Personally, I first noticed how hot Winona Ryder is in Mr. Deeds with Adam Sandler. I remember her shoplifting incident happened close to when that movie came out. I still need to watch season 2 of Stranger Things. 

Yeah, I still use Facebook, but I stopped posting personal things on it almost completely. I keep all my social media stuff confined to geek culture these days, with very few acceptions. Except for tumblr, but that I keep extremely anonymous, because tumblr is a wasteland. A glorious, glorious wasteland. 

Great show guys. Sometimes these Consumption Junction episodes are needed since the interactive segments can take up a lot of the show. 

I am about 1/3 of the way through Nioh. It is very good but can be tough as hell. I'm a Souls veteran and Nioh is probably harder. I still want to go back to it but constant releases make it hard. It started with Horizon, then Zelda, and kept snowballing from there. One day...

Got to say that all the top Easter Egg lists online are very uninspired. Not saying they don't have some good picks but that they were VERY similar. The first 3 I looked at seemed to be 95% the same and even used the same pictures. I knew at least my top 2 but wanted some ideas for my 3rd. I don't recall seeing any of mine on any list which surprised me.

Chrono Crossing: Top 3 Easter Eggs 

3. Alan Wake: Night Springs Episodes 

These were essentially short Twilight Zone episodes hidden throughout each level. I won't spoil them since they are worth a watch. They add up to about 15-20 minutes all together if you want to kill time and are exactly what you'd expect from a Twilight Zone spoof. 

2. Project Gotham Racing 2: Geometry Wars 

It was a toss up between this and Animal Crossings free NES games but PGR2 gets the edge since it seemed to revitalize (create maybe?) the top-down Twin Stick Shooter. Unfortunately these games seemed to have died down but for a while they were everywhere. 

1. Chrono Cross: The Bend of Time

Chrono Cross? I know, surprising isn't it? This Easter Egg was only attainable in New Game+. You find a hidden island that takes you to the Bend of Time which is basically the same as The End of Time location in Chrono Trigger. Here you can battle Ozzie, Flea, and Slash from Trigger.

Bonus: Bringing Sprigg along for this battle can allow her to doppelgang them and make them playable for the rest of the game.

PAK Watch: Metroid 

Very vague memories of Metroid. I recall my dad renting it for me when I was a kid. I couldn't figure it out. It wouldn't be until years later when Prime had original Metroid as an unlockable that I'd finally go through it. It was very rough to go back to since Super Metroid was my first. 

Ah, it's good to have you guys back. Here goes nothin...

Stage Select:

3. The hilarious codec conversations from Metal Gear Solid. Everything from being scolded for smoking during a call, to being pitied for using a mono television during the fight with the helicopter. I stumbled upon a lot of these randomly as a kid and thought they were hilarious. I called Mei Ling so many times she refused to let me save and stuck her tongue out at me. I called Master Miller enough times that he schooled me in the art of controlling my bodily functions to make it through the game's long cut scenes,,, I just loved that part of the game.

2. Fighting Reptile in the original Mortal Kombat. I actually don't remember how you trigger this fight, but I remember doing it by complete accident as a kid and I had never been so scared during a fight up to that point. I thought it would unlock him as a character, (Which is why I was afraid to lose) but it didn't, so beating him meant nothing really. Still a moment I will never forget.

1. Crouching on a white block in Mario 3 until you fell behind the stage. This was seriously the coolest thing ever to me as a kid. I learned it from watching a TV show on the "Family Channel" about video games. I have no clue what that show was called, but I thank them for the tip. It was a personal mission after that to show this to every friend I played this game with who didn't know about it. I was all about the Warp Whistle life.

Pak Watch

I have a confession to make. I have never played the original metroid before. I think the Samus twist at the end is pretty great though! I'm sure that would have blown my mind in those days! ...But I've never played it... Also that twist would have been better if it were Chun Li at the end. I mean Samus is great and all, but she's no Chun Li... Then again who really is?

Episode Comment

Hey, Julian and Angelo are just as entertaining to me without Patrick. Not every episode needs to go off the rails on a crazy train. (Though I enjoy when it does) You're both great. Julian you've definitely gotten way further than I did in Agents of Mayhem, I played it for roughly 2 hours and got so bored I uninstalled it. I was really bummed by how disappointing it was, I thought there would be something there for me to like considering it's lineage, but there just wasn't. It's very very sad to me. I'm looking forward to hearing about Yakuza Zero shenanigans in the next episode or beyond. If I would have ranked my top 5 games, it probably would have been number one. I had so much fun with that game and how over the top it was. (Have you done the phone call minigame? It's a great moment) Really looking forward to Six when it comes out. Keep up the good work!

Totally agree about the show without Patrick. It's not the same when any of the main hosts missing. This show is so great because you all play off each other so well. 

Thanks for the kind words! Historically, when it's just me and Angelo on an episode, it just exists with little to no fanfare, so I get self conscious.

I did the phone call mini game in Yakuza and...wasn't a fan. Found it way too hard to hit the targets, considering how convoluted the controls are. But the way Kiryu answers a phone is amazing, and I wish I had a landline to do that, because I would do it every time.

God I forgot about how hard the targets are to hit. I played that game a while ago when it first came out and my memory of it is just how funny the entire event is. Love that game. Its so delightfully weird.

See, I can hit the targets pretty consistently. I got used to rotating the right stick well enough, but what's currently pissing me off about that minigame is I talked to the other two girls you can get but can't complete the Ayaka storyline because I got her to meet up with me once, but chose the wrong girl. 

Ever since, I've only been getting through to the ones I already had and the one Kiryu doesn't like. I'm thinking it might be a glitch. I swear, if that ends up being the reason I can't 100% ...