PixlBit

Stage Select: My answer is Twisted Metal 2. Because what the world needs now is more games that are just completely ridculous. Why is there a man with his arms and legs trapped in wheels? Why is there a skeleton man driving around on a motorcycle and fully capable of absorbing missile blasts? Is that clown's head really on fire? I don't know, how about shut up about it and blow everything up. Twisted Metal 2 was my favorite from that series and I don't think I'm alone there. I think a decent amount of people would be into this. Also with the tech we have now, fully destructible environments would be pretty sweet in a car combat game. What's the story with this guy granting people wishes? Who cares!? That missile just blew up an entire neighborhood! Will they be mad about the loss of their homes? Probably! But maybe don't think about that too much! It's likely that I have a lot of misplaced nostalgia for this game, but I think we could remake it and really make it special again. The children of today's world deserve to blow things up in a weaponized ice cream truck.

Cage Match: You know where I stand. One of these games has Chun Li in it and one of these games does not. Do you know how many costumes you can buy for Chun Li in Street Fighter V? 15. And that's not counting all the colors. How many costumes can you buy Cassie Cage in Mortal Kombat XL? I don't know, and I don't care enough to google it right now. Oh what? Is this a weird argument? You wanna talk gameplay? Let's talk gameplay. Mortal Kombat XL's fighting is trash. And that's coming from someone who likes the game. The actual fighting just feels wrong. The single player is great, but Netherrealms fighting games usually just devolve into projectile wars. Street Fighter V isn't my favorite Street Fighter by any stretch, but at least you have to time button presses in combos rather than hit all the right buttons as fast as you can and let the combo play automatically. That's bad Netherrealms, and you should feel bad about it being in every game you make! Now, I will concede that Netherrealms can make some story modes. They make excellent single player content, and Street Fighter could learn a thing or two from them... But come on, you gotta make the fighting good in your fighting game!... Also stop spelling everything with K's instead of C's, it was cute for a while but I'm over it. Street Fighter V should win this match, and anyone who says differently doesn't know a fierce punch from a fuzzy guard.

Episode Comment: I'm just glad that Patrick knew what I was talking about on my Earthbound ramblings. Glad I researched it a bit more so I could flesh that out for anyone who didn't know that was a thing. Cage match is way too fun and I see myself turning full heel as I write every comment for it. It's pretty great.

Stage Select: Ya know what, I want a Supergirl game. Yea yea, I know, that's just a Superman game Justin. That's a lame answer. But damn it, I just want a Supergirl game. Supergirl is probably my number 2 all time fictional character crush after Chun Li, and I just want to live in a world where she's more popular than Superman is... But a Wonder Woman game would be pretty sweet too actually. You could deflect all the bullets with the bracelets and Lasso of Truth motherfuckers. Plus you get all the cool Amazon fighting stuff. It would be like Assassin's Creed Odyssey but with superheros and in modern day... Okay I actually want that game. Someone make that.

Cage Match: Okay, I may be the outlyer here, but I think Earthbound wins. Now hear me out., Earthbound had a part where you battled a cult that was obsessed with painting everything blue. You are contacted by a bee sent from the future who sends you on your journey to save the world. And also wombs. Let's talk about em. To defeat the final boss of the game you have to travel back in time to when you can fight the boss in a much weaker state. So the final dungeon is composed of weird flesh colored tubes and then you reach "The Devil's Machine" which is said to look like the female reproductive organs... Yep. Oh and the boss sort of looks like a fetus... Yep. It's unconfirmed whether or not that's what you're actually doing, BUT what is confirmed is that the final boss is based on a childhood trauma the creator had when he stumbled into a movie depicting what he thought to be a rape scene... What did Kingdom Hearts do that was this fucked up? I don't know, probably Donald and Goofy talked nonsensically about hearts and darkness for 20 minutes. Also Earthbound is a turn based RPG and Kingdom Hearts has a boring button mashy battle system. So also that. Earthbound should win this match, but I understand if the referees were all paid off by Disney nostalgia how it would lose. I forgive them.

Episode comment: I just hope people thought it was okay. As I was there saying things on it.

You'll love it then man. I just hated how they handled the wrap up section. If you can handle that then its a cool game. That aspect just really turned me off. Actually glad to hear you're interested as it means I wasn't too harsh on it.

Stage Select: 

So I had more time to think about this than most, and I have to say it wasn't easy... But I think I got somethin.

So I've said for a long time I want somebody to bring back the Mendel Palace game, because I loved that game as a kid. So my idea for this is to make a game called "Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace." Now I know what you're thinking, "Justin, it would just be Mendel Palace," and that's where you're very wrong. You see in Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace you play as the character Legally Distinct Chun Li, (That is the full name of the character) And she looks a lot like Chun Li but just different enough to not be sued by Capcom. What's the story you ask? I don't know yet, but there'll be a lot going on... At least that's what I'll tell the people kickstarting it, because I need money. For five hundred dollars we'll render a room to look like your cat or whatever. There will be zero fucks given on the dev team of Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace.

Now Mendel Palace was a game where you flipped tiles and knocked enemies into walls to kill them. Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace will do something similar, but instead of tiles, you'll pull rugs out from under enemies. Every stage is just a room with a bunch of rugs (Which the story may or may not explain) and you have to pull the rugs that the enemies are on. Some enemies will be tricky because they jump and such, so you gotta have good timing when you pull those rugs. And then when you pull a rug, there will be another rug under it you can pull. Some rugs will be magic and do cool things that I havent fully thought out yet when you pull them. Also there will definitely be a coop mode so your friend can play as pink Legally Distinct Chun Li, and you can pull all the rugs together. Your friend may complain about having to be pink Legally Distinct Chun Li, but just tell them to shut up about it, and if they want more colors they should pay us like 500 dollars on kickstarter and send us a picture of their cat. Then they'll have more colors and a level based on their cat in the game. Everyone wins!... Probably.

Now how do we get people to play this? I don't know man. We'll get like the Bakugan license or something. They're not doing anything and I assume it's a cheap tie in to get. Why wouldn't they want to be a part of Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace? Then the kids can play as... whatever a Bakugan is. All I know is Bakugan Brawl, standing tall, they're the awesome ones and that sounds like a perfect tie in for Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace, because it's a game about standing and not falling on the rugs... So yea. It works.

Episode comment: I just hope people liked it okay. I had a good time rambling about my favorite games of the year. My list was super weird compared to a lot of other people's I;ve heard, but hey, I'm a weird guy. So it fits. Sorry if my stage select was long. Look forward to hearing other people's ideas because this is a cool stage select!

Just wanna say. hey, I'm just glad people think I'm doing an okay job when I'm on the show. This seriously made my day when I read it... Like you have no idea. I'm really just happy to be there. So... thank you guys a whole bunch.

Hahahahaha! ...Yea I caught that too.

This came out real good! I miss Angelo's music talks a lot, but it was good to hear from him. Hope people liked this! I know theres already a few things I need in my life from it. (What was that last track Angelo played from a Japanese Vania? That track is fire)

State of the Generation

It seems we keep having some really good years for video games as of late, and I'm not sure if I see that slowing down. Which is great... for the most part. See I'm sort of wondering with all these great games if there's room for small, underdog B tier games anymore. There's so much good now, that if your game isn't at least a 9/10 it's possible nobody will ever play it. And that's kind of sad to me, as a lot of those "lesser" games have some really fun ideas in them. But why sink your money into those when you have 80 plus hours still to play on the new hotness. It seems a lot of games now want themselves to be the only game you play.

Also this year, brought about a lot of talk about unionization in the gaming industry. With the shut down of Telltale and Rockstar's "100 hour work week" mishap, I've heard a lot of different angles on it. I'm pro unionization in gaming myself, and from personal experience I can tell you it won't fix everything, but it would definitely help move things in the right direction. But that's my personal opinion, curious as to what you guys think. (Feel free to skip that if you don't feel like going here. I wouldn't blame you)

I think this generation still has another good year or two before we actually get the next gen in our hands. I think Xbox is doing a lot of things right at the moment, and Sony has been in a weird bubble. Sony has great exclusives, but I think some of their business decisions have been odd. Suddenly they're censoring their store, and they're one of the few holdouts on crossplay at the moment. I suppose you can do that when you're ahead in sales. Not sure if I should be worried or excited that they're skipping E3 this year. And Nintendo is Nintendo still. I think the Switch didn't have a particularly great year, but I'm sure it's fine. My Switch has been mainly an indie handheld device so far, but a lot of those indies don't play particulatly great on the Switch. Also Smash Bros. does nothing for me. I keep trying it and I can still confirm, I hate Smash Bros. But other people like it so... what the hell do I know?

...Also what's the deal with game streaming? Does anyone else think that's going to be a really big deal once the tech gets there?

Episode comment

Sorry for taking so long to get back to this. Kind of slipped my mind there for a bit. I echo you Julian on Spiderman. I enjoyed that game a lot but I didn't think it was amazing. Had a few issues with the combat personally (like the dodge not meaning shit against the brute enemies was infuriating) and I just felt the game did a lot of by the numbers open world stuff. Its good, it just didnt blow me away. Also fuck those stealth missions.

I think Pokemon was actually the reason I stopped collectathons in any game. Once I see I need however many of a thing, just to say I did a thing I'm out now. I've missed many a platinum trophy for this reason and I sleep like a baby at night.

That's all I got. Keep up the good work guys!

Stage Select: I admit to not being much of an achievement hunter when it comes to games, but I do have some things that come to mind here...

3. That time I beat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game when I was like... five years old. Yea sure, maybe I went to a theatre during their grand opening and they were giving out free arcade games to people, and sure maybe I was the weakest link among all the teenage kids who I was teaming up with at the time, but damn it I beat that game and nobody else I knew had. I remember going to friends houses and describing the end levels to them when we would die on the third stage. Did that make me an asshole? Possibly. But I thought I was pretty cool.

2. I caught all 151 of the original Pokemon before it was a cool thing to do. I got Pokemon Blue and Red, a link cable and a brand new Gameboy Color for my birthday one year, and proceeded to play both games until I had caught them all. This was a little before Pokemon really blew up in the states, which basically made me a video game hipster at the time. And yes I realize I said 151 pokemon, I eventually convinced somebody to buy me a Gameshark so that I could have Mew as well. After that, I hung up my Pokemon hat for good, because it got too cool. And as the video game hipster that I was, I was not about that life anymore.

1. So I talked a bit on the show about how I think the new WWE games are bad, and they are, but I'm part of the problem and I still buy them every year. Mainly because I love the Create a Character stuff on those games. Years ago I started uploading some of the things I had put together out of boredom and people randomly downloaded some of them. I even started to develope kind of a cult fanbase for some of my stuff. Turns out I'm really good at making female wrestlers... Crazy right? I mean who'd have thunk a guy who idolizes Chun Li could understand some of the finer points of women's wrestling fashion? Last year I had over 25,000 people download one of my creations and that was pretty wild. There's a Youtube video of a Youtube man asking his audience who my made up wrestler is because he's never heard of them on the indy scene. So if anyone asks, Roxanne Rolston definitely came to your town and put on a great match okay?

Episode Comment: I enjoyed listening to this back a whole lot. Hope other people dig it as well. Hope to do it again!... Sorry I don't have more than that as I was there. Also I'm glad I was on the episode with the Queen music... Because Queen is good.

Oh! And I knew there was science behind the voice thing! I just only remember half of the facts a lot of times.