PixlBit

Glad you released this one. I was working midnight's and was very happy to have NWP pass the time. Though all the Chrono Cross bashing almost killed me on the inside. I think cutting more than half of Cross' character cast is pretty reasonable. There were 40+ in that game. I would love 20 amazing flashed out characters. 

I was surprised this episode was so long considering it was cut short but I'm glad it was. I'll be back later with Stage Select.

Hey, I like Chrono Cross. I can't help Patrick's feelings. 

The funny thing is that my favorite Final Fantasy games are the ones with the largest casts: IV has around 16 characters and VI has 14. But something about the cast of Chrono Cross felt...rushed to me. Like, everyone could be boiled down to a gimmick, and few of them felt very developed. So I think 10-12 characters would be the sweet spot for me in another game.

Glad we were able to keep you company on your night shift, even if we probably made your ears bleed a little.

I definitely cant go to bat for all those characters (looking at you Korcha) but I liked having lots of options. I definitely agree that they seemed to just make some archetype and call it a day. That's why I'd love some amazing characters. Imagine an RPG with your top 20 favorite characters. It'd be amazing. 

Anyways, the podcast was perfectly fine. Audio issues are rarely an issue for me unless the volume is too low since I work in a loud industrial setting. 

What ... in the hell ... is that box art? The screens look like an actual game, the text makes it sound like some kind of economic program, and the imagery looks like the natural progression from one of those inappropriate Atari games. 
What am I looking at?

It’s a promo for an arcade game that would be seen by vendors and arcade owners. That’s why the text is so dry. 

That makes a lot more sense. I thought it was NES box art. lol Can you blame me? We've all seen certain NES box art ... 

Stage Select: As a coward, this is super hard for me since I do not play horror games, but here goes nothin...

3. The Salem Museum of Witchcraft in Fallout 4. Yea I probably should have known to just avoid this place, but I figured, "Hell everything else in this game is a little creepy, what could they possibly do here?" Turns out they can do some things. You're walking through and there's a lot of... not great stuff happening, because there's a deathclaw living there, and it's pretty nonplused about anything that gets close to it's nest. It's all dragging corpses around and it's just not a life I was about nor will I ever be about.

2. Creepy dentist man in Bioshock. So I once decided it would be a cool idea to show a girl I was dating how videogames could tell interesting stories, and I picked Bioshock having never played it. So... There's a part in the game where you go into this dentistry place, and this fog fills the room. Then once the fog clears, a corpse appears in the chair... Alright, that's odd, but whatever, might as well check around and get some stuff in here... And then at some point... You turn around and this dude... He's right in your face. He doesn't attack you... He just watches you... It was not okay, nor will it ever be okay to do that and so I shot him many times. I'm not sure if Bioshock's story really impressed that girl I was dating, but she definitely witnessed me being a huge coward in that moment, so... Yay?

1. Batman Arkham Knight. The part where you're all being the Batman, and you're grappling onto rooftops and looking all cool and suddenly the Joker appears in front of you and does his whole creepy laugh thing... Yea fuck this part. This was the EXACT moment in the game where I turned it off and never played it again. Youtube was good enough for me. Needless to say, if there is ever a situation where the world needs me to be Batman, we're all fucked because I'm not dealing with it. I don't ever forsee this happening, but just in case it ever does, don't say I didn't warn you.

My episode comment: Quick reply to a previous thing, I actually did buy a Blue Yeti mic. My sister and I both have them. I bought hers for christmas, because Amazon had a sale on them during a black friday thing and I just said, why not? They work great for pretty much everything I need. Still working on getting levels right and what not, but I'm gettin there. It's a whole trial and error thing.

I forgot about how great some of the old Bushido Blade levels were! It's been so long since I've played those games, glad Jesse mentioned that! Also as a person who went back and listened to all the old episodes, audio didn't bother me. Shit happens. Glad you put this out there though. Wish I would have gotten to hear the Suikoden talk, because it's one of my favorite RPG series of all time. I remember actively avoiding using Konami games because... Well it's Konami. Anyways, good episode all things considered, keep up the good work!

Wait...when did you actively avoid Konami games? Because up until the tail end of last gen they were still one of the best studios in the biz. If we're talking historically, it's Capcom>Konami>Square>Nintendo for me. Nintendo is only that low because I don't revisit their games as much.

I wasn't necessarily saying they crossover the gaming styles for BaG and RS, but that you have both styles of gameplay in one game and both character rosters. Or just BaG, cause it's kind of a rythm-action fighting game in a way. 

SPOOKY STAGE SELECT:

Walking around the mansion in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem with my sanity meter fairly high is a specific part of the game I still remember, though at the time it was just a genuinely creepy game (the fakeout "your memory card is erased" screen was also scary, but I think most of what I felt was anger after the initial stomach drop).

Playing the Resident Evil VII demo; it was the first legitimate scare I'd gotten from any form of horror media in years and the whole thing made my heart race.

The Silent Hill 3 demo I got via Official Playstation Magazine for PS2. I mostly remember being scared by how abstract the monsters were and the general atmosphere. 

I realize these are vague and involve two demos, but I just never played many horror titles and several ones I have like RE4, White Night, Until Dawn, The Evil Within 2, etc. either didn't scare me at all or as much as what I mentioned (Until Dawn had some pretty effective atmospheric moments, but then you have to factor in all the cheese). 

Chrono Cross:

Never played it and only played a very small portion of Trigger via emulation years ago. Make it 80 characters and introduce online play. 

By the way, so far I'm not hearing many audio issues that I notice. 

I have only ever rebought games for PS4 I had on Steam because they were more convenient once my old laptop bricked. 

I love prequels ... Julian ... we disagree on so much. lol 

Since sales came up a few times this Stage Select, is there any semi-reliable source for production costs and sales for video games a la boxofficemojo.com for movies?

Sadly, it's harder and harder to lock down video game sales, especially since NPD stopped publishing numbers at all. You can probably track down some arcade data, but of course it would vary wildly from arcade to arcade. I just looked up Street Fighter 2 and it seems like most machines could take in about $1000 a week, which definitely adds up, especially in 1993 money.

No you misunderstood. Sorry weird wording on my part. Konami was great, and when they were making games I adored them. I meant I avoided them for my stage select because I dont think we're going to get anything new out of them unless they change what theyre doing right now. We'll get some cash grab remasters but I'll be surprised if we see a new game from them in the near future. I hope Im wrong though.

Ah, I see! Whew, you were about to catch these hands...

I really want to play board games at a brewery. I was doing lots of trivia at the Fredonia Brewery in Nacogdoches, but board games and beer sound great. 

Man, I hate coming back to games after too long and forgetting the mechanics; combat is usually not a chore, but puzzles are so much harder when I forget what the rules are. lol 

I wonder how much money each of those individual Capcom games made from quarters over time. How much would you need to recoup a loss building an arcade cabinet back in the day? Once again I'm wishing we had better public ways of tracking games sales and production costs, unless I just don't know of one. VG Chartz seems fairly limited. 

Sly Cooper! Yes! I knew there would be an MIA pick I overlooked. 

This vampire human farming is interesting ... 

I still haven't finished Horizon. No one cares at this point, I just like repeating that.