PixlBit

Great episode so far guys. Taking a break and had to chime in before I forgot. I totally agree with the ending about James killing himself being the best. That ending is what cemented it as one of my favorite games ever. I dont think I had seen any ending that was even close to that depressing. 

Justin you should definitely give Super Metroid a go if you have time. Now that I think about it, Julian was totally against the new Switch. A few weeks go by, Nintendo adds Super Metroid to the mix and Julian's a proud owner of a new Switch. Coincidence? 

As far as Souls games. Bloodborne is definitely up there for most popular. Combat is vastly different from the Souls games. Definitely similarities but its much more offense heavy. Souls 2 is given crap because its supposedly easier but its probably my favorite of the bunch. It streamlined some stuff like fast travel so that makes it's a bit easier to dive into. 

Stage Select: Edge Lords

3. Sol Badguy (Guilty Gear X2): The name enough screams Edgelord! His last name is Badguy for crying out loud. Though he's pretty bad ass and a hell of a fighter. His sword is also unique in that its basically a rectangular piece of steel that smacks people around.

2. Oswald (Odin Sphere): Oswald may not have the edgiest name but he's definitely badass. In the heat of battle he can bring out his shadow form with glowing red eyes and tear apart his enemies. 

1. Lulu (Final Fantasy X): Lulu is just straight edgelord and has other, "assets" that help cement her on this list. Her straightforward, no bullshit attitude is scary at first but she opens up a bit and you see she's really a good woman who can also kill you in dozens of unfun ways. 

Cage Match: Brave Fencer Musashi for the win! He's brave, fences for a hobby and is most likely a samurai or something because his name sounds like it would be. The other guy is probably a magical ninja pokemon, I assume, based off the name. Does that make him Greninja? If so that's a damn cool pokemon so I change my mind, Mystical Ninja Pokemon for the win! 

Google it, you will find it. Follow the money.

Yes, go back to the Eldritch horror that is Bloodborne.

Top edgelords I'm gonna have to think about a bit. I haven't seen a lot of game characters that are covered in Dorito dust mixed with Mountain Dew Game Fuel and wearing fedoras. The only fedora-wearing game character I can think of right now is Tex Murphy. I dunno, maybe Doug TenNapel?

Cage Match:

This is actually kind of a tough one for me. Surprisingly, despite one being on a N64 cart and one being on a CD, the two games have a similar amount of content, with Konami even throwing in a couple of musical numbers with Japanese vocals in Mystical Ninja. Musashi definitely got a better localization, as Konami did the bare minimum, and a lot of the Japanese humor fell flat. Goemon would have been a perfect project for Working Designs to handle. On the other hand, Musashi also had the first playable demo of Final Fantasy VIII, lol. 

I think I'm going to give a slight edge to Goemon here. Part of that is because MNSG was one of my favorite non-Nintendo N64 games,  although in the N64's case, that's like a bowl of chocolate Jell-O pudding winning out over every other dessert on the table because it was one of the few desserts on the table that wasn't just literal shit in a bowl. It just played better than Musashi for the most part. It did 3-D Zelda before Ocarina of Time did. It even had its own version of the Hookshot. 

Yes to Lulu? Like, Metallica x Lou Reed Lulu? Weird flex, but okay. We'll talk about this.

STAGE SELECT:

I mean, I assume any character from TWEWY? But that's unfair, cause I never played TWEWY? Just seems like a game from the 2000s about apocalyptic emo people (again, this is totally unfair, cause I have never played it ... IS it about apocalyptic emo people? I'm 100% basing this on hearsay) would be patient zero for "edgelords in video gaming?

There's also that Metallica game that was never released, which looks exactly like Twisted Metal? https://kotaku.com/first-look-at-the-cancelled-metallica-video-game-1787861229

Gonna go ahead and say that and Twisted Metal are full of edge lords? What was Justin's definition of edge lords? I'm sorry, I was not paying attention because I have ADHD like an EDGE LORD. 

In closing, here is Sanic the Hurdge HORG! 

Mystical Ninja Goemon: looks all weird and Japanese; does not appear to be a turn-based RPG. Welp ... looks like that's settled. My vote is for Mystical Ninja starring Goemon. 

Stage Select:

At first, I had a hard time narrowing my choice becuase so many edgelords have come gone since the PSOne era and beyond. But then, it came to me. There's one edgelord that stands out above the rest for me. Jak from the Jak and Daxter series on the PS2. In the first game, he was a (assumably) good-natured silent protagonist with Daxter being the wise-cracking sidekick.

But two years and one Grand Theft Auto 3 game later, Jak and Daxter 2 comes out. Only now Jak talks, and is all dark & gritty from being subjected to traumatic experiments, and has a pointy goatee.....and has a gun, becuase you can't take an edgelord seriously if he ain't got no gun! And as the cherry on top, he can carJak (see what I did there?) any vehicle just like in GTA 3! Finally...a damaged, gritty, just short of being an anti-hero character the angsty teenager in me can identify with!

He knows my pain. He is...the edgelord!

Cage Match:

I have played very litte of both games, though I have re-purchased Brave Fencer Musashi and need to give it a second go. That being said, I did play a good amount of Mystical Ninja on the Super Nintendo and really enjoyed the Japanese humor. I suspect that Goemon on the N64 had the same humor in it too, though I didn't play enough of it to know for sure.

Even so, I'm going to have to give it to Brave Fench Musashi. I'm a bit more familiar with that game and I liked the voice acting in it. Also, Musashi was voiced by Mona Marshall- the same actress who voiced Izzy in Digimon back in the day (and many other shows). Her voice always stood out to me and back then, it blew my mind whevever I heard a familair voice in my video games.

Future cage match booking:

Gran Turismo 1 vs. Ridge Racer Type 4

Oh, don't know if anyone got the same Zelda gif that I did, but it reminded me that the original Link's Awakening Japanese commercial (like you might have heard they brought back with the A Link Between Worlds Japanese commercial.  Even the US one was in a 90s/00s throwback style) continued the tradition.  Here's the original.  And, no, the Switch version isn't similar, although one of them does have a sung version of Ballad of the Wind Fish with new lyrics.

About Borderlands, loved the "Dollar Store Invader Zim" drop, it's just so true. And when you mentioned all those problems you had (driving, inventory, weird bullet sponginess and uneven difficulty especially for single player) it was like yet another Borderlands Bingo. It's a shame when a game in a series doesn't improve anything but still is wildly successful (especially from a company as scummy as Gearbox).

STAGE SELECT: There's a billion anime video game edgelords out there so I thought I'd go a different way with it (although somebody should submit Travis Touchdown). So I thought I'd bring up one of my favorite games again, Deus Ex. Now, I like JC Denton as a character, but when he wants to be a shit (especially when the player wants to be a shit), he can edgelord with the best of them imo. I'll give a few examples (mostly thanks to the JC Denton One-Liners video). JC Denton is a nano-augmented anti-terrorism agent in a world where mechanical-augmented agents are not unheard of. When Agent Navarre gives you a complement (and a backhanded one to your brother, Paul) about your battle-readiness, JC responds, "You mechs might have copper-wiring to re-route your fear of pain, but I've got nerves of steel." Later if you kill her a certain way, you may get a line where JC says, "Agent Navarre was out line. I had no choice." Your communications/handler/tech pal says, "They'll have you killed. They won't even blink an eye." JC goes, "Neither did I." There's the classic where if you get the hotel owner killed in a skirmish, even if you did it yourself, right there JC will go, "What a shame..." to his grieving daughter (in all fairness, he does follow it up with an awkward, "He was a good man... What a rotten way to die."). If you kill your boss, you tell your new one (who's more or less the ultimate antagonist's crony), "Well, since that makes you my new boss, take a long look at [my old boss's] dead body. Consider that my resignation, I don't have time to write a letter."
Here's a couple favorites of mine. Not once, but two different times, does JC Denton say he's "not into books" to stop a conversation, once because of a philosophical soliloquy that JC could've easily been guilty of himself. And if you meet the ultimate antagonist's crony at the end again the crony says, "You take another step forward, and here I am again, like your own reflection repeated in a hall of mirrors," JC responds with, "That makes me one ugly son-of-a-bitch."

VIDEO GAME CAGE MATCH: I don't care if you have to stop recording or go out of your way listener to open up a new tab or press your mobile phone buttons boo hoo, watch this video, ""I Am Impact" Mystical Ninja: starring Goemon. Impact! Music sequence": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WCnDhyHzZ8 . And that Impact Super Punch, (B, B, B, A), bunches of punches, can follow up with a satisfying drop-kick if you slam A repeatedly at the end. Also, you can scream lasers. I like Brave Fencer Musashi, it's arguably(?) the better, more even game as a whole, but Goemon has a tendency to just constantly deal out very weird, very awesome things. That may not matter anywhere else but it should matter in the cage.

Couple thoughts - Was so happy with Destrega coming in a laying waste in Cage Match.
I still have no idea what an edgelord is...

Cage Match:  Yet another matchup of games I have not played.
Has to be Musashi - Square was unstoppable in that era.