[00:00:03] I can't fucking breathe dude. This is what it's all about dude. Alright, let's... Okay. Fuck off, I have to host this one! Fuck off! Okay, okay, okay. Oh shit. Enough! Hey, I'm Jerry. Hey, I'm Aaron. And this is Retro Rehab.

[00:00:48] Welcome back to Retro Rehab, the greatest collaboration of all time. Today, we're gonna talk about throwing some Phoenix Downs on some franchises that are either dead and gone, or just they need a revival. You know? Like Pitbull. Like Pitbull. Is he dead? Hey, can we get a quick check? Is Pitbull still alive? Uh... Pitbull... I typed it really stupidly.

[00:01:17] I typed Pitbull, is he alive? Pitbull, is he alive? So his full name is Armando Christian Perez. Yeah, he's still alive dude. He's five foot nine. What a fucking shorty dude. That's two for two if you're counting. Last week was Ludacris. We checked to make sure Ludacris was still alive. Our boy Ludacris is still alive. And we got Mr. Worldwide. Mr. We're... So we're doing pretty... We're doing pretty good. We're doing pretty good.

[00:01:47] But, before we get into throwing some Phoenix Downs at some franchises and talking about games that we feel like should get revivals, let's talk about what's going on in the world of retro for a quick second. Because there's a couple things. A couple things. A couple little tidbits of news in the world of retro. If you are up to date on the company Analog, they announced that they were doing a restock on their Analog pockets. And they're gone.

[00:02:16] They're gone. It lasted, I think, a day and a half. And they're... Goodbye. I was lucky enough to get myself an Analog pocket. I am very excited to get it. But there's some stuff about Analog that... I don't know. I don't... Look, the hardware itself is fantastic.

[00:02:47] They did release their own cores. Because, like, you don't have to have the physical hardware. You don't gotta. It's like... It's kind of like the Mister. Like, it has its own cores and stuff. And I think it supports up to... And, Aaron, you'll be happy to know this. It supports up to TurboGrafx CD. The Analog pocket? Mm-hmm. Yep. That's fucking sweet, dude. It sure does.

[00:03:19] They've made cores and never updated them. Like, for two years. They still haven't been updated, as far as I know. What the fuck? So, the community took to it and they were like, fuck it. We're gonna make our own cores. And I think it was only a couple of months ago that they actually released... ...like, scanline filters and different, like, filters and stuff. Because the filters wouldn't work with the analog cores. And there's still some things, like, some kinks getting worked out... ...with some of these, like, the community cores.

[00:03:48] Because, essentially, some of them don't support save states. And if you don't know... Oh. The way the analog... Well, I'm okay with not having save states so much. ...but the analog pocket uses save states so it can sleep. Oh, shit. Like, when you put it to sleep, that's what it does. It does a... Because, like, obviously, like, if you turn off a Game Boy, it turns off.

[00:04:17] Like, there's no sleep on a Game Boy, right? Yeah. So, it uses save states to allow the sleep bone. So, I guess, the Game Boy Color or the Game Boy... Yeah, the Game Boy Color one. Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Uh, the developer said that he's working on the save states. So, it should be soon. But, it's crazy to think that, like, a year ago... ...people that had these pockets just had to deal with it. Like, nope. Too bad.

[00:04:45] Just use the shitty analog cores. But, now there's better ones out there. But, I'm really excited. It should be... At the time of this recording, oddly enough... I ordered my dock the day after I ordered the pocket. Because, I got, like, FOMO. Like, a motherfucker. I was like... Because, the other thing is, I looked up, like... What's an alternative to the analog dock? And, I quickly found... All the responses were, nope.

[00:05:14] Because, they have, like, their own proprietary thing. Like, you can't just, like, use a USB to HDMI on the analog pocket. It does not work. It has to be that dock. So, it's... Look, it's a fantastic piece of hardware. But, the company itself is just... I don't know. It's like the Apple of retro stuff. And, that's coming from somebody who... Yeah. I do like myself some Apple stuff. But, like... I don't know.

[00:05:44] All the proprietary shit. It just... I don't know. There's no way at all to, like... To put custom firmware on an analog pocket. Like, ArcOS or anything like that. It just... It has to be what's... Like, what they put in it. As far as I know, yeah. It's just... Like, it's not so much the OS. Like, the OS is fine. It's just the cores themselves are the things that... Are the more desired thing. That's crazy. Yeah.

[00:06:14] I really wish I would have bought one of these. When the transparent ones were... Oh. Were on sale. Yeah. Or the dark one. Oh, man. I remember sharing that on Facebook. They even went as far as to replicate the same, like... Dye as the colored Game Boy colors. Like, all those colors that they did for a limited time. For the pockets. Like, they were color matched to the old school Game Boys.

[00:06:43] Like, it was crazy. It's crazy what they did. Really fucking cool. Again, fantastic product. Like, the hardware itself is just amazing. God, that... It's not a replacement for the mister, but like... If you were to say, like, I don't really want to do a mister yet or something. And you were more of like a handheld person. I would say, like, 100%. Like, this is the way to go. Because, again, this is FPGA. As I mentioned before, FPGA is not emulating games.

[00:07:12] It's emulating consoles. Yeah. It's accuracy at its highest. Like, it's still... I guess... It is a form of emulation, I guess. But, like, not really at the same time. At a higher level. Because, like, instead of... I don't know how the fuck to explain it. Yeah. Well, actually, technically speaking, it's low level. High level emulation is like... I think. I hope I'm not fucking that up.

[00:07:40] I think high level emulation is, like, less accurate. But low level is, like, much, much more accurate. So, that's why, like... That makes sense. I know that the N64 core on RetroArch has some options to do, like... To use different plugins. And one of those plugins is the Parallel. And Parallel uses low level. Because it's LLE. So... That's a thing.

[00:08:10] That's a thing. Low level emulation. That's a thing, dude. But, yeah. If the analog pockets go back up. And there's another resupply. I highly encourage Aaron. Aaron, especially you. To get one. I want that fucking transparent. I want the green one. But I want to be less of a basic bitch. They were a limited time only. And I don't know if they're doing those again. You can find them on Marketplace, though.

[00:08:41] There's, like, even up here. In my city. Like, I've seen them. But you're gonna pay. You're gonna pay. I'm gonna look it up, dude. Oh, this is gonna hurt. You're gonna be upset. Oh, this is gonna hurt, bro. You're gonna be upset. I'm gonna guess... $4.50, right? Actually, no. $3.50. But that's $3.50 US. Oh, yeah.

[00:09:08] To me, that's, like... That's expensive. I paid... Oh, no. I think it was... I think the pockets are only $2.21 US. Or $2.29 or something. Well, I'm pissed. Yeah. I mean, you can. You can get one. There's worse things you could spend your money on. Like a Pitbull CD. Yeah. Dollar, baby. Dollar, Pepsi.

[00:09:39] Speaking of emulation, did you see that Apple opened its floodgates? Did you see this? I saw it. Like, the first one they allowed was some NES emulator, which is... I was... When I see the article, I was like, get the fuck out of here. Are you serious? Apple is allowing emulators on the App Store now. After all these years. Why are they suddenly doing it now? Just because of the demand? Maybe somebody at Apple was like, you don't fuck with Yuzu.

[00:10:09] You don't fuck with Yuzu. We're putting them all up. You don't fuck with Yuzu. Or IP Yuzu. And Citra. Goddamn, dude. But yeah, it's... It's crazy. I can't wait to see what... The biggest thing would be to see RetroArc get added to the App Store.

[00:10:39] That would be some shit. Yeah. Because as far as emulation goes, RetroArc is like the thing, I feel. Like, there's emulators that are more accurate and other things outside of RetroArc, but even a lot of those have been implemented as cores into RetroArc at this point. And yeah, if RetroArc gets added to the App Store, like, that's a game changer. Give me one of those backbones, a bottle of Lube,

[00:11:07] and 15 minutes with RetroArc, and we're fucking off, dude. Oh, fuck. Yeah, dude. Oh, fuck, bud. I, um... Yeah. Oh, God. I can't top that, but yeah, they really... I'm really surprised it took Apple this long to allow that shit on there because, like, what's the worst that could fucking happen? I mean, I don't know. I don't know anything about Apple, man, but that's good.

[00:11:37] That's cool. Yep. Um, yeah. And then finally, to top up the news, uh, I usually go digging through to see what, uh, new translations and stuff we have in the Retro community, whether it's through ROMHacking.net. CD Romance is great because they, they upload, like, the, um, the game that's already, like, pre-patched and stuff. Um, there was one that caught my eye that's been recently translated. It's a PS1 RPG

[00:12:06] called Linda Cubed Again. And it's a, it's a port of Linda Cubed for, I think, the PC engine, which was, uh, technically the TurboGrafx. Um, it was ported to PS1. It was then also ported to Sega Saturn, but the only English version that we have, as far as I know, is the PS1 translation that just came out. And it's, like, I don't know if you're looking

[00:12:36] at these screenshots I added to the notes here. They look, like, fucking cool. It's like, um... It is interesting. So, what people are, like, when I was digging into it to try to find out, like, because, here's the weird thing. When it comes to, like, finding little gems like this, I don't want to see any videos of it for some reason. I'd rather just see a screenshot. Kind of like, I guess it's kind of like hearkening back to, like, the good old days of seeing, like, something in a magazine and be like, oh, I can't wait to try this out. So, like,

[00:13:04] I'd rather not look at videos of stuff. I'd rather experience the game, like, just by a few screenshots, like, because the screenshots that I grabbed and threw into this, I was instantly like, what the hell is this game? And people said that it's pretty much Phantasy Star meets Shin Megami Tensei. That's fucking tight. Yeah, it takes place in Neo-Kenya. What the fuck?

[00:13:35] Yes. And there's, like, three scenarios and, like, each one is, like, a different timeline. So, like, scenario A, B, C. But by the time you get to C, apparently, like, they're making fun of scenario A and B and being like, that wasn't shit. That wasn't nothing. You wait till you see all this stuff. And, like, they're making, like, inside jokes about, like, what happened in this game and stuff. And, like, yeah, it's just supposed to be, like, batshit crazy. And I feel like you and I, for people that

[00:14:04] really like weird games, like, Earthbound, I feel like, I feel like we should both try this thing out. this looks really, really fucking rad. Yeah, there's that one, there's that one screenshot where it looks like a man that resembles Hitler. He's like, he's got Mecca Hitler. Yeah, Mecca Hitler. He's like, it reminds me of something from, like, the movie Akira. Sorry, Akira. They put the Japanese twang on it. Actually, it's something you'd see in that, but,

[00:14:34] like, like, Hitler, if he was, if he was Akira, I guess. And there's a whale. There's a big fucking whale island they're fighting. What the shit? Dude, yeah, it looks crazy. And like, this is the thing about Retro, and this is like, like, all jokes aside, this is why I feel like we needed to do this podcast because I cannot believe after all these years, there's still shit. Sorry, keep going, keep going. What did you see? Oh,

[00:15:04] man, hang on, hang on. I can see the reflection in your glasses, kind of. Hold on, bro. I'll send it in the chat. No, you know what? We'll take this link, too. Where's the chat? There's a bunch of screenshots on that bastard. nice. But yeah, what I was going to say was that even after, like, all these years of, like, playing retro shit

[00:15:34] and playing ROMs and emulators, I cannot believe that there's just, like, it feels like something every month that I'm like, I've never heard of this, never seen it before. Where's this bed? And, like, stuff just pops up. Like, it's fucking wild. Like, I can't believe it sometimes. But yeah, Linda cubed again. Go check it out. New translation out. And with that, I have... Oh, this looks really, really cool.

[00:16:03] Yep, do it. I'm gonna. So, topic of the day. Game franchises that need revivals. Aaron, why don't you kick us off with the first thing that you feel like you need to resurrect? First, I'm gonna download this game. If I can find a goddamn link for it. The first, the first series I had down to bring back from the dead. Custom Robo.

[00:16:34] Cause motherfucker, there were four games in total. The America only saw two because Nintendo hates us. But, so, the series is, the name kind of describes it all. It's people fighting with robots that you can customize with like just a million different fucking parts. Like there's legs that affect your speed and like how, uh, how you dodge and shit like that. How many jumps you get.

[00:17:03] There's different guns that affect like your fire pattern. They can get like a three-way spread. You can get a dragon one that shoots little like dragon flame balls out. You can shoot like a sword that flies into the air, stays there for a little bit and then just shoots down an enemy. Um, there's all sorts of different guns. There's bombs. There's what's called a pod where it shoots out like a little, um, like a deployable, um, explosive thing, I guess. Um, there's just all sorts of different parts. And,

[00:17:33] I think the last one we got was, oh, I think it was custom robo arena on DS because there was, there was two for that. There was more than one. Yeah, there was four. There was, um, Oh shit. I didn't know that. Two on N64 that only came out in Japan, but the first game does have a complete fan translation. The second one, I don't think, I think it's like partially done. Uh, the one on the GameCube is the one that I played the most and it's got a bitchin' soundtrack. Um, and then yeah, the one on the DS is still

[00:18:02] pretty good, but the soundtrack isn't nearly as bitchin'. Not quite as bitchin'. Maybe like, like three tenths bitchin'. But, uh, yeah, so I guess like, yeah, like what, what, what do you think would, um, like what do you, what do you visualize like a custom, like a modern custom robo, like revive looking like? You know, I'm glad you asked that, Jerry. I could see it, uh, you mean, I want to see, I want to see like, just bunches of different game modes,

[00:18:32] like 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, maybe even like 12, 12 person free for all, I don't know, whatever kind of royales and shit. Yeah, basically, because the, the gameplay is, like when you're playing as the robos anyway, it's, you're in this little arena, um, and there's little walls and shit that you can go behind for cover, uh, and it's kind of like at a, like an isometric overhead view almost, most, but you could do, you could do a lot with that, really, like, yeah,

[00:19:01] put like multiple levels into an arena, make like big, awesome arenas, they could, uh, add even more ways to customize your robos, I don't know, Nintendo could add Mii's into it, I guess, if they really fucking wanted to. Yeah, they could. I don't, I don't know why it'd be awesome for today's online multiplayer fucking world, but Nintendo is just like. I still need to throw that on, uh, a buddy of mine, I think, threw it on after you talking about it on, I think it was

[00:19:31] episode one, yeah, it was episode one of this, it was our random recommended game at the end, yeah, Mention Custom Robo and he threw it on, he was like, man, it seems pretty cool, um, so yeah, I definitely want to, I want to check that out at some point, so, yeah, I can kind of get a better because all that sounds really cool, like I feel like that's the thing, right, like when you, when you think about revivals, like it's, I feel like it's always one part fan service, but it's also like another part like how can

[00:20:00] we make money, like will this make us money, and part of the reason why I wanted to do this, this episode is because had this been a year ago and we did this episode, I would have been screaming for Secret of Mana, like man, bring Secret of Mana back, like, what the hell's going on with this franchise, like you just keep remaking these games, like, and then Trials of Mana sold really well for their expectations, and then finally we get Visions of Mana, which by the way looks fucking dope,

[00:20:30] I don't know if you've been keeping up, it's pretty fucking good, so yeah, like that was kind of the crux of, I've been screaming about some of these franchises, one of the franchises that I've been screaming about that I don't think we'll ever get, if we do, I'll be shocked, but it is a, it is a crying shame that we have not had a proper Goemon game since 2000 and motherfucking five,

[00:21:00] holy shit, 2005? it was a DS game, sorry, I mean, technically the last Goemon game was 2009, and it was a fucking Pachinko, goddammit dude, fucking Konami, let that say, I was just gonna say, take one fucking guess, who owns the rights to Goemon, the only company that could take any of their

[00:21:29] wildly popular franchises and be like, nah, we're just gonna do Pachinko. They probably make way more money off of Pachinko than they do any fucking Goemon game, I mean, that's the sad reality, but yeah, I don't really know what the sales are like for Goemon, but, I don't know, like, reintroducing Goemon to the mainstream, like, it would be amazing either way, I think, because,

[00:21:58] like, even in the last, like, 10 years, there's been a massive resurgence of 2D platformers like Metroidvanias, and even, like, the HD retro stuff has been coming back, like, I feel like Shovel Knight started really pushing the envelope forward for, like, hey, let's get, like, these really highly polished indie games that look like, like, NES, SNES games, like, let's get, let's get these back into the mainstream, because it doesn't,

[00:22:28] it doesn't have to have, like, these AAA graphics to, to make a big difference, I mean, it probably goes back further than that, even to, like, the Xbox live arcade stuff, like, I remember Castle Crashers being, like, one of the best games ever, I couldn't believe it, and it was, like, it looked like a Flash game. Or, like, Fez, Fez was, like, an SNES game, pretty much. Yeah, so, yeah, I feel like bringing Goemon back now,

[00:22:59] like, we did get, like, this, well, I mean, we didn't get it, but Japan got it, it was announced in one of their directs, and people started picking up on it, and they were like, hey, did anybody catch the Japanese direct? They showed this, and it was, it's, it's literally a spiritual successor to Goemon. Like, it looks like Mystical Ninja 64, but, like, newer, and it's not, it's not Goemon, but it may as well be. He has a fucking, pretty sure he has a chain pipe and shit, or maybe he has, like, these two, like, sticks. He's got a fucking blunt.

[00:23:30] But, yeah, it was, it's basically, like, a spiritual successor to Goemon. I'd be curious to know what the, what that game did in numbers in Japan, because I feel like,