Underrated Fighting Games | SNK Gals' Fighters, Psychic Force 2012 & More
Just just in case
Dre:Sorry for the crotch. I'm fully decked out. See? I got the
Aaron:Don't be sorry for the crotch.
Jay:Hell, yeah. I came back I came back just in time for dick cam.
Dre:Yeah. I was gonna say, so I said sorry for the crotch, but I did I did apologize.
Jay:God. No. This doesn't work very well because preferable headphones. Alright.
Aaron:What it do, everybody. Hey, it's Aaron. It's it's topic time. We're back with topic time, and we're just discussing a topic. Topic time.
Aaron:Topic time. We just pick a topic, talk about it, and that's it. Totally original. It's all us. Let's introduce the guest, though, before we go any further.
Aaron:Jay, why don't you go first and introduce yourself? Tell us all about what you do on the internet, all about yourself and your favorite ice cream flavor.
Jay:Oh, it's an easy one. I'm gonna start with that. It's butter pecan. Oh.
Dre:Oh, hell yeah. Butter pecan grows
Jay:right here. A good butter a good butter pecan. My wife's always like, don't get it. I'm like, sorry. It's it's I guess it's not for you to kiss.
Dre:Oh, it's not for everybody, but for you.
Jay:It's if it's a good butter pecan. There's like certain there's certain foods of the world where it's like, I get it if you've only had mid range coleslaw and you'll never like coleslaw, but a good coleslaw, it's like, you know Yep. There's there's
Dre:there's I had a one good coleslaw. I'm like that. I'm not a coleslaw liker, but I did have one good one in San Francisco one time at the pier. That shit hit. You'll be you'll be you'll
Jay:be chase chasing it for the rest of your game life. Chasing the coleslaw. Chasing the coleslaw.
Dre:Yeah. I've been to that restaurant several times. That's just the only place I've ever liked coleslaw. So
Jay:Anyways, my name is Jay, IdolismJ. I've been in and around fighting games for over fifteen years, and I've spun off from my fighting game career with my, old age and retirement from the competition side to be more of a general video gaming YouTuber talking about JRPGs and whatever else I find interesting on the interwebs.
Aaron:Hell, yeah. I love it. I know the last few videos you've done no. Is the one you're working on now still what is it? Final Fantasy four or five, or am I totally wrong?
Jay:I'm on I'm on seven. Seven. Goddamn it. I'm so far behind. It's so so why it's taken forever is because it's like, okay.
Jay:Well, there's 8,000,000 things to talk about when it comes to seven. Got it. I was gonna I was gonna reach out to I was gonna reach out to Andre who was also on this this call for anyone who's only listening to the audio. I was gonna reach out to Andre and be like, Andre, I need someone who was there at the time to be like, hi, I'm old, and this was revolutionary to see for the first time.
Dre:I could talk about that. That's pretty that's something. Actually, I'm for Fighting Time for a solo episode, I'm going to play Final Fantasy six for the very first time. I've never played it. I don't know shit about
Jay:that game.
Aaron:The very
Dre:first I'm going to I'm going to do it.
Jay:At at every every fucking elder millennial will tell you it's the best Final Fantasy.
Dre:And that's why I've always avoided it because I'm like, y'all keep talking this shit up. I don't give a shit. I'm not gonna play you know what I mean? Like, because that's how I am. So I'm gonna push through that and just play it for the first time and see.
Jay:I I played it for the first time to completion a couple years ago for the show because I had played it as a kid when, like, my neighbors had it. And then I played it again when Zsnest was a thing, but I never got, like, farther than, like, the first quarter or so. It was just still decent. It's a long game. But I played it to completion.
Jay:I was like, god, fuck, it is
Dre:that good. It's as good as everyone said it is. Oh,
Aaron:no. I
Dre:hate it. Yeah. So that's how I'm gonna that's how I'm gonna do. Because last year, I did Undertale, which I knew I was not gonna like for obvious reasons. Yeah.
Dre:So, like, I mean but I did it. I played the whole thing, and I did that. So this is kind of the opposite where something I know I'm gonna like this, but I'm but but I've been avoiding it for the same reasons. So I it's kind of the opposite thing. So I'm go I'm going to try.
Dre:I'm going to play Final Fantasy six.
Jay:It will be right.
Aaron:For what it's worth, I think you will like it. I mean, you love you loved Octopath two, didn't you? Yes. Yeah. Okay.
Aaron:Yeah. You'll love this.
Dre:Yeah. I'm I think the the the DNA for Octopath ties directly back to Final Fantasy six. Okay. I'm in for a good time then. I know I will.
Dre:I just need to push all the the you know, all the all the things people said, especially when, like, seven was coming out. Well, six was better.
Aaron:Shut up. Fuck up.
Jay:No one
Dre:cares about you.
Jay:Straight the fuck. Straight the I I've been hearing, well, six was better since, like, 2004. Yep.
Dre:Yeah, bro. I don't know. I've been hearing it since literally '97. Like, people have said that since seven has come out. So, like, ugh.
Dre:Enough variety. So that's I hate that I agree with play your game, this is not the way to do it. So now I'm playing it in the year of our lord 2026. So
Jay:This is, like, good job. I I agree it's a better game, but also, like, people who say that are 100% being hipster even if I think they're right.
Dre:That's that's what pisses me out. And, you know, that's like so anyway, the yeah. That's that's gonna be my journey. Hi, everybody.
Aaron:Hey, Dre. What's up?
Dre:'Sup? I'm here.
Aaron:Tell us, yeah, tell us all I like games. Yeah. You tell us all about yourself and the things you do on the Internet. And, yeah, what's your favorite ice cream flavor? You can't say butter pecan because Jay said that.
Aaron:You gotta pick a different one.
Dre:I have to. We just bonded over it. It is my favorite ice cream flavor.
Jay:Do you do you Pick another one. Aaron, do you think I would deny this man to agree with butter pecan?
Dre:Yeah. What the fuck? I don't wanna pick another one.
Jay:Fuck. Aaron, we're barely into this podcast, and you're gonna drive a wedge between Andre and I like this.
Dre:Shit. I mean, come on, dude.
Aaron:Fine. You can have butter pecan. Alright. Tell us what you do.
Dre:Thank you. You know how shitty I am at talking about myself, but I do do a show called fine time with my friends, Steve and Kevin. We get on there and talk about, quite frankly, whatever the hell we want. New games, old games, current news. Oh, man, Microsoft.
Dre:Oh, stop. Microsoft, please stop. Stop. It's it's the show is only so long per week. We can't just we just can't keep doing this with you.
Dre:So, yeah, we cover recent events. We play little games with each other, quiz games to embarrass each other with because that's always the fun part of it and let the audience play along as well. So, yeah, come have a fine time with us. Me and you, Aaron. Holy shit.
Aaron:Mhmm.
Dre:I'm glad you're here so we could talk about the show we do together called Neo Geo Go. We we're covering the entire Neo Geo library sans a few mahjong games and stuff that we can't play, obviously. Twenty minutes or less. That's it. Every episode, every game, twenty minutes or less.
Dre:That is a hard limit. Most of the episodes aren't even that long. So they're usually, like, nine, ten, eleven, twelve minutes. So sometimes we go to the 20. We have I don't think we've aired an episode where we've gone that long yet.
Dre:I don't think so. Yeah. And we there's been a couple that have been, like, six minutes. So, you know,
Aaron:didn't happen. Holy shit. Riding hero is just like, this is a horse game, and that's it. Bye.
Dre:That's not Riding Hero, baby. That stakes winner.
Aaron:Fuck. Oh, Riding Hero was the oh, it was the really cool guy on motorcycles. That's right. Shit.
Dre:Yeah. Yeah. The the dating's basic almost a dating sim.
Aaron:Motorcycle dating sim. Yeah.
Jay:There's only, like, a million horse racing games from the nineties that have similar similar two word titles.
Dre:Oh, yeah. Yep. Yeah. But but, yeah, that's what I do. Otherwise, you can just find me on blue sky talking shit.
Dre:That's that's about really it. That's all I do on the interwebs.
Jay:Yeah. Alright. I was gonna say, regard irrelevant to my friendship with Andre, Fine Time is my favorite podcast that I listen to weekly.
Dre:You are so fucking awesome. I'm so glad you listened. I love that my friends listen to the show. You don't have you know? And some of my friends don't.
Dre:That's fine. I'm not one of those people who's like, why don't you listen to my show? I would never be like that. I'm so glad that you do. I'm really glad you enjoyed this.
Jay:My my friendship with Andre is not the reason I listen to Fine Time.
Dre:It is because Fine Time is my favorite podcast of
Jay:the of the week.
Dre:Thank you so much.
Jay:Whoever whoever invented, fake jav names deserves to go in the history book. Oh. It's the best game ever.
Dre:Fake JEV titles. I I've I've that was my idea since our previous creative endeavor, but that guy was no fun. So I never really brought it up in front of him. But that was the very first thing we decided. When we started our show, I was like, we're we're doing that.
Dre:We're absolutely
Aaron:doing that.
Jay:Going. Best best piece of best piece of radio you'll ever
Dre:find is the fake JV names I play yeah. I gotta start gotta gotta start playing sexy music under it some more. I have started doing that. I gotta do it some more.
Aaron:I I love when you guys do the taste tests, especially when it's like, was it you guys did the Coke Oreos or the Mhmm. There was that one Mountain Dew a few months ago that Steve
Dre:the one from Little Caesar's.
Aaron:That's what it was. Yeah. That shit always kills me because it'll be like, you and Kevin will be like, this is awesome. And then Steve will be like, this sucks. Or it'll
Dre:He doesn't like anything.
Jay:That's the whole point. He he thinks everything sucks. So like I
Aaron:was gonna
Dre:We'll be on it. Yeah. Yeah.
Jay:I was gonna pitch to FineTime that you guys should do the the the red, white, and blue Oreos before they go away.
Dre:Oh, yeah.
Jay:Because my wife and I have had them.
Dre:They're gonna try that.
Jay:Would make for a very interesting taste test.
Dre:You know, we did all enjoy the Selena Gomez Oreos though. I doubt
Jay:I never got the Selena Gomez.
Aaron:Those were so good. Yeah. Steve actually liked that one. I remember that now.
Dre:He did. He really did.
Aaron:Beat with bits of real Selena Gomez.
Dre:That's what that's what I'm out here doing. Yeah. Fine type. Diocchio Go. Good stuff.
Aaron:Hell, yeah. I'm gonna, I guess, plug myself here too. Chillscape, Neo Geo GO, video games analyzed. Boom. That's it.
Aaron:That's all I care to say about me. Let's go to the topic, though. We're here to talk about some really cool underrated fighting games because, I mean, we all know Street Fighter and Tekken, all the big names. We all know them. We all love them.
Aaron:But there's a lot of really cool fighting games that have just kind of slid under the radar and get kinda overshadowed and pushed into a corner that's hoping with this episode, we can bring some of those bad boys to light. So alright. I've got a I've got a fun little idea. I'm thinking of a Street Fighter character, and whoever can guess it gets to go first.
Dre:Blanca.
Jay:That's it. My first I'd say my first guess was gonna be Guy, but I guess I'm off the mark.
Aaron:It was Blanca. Yes. So, Dre, you get go first? It was. It was Blanca.
Aaron:Yeah.
Dre:Oh my god. What the fuck? I know I do a show with you and everything, but I shouldn't we shouldn't be able to Pacific Rim mind meld like that. That was it's kinda crazy.
Aaron:Was a fuck that was a hell of a reference. But yeah, dude. Blanca.
Jay:Pacific Rim. Going for the original. Pacific Rim. All a
Dre:fucking time. Like, it's 2013. I still I don't care.
Jay:That's that's a great movie.
Aaron:I will always reference that.
Jay:Such a great movie. Yeah.
Dre:It's so good. Is it is it, like, sacroiliac to say that Guillermo del Toro's best movie?
Jay:I I couldn't name another one because I haven't seen many others.
Aaron:I don't think I've
Dre:seen a few. Blade two?
Aaron:Was that Guillermo del Toro? Yeah. You haven't seen Blade.
Jay:I haven't seen Blade. I'm actually really bad about Your book. I'm I'm really bad about movies. I'm just I'm gonna be upfront. I'm really bad about movies.
Jay:I don't watch many. Two.
Dre:Oh, Nightmare Alley was great. That was definitely a Rona Rona classic for me. Getting to go to the theater when no one's around at, you know, 10:30 and watching this slow three hour drama about god knows what.
Aaron:Speaking about god knows what. Hey, Dre. What's your first underrated fighting game?
Dre:Man, where should I start? Okay. I'll start here. I wanna talk about Psychic Force twenty twelve.
Aaron:I knew this was coming.
Dre:It has to. I have to. It's it's always my go to. I've talked about this game to Jay maybe more times than he cares to even hear about, because I will never shut the fuck up about this game. This shit is unbelievably I don't even I think it goes past underrated.
Dre:I think people just don't think about this game at all because it just wasn't really that popular here. It I guess it had a following in Japan because it got a sequel. Psychic Force twenty twelve is a sequel. Their original game is just called fighting psychic force. And then twenty twelve is its sequel.
Dre:I played this. I never saw this at my arcade. I played it on Dreamcast when it came out here. And, man, I tell you what, it just think about here's the best way I can describe this game for anyone who doesn't know what this is. Think about why Dragon Ball Z games are never good.
Dre:Like, let's be real. We like we like the characters, and we like Kamehameha and doing these big blasts and go zooming into each other and, like, doing all these crazy punches and shit. They aren't actually good games. It just gives good Dragon Ball z. And quite frankly, that's completely fine.
Dre:I love turning off my brain and playing DBZ sparking zero or something like that and just picking some stupid version of Goku and just, like, going at it and turning a game down to easy and not even trying. I just wanna see the cool shit happen on the screen. And, again, that's totally fine. That's what those games are for. Psychic Force twenty twelve actually takes all that, like, projectile heavy combat and turns it into, like, a real game.
Dre:Because first of all, you're in like a cube floating in space, So you could only move so far away from each other. Dragon Ball z tries to be true to the game where you can really zoom the fuck out and do all this and, obviously, it's not good for, like, an actual game.
Aaron:Yeah.
Dre:But, again, that doesn't matter. Psychic Force twenty twelve really plays tries to play it straight that way. And, honestly, I think projectile fighters are, like, really, really fun. One of the reasons why I can still go back to all any of the five or now maybe seven or eight versions of street fighter two and still have fun is because neutral just involves chucking hodokins or sonic booms at each other or tiger shots or yoga fire and just you have to eat this shit. Here is the obstacle course.
Dre:I love that. I don't care I don't care how many times we've done that in video game history. I will never get tired of that. That's always fun to me.
Jay:Yeah. Everything after everything after five is like, we're done with Fireball Wars. And I'm like, no. No. No.
Jay:We must return with a v. I'm sorry.
Dre:I love Fireball Wars, man. Oh my god. It's like especially, like, when you get to what's the first one with the Super War? Super Turbo? When you when like, the first time Ryu chucked a Super Fireball at me, was like or Shinuu Shinuuudoku.
Dre:And I was like, what the fuck? That beat my wow. I was, like, blown away. We have a new dimension to the Fireball Wars now. I loved it.
Dre:So, like, obviously, Psychic Force twenty twelve isn't like that. You're floating in space on a two d plane. I was gonna say three d space, but it's not really. The characters are three d, but you fight on a two d plane. And you're chucking all sorts of stuff at each other.
Dre:Little fireballs, big zappy things. But then you can also still zoom in and do, like, some basic combos to each other. And it's just so fun. You have to there's like meter management, I think, is like one of the most fun things you can do in a fighting game. It's one of the reasons why I like Street Fighter six so much because, I mean, people I mean, some people don't, some people do.
Dre:I really like that game because you have to manage that shit very well, and I really like that. Psychic Force twenty twelve is all about that. You have to manually charge back up. Aaron. Yes, sir.
Dre:You know, one of the things we're talking about that's unique about Art of Fighting is that you have a you have a bar. You have to charge that shit back. You can't just chuck a whole bunch of fireballs and just do that. You have to charge this thing back up manually.
Aaron:Yep.
Dre:Psychic Force twenty twelve actually does have that. And it works in a totally different way, but it's still really awesome. And I I just really like that. And, of course, this goes along with the incredible just anime designs from Taito. This is a Taito game.
Dre:You know? So it has those designs. It has Zuntada music that is just absolutely insane. Oh my god. Some of the themes in that game just go so hard.
Dre:It's crazy. You know this already, Aaron.
Aaron:I've used a couple of them for Chillscape already. They're good shit.
Dre:Oh my god, dude. So, like, they're just it's just great inventive characters in this concept that's so weird, and it actually works. It's actually good. It's not something you'll just play and be like, oh, that was neat. Right?
Dre:That you'd be like, no. This is actually kind of fucking awesome. This is the real deal. So, yeah, Psychic Force twenty twelve. I wish this could get a rerelease somehow.
Dre:I don't know. Taito's pretty good about rereleasing their back catalog.
Aaron:Yeah. They
Dre:are. So maybe maybe that can happen sometime. Maybe Arcade Archives two in our future or something.
Aaron:That'd be fucking cool, man. I feel like there's I feel like there's a shit ton not necessarily Taito, but there's a shit ton of cool fighting games from the Dreamcast era that I got kinda glossed over like, oh my god, Mecromancer. That was really fucking good.
Dre:Oh, Techromancer.
Aaron:Techromancer. Techromancer. Yeah.
Dre:Very good stuff.
Aaron:Fucking Project Justice. That shit was really cool. There's there's a million of them I could fucking list off. But, yeah, a lot of
Jay:those It kills me that, like, the Project Justice series ended at Project Justice 20 Yep. Six fucking years ago.
Dre:Yeah. I can't believe it.
Aaron:Twenty six. Oh, gross. It is very gross.
Dre:Capcom, oh, USA knew it too because when they brought that out here, it was a big old MSRP of $20. That was it. They knew they knew already that it wasn't gonna sell. It's like, this is the only chance we have to sell any of these.
Aaron:I guess that was around when, what, Street Fighter three third strike was kicking it off, or maybe it was a couple years after that?
Dre:Yeah. But no one cared about that Aw.
Aaron:Yet. Shit. Never mind. Well
Dre:Yeah. That was not really popular,
Jay:unfortunately. Third Strike was the slowest burn you've ever seen in your life.
Aaron:Oh, shit. Never mind. Never mind. Jay, what's your what's your first game you wanna talk about?
Jay:I wanna talk about I was I was gonna joke, like, I'm pretty sure Dre and I are gonna come on here and not talk about a game whose release date starts with anything other than '19. But I was thinking my first release will be something in the February. Oh. It is Battle Fantasia. Don't think I've ever heard of this.
Jay:Battle fan Battle Fantasia
Aaron:Dre? Is
Jay:The yeah.
Dre:Know you are. I know you're typing into the fucking computer.
Jay:I was I was actually I was actually looking something up while Dre was talking because I want to confirm the fact. Psychic Psychic Force is an offshoot or rebuild from the Kaiser Knuckles series that Taito did. Because they had Dan Kuga, which is like a real un unreleased but finished game, and then they kinda scrapped the release of that and worked on Psychic Force instead. But I wanted to double check that off the in the background.
Dre:I did not know that, actually. I that's that's news to me. So that's a cool little tidbit.
Aaron:This battle fantasia game is really cool.
Jay:Yeah. So before Street Fighter four releases in 2008 and basically, like, reignites fighting games into the second golden age. The original Street Fighter four was Arxis' attempt at a Street Fighter game in Battle Fantasia. This, like, very soft swords and wizardry fighter four button. It has a beautiful, like, two and a half d art style.
Jay:It's still a two d fighting game, but it was one of the, you know, first prominence, like, HD era, you know, three d model fighting games that was still a Street Fighter esque two d fighting game. And it apes a couple, Capcom conventions. It has a a mechanic called heat up, which is basically stealing the, dark force from dark stockers, like wholesale. Pretty, pretty unambiguously stealing that mechanic. And it also has its own version of, like, third strike parries.
Jay:It's a little better than third strike because no one else decided to ever do the third strike parries the way third strike did it again for And I love Third Strike, it's one of my favorite games ever. But there's like a pretty good reason why you don't do Third Strike parries the way they did them. But Battle Fantasia is, a shockingly, like, well thought out and interesting fighting game. Not only just because of how it was made and, like, how it all comes together, like, is competitively viable, but they just made a lot of really, really interesting character kits in that game. And I really dislike the fact that that game has been left to flounder so badly.
Jay:Like, there's a PC port of it, and that PC port is one of dot emu's biggest hack jobs. It is such a crappy PC port. Man. Like, if you try to plug two Fight Sticks into that PC port, the game kills your computer and then and then reports you to the HOA. It's like, it's so bad.
Jay:That sucks. Like, getting get try and get that game to run offline. Even, like, you know, getting that game to run online is is herculean enough, but, like, trying to take that game to an offline setting, and then you need to have, like, Steam big picture mode, like, take the wheel so you can get two arcade sticks working.
Dre:It's that's what I do a lot for old games. I'm like, big picture, please take the wheel here. I would really like to play this old PC version of Prince of Persia, Sands of Time, but I just can't get it to operate. Please do something in the background. Yeah.
Jay:So it's it's a it's a total shame because it's, the revised edition that the PC port has is, like, the the balance update. It's a very slight balance update, but, you know, mildly relevant one. So there was the original, like, PS three and Xbox three sixty releases, but those are technically the outdated versions. So if you want to play Battle Fantasia in its final variation the way anyone never would, you're really stuck with a crappy PC port.
Aaron:That fucking sucks.
Jay:It's it's a it's a it's
Dre:a shame.
Jay:It's that, like, it's an unbelievably fun game, and it was left in a very poor state. Again, like, it's a playable game, but just like the the way that game needed to be released was not up to snuff. When a dot e news worse releases and many people do not like that company, that one's always been like my the thorn in my side. Like, they did not give that game the actual level needed.
Dre:They're kinda hit or miss. Right? They've done some really good stuff. It does, like, do stuff like that too. So I it's so weird with Battle Fantasia because I don't ever remember it coming out until I saw it at, like, a game GameStop for, like, $5 used or something like that on $3.60.
Dre:Like, I just did not know about this. And this was so weird because I keep my ear to ear to the ground about all the shit, especially, you know, back then, it was in my twenties. I didn't have anything else better to do. It's not like I had a girlfriend or a family or anything. I just paid attention attention to stupid video games that I liked.
Dre:Right? So I can't this game completely passed me by somehow Yeah. Until it was way too late. And then it will I mean, but then after it was way too late, I bought it for a few bucks, like I said, and I had a ball with it. I thought it was really fun.
Dre:I didn't, like, love it. It's not like it was, like, one of my favorite games ever. And was like, this is cool. You know? This is really cool.
Dre:And then and Jay's right. The Street Fighter four, I never thought, like, three d characters on the two d playing for a fighting something as precise as a fighting game could work, and then they made it work. But Battle Fantasia did it first. They really did. And I really like the way the game looks.
Dre:I so, yeah, I do have, like, kind of an affinity for it. Like I said, it's not like one of my favorite games, like, ever or anything, but it definitely it's something I look back on and think, like, yeah, that was cool. That was interesting. It just didn't didn't really do anything, I wish I could come back somehow.
Jay:There's some scuttlebutt online about the fact that, it was a female developer who was the director for that game, and the powers that be it, Arxis may have done enough of a sexism to kinda run her out of the industry and, like, they didn't really help the game to the degree they probably should have. There's a like, I can't research it fully, but I had someone who I trust enough to be like, yeah, there's some kind of like sexism problems under the hood when it came to the fact that the director was, one of the ladies at Arcsys.
Dre:Yeah. That's unfortunate. But, unfortunately, we see that kind of stuff too often in this industry.
Jay:Mhmm. I mean, look at
Dre:the way I mean, we're talking about an entire totally different Microsoft mess right now as of this recording. But the previous one that happened, think about how Sarah Bond got railroaded and, you know, Phil Spencer came out looking like a, you know Yep. Some sort of hero. That's, you know, that's all I gotta say. That shit happens all the time.
Aaron:Man, that does suck about Battle Fantasia because just looking at screenshots, dude, I'm interested. I had no idea this came out for three sixty and PS three. Don't like, I feel like I was kind of on top of fighting games because I played a couple of Blaz Blues or Blaze Blue. Don't know how you really say it.
Jay:Blaze Blue. Blaze Blue.
Dre:Yeah. Blue. Yeah.
Jay:Yeah. Played a
Aaron:couple of those. I know there was a Guilty Gear on there that I played. There was, yeah, Street Fighter four, all sorts of that shit. I don't know how I missed this game because these characters look really cool.
Dre:It's not hard. Really didn't know it existed until I saw it used for $5. Like, I just did not know about it.
Jay:The it's it was really easy to miss because unless you were, like, deep in the shit like me.
Aaron:Deep in the shit.
Jay:Because it was before Street Fighter four, so it was kinda at the very tail end of people not caring about fighting games the way they used to or would again in about a year. Mhmm. I guess that's true. It's like a really terrible situation with, a great, great game came out at the wrong time. It was too ahead of the curve, and then it did not get a good port.
Dre:It's so funny with the we talk about those dead years in the February because I feel like all my friends played were just the multiple variations of Guilty Gear XX. And I feel like that was totally it. I guess there's like a Tekken five in there somewhere. Tekken. That's really it.
Dre:Like, we just did that for a very, very long time. There was this really kind of a dead time.
Jay:There's your XX variations. There's, you know, a fair amount of King of Fighters as there were, but that's also where you had, like, King of Fighters, Neo Wave, and, you know, King of Fight like, some of the less known ones. And
Dre:then have a weird affinity for Neo Wave. No. It is not on this list today that I'm gonna mention, but I I really like people just forget that game exists. I don't know. Maybe just because the arcade had it that I went to at that time and I played it a lot or something.
Dre:But
Jay:Yeah. I don't think a whole lot of people had, like, a Thomas Wave access, which I think probably
Dre:didn't help. So I got to play I don't know. I've always had a fit a little little soft spot for Neo Wave.
Jay:Yeah. And so it was like that. And then Tekken five, specifically Dark Resurrection is Mhmm. Pretty well heralded as the best Tekken game.
Dre:It is.
Jay:Outside of that, like, it wasn't the best of times. Many things were in the they were not at their peak anymore.
Aaron:It was the best of times, but the worst of times. It was there's
Jay:still plenty of good games from that era. It's just that they were not demanding the popularity that fighting fighting games used to have.
Aaron:Yeah. Not at all.
Jay:No. That's real that's, like, that's really the issue. Was, like, still plenty of great games. They're just the fatigue had kinda set in, and, like, the games that were there weren't doing the work.
Aaron:Yeah. Goddamn. Speaking of well, maybe not fatigue in general, but one of my first picks, Dre knows it. World Heroes two Jet, or as we like to call it, Sloppy Jet because it's got the sauce. It's got so much fucking sauce.
Aaron:World Hero two World Heroes two Jet. I It does. Fuck. I love this game so much, and I I didn't know it existed at all until we started doing Neo Geo GO. And the characters are all so fucking unique.
Aaron:Like, of course, they're all based on mythological characters or whatever, but it does it all in such a a different and unique way. Like, sure, we could just take Zeus and do the same thing that every other fucking game does with Zeus, but they went like, no. Let's make Zeus into this fucking freak. Let's make oh my god. Let's make Rasputin into this statue man with glowing hands.
Aaron:Let's do this and that. And and it's just so fast. Like, go listen. Well, I guess that Neo GeoGo episode isn't out yet, but It's
Dre:not out yet. That's right.
Jay:No. Okay. As someone who's on the public the first
Dre:world heroes at this point. I think we've recorded we've recorded all the world heroes. We can say that much, but, yeah, but we can't you know, they're not out yet, but we will get there. God.
Aaron:It's it's got so much going for it, man. It's got that televised game show vibe that we fucking love so much. Like, just the first
Dre:You know I love that shit.
Aaron:Just the fucking first stage. It's like, bam. You're on this gigantic stage. There's lights everywhere. There's this big ass neon sign, world heroes to jet.
Aaron:And then there's this fucking sports car with a hot bikini babe on it, and it's like, fuck. Yeah. And then that announcer is like, round one, fight or go or whatever. And then you fucking beat ass and
Dre:oh. Oh, that oh, also, you remember the continue scream where
Jay:the Oh, yeah.
Dre:The the referee's right above you? Nine. Eight. Seven. He's, like, pointing right in your fucking face.
Dre:It's so good, man. The presentation is off the charts on two jet, man. It's it's incredible. You know, I gotta I gotta supplement what you're saying here because I came I came into NGG thinking I would say perfect is the best one because, you know, I feel like a lot of people feel that way, and it's definitely the most, yeah, and, like like, it's definitely the most refined one. What I've learned over the course of doing that show and by the time we got to World Heroes Perfect is that for me, more refined isn't always necessarily better.
Aaron:Yeah.
Dre:Like, I think I like gay I think I learned that I like fighting games that are, like, a little off or fucked up. That doesn't mean that I like, like, x men versus Street Fighter Infinites or some shit. Like, I'm not
Jay:saying I like stuff where, like,
Dre:the other person doesn't get to play the game or, you know, mar like, Marvel three x factors. Like, that shit can go I I hate that shit. What I do like is when things feel a little bit off in a way that you can't describe that just makes that gives a little interesting sauce. I just don't think World Heroes Perfect is as interesting as a game of a game besides all the presentation stuff you said, which is obviously, like, wow. Right?
Dre:World Heroes Perfect definitely doesn't have that. You get teleported to a random stage in time. Nobody has, like, a stage anymore. You get and I get that, like, people who, like, really play fighting games wouldn't care about any of that stuff. Look.
Dre:I'm putting, like, quarters into a machine, and I'm I want to be entertained.
Aaron:I want to be entertained.
Dre:You know what I mean? That's that's my and that's, like, kind of the that we both have that sort of focus to it. So for maybe for people like us, two Jet is it, man. Yep. Like and it is it again, I never thought I would go into that show thinking I would come out thinking two Jet is better than perfect, but I did.
Dre:I was just I was just wrong.
Aaron:Dude, and the and it's got that big old tournament mode. Like, you basically won v three a whole other team, and you keep going and going and going till you get to the end. That tournament mode was so fucking cool because it added all those cool little flashy cinematics right before each match. Like, the very first match, you got your guy all brooding and deep on top of a fucking skyscraper like Batman. They jump down, and it's like, boom.
Aaron:Match one. Let's fucking do this shit. Let's boogie. And then you don't have any of that in in in perfect because it's just, you know, you go right from character select right to match one, and then you're fighting, and then that's it. It's just there's no sauce.
Jay:I mean, it just have
Aaron:it's own sauce, but, I mean, not a sauce.
Dre:Since we're blowing all our future NGG episodes, it's kinda like the thing I said about, like, Samurai Shodown three where that game feels like it wants you off the machine enough. Like, no more intros, no more talking, no more anything. You pick that character, you pick slash or bust. I don't care if you don't know what that means. And then you then you are getting in this match, and you're gonna lose, and that's it.
Dre:Sorry. That's that's that's all you're gonna do here.
Jay:You're gonna lose that, man.
Dre:Bully you off the machine. That's what that's what that's how our summary shot on three is. It's a bully. It's a big old bully.
Aaron:Especially that nice bitch.
Dre:I'm not saying perfect is that is that far gone with it, but I'm just it you know, it is definitely, like, kinda like, you know what World Heroes is. Here are here's your here's your here's your shit. But, yeah, man, I think I'm with you. Two Jet. Oh, so good.
Aaron:Top notch fucking soundtrack. Shout out to my boy, Brocken. Always love Bronkin. Eric is good too. He's like thunder hammer.
Aaron:God. Love that move.
Dre:Rasputin has always been ever since I was a kid, I've been a Rasputin person, man. Rasputin. I've always been big, lowy hands. I can't resist. Jay, I don't think I've ever heard you talk about World Heroes ever.
Dre:Like, do you even like World Heroes? Or
Jay:No. I I it's I've only I've had very few chances to play World Heroes. The only time I played it was I'd I'd fiddle around in a random bracket with Rasputin and Perfect. But it's just one of the it's one of the few games that has always kind of passed me by. Like, I just never got the chance to, like, dig deep into World Heroes.
Jay:And if I was, I was going to do Perfect because, obviously, that's the competitive one.
Dre:And there's nothing wrong with that. It's perfect is still a very, very good game. It's just
Jay:It's preferred way to engage with fighting games is, like, tournament level stuff.
Dre:Yeah. So, obviously, you would want to play it that way. But, obviously, you know, that's that's what's so great about, like, talking about fighting games. Right? Like, you can you can get into it on that level.
Dre:Or, like, for us, just to me, a fighting game is any other game I can play at the arcade. And I and if you want that real arcade you know, like, arcade gives good arcade, two jet is it.
Aaron:Gives good arcade.
Dre:It's just what it it does. It gives good arcade.
Aaron:Gives good head, arcade game.
Dre:Yeah. Yes. Gives some head and arcade.
Jay:So no arcade?
Dre:No arcade. Just head. Oh, shit. Oh, man. Alright.
Jay:Sorry. That that joke was only gonna play well for video.
Dre:Are we back to me already?
Aaron:I believe so. Happening? Yeah. Passing the book.
Dre:Okay. Okay. Man, so I'm gonna be real. Obviously, I had two Judd on my list here, so I'm gonna pull my audible that I that I that I pulled up. And this is something that I feel like this is just a me opinion.
Dre:I really don't think I've ever heard anyone else say this, but I think the first Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha one is so fucking sick and no one cares. I look. Street Fighter Alpha, I think that might be my favorite Capcom fighting game series. I think all three games are incredible.
Aaron:I do love that art style.
Dre:Particular way. You know you know how much I love alpha three. Alpha three's maybe maybe I've always said it's my favorite fighting game. I don't know if that's true. I mean, I might say Tekken five or I might say I don't know.
Dre:Right? But it's it's really, really up there. It's something I would have to deeply consider. And alpha two is really great as well. And I'm not saying I'm not even saying that alpha one is better than two or three because I'm not you know, I don't necessarily feel that way.
Dre:What I am saying is that alpha one just seems to get forgotten in a way that's like, well, it's superseded by alpha two, like some other version of Guilty Gear x two where XX is superseded by this or that one. And I just don't feel like that's the case. I think all three alpha games are worth playing in their own right. They're all fucking fun for for different reasons. And I really do think people don't think about the first one anymore.
Dre:Like, at the time, it was kind of a big deal. Right? Because you had it was the first game that actually acknowledged, you know, Final Fight and Street Fighter being, like, the same universe, and that meant a lot to me as a Final Fight That's cool. Lover.
Jay:You know, birth date to Andre when that happens.
Dre:Dude, I I thought this was the best. Oh my god. I get to play a fighting game with Guy and, like, it was just incredible. And hearing final
Jay:Cody Cody showing up in alpha three is one of the coolest fucking things ever.
Dre:Dog. It truly works at
Aaron:the head of the arcade,
Dre:That's how hey. How do you think I never mind.
Jay:The the alpha the alpha three the alpha three cabinet was just Dome City.
Dre:Dome City. The play the place where I used to play alpha three was one of the Capcom ones, Nickel City. So I'm just imagining
Aaron:Hell, yeah.
Dre:The logo saying Dome City. Dome City. But no, dude. I think, like, as time has gone on and then alpha two came out and alpha three came out, we just kinda think of the first one as, like, some sort of well, that was a good start. No.
Dre:I think the I think alpha one is actually fucking sick. I do. I've always felt that way, and I do I don't like that it gets, like, overshadowed, I guess. I feel like that game deserves more mindshare than it gets these days, I guess, because people really only talk about you're an alpha two person or an alpha three person. Yeah.
Dre:Alpha one people, rise up. Rise up. Goddamn it.
Jay:Andre is Andre is correct in so far that, like, alpha two kinda steals all of alpha one's thunder. Mhmm. Whereas, like, at the very least, like, alpha two and alpha three are very different playing games. Yes. And the the issue, like, the soft issue here is that alpha two does just feel like the iteration on alpha one.
Jay:But I I will agree with Andre. Alpha one still rules. Like, it's like, alpha one on its own is still a fantastic game. I think it's just a a shame that another alpha one came out, and it was called alpha two.
Dre:Yeah.
Aaron:Yeah. That is
Dre:They they that is a shame. And I totally I would never sit here and say it's better than alpha two. I'm not obviously, it's not true. It's just that, like, there's something about going back and playing that original one. There really
Jay:is still more than enough to to handle just being alpha one. Like, it's still a perfectly great game on its own.
Dre:Yeah. Aaron, you're not you've never really fucked with alpha. Right? Like, you've never been a
Aaron:I've grazed I've grazed the surface of it on the the Street Fighter collection that they did a while back. I haven't
Jay:Mhmm. Oh, he was he was playing that zero three upper. He was playing that. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.
Aaron:No. Yeah. I've I've grazed it, though. I do love the fucking art style to those games because they were, like, they were comic book y as fuck, weren't they? Like, more two d or
Jay:I I would definitely call I I think calling them comic book y is not a bad way to address the, like, the bump up in fidelity with alpha.
Dre:Yeah. It it almost felt like they were trying to go for, like, the anime, like, Shrewfighter two, the animated movie almost a little bit, but not exactly that. Right? But, like, kinda, a little. But I wouldn't I wouldn't say the look of alpha is anime necessarily.
Dre:Yeah. You know?
Jay:It's it's still it's very obviously Japanese in undeniable way, but it never feels, like, overtly anime. But you can tell that there's a different amount of stylization, whereas, like, the two like, Street Fighter two series feels very much kung fu movie.
Aaron:Yeah. Like, more realistic.
Jay:Feels alpha definitely feels more exaggerated. Like, m bison in alpha is a comic book amount of muscle.
Dre:Yes. Oh my god, dude. I love short fat bison. I love it. It's amazing.
Dre:Short fat bison.
Jay:Thick thick boy bison is the thing. Like, alpha is it's the best bison.
Dre:It's it's it's like, I remember when I first, why does he look like this? This is amazing. Oh, and I I didn't even talk about the home versions where you get to do dramatic battle and fight, like, that super hard version of Akuma, which is, like, insane. I don't think I've ever actually beat him myself. Like, that shit's crazy.
Dre:Like, there's all the home versions of alpha games have always been legendarily, like, great stuff. Like, they add so much cool stuff for you to do at home. But even just talking about the arcade game, like, just I wish we could think of alpha as its own thing instead of just alpha two is better and it superseded because I do think there's something to it. You know, this is kind of random, but, Jay, I didn't realize that, like, competitively, there are some people who like to play Street Fighter two champion edition. Had no idea.
Dre:I thought that was so that was so weird because, like, I thought, like, I don't know, people just like Super Turbo or even hyper fighting.
Jay:Right? It was usually hyper fighting if you're gonna go pre Super Turbo. I mean, I don't doubt it just because like, no one's playing World Warrior for starters. Yeah. No.
Jay:We we left World Warrior in the dust. So champion edition, I wouldn't be shocked by, but it's definitely, like, Hyper Fighting and Super Turbo are the worst.
Dre:Yeah. But I do I just thought it was weird that there was, like, some people
Jay:who
Dre:did that. Right? I I thought that would be I thought there would just be Hyper Fighting or SuperDurbo. But I've because I've I say that because I've always had an affinity for champion edition myself. It's just It was like I said, there's a home point to it that's different.
Dre:You know? So it is not necessarily better, but different.
Jay:Yeah. Hot champion edition was always the
Aaron:one that was like, what? This is the one
Jay:that came home. So it's like, this is Mhmm. This is important to me. Yeah. Because I'm I'm playing I'm playing Street Fighter two on the SNES, and it's not costing me a million dollars and quarters.
Dre:Yeah. And it's also like let's be real. Like, if you're a child, champion edition bison is the most busted. It's so fun. It's so fun just to torpedo back and forth and just, like, win the game.
Dre:It's so unfair. 25% on block, 20 to 25% if you block that shit. Oh my god. God, I love chip damage. If I were to ever make my own fighting game, chip damage would be like I legitimately think, like, my favorite thing about Marvel two is that you can do screen supers that just do crazy chip.
Dre:That is just so fun. I I'm sorry. I I hate that we've gotten rid of chip damage largely on NVIDIA games.
Jay:It it's chip chip damage should always be back. I I dislike, I dislike that you can't put people in checkmate situations, where it's just like, okay. You have no response. It's over.
Dre:I love it. I love that. I think that's I think that's fun. That's the
Jay:that's the fun of fighting games is just
Dre:go and
Jay:check checkmate, bitch. Optic blast.
Dre:Optic blast, bitch. Oh my god. You can't do shit.
Aaron:There's a there's a reason
Jay:that, like, everyone over the age of 30, like, responds immediately. Their eyes light up if you ever say behold because they know what they're about to say next. Oh. It's just like the it's like the greatest Manchurian candidate trigger.
Dre:Oh my god. Yeah. Okay. I'm I'm glad I wasn't complete. I'm glad I talked about Alpha one.
Dre:You guys weren't just looking at me like, you are fucking No. Insane. So alright. Good.
Jay:Okay. I I'm up next. Yes, sir. And I'm I'm gonna call my Audible, which is relevant because I got you two here. Because it's one of my favorite fighting games of all time is Windjammers.
Aaron:I guess you could count that as a fighting game. Yeah. You know? I'll count it.
Dre:I mean, I understand.
Jay:I understand. I've played in in in probably more Windjammers tournaments than almost any, not like my main games, like, at Guilty or Exert or Under Night, but, like, it's probably within the top five Hell yeah. Amount of, like, competitive tournaments I've entered in. I've met I've meddled in Windjammers before.
Dre:Like, Wow.
Jay:There's, there's there's, like, a theory that, like, any game can be a fighting game. It just needs to be have, like, the right amount of sauce to it. And the crowning example of that for like, a lot of the the a lot of the twenty tens was, like, yeah, Windjammers is a fighting game. I can
Aaron:see it kinda.
Dre:Philosophically, I agree. My brain obviously won't let me, like There's Frisbee's. Because I'm so, There's Frisbee's that can't be a fighting game. Exactly. Right?
Dre:But you know what? I you know what I finally relented on this is when people said this about Mario Tennis Aces on Switch. Like, I don't know if either of you have played that game, but people said it had that quality to it. And I'm like, you know fucking what? I see it.
Dre:I really do see it. This is not just a tennis game. There's there's so much going on here.
Aaron:Like a like a a back to forth battle that's that demands your attention. Guess, yeah, that and, like, I I guess this is a stretch, but I would no. I'm not gonna call a card game a fighting game. That's stupid. Never mind.
Aaron:Yes. I agree with Martin.
Dre:Depends on
Jay:what it is.
Aaron:And you know what I'm gonna say.
Dre:Were you gonna say some Yu Gi Oh shit?
Aaron:I know you like that. Yu Gi Oh. Yeah. That shit can be a a real back and forth battle.
Dre:I know you like that Yu Gi Oh.
Jay:Yeah. The the thing with, like, Windjammers is maybe think of it as only, like, a step and
Dre:a half
Jay:removed from a projectile fighter. Mhmm. And then, like, I think I think the bridge to see it as a fighting game gets a little clearer. Because you're you're yes, you're basically playing tennis, but so much of how you play tennis in Windjammers is determined by what character are you picking and how are you doing their special inputs, which, like, you can then filter back into, this is a fighting game. Like, so much of it is spacing, so much of it is is, like, adding Yomi levels to psych out your opponents, you know, attacking certain spacing areas, playing neutral differently.
Jay:It's it has so much of the same fundamentals, and it's hard to really pin down when a nonfighting game is a fighting game other than people being like, I can feel it in my hands. This is a fighting game. Like, there's just like a there's a intangible Yeah. To when you take the fighting game people and you put them in front of something like Windjammers, they just go, oh, yes. Like, instantly, this makes sense.
Jay:This is a fighting game.
Dre:I get it. I can feel really do. And, obviously, Windjammers sorry for the spoiler alert for NGG. It's my favorite Neo Geo game of all time. It always has been.
Jay:One of
Dre:my favorite games ever. Yes. Was not a question. Never. Have two Windjammer shirts over here in my closet that I'm pointing at.
Dre:Like, I am a I am a freak for that game. I always have been ever since it came out. And I love that over time, especially as we got into the twenty tens, people just came around. It's like, hey. Yeah.
Dre:That Windjammers game. Right? So and then to the point where we got a sequel, which, I mean, I don't know if you guys have played Windjammers two. I love that shit. I love that they realize they don't need to do much to it.
Dre:Mhmm. That's just it's Windjammers plus. You know? And and it's like the perfect sequel. It's the perfect I because you know how it is nowadays when you do iterative sequels, people are just like, yeah.
Dre:This is the same thing. It's really not. Like, Windjammers two, I think I actually prefer. But point is, yeah, man. I I get it.
Dre:I mean, you're gonna get no argument for me. Who do you who do you pick in Windjammers, Shay? Who's your who's your go to?
Jay:I play the German guy whose name is failing me at the moment. Right.
Dre:Yeah. I picked I picked the American man, Gary something. The only person wearing pants, and, of course, their football pants because America.
Jay:Yeah. I wanna say his name's, like, Gary Scott. That sounds right.
Dre:That's the that's the Amer I think that's the American guy.
Jay:Yeah. G Scott.
Aaron:Do want me to look it up?
Jay:And then I I yeah. Because I need to
Aaron:I need to remember that one yes or no. Name. Fine. Too late. Put my phone down.
Jay:German guy's name. I
Aaron:I usually go I'm gonna I'm gonna be on tilts the entire time if I don't do this.
Dre:Okay. Fine.
Aaron:Go ahead. Because I just I need to know. It's my Okay. That's fine. My my dude.
Dre:That's fine. Wessel? Something Wessel?
Jay:Yeah. Wessel. Something like that. I just remember he go he goes, emboldened.
Dre:Yes. Oh, fuck.
Aaron:There's one character that has
Jay:Yeah. Klaus Klauswessel. And I was right. It was it was Gary Scott.
Dre:You like that super Aaron, right, with the one that, like, does the ride on the
Aaron:Yeah. It, like, rides on the side of the fucking arena and then goes right to their goal or whatever. I forget who that is. Yeah. But that one's really
Jay:That's the
Dre:it's the British guy. He gets swapped with a Korean
Jay:Yeah. It's the British or the Korean guy depending on Yeah. It's either Miller or you or Yo. But, yeah, it's it's a, it's a great fighting game, air quotes fighting game. Just also maybe one of the most beautiful and aesthetically pleasing and a fantastic sounding games that's ever been released.
Jay:I tried.
Dre:It's it's some of the best sound design ever. It's not just that obviously, sound design just doesn't mean music. It's everything. Every sound thing. The way the way the the way the particular when it bounces off the side of
Aaron:That's where
Dre:it's most common Yep. Mhmm. The announcer, the everything. It's
Jay:just incredible. I can't I can't wait until I finish building my arcade machine because I just wanna have that I wanna have that game ripping through the speakers. It's so fucking beautiful.
Dre:Man. It's beautiful.
Jay:So that was
Aaron:me that was me playing to the crowd a little bit for this.
Dre:That's Hey. I love it. I love it.
Aaron:I see it. I did not expect that I did not expect that for an answer on this episode. So hell yeah. I like that ship.
Dre:I'm with it.
Aaron:I guess before we get to to my next pick, I guess that would be the halfway point. Let's let's take a real quick ad break. We'll hear a word from our sponsor, and we'll be right back. Shout out to to this episode sponsor, Nelson Bros Flavored Windows. So windows are cool.
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Aaron:But, I mean, you know what? They they should taste good too. Right? Like, they they do everything else. Why not give them a little flavor?
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Dre:You can lick them till the town's Yeah. Come
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Jay:I'm I'm particular to the brown sugar flavor. Not only is it a delicious snack whenever I'm, you know, waking up in the morning and I could just use a little pick me up, but it does such a great job distilling the sunlight that comes into my bedroom. So it's really you're getting an added value. That's all I'm gonna say is, you know, you're getting a little bit of an added value.
Aaron:Just changing the key in like that. Wow. Dre, what about you?
Dre:Man, you know, I like so many of them, really. I really like the cheesy broccoli flavor, though. You know? Damn. Because sometimes, you know, it's a thing where it's like, I really like the taste of that, but I don't always wanna make it.
Dre:It's not like I always have broccoli on hand or whatever. So sometimes, you know, I get in the middle of the night. I've just get I kinda stand up on the bed, like, by window real quick. I get that cheesy broccoli flavor.
Aaron:Your neighbor walks by.
Dre:And it's just like yeah. And it's just like, you know, I mean Jealous.
Jay:You know? But I'm
Dre:glad I'm glad my window isn't on a busy street anymore because before everyone would see me look that window. But now it's nice and private. Not not too many cars going by, especially at 3AM. Who's really gonna be looking? Yeah.
Dre:Is anyone gonna just be standing out there waiting for me to oh, are they double coated? Because I wonder if people can walk up and lick my cheesy broccoli window.
Aaron:You know what?
Dre:You know what I mean?
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Jay:The miss the missus has been bugging me for the matcha windows, and it's just not in the budget at the moment. But I've been They have one. I understand her desires. You know?
Dre:I understand.
Jay:Happy wife, happy life. We'll be getting them soon enough.
Dre:Oh, man. Oh. Oh, god. And you know what?
Aaron:You can have a different flavor slash color in each window in your house, almost have like a stained glass window effect, dude.
Dre:100%.
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Dre:I was thinking like well, definitely in the living room, I definitely wanna get the cotton candy window because that alluring pink, like my like my tank top right here, I definitely want that filtered through when the sun comes through. You know? You get a nice little nice little hue going Right? I would I basically, what I'm saying is I want all my rooms to look how they taste. I just really think that's optimal.
Aaron:Hell. Holy shit. My voice cracked so because I love that fucking idea so much.
Jay:Oh, yeah. I'm sorry.
Dre:I didn't mean to get you so excited.
Jay:Andre is simply looking to slay savor the flavor, if you will, of those beautiful dusk nights that he gets over there where the pinkish sky is slowly fading away, thinking to himself, why can't I have more of that during the day? I wanna experience that at 2PM on a Thursday. And with this product, you can.
Dre:I just, it's just I don't I think if you out there have ever looked at a sunset and have never thought, man, I wonder what that tastes like, you're lying to me. You're lying to me. You have absolutely thought that. So I don't wanna hear it. You know?
Aaron:That's right.
Dre:Don't judge me.
Aaron:That's right. He's right. Goddamn it. But don't judge him
Jay:for having taste and dreams.
Dre:Sorry. Flavor of dreams. I thought this was America.
Jay:Pursuit of happiness allows me to flavor anything I want
Aaron:when I want within the
Jay:confines of my home.
Dre:Whole house, everything is flavored.
Aaron:Got flavored floors, flavored bucket cupboards,
Jay:like Well, I mean, after they removed lead from paint, what the fuck else was I supposed to flavor it with?
Dre:Come on. I mean, seriously. Oh. Cut down way now. What am I gonna eat?
Aaron:Oh, with Nelson Bros, anything is possible. Thank you, Nelson Bros Flavored Windows for sponsoring this episode.
Dre:Thank you, Nelson Bros.
Aaron:Thank you, Nelson Bros. Oh, alright. So we're back. I wrote down five just in case there was any overlap. Unfortunately, there was no overlap.
Aaron:So now I'm stuck with five, and I have to make the difficult choice. You know, fuck it. The Killer Instinct reboot from the Xbox one, I feel like nobody talks about that game. And it's a goddamn shame. I mean, I can see why because, like, when it was first released, it was just, we're gonna have a rotating free character and the game is free, but you gotta buy to rest as they come out.
Aaron:But then, what, like, five years later, they were like, that idea is actually dumb. Here's the gold version. Everything comes included with that, every single character. But what's really fucking cool about the reboot other than everything looks great, everything fucking sounds great, all the characters are cool, they'll have their own cool passive abilities that lead into their combos and everything. The the way you do a combo in that game is so fucking unique and different.
Aaron:Like, every character has their own cool unique play style, and the way that they input combos is just a little bit different as well. Like, for example, Glacius, he can start up a combo. Like, he doesn't have to be near an opponent to start a combo. He can do it through his little range, like icicle spike attacks.
Jay:He this is forward heavy punch is is, like, is 75% screen forward heavy punch he can start from. It's so fun.
Aaron:It's fucking insane. And then my gal, Riptor, fucking just go back forward and then do your combo opener and then, you do a linker where you're just like, bam bam bam tail whip and then combo ender. You just fucking double whipping tail whip and then goddamn it. It's so fucking cool and flashy.
Dre:Today, I learned Riptor is a girl.
Jay:Yeah. That's a it's kind of a it's kind of a meme to bring up that Riptor is a girl.
Dre:I had no idea. I feel like I just found out about Samus already.
Jay:It's it's yeah. It's it's it's like one of those things that's been true since the original, but why would you ever bring it up? So it's a bit of a, like it's like a very, very slight meme to be like, yeah, Riptor, who is a girl. Who
Aaron:else Aaron? Clue. Else put
Dre:this Blade the shit out of the first two. I just I never knew. Alright. Would you About time I learned.
Jay:You can't identify from a distance. The genres blasphemous. Sorry.
Dre:I did not peek at I did not peek at the Riptor undercarriage.
Aaron:Yep. That that I guess that's knowledge. That that's useless knowledge. Whatever. But, yeah, I I'd I'd really love I've always loved how cool and unique all the characters feel.
Aaron:Like, I feel like any other fighting game, you've got kung fu guy number one, kung fu guy number two, electric boy, fucking hoo whatever. But you've got you've got fucking Saberwolf, the the you got Fulgore, the fucking killer robot with the laser eyes. You've got Riptor, who's a dinosaur. Glacius, the fucking ice alien. Cinder, the fire guy who could throw a little fire bombs and shit.
Aaron:And then they they keep they kept adding more and more sweet ass characters to the game over time. Like, the the the Japanese demon lady with the the the spear. I forget her name. Hisako.
Jay:Hisako. Yeah. It's very hard for me to remember because it's not Hisako. It's Hisako. Hisako.
Aaron:Then yeah. There's a million they also did a lot of cool Xbox crossover characters like General Rom from Gears of War, fucking Yep. The Arbiter from Halo, Rash from Battletoads. And I think they did Rash. One other one, but I forget.
Aaron:But,
Jay:yeah. The music fucking rules, like, just the Mick Mick Gordon on the soundtrack, if I remember correctly.
Aaron:Yeah. He fucking brought it, dude. Like, he destroyed that game. Just
Jay:It's so it's so heavy.
Aaron:The main menu theme gets me every time. That is a constant rotation in my playlist. Yuck. Yeah. Can't get can't even do it justice.
Aaron:It's so good.
Jay:It's yeah. The perk the percussion on that track is incredible. It's like he's
Aaron:Oh, yeah.
Jay:Crushing a skyscraper for the percussion. So it just sounds like an entire, like, building falls every time there you need to punctuate a beat.
Aaron:Oh, man. Oh, and there's so many cool single player modes. Like, the the multiplayer is great, of course. Online, local multiplayer is great. But there's a lot of really fucking cool single player modes.
Aaron:Like, first off, you can train what's called your shadow, which is like it's I guess, like, an AI version that or an AI version of your character that copies the way you fight, and you send it off to fight other AI copies of other people. And that's kinda cool. You can basically use that to train against yourself or whatever. But then there's the fucking roguelike single player mode, which I don't think I've ever fucking heard of a roguelike single player mode in a fighting game before. It's build your team of three, rip open packs of cards to get cool new abilities, give them to certain characters, and you fight until you die and you start over.
Aaron:And eventually, you'll get to Gargos, stick your foot in his ass, and then you win. And then you go back to open to more cards. It's fuck. I I love the Killer Instinct reboot so much. I I wish they would make another one, but I don't know what the fuck they would do with it because they did so much with this one.
Aaron:So
Jay:Yeah. It's it's a really complete game. Mhmm. The history of the Killer Instinct 2013 is you could fill it you there is a documentary about it for starters, but you could fill an entire book on the history of that game for both good and bad reasons. But, yeah, it's a once it got to be good because there was a time unreleased, that was a bad game.
Jay:Yeah. It was a a decently bad game because it was originally developed by Double Helix, who I think at that point in time, Double Helix was people who did, like, ports and remakes.
Aaron:I think so. And then they got bought by Amazon or something?
Jay:Or Something like that. So it was, season one of that thing was, like, Double Helix is trying to make a fighting game, and boy, howdy did they try. There's a there's a really famous quote of from one of the fighting game players, Oliver Lang, who's like, the current state of king the current state of killer instinct is that I dunk a basketball on top of you, and then we pay rock, paper, scissors to see if it scored. But after that first run with Double Helix, then Iron Galaxy took out that game over.
Dre:Yep.
Jay:And it became so fucking good. And so, like, it did suffer a lot from being the one game on Xbox in a generation where all fighting games went to PlayStation. That's, like, secretly one of the bigger coups of that generation was that for seventh gen, almost all the fighting games were multiplatform, but they were better on three sixty, like many many such cases of seventh gen. The multiplatform games were better on three sixty. So, like, three sixty was the preferred tournament consoles.
Jay:And then when the PlayStation four and Xbox one generation happened, Street Fighter was exclusive to PlayStation four, and that changed everything. Like, that the tides were completely switched to the other direction, and Killer Instinct was not enough to pull things back, and people were not gonna buy two consoles. So Killer Instinct had a very, very rough start for a long time. But, the second or third biggest tournament in North America, Combo Breaker, The person who, you know, one of the the main directors for that, Rick, the Hadot. Killer Instinct is his favorite game.
Jay:He makes sure that Killer Instinct is run at that event every year and put in a prominent position, and it is always highly celebrated. All the Killer people come out to that turret.
Aaron:Oh, yeah.
Jay:You know, that game as long as there's a combo breaker, and honestly, as long as Rick still, like, breathes, Killer Instinct will be supported.
Aaron:That's good, man. Like, I've played a lot of the older ones and and they are good, but there's just something so fucking special. Like, something so so fucking metal about this reboot and something so you like like, every character has a cool little special ability that I love dicking around with and toying with each character with. And fuck. They even added the what the the finishing moves, I think, later on.
Aaron:I forgot what they were called. Not the ultra Ultras? Not the ultra combos, but, like, something else after that. It was basically, like, fatalities, but for killer instinct. I forget what it was.
Aaron:But even though even the ultra combos, fuck it. Even those feel really fucking good in this game compared to the to the previous games. And they'll time it to the fucking music, to the stage music in a really cool way. It'll be like, It's so fucking I look real stupid doing it, but goddamn it. Does it look awesome in the game?
Aaron:So sick.
Jay:It's a it's a great game that constantly, like, finds a way to improve on itself and just asks what more can we do with this game and then always comes up with an answer.
Aaron:Yep. Yep. Once again, cool.
Dre:As you as you probably tell at this point, I've never played this. I I played the obviously, I mean, because I just the only Xbox I ever had was a three sixty. So it's like, never had an opportunity to play this. I know it's on PC, but I've
Aaron:It's on Game Pass.
Dre:I don't know.
Aaron:You can get the gold edition on Game Pass.
Jay:Game
Dre:yes. The Game Pass, the thing I definitely
Jay:definitely have. That's Andre. Definitely. No.
Dre:So but I've never played this. Obviously, I'm very familiar with the older killer instincts and shit. So Yeah. But that's really my only rear end roads. But, yeah, I've never heard anyone say a bad thing about k I 2013, but that's not a lot of people because, as you said, that's the reason why it's on the show.
Dre:It's not something that's, like, everyone has played, including myself. So Yeah.
Jay:Yeah. Andre, I I would highly recommend you give that game an honest shot. I think you would love it. I'll buy it for you. It's it's I'll buy it for you.
Jay:Really, really good.
Dre:I'll play it. For sure. It seems it seems cool. I've just never I've just never dabbled in it.
Jay:It's just it's one of those things where, you know, you've you never had a reason to, and then you never really had a reason to. But if you just spend some time with that game, I think you're gonna be like, goddamn. This is good. Like, it's got it's got the stuff. It's got the juice.
Dre:It seems so cool. I it seemed the interactions is I've obviously, I've seen people play it and stuff. It just seems it seems like a wild time. I definitely see it seems like the kind of thing that we get into.
Aaron:So It's got a lot of fan service too for fans of the older games. Like, they bring back Yeah. Oh my god. The the Viking warrior guy, I forget his name. Tusk.
Aaron:Tusk.
Jay:They bring From from from gold.
Aaron:Yeah. Yeah. They brought him back. Kim Woo, they brought her back. Fucking the three headed guy, they brought him back as a playable character.
Aaron:They brought, like, everybody
Jay:Tusk Tusk has such a cool, like, mechanic to him because I think every one of his sword attacks has super armor. Yep. So you just, like, super armor through shit. It's such a fun way to play that game.
Dre:It sounds. So everything he does is a drive impact? That's that's amazing. I
Aaron:love it. All of I think just all
Jay:of his, like, his big sword swipes have drive in like, drive impact to it more or less.
Dre:That's fucking that's amazing. So you just, like, pull up your shit. As this game was being, you know, like, in its first, maybe, first couple seasons or something, I do remember reading the thing about how they tackled chief thunder. Because, obviously, you know, it was the nineties, and Native American characters just were what they were back then. So, like, obviously, in the year of our lord twenty thirteen, fourteen, can't really do that anymore.
Dre:So they're trying to find a way. How can we have this character in the game and have it not be, you know, embarrassing? Right?
Jay:And
Dre:they found a way to do that, which is which is super cool. You know?
Jay:And the the version of Thunder in that game is so sick. Yep. He's, like, kind of like a a, like, southern gothic reinterpretation of a Native American. Like, this very, like, kind of the crow, you know, crowish
Aaron:Yeah, dude.
Jay:Like, dark face paints. It's almost, like, kind of brooding. Whereas, I really like Thunder in the original Killer Instinct, but he is barely a half step removed from a football mascot.
Dre:Which which we know. You know? But yeah. No. But I like that they I like that they found a way to do that without you know?
Dre:And then I remember I I don't know if it was, like, some sort of Xbox blog or something, but I just remember being very interested in that. But, no, obviously, I've never had a x bone, so I never played the game. And, again, I know it's on PC or whatever. So I guess I'll just have to do
Aaron:that. Yeah. You will. Yeah. You will.
Aaron:And then you can tell me how much you love Augenos. You're gonna play Augenos because he's really cool. He's a big old,
Jay:like, stoic gold was a orchid person.
Dre:Berocked bad in this game? Is she good?
Jay:She's really good. Orchid's Orchid's good. She? Orchid.
Dre:Yeah. Okay. Good. Because that was well, look, man. The first Killer Instinct came out when I was, like, 13.
Dre:I mean, what do you want? Of course, I was gonna pick b orchid. I mean, I'm sorry. You know, buddy. I mean, what do you what am I gonna do?
Dre:Right? I
Jay:You think you can go put women in half the X and say no?
Dre:I believe there are at least two fine time big deal episodes that have bee orchid in the in the title. I could be wrong about this, but yeah. But yeah. Cool. Should I go with my last one here?
Aaron:Shut up.
Dre:Yeah. Okay. So this is something I love to talk about because I'm old enough to talk about this. And, you know, as time goes on, you know, there are less and less people who can talk about this. So we talked about it a little bit earlier, alluded to it.
Dre:But Street Fighter three, new generation. When that game came out, it is very hard to describe to people who were not there at the time how completely ignored this game was. Nobody gave a shit. Absolutely nobody. I would go in the arcade.
Dre:And look. That was a joke the entire, like, mid nineties. Oh, you know, Street Fighter two alpha super turbo championship edition. You know, like, you know, all the that was like the original meme, basically. And it's just like, okay.
Dre:We finally get to Street Fighter three.
Jay:Featuring Street Fighter two was such phenomenon.
Dre:Like, nobody gave a shit. This I went to this I I when it first showed up, I was like, oh my god. It didn't even Aaron, it doesn't even say Street Fighter three on the marquee. It just says three. Like, t h r e e.
Aaron:What the
Dre:fuck? Yeah. Yeah. Spelled that in letters. And it was it was so weird.
Dre:And I saw this, and I I looked at the machine. I was like, oh, shit. Oh, shit. It's here. And I'm looking around like nobody cares.
Dre:Nobody's even around it. Right? And this is an era where when a new fighting game came out Aaron, I think I talked about this
Aaron:Yeah.
Dre:On SuperPod Saga a very long time ago with you and Tommy. We were just talking about, like, video game memories or something.
Aaron:Yeah.
Dre:And one of my biggest video game memories is that the first time I ever saw, ironically, Killer Instinct was on test location in Las Vegas. We went up to Vegas, like, a couple times a year. It was on test location, Excalibur or Luxor or something. I have never in my life seen that many people around an arcade machine ever. It was the most crowded I had ever seen anything.
Dre:I had to and, again, this time, I'm a teenager, and, yeah, I think I'm full height at this point. Right? So I'm but I'm still trying to push my way over and see what this machine is. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Dre:It was killer instinct. Everyone's crowded around this thing. Dude, I saw big crowds for Mortal Kombat four, a game people think a lot of people think sucks. Right? And, like, that that game had, like, a huge crowd when it came out.
Dre:Nobody cared about Street Fighter three. Street Fighter two was one of the biggest phenomenons of all time. Here my point is Street Fighter three was always destined for failure. However, they kept trying. Right?
Dre:They did Street Fighter three second impact, and then they did Street Fighter three third strike. Third strike some years later goes on to become a legend in in a lot of people's eyes, and quite frankly, including mine. Even though and and Jayce, even though that's not a game I'm super passionate about, but I recognize the hell out of it, obviously, because how could I not? Here's the thing, though. Street Fighter three Second Impact, for me, is like the one I am really passionate about.
Dre:When I think about Street Fighter three series, I think about that game. And it's almost like a Street Fighter alpha situation where it's like, yeah, obviously, the third strike is better. I would never come on the show or any other show and say Streetfighter like, second Impact is better than third strike. That's just not true. Right?
Dre:What I will say is this, what we can assess around here is vibes. And we talked about this with with World Heroes two Jet. Second Impact might be the most vibed out fucking Capcom game ever, ever made. That it is an absolute audio visual masterpiece of a game. The backgrounds are insane.
Dre:Like, every single one is crazy. The animation is off the charts. Obviously, that was the thing that drew me to New Generation in the first place. I was just seeing these characters animated this way, and I was like, this is this is is anyone else seeing this? Does someone care about me?
Jay:It it it's like it I just sometimes I struggle to, like, explain to people, like, to late nineties Capcom are the Chicago 93 bulls of Sprite work. It's Above 100%. Yeah. It will never get better. It's just it literally does not get better.
Dre:Between, like, the, like, Darkstalkers two and three and, like, the fur like, the Street Fighter three series and even, like, even the alpha series, which wasn't as, like, animated, it still had its own thing going on that is just, like, crazy. Even something like Red Earth. You know what I mean? Which is insane.
Jay:Jojo's Jojo's bizarre Jojo's for CP s three. It's just like Yeah.
Dre:Yeah. And that's the that's the thing about Street Fighter three. It debuted on this new CPS three hardware, which was like making two d hardware in the year of our lord 1997 just probably wasn't a good idea. However The
Jay:CPS the c p s three has six games. Two of them are Jojo's. Three of them are Street Fighter three.
Dre:Yeah. And one of them is
Jay:Red Earth.
Dre:Red Earth. Yeah. And that's it. And but point is, man, I've always loved that's something that never hit for me with third strike is that. Right?
Dre:Because I think the I think the backgrounds are better in second impact. I think the music is way better. I think the second impact music, and quite frankly, new generation, if I'm being real, that shit is amazing. In fact, I would say New Generation has my favorite jazzy New York City, if you ask me. I like that one better than, like, the the later ones.
Dre:But that's, you know, that's just a personal that's just a personal preference. Point being, I really do think, like, Second Impact deserves more flowers. I know some people do like it. I know it's not completely forgotten. But in the face of third strike now in after all this time being, like, the face of that thing, Second Impact deserves more love.
Dre:I really do. I'm not gonna keep up for new gen. I I'm not gonna. Right? Like, no one really can.
Dre:It looks great, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna sit here and tell you, oh, man. You should definitely go back. Jay, I discovered the Ibuki infinite by myself. Like, with the the kick, you know, where she can do the kick and just keep picking you in the air. If I can do that as, like, a fifteen year old who doesn't know shit from shit, I mean, that game is fucked up.
Dre:Right? Like, even I know that. Right? Good luck purring anything in that game, by the way. God forbid.
Dre:Like, I mean, it is so I don't know if it's super tight or if it I'm just bad at it. I don't know what it is. I can't do it in new gen. But I don't know. I do think Second Impact, there's stuff about that game that is super cool and gets god.
Dre:I love the the windscreens where the person's on the ground fucked up and then the then the winner behind them, like, yeah, you know, like, celebrating. It's super cool. And then when I say fucked up, Aaron, they're, like, bloody and shit. Their faces are puffy. It's like they really went all out with this, like, full screen sprite art.
Dre:Hell no. Get that in third you don't get that in third strike.
Jay:People don't really remember how violent Street Fighter used to be. Yes. Like, Street Fighter was bloody and violent and, like, back in '2, people would get, like, hit in the stomach and puke. Yeah. Like, there there was, like, a a real, like, visceralness to Street Fighter that you had until four.
Dre:Goddamn. 100%. 100%. And Alpha didn't have any of that. Alpha was a lot prettier than that.
Dre:Yeah. You know what I mean? It was it went for a It was pretty. Yeah. But, yeah, dude, I don't know I don't know if that makes me completely I mean, I don't know, man.
Dre:Second Impact, again, I'm not saying it's better. I just wish we would remember it more. I think it deserves it.
Jay:That's It it it's a it's a herculean effort to give Second Impact its flowers, but there are more people who I mean, there there's always been people even in the Third Strike side who are like, yeah, Second Impact has, at the very least, equally good music and art, you know, at least. And there are more people who have been discovering more, like, competitive in tech stuff with Second Impact. It's never gonna overtake Third Strike. Third Strike's kind of, like, made it to, like, the upper heavenly pantheon where Mhmm. God himself could only dethrone Hit.
Jay:As it should be,
Dre:quite honestly.
Jay:True. But there are there is a a slowly growing contingency of people who are giving second impact as flowers this many years later in life.
Dre:I'm glad to hear that, honestly. Because I I always thought I was the one who was insane. I was like, I don't know, man. I kinda feel this game more. You know?
Dre:Again, not saying better, just I personally feel it more. So
Jay:Yeah. I like I like playing Hugo in that game because you can do, like, crouch jab six times hammer mountain. Yeah. Hammer crouch jab six times super hammer mountain.
Dre:And he that's why I like playing Aki in Street Fighter six because I get to do, like, three or so, like, crouching jabs and then do some weird shit. I I I like that. Crouching jabs are fun, people.
Jay:Crouching jabs is fun. You should be able
Aaron:to chain them.
Jay:That's just, like, law of law of, like,
Dre:crouching should never not be chainable. Standing jabs, whatever. Crouching jabs, you should always be able to chain them. This should always be a combo.
Jay:Like, I can play the games where it's just like, your your crouching combo is crouch jab, crouch kick special, but, like, god, it doesn't feel right.
Aaron:Sorry to,
Jay:like, shit up. Sorry to shit up in c v s two,
Dre:doesn't it? It is. Like it's a lot of c v s two combos.
Jay:It's it's it's like every King of Fighters combo is Yeah. Crouch every King of Fighters combo is, like, crouch b, crouch a thing or crouch b, crouch a command normal. Like, that's a very common King of Fighters thing.
Dre:Yeah. Also, you know, I guess this is a Street Fighter three thing in general. I like that, like, combos are not crazy in those games. You have combos. Right?
Dre:But they're not insane. I feel like, obviously, when you get to alpha two and alpha three, you do custom combo bullshit that I think is kinda lame sometimes. But, like, not counting stuff like that, but, like, the the, like, the games don't really rely on these, like, huge combos. Right? They're just kinda quick things you can do, quick executional things that are fun.
Dre:And I think, like, second impact has that pretty well down as well. Obviously, third strike does as well. But, you know, it's it's fun shit. I really do. I'm glad to hear that about second impact, though.
Dre:You're more in the in the inside of people who play this shit like that more than I am. So I'm just going off me. This is how I feel. I'm glad other people feel the same way.
Jay:Yeah. It it's it's never gonna be enough, but there are more people over the years. I think, you know, it's one those things where, like, people discover more shit during the rona times. But Mhmm. Know, second impact is very slowly getting its its flowers.
Dre:That's very cool. The Ken Ken's theme in second impact maybe might be one of my favorite Capcom songs ever. It's it's probably top That shit's so Aaron, I gotta send that shit to you later. Remind me to do that. You'll love it.
Jay:You'll 93 Chicago Bulls.
Aaron:I love it. Don't know what else to do.
Dre:Can't do
Jay:it. I don't know. Anyway inscrival.
Dre:I'm sorry for talking so long about Street Fighter two.
Aaron:No. It's fine, man. It's the fuck. I love the soundtrack. I forget which version of the soundtrack I I listen to the most.
Aaron:I I pretty I'm pretty sure it's just the original one, but best fucking character select theme ever in the history of games where it's like, come on. Yeah. Pick your best one. Fucking the the hip hoppy one. I forget.
Dre:I think that's Third Strike.
Jay:That's that's Third Strike. That's Third Strike.
Aaron:That's the one I like.
Jay:That's all
Aaron:Third Strike. Fucking ever.
Dre:Okay.
Aaron:There's not a single bad fucking stage theme. It's all good. Yeah. I I need to play
Dre:that game. Has I didn't mean to, like, sound like Third Strike has shitty music or something because it absolutely doesn't. I just really like the I just really like the first two a lot. You know? Really just confusing.
Dre:Does have really fucking good music.
Jay:It's comparing a nine out of 10 to a 10 out of 10. Like, it's just Yeah.
Dre:Because basically, if they're all good
Jay:I love third strike soundtrack, but there's a couple stinkers. I hate the hot dog rock.
Aaron:It's a song that Uriene has.
Dre:Is that the Hugo song, or is that like the
Jay:It's so the Uriene one. Kinda Oh, yeah. I don't I don't like it. Like, that's not that
Aaron:great riff. Hot dog rock. I love that. I need to go through and listen to those some more. Jay, what's your next one?
Aaron:My
Jay:this home?
Aaron:Yes. What's your next one?
Jay:Okay. Goddamn. So this is this is this is the deep cut. This is a really deep cut. No one knows about this shit other than, like, me and some other perverts.
Jay:Okay. And I do use the term perverts correctly here. This is a PS one exclusive fighting game that is, like, the fourth or fifth release in its series, and it is a sanitized version of a porn fighter. Oh. Oh.
Jay:It's one of my favorite fighting games ever. It's advanced variable g o two.
Aaron:I've heard of this just from the soundtrack.
Dre:Didn't know there was a two. I didn't know there's a two. So that's interesting. Okay.
Jay:So you'll see you'll see it, like, formally titled advanced VG two. It's a Bashocho fighter where you play as a gaggle of, you know, your selection of girls who represent different restaurants. They're all, like, maids of different different flavor, so to speak. And it's been like a it was like a porn fighter back in the era of your, like, PC fighting games that weren't very good because they were on PC. Wow.
Jay:But you had you had to unlock those CGs somehow, baby. But through time and some console releases, they made slightly more and more better games. And then advanced Variable Gia two, which is a perfectly safe for work, there's nothing sexualized about that game at all. It is just a fighting game. That game rules so unbelievably hard.
Jay:It'll just knock your socks off. Great presentation, great music. One of the more unique fighting like, one of the more unique four button fighters you'll ever play because of the way it's it's like, it has a very good ground game, but it's a game more about super jumping. But super jumping in that game is less about going high more than it is about going, like, at people. So a lot of Oh.
Jay:A lot of the game is, like, I'm gonna, like, super jump at you, and you're gonna super jump at me. But it's not like Toshideki angel eyes where we're, like, super jumping really, really intensely.
Dre:I hate that I know what that is, first of all. Secondly, so is it like a is it like a King of Fighters hop thing? Or is
Jay:it like a No. No. It's it's it's like a really intense, like, far like, horizontally far super jump. Oh. And you can it you it has, like like, Capcom magic series the way you would have in Darkstalkers, but you can do two of them in the air, and there's a couple characters that can do four in the air.
Jay:So a lot of the game is, like, really establishing aerial dominance over people by jumps, but there's no, like, there's no, like, air dashes. There's no double jumps. You just wanna, like, be able to time these jumps really correctly or play against them. And every character kit in that game is so unique and just so original. They had so many cool ideas for characters.
Jay:One of the greatest grapplers I've ever seen in my life. Jhun is such an insane grappler. She's got everything a grappler could want. She has OTG. She's got knockdowns.
Jay:She's got a sway that, like, is striking vulnerable. So you can just, like, sway into command grabs. There's so many cool things you can do in that game. And there's the way that they handle, like, invincibility frames in that game is that, like, one person has one dragon punch with invincibility. Everyone else has, like, invincibility after startup, which isn't very good.
Jay:But some supers in that game start at frame zero. So instead of being instead of being invincible, you can instead be fast.
Dre:That's so is it like the, you know, the what is it? The in in alpha three, Bison does the thing on frame zero, the the psycho crusher, the the whole screen where it's like, if you're if you have even thought about pressing a button, you are dead.
Jay:Yeah. So there's a lot of that. Like, almost every character has, like, a zero frame attack where it's like, if you press something, it's already too late unless you cancel it into your own zero frame attack. So there but, like, there's and not everyone has it for everything, but there's a lot of interesting ways to go about it. And, like, some characters have infinites, but they're still, like, fine.
Jay:Some characters have loops, but they're still fine. Some characters are just, like, there's so many different, like, ways to approach a fighting game, which leads this to being a game that has no analog. It doesn't it's a it doesn't play like a SNK fighter. It doesn't play like a Street Fighter. It doesn't really play like an air dashing anime game.
Jay:It's a game that's so concretely, like, one of one. Nothing else plays like it, and it plays so good.
Dre:Okay. Yeah. Like I said, I've heard of the series that I didn't know there was a two nor did I know there was, like, a whole string of them. Then they were also apparently porn fighters. So that's a that's a lot of information.
Dre:But, yeah, this is a name I've heard back in the day every so often. Right? But, yeah, that sounds I mean, honestly, that sounds cool.
Aaron:It's taken every fiber of my being to not look this up while he was talking about it because I
Dre:really wanna look up and the fuck you
Aaron:want. Don't let
Dre:me shame. Just let me shame you while you do it.
Jay:No good. Just just shame how you feel to learn how to feel shame, Aaron.
Dre:Shame you.
Jay:But it it if you if you have a certain weakness, and I can I can pretty frankly speak for all of us, not just here on this this podcast, but anyone watching? If you have a certain weakness to, like, nineties OVA anime girls Oh. Then Yep. Hand hands up in the crowd, boys. Yep.
Jay:This game is packed to the gills with just excellent nineties anime OP, girls.
Dre:That's my that's my punk wheelhouse. Let me tell you.
Aaron:Oh, damn it. I knew that shit.
Dre:There we go. Oh, wait a
Aaron:fucking camera. There's no world in
Jay:hell I can see that.
Aaron:Yeah. No. Yeah. It's just a very nineties anime fucking little cutscene. Damn, Oceania showed on
Dre:You sold me. All you had to say was nineties OAV. I'm I'm into it.
Aaron:Yeah. I was trying to
Dre:I was
Jay:I'm I was trying to look up if, like, who was the artist behind these designs? Because I remember looking at their name once, and I was be like, you know, Andre would know this person.
Dre:I would I would maybe I would. I don't know.
Aaron:You you would. If you looked at if you looked at
Jay:the art, you'd be like, I know who the artist for this is. Okay. Well, I'm the Not not just by name, but by style.
Dre:Right. Right. Because I'm kinda weak on the name sometimes, but I
Jay:I'm weak on
Dre:the names.
Jay:But, yeah, there's definitely a lot of, like you you'll kinda you'll recognize the nineties OVA ness of the of, like, the key art and whatnot. And it's really, really good. It's so incredible. Good.
Dre:I'm I'm excited. You you wet my my whistle is wet.
Aaron:My my whistle is so moist, boys.
Dre:I was trying to avoid the m word, but, you
Aaron:know No. I'm not avoiding it. Just fuck that.
Dre:Okay. Sorry.
Aaron:My shit. My last one. Oh, man. Fuck it. I'm gonna reach.
Aaron:I'm gonna reach, dudes. I'm a big fan of the Neo Geo Pocket Color, and this already doesn't spell out very well for a fighting games episode because usually handheld fighting games suck ass, but Neo Geo Pocket Color has some really good fighting games. And probably my favorite one is SNK Gals Fighters. This game is so fucking tight. It's just a big ass crossover of different SNK characters.
Aaron:We got characters from, obviously, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Sam's Show, Last Blade, fucking other other different games that came out in, like, NES and shit like that. Shove them in. My girl Athena, that's my main. She's really fucking good. Yeah.
Aaron:Gauss Fighters is just so fucking tight and quick and snappy for a handheld fighting game. It it blew me away the first time I played it. There's cool little equip equippable items that you can get during the story mode that'll give you different abilities and and change the the way your characters interact with each other in this in the story cut scenes and shit. It's just it's such a fucking this is such a cool game. Such a cool fighting game for a for a handheld console.
Aaron:I could play it, like, a million times over. Never get tired of it.
Dre:I have this game on one of those. Because, you know, on Switch, they started compiling. They just started randomly putting out Neo Geo Pocket and Color games.
Aaron:Yeah.
Dre:I have on I have it on one of those, like, you know, here are 10 games in this random package. I feel like I have that somewhere around here.
Aaron:I'm sure you do.
Dre:As you well know, I you know, it's part of the reason why I wanted to do Neo Geo Go with you is that, like, after we're done with that, we could definitely do pocket Yes. Pocket color. We could definitely you know what I mean? So I'm I'm looking forward to digging into those games and definitely to familiarize myself because I don't wanna go in, like, 100% blind. I mean, I do know a little bit.
Dre:I played, like, some of the first metal slug on there. Right? I I know a little bit of stuff. But, yeah, the Galsfighter, I always forget because, you know, obviously, the reset one from, like, 2018 or something like that, which was just
Aaron:It was alright.
Dre:I don't know what happened there. But, like, you know, obviously, like, aesthetically, it's pretty cool. But as a fighting game or as really not even a fighting game as a game, oh, boy. Right? But I always forget that stems from this Neo Geo Pocket idea.
Dre:So I would love to eventually try this.
Aaron:Yeah, man. It's it it feels weird to say that a handheld fighting game is one of my favorites, but, yeah, it it really is. I've played this game a bajillion times over and over and over. Fucking I always gravitate right to my girl Athena. Her move set is so good.
Aaron:The little psycho wave fucking Mai is also really good in this game, and you've got all the big hitters from oh, what's what's her fucking name from Sam's show?
Dre:Charlotte. Nakaruru?
Jay:Nakaruru. Yeah. This is one of those
Dre:two. Charlotte?
Aaron:I think oh my god. No. It's not Charlotte. I can't remember who it is from.
Dre:Sham Sham?
Aaron:No. I think it's the the the Nakaruru or whatever. It's gotta be Nakaruru. I'm blanking either Charlotte
Dre:or Nakaruru. I'm blanking hard
Aaron:on names. But, yeah, they they got, like, the
Jay:I see Nakaruru more than I see my family.
Dre:I mean, as one does.
Jay:As one does.
Aaron:Yeah. You you guys gotta check this one out. Like, one one play through well, mean, it's a fighting game, so one play through definitely won't take you very long. But it's just that it's such a quick little romp through the single player mode. I don't think there's any way to do a multiplayer mode unless you have, like, a friend who's brings their Switch over or their retro handheld over and you do it that way.
Dre:Yeah. I think the Switch versions let you do let you do that. I believe they kept that functionality miraculously. But yeah.
Aaron:Hell, yeah. Yeah.
Jay:Yeah. The the Neo Geo fighting games or the Neo Geo pocket fighting games, I should elaborate, because we know the Neo Geo fighting games are
Dre:kinda Neo Geo
Jay:pocket fighting games are, like, kinda notoriously above standard for being handheld fighting games. Though they're really snappy, really well done, really artful, and they kind of had a interesting way to approach a fighting game with only two buttons. So, like, you would do your specials by I I don't know how uniform this is across the Neo Geo Pocket Fighters, but, like, you would do your specials by doing, like, a diagonal and then holding the button a little longer than normal. Yeah. And that's how you would activate specials in those games.
Aaron:And, thankfully, the the Neo Geo Pocket and Pocket Color, they've got that that eight direction clicky stick that
Jay:Super clicky.
Aaron:Yeah. Like like like no other handheld at the time had. You just had your regular four direction d pad. But, yeah, that clicky stick lets you do all sorts of cool shit. Yeah.
Aaron:You've got your diagonal jumps, all that shit. It just it feels so good to play. Doesn't feel as janky as fucking oh, who's that one x men game I had on Game Boy Color?
Dre:Oh, Jesus Christ.
Jay:It was a it was
Aaron:a piece of shit.
Dre:I don't even know what you're talking about, but it just made me recoiled. You saying those two words together.
Jay:I play I play kill I've played killer instinct on Game Boy.
Dre:Oh, boy.
Jay:Survived those days. And Aaron, the the the game you're talking about, that that's the one with miss x. Right? Yori and the cross play?
Aaron:I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron:Yeah. Because you find out, like, at the end, it's it's Yuri that he's in, like, a he's in a lady costume or just a costume or whatever. Yeah.
Jay:He is in a he's in a, you know, very nineties schoolgirl long pleated dress. Yep.
Dre:Is homegirl from Last Blade in there? There any last blade characters in gals?
Jay:I'm If
Dre:you don't notice, see, now I'm gonna shame you.
Jay:I wanna tell you something. I'm I'm
Dre:I don't it's fine. Go ahead. Now look.
Aaron:Go ahead.
Jay:Yeah. I I I think Hibiki's in there. Hibiki? Hibiki's because she's she showed up in CVS two as well. So if anyone
Dre:Right. Yeah.
Jay:She was gonna be
Dre:big, big normal that does chip damage. I love that. She, again, it almost comes back to chip damage.
Jay:It's always good.
Dre:You have the fucking fear her fear slash does, the this, like, actual chip damage, I think.
Aaron:Oh, yeah. I forgot. There's, like, two or three unlockable characters in this game as well too, depending on, again, the items that you have equipped and who you fight during the story that'll you can unlock different characters. But okay. So you got my homegirl Athena.
Aaron:You got Mai. You've got Yuri, Leona, Heydarn, Nakoruru, Akari Ichijo, Shermie, and Shiki.
Jay:Shiki. Shiki. She's from she's from the the 64. 64. Yep.
Dre:64. That's what I thought. Yeah. Oh.
Jay:Got to she had to live to be a real girl outside of that, eventually.
Dre:Have to that's what we have to do before we do Neo Geo Pocket Color. We have to cover is Hyper Neo Geo 64 able to be emulated? Like, I don't even know.
Jay:I I I'm pretty
Aaron:sure it is. It's hard.
Jay:It's still it's still not good.
Dre:Still not good? Okay. Maybe by
Jay:the They're still advancing on it, but I I I still believe it's, like, not all the way there.
Dre:Okay. Well, we have, like, a good two and a half years easy before we before we get to that point. Maybe by the time we get there, it'll be it'll be good. Oh, man. Oh.
Dre:Yeah. Cheeky. Interesting.
Aaron:Yeah. And I guess before we go, do you guys wanna wanna cap it off with, like, a lightning round of any other honorable mentions that you wanna throw out there? Because I had Dead or Alive two. I love That's Dead or serious whoops ass. Another one of these.
Jay:I I can't I can't I can't say that that's an underrated one because Dead or Alive two is one of the famous
Aaron:Dead or Alives. Yeah.
Dre:I don't know if I really have any that are, like, too you know, I wish Tekken six got a little more credit than it did. I I really do. I think that game's really good. Now, like, obviously, I now see yeah. See, no one's gonna agree with me, and that's fine.
Dre:I really obviously, I'm a Tekken five person or a Tekken five Doctor at this point is, like, maybe my favorite fighting game ever. It's either that or alpha three. I think Tekken six better than seven. I think it's better than I mean, I don't know, man. I know that's not saying a whole lot.
Dre:Right? But it's just like, again, I'm not gonna keep up for it. I'm not obviously, it's the reason why I didn't meant to put it on, like, you know, my top three here. But, like, will kinda defend Tekken six a little bit to, like, to a degree. I'm not gonna go to the mat with it.
Dre:Like, if someone says if someone says Psychic four sucks, you're dead to me. Right? Yeah. I'm not gonna do that with Tekken six. It's just that, like, I don't know, man.
Dre:I think it gets shut on a little too much. I think we could I think we could ease off the Tekken six.
Jay:Tekken six is a problem where it's like, it is a good game with a glaring flaw. That's the problem. Yeah. It's it's rage is rage is just overcooked in that game.
Dre:It is.
Jay:But other than that, it's a good Tekken. It's just Yeah. You know, the problem is that also there's a million great Tekken's.
Dre:There sure is. Especially the one that just came before it is is fucking godlike. Yeah.
Jay:The one before it is the best Tekken. So
Dre:Yeah. But I really do think it like, when Tekken seven came out, I'm like, I don't know. Maybe I'm insane. I'd rather play six, but maybe I should.
Jay:Tekken seven is its popularity eclipsed how good it was, I think. Mhmm. Actually, I should say this. There is no game that benefited more from Street Fighter five coming out of the gate and falling flat on its fucking face than Tekken seven.
Dre:Yep. 100%. Because it was just like, well, well, you think we either can go this or go back to tag two or something? I don't know, man. So it's just like, what are you what are you gonna do?
Jay:Yeah. Like, Tekken seven exploded in popularity because Street Fighter five came out of the gate sucking.
Dre:Yes. And then and then Akuma was in Tekken seven and was cooler than in Street Fighter five. So Yep. What can you do? You know?
Jay:My lightning yes. And my lightning round choice is Dark Awake.
Aaron:I don't know what that is.
Dre:Do I know what this is?
Jay:Dark Awake Dark Awake, also known as Chaos Breaker. The the Japanese title is Chaos Breaker. The North American title is Dark Awake, The King Has No Name.
Aaron:What? It is it
Jay:it the best way to describe it is, it's swords and orcs, king of fighters. Oh. So you pick a team of three fantasy characters. You have, like, three humans to choose from. So it's like yeah.
Jay:You pick a team of three, then there's three humans, three dwarves, three elves, three orcs, three undead, and three, like, trolley beasties. So you pick a team of three, and then you pick an item, and there's, like, 30 items. And it's king of fighters from there on out, more or less, but not with the hops. It's a kind of a simpler game. The thing that kinda defines the thing that kinda defines Dark Awake is, like, it's a very simple combo game where it's like, I'm gonna do confirm into special into super.
Jay:And if I learn how to do a combo longer than that, I have successfully discovered an infinite. It's like it is a game with, like Ridiculous. It's a game with two it's a game with, like, two extremes where it's, like, it's either the bay most basic form of a combo ever or you have discovered it an infinite.
Dre:That's so funny.
Jay:Which is it's really one of the thing that's really cool about that game, but, it it never it really never got any popularity, but it's another game where, like, because of that constrained simplicity, there's a lot of super cool characters to it. Not as many hitters not as many hitters as, like, the games that I previously brought up this episode, but, you should look into Dark Awake. It's got, like, it's got like a donkey it's it is it's on your PS three, and it has the same art style as Donkey Kong Country where it's, like, digitized three d models.
Aaron:Oh, that sounds kinda janky and cool.
Dre:That sounds like that now that that said that makes it sound more intriguing. Usually, it'd be like, man, that sounds oh, don't know about that. But
Jay:And and I gotta I gotta double check before I say this.
Aaron:While you're double checking, I wanna throw bushido blade out there. Bushido blade's cool.
Dre:Oh, yeah. Bushido blade oh, see. So I I've never played the original. My friend had Bushido blade two, which we played a lot. I don't know how different that is from the original, but, like, definitely, we had some fun with Bichuido Blade.
Dre:I wish we could go back. Actually, I wish we could make a fighting game that's either something like that where you can kinda one hit kill somebody or just you know, I just think that's such a unique concept that wasn't ever really explored too much. So, like, I don't know. I think that could be that could be fun.
Aaron:I think yeah. That definitely would be fun. Fucking we've talked about this a lot with with this with Sam's show, like, the the pokey risk versus reward, like, more so risk. Like, I I I love that kind of shit. Maybe that's just us.
Aaron:But, like, I feel like that that could be popular again.
Dre:I love slow poke poke games. I that's that's really fun. Fighting game or otherwise, to be honest with you. So, like, I that's kind of that's kind of something I like. So I really hope so.
Jay:Yeah. Do Okay. Yeah. I wanted to double check the the comp the developers that made it. It's Eolith who are the people Eolith.
Jay:It's the people who took over King of Fighters briefly during the bankruptcy. So they did King of Fighters 2001, King of Fighters 2002, and then they made and then they made Fantasy King of Fighters.
Dre:Aaron, I'm Fantasy King of Fighters? To say this I'm sorry to say this in advance. I feel like King of Fighters 2001 might be the only other game on Neo Geo GO I give an f. I'm letting you know right I fucking hate that game. I can't stand that shit.
Dre:I think two thousand one two thousand one makes me just angry. Angry. Goddamn. It is the most angry a Neo Geo game can make me.
Aaron:I'm excited to see that.
Jay:Not a fan of the striker system.
Dre:You know what? I don't mind it, but like that, that feels like nobody I don't know, man. I don't I'll I'll get to the I'll save my anger for that episode.
Aaron:Do it. Bottle it up. Bottle it up and get a hernia and stuff. And then we'll
Dre:It might get a d minus if it has some cool tunes that I like, but that's it.
Aaron:Sure. It might. Yeah. That'll that'll do it for this topic time. We're all I mean, the fuel's all out of me.
Aaron:I I have to get up early in the morning, do some more overtime because money. Fuck.
Dre:I'm gonna go play Saros for six hours and order a pizza.
Jay:Oh. Damn. I'm gonna sleep.
Aaron:Oh. Yep. Oh. That sounds good too.
Jay:I'm gonna I'm gonna sleep until my 10 old says I'm not gonna sleep.
Dre:When you just when he decides you will get up. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron:Yeah. Oh, man. Alright, boys. Well, it was great talking to you guys. For all the listeners and and viewers or whomever, I'll leave a link to everybody's stuff down there.
Aaron:Alright. That's it. Oh, okay. Bye.
Dre:Bye. Thank you.
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