Deep Space and Dragons
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Deep Space and Dragons
How Video Games Learned to Stop Punishing Players and Start Respecting Their Time
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Richard and Karl explore how video games have evolved from punishing players with limited lives to more player-friendly mechanics that respect their time while maintaining meaningful challenge.
• The origin of lives in gaming traced back to arcade machines and pinball, where quarters represented a set number of attempts
• How the traditional three-lives system artificially extended gameplay in an era with limited content
• Modern roguelikes like Hades transforming death into a progression mechanic rather than punishment
• The problem with "game overs" in lengthy RPGs that force players to reload distant save points
• Why Pokemon's approach to failure (keeping experience and items but returning to the last Pokemon Center) was revolutionary
• Monster Hunter's shared life pool system creating tension without excessive frustration
• The distinction between "cozy platformers" focused on collection versus action platformers focused on precision
• How modern remasters (like Sonic Origins) are removing lives entirely to improve player experience
Follow all things Richard and Karl, and check out "The Minuet of Sorcery"
https://linktr.ee/rajkevis
Hello, gamers or not gamers, or whoever watches this for some reason, I'm Richard Arthur John Kivas of Deep Space and Dragons.
Speaker 2:And I'm Carl, just Carl, perfect. That was what I was expecting you to do.
Speaker 1:I nearly tricked you into doxing yourself, but it'd make the Carl tattoo enthusiasts have too much power.
Speaker 2:If they could actually find me.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to give them hints how to, but if I had to find you, I'm pretty sure I have strategies. So I mean Deep Space and Dragons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Welcome to Deep Space and Dragons, which is not the show where we capture Carl's and and bring them in for questioning.
Speaker 1:No, that's the other show. That is for pay-per-view viewers only.
Speaker 2:Also disclaimer.
Speaker 1:This is a comedy show, and nothing we say should ever be taken seriously. Just putting that out there. Ever Except that time, we absolutely made Dokopunk Kingdom get remastered on the Switch.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, we have manifested a few things, right, it's, it's pretty good although the st gundam game we manifest was very mid, I think we didn't manifest that one hard enough like we manifested it. But we got like monkey kapod, where it's like you want st gundam have a bad action shooter worse than capsule fighter. I'm like how did you manage this? Capsule fighter wasn't good, I'm just a nerd Capsule.
Speaker 2:Fighter but yeah, what's new in the Carlverse? Well, I mean a little bit of a doozy here, uh-oh. Well, okay, because, like you know, last week we didn't post an episode. They don't know that we didn't record an episode. I guess they have no way of knowing that.
Speaker 1:No one is checking our release dates. Anyways, we could be doing April 1st right now. They would never know.
Speaker 2:I have this bit about anti-disestablishmentarianism, which, okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but my, my understanding of what anti-disestablishmentarianism means is that you are against people who are against a given establishment, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you support that establishment yourself huh, that might actually be me.
Speaker 1:I had an interaction establishment, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you support that establishment yourself. Huh, that might actually be me.
Speaker 2:I had an interaction on social media earlier today where that may in fact be me Against people who are against the establishment, but not necessarily supporting the establishment yourself.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to give a what's new with me quickly and then go back into your rant, because it's super on point here.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:So a mutual acquaintance of ours put a Facebook rant that said copy this rant if you're brave enough. And it was a rant about the government and betraying veterans and yada, yada, yada, and for whatever reason, I decided to use the full breadth of my five years of training to write a systematic takedown about how dumb it was to be like hey, democratically speaking, 51% of our country voted no candidate. Mathematically, you can just form a political party. The Rhinoceros Party had enough members to prove. You could just organize a local community. What is the name of your alderman? What is the name of your mayor? Have you emailed them? Have you wrote them? Have you unionized? Have you collected a petition?
Speaker 1:Before you start going, we need to bring down the government. Have you bring down the system? Have you tried using the system at all? No, because you're copy pasting a facebook comment and saying it's brave, the least brave act imaginable, and the original comment was probably generated on chat jipita, it probably. So I'm like, before you start talking about, we need a ride in the streets, have you tried calling your local representative like? Or it's like what are we going to do? I'm like, have you tried donating blood? That has record low numbers and we need that.
Speaker 1:That would help veterans immediately, instantly it would literally save one of their lives, like immediately, and you don't have to take down a city, you don't have to graffiti a single building to do it. It would literally save one of their lives, like immediately, and you don't have to take down a, you don't have to graffiti a single building to do it. So, yeah, I think I actually am anti-disatablet materialism because it's like I don't actually like a lot of things. I've complained about politics at length, but what I don't like more is people being like better throw a brick through an unrelated window, when when I'm like you haven't even tried to use the broken system. We know it's broken, but like literally enough people didn't vote that they all just wrote Keanu Reeves as Shadow the Hedgehog that would have won the election because of how few people voted, like there was enough undecided voters for Keanu Reeves to be Prime Minister right now.
Speaker 2:That would be wild.
Speaker 1:Anywho, back to you. My segue was fun.
Speaker 2:So I took a liking to this website known as Quora, which I will describe as discount Reddit. I don't know why I don't just go on Reddit, but I like to go through Quora, which I will describe as discount Reddit. I don't know why I don't just go on Reddit, but I like to go through Quora.
Speaker 1:Fair. No one should like to go on Reddit. You go on Reddit because chat searches have been replaced by AI bots that are just wrong about Pokemon facts. Ooh, I was so mad. So where do you get the Earthquake TM and Pokemon Fire Red?
Speaker 2:Ooh, I don't actually recall.
Speaker 1:You get it from Giovanni because he used to give you Fissure in Gen 1, and Fissure is stupid, so they gave him Earthquake instead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so I'm watching a Pokemon stream and he's like oh, I'm doing a Chikorita-only run of Pokemon FireRed Okay, because Chikorita got announced as a new starter. I'm doing a Chikorita-only run of Pokemon Fire Red Okay, because Chikorita got announced as a new starter and there's a lot of Chikorita hate. It's like no, I'm going to beat this game just using Chikorita. It makes me think of Carl and Butterfree. I support this decision.
Speaker 1:So he's like hey, chat, where's the next Earthquake anyway? And then I look at the chatbot oh, it's in self co. And I'm like no, it ain't, you're just wrong. Built-in auto ai responder that goes at the top of the search. That just lies about pokemon facts. So bad, I'm like. This is an obviously clear, documented piece of history. There's no like subjectivity here right, right.
Speaker 2:It's been true since 1993, I think so but anyways, I I used to really like cora, uh, because uh, it would be some truly off the wall questions and answers, um and uh, occasionally it would show me, uh, cute, uh comics like more akin to like comic strips you'd see in the newspaper, if you even remember what that is specifically yeah, study those like I guess, uh, a more broad would be like comics, as in the same sentiment, as like peanuts or garfield or calvin and hop yeah the funnies, yeah, the funnies, I think that's like actually the socially like the correct term is.
Speaker 1:If you refer to them as the newspaper funnies, that does distinguish them pretty perfectly.
Speaker 2:Right, right, but there was one in particular that I really liked. It was called Petfoolery. I probably could just find it on Instagram or whatever other service I might post it on or chat, but I will lie to you and say it never existed and you're crazy. But for whatever reason, I was getting it through Cora, but the algorithm, it has slowly decided that the Pretty much the only thing I want to see Is this Anti-Trump community. No more magas or something like that.
Speaker 1:Fair, and my sentiment towards Trump as the president, uh, fairly well mirrors the rest of canada at this point I don't want to be annexed I mean, if like yeah boil down all the subjectivity of it and just go to like straight politics and then go past that to straight concept. Dude said we want to take your country and we said no, it's really hard. Like you know, I sometimes take politics out of here before I slip because I'm naturally a stanced person. If you're pro another country takes your citizenship away, you're bad at math, because think about it. If you're like I want to be part of america, your vote just got cut in half by 100 times. You now just have less power to self-dictate your life Because, by population, you just lost the ability to sway policy.
Speaker 1:So no matter how much of a jerk or not jerk you may be, it is directly self-defeating to let a larger population base enter democracy with your smaller population base because you just have less power as a citizen. This isn't about politics, it's pure numbers. It's just bad.
Speaker 2:But I, based on some of the answers that I've read, I would qualify this community on Quora as an echo chamber and, regardless of your political leanings, echo chambers are inherently bad.
Speaker 1:Oh, I got a fun algorithm side tangent and I'll give it back to your main tangent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So me and my brother watch drastically different things and, as a result of that, our algorithms across the apartment have been inverted politically. So I'll get hate campaigns for one party and he'll get advertisements for the other. And it's so funny because, to go Canadian local politics right now, they wrote these ads before the Liberals decided their new candidate, so I'm getting these carbon tax carny ads right that are airing at the same time that he abolished said tax. So they plan this attack on someone who, in his third day in office, already undermined the attack. And it'd be like saying don't support King Piccolo.
Speaker 1:He released all the prisoners and then the next day is like actually put them all in a maximum security prison. You can't really go prisoner Piccolo. He released all the prisoners and then the next day he's like actually put them all in a maximum security prison. You can't really go prisoner Piccolo anymore, can you? You lost Too bad. You dropped millions of dollars on this Instead of donating to the local bank. Oh man, the number of lives political party budgets, advertising budgets, could save if they're just spent on the constituents.
Speaker 2:So I mean back to the original point anti-disestablishmentarianism. It's like I really really have a strong sentiment of anti-disestablishmentarianism towards this core community because I just don't like echo chambers, regardless of their political leanings. But that's not actually what I said. This is a doozy because you might recall that I mentioned Petfoolery was one of the newspaper funnies that I like to find on Quora, one of the newspaper funnies that I like to find on Quora. Now it's published in a Webtoon format and so, surprisingly, it's being posted on the Webtoon app. Did the internet cut out?
Speaker 1:It was weird because my mic mic cut out, but you came in fine okay, I don't know how that works, because I'm the internet. But I want to go on, go on, and then I gasped a couple times for dramatic effect.
Speaker 2:It was beautiful okay, okay, anyways, um so, uh, that was when I realized, uh, that the webtoon app uh is not, uh, exclusively korean content. I don't know why.
Speaker 1:I assumed it was so I've literally like, applied and interviewed with webtoon as part of like, my internship, as like creative writing, publishing yeah and we could just get published on webtoon if we so desired. Once you go to art school for a couple years I have a lot of faith, by the way, and the amount of time it would take you like.
Speaker 2:If current adult carl decided to like learn to write and draw in a structured format, you'd probably pick it up pretty quick that's not related that's just me having blind faith in you so I've been very happily reading this petoolery, which is about this adorable kitten and her older brother, a retired veteran war dog.
Speaker 1:Wait, is that the one with like Brutus the dog? I think it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Brutus and Pixie. Oh yeah, I know I'm completely on board.
Speaker 1:Like, okay, I'm right there with you, yes. I've never looked at the title of this comic, but it's definitely worked its way into my algorithm, Possibly through your algorithm like some sort of monomic virus, Right?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just like this nice wholesome, beacon of happiness in what is otherwise a bleak and dark internet.
Speaker 1:You know what's funny? It's like literally I just go outside the sun shining the birds singing. I did like a laundry all day yesterday. I'm like you know it's ironic to come for me, but I think I need less screen time. Like I literally have a console set up in the living room so I don't open news windows on the other screen.
Speaker 2:But then I slowly I was like, hmm, I've been reading this Paranoid Mage series on Webtoon and they actually they just recently posted the season finale on Paranoid Mage on Webtoon and so I looked it up and apparently it's based on five books Paranoid Mage, renegade Mage, heretic Mage, and I don't remember the last two, but I'm currently reading Heretic Mage because I've read the first two but I didn't realize and there were a few clues, but I didn't realize that Paranoid Mage was not a Korean manhwa. It's actually written by a North American author.
Speaker 1:Oh man you're culturally insensitive on this channel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know. Well, see, it's hard for me to articulate what the difference actually is. Most Korean manhwa have very there's something about the art style and there's something about the writing style that make it very clear that they're not by a North American author. Like I say, it's hard to articulate what it is that I'm sensing, but there's some, there's something there. So it's like, well, there there was another series that's on Webtoon, it's called of swamp and sea. Um, and just looking at it I was like, okay, this is north america, I can tell by the art style. Then I start reading it. It's like, okay, this is north america, I can tell by the writing style. Uh, it's just there's something there. I don't know what it is, but there's something that that clearly separates north american art or authors from korean authors, from Korean authors, from Japanese authors.
Speaker 1:Oh, the Japanese one is a deep hatred of fat people and such embanked in sexism that even when you invert it, you end up still being sexist, but Looking at the new chapter of. Bort. It's not going to make it into the episode. I just had to just be like the new chapter of Bort sucks. That's not going to make it to the episode. I just had to be like the new chapter of Bort sucks and I'm just going to leave that at that.
Speaker 2:But there were a few clues. You know the North American names in Paranoid Mage. The lack of reference to any Asian geography like Jeju Island or Mount Fuji.
Speaker 1:No, ants yeah.
Speaker 2:No, ant monsters.
Speaker 1:I do wonder if that's like a cultural thing or something, because I'm like I've seen that happen a few times. I guess in Terraformers it was cockroaches, but still.
Speaker 2:But still, I was surprised. And have you ever heard of the website Royal Road? No, have you ever heard of the website Royal Road? No, I'm not exactly sure what its deal is, but all of these Paranoid Mage books are released on Royal Road and you can buy physical paperback copies, if you want from Amazon, which I am considering doing, but right now I Need to buy Canadian authors because something, something politics. Right, but in the course of Paranoid Mage, the protagonist, he doesn't know anything about magical society.
Speaker 1:This is like such a such a tangent. I mean I stopped a sub tangent but like your point is like like a Tesseract, where it's like folding in on itself and I'm like I know there's a point, but I just don't know how you would get there we're almost, almost to the end here I almost believe you but there's a point in paranoid mage.
Speaker 2:Uh, the protagonist doesn't know anything about magical society, uh, and he's talking to a healer and she's like oh, to pass this test, I need an offensive attack, an offensive move, I guess, not attack but offensive move. And he's like well, I mean, based on mundane biology, if you apply your healing magic, you could put neurochemicals out of whack and just knock someone out by dropping the right chemical in their brain or whatever.
Speaker 1:So pause, I have to final touch on something because it's really funny to me. There's an anime called Drifters, where each character is based on a mythological Fate Stay Night style. But it was hyper-violent Helsingi.
Speaker 2:And there's an anime called.
Speaker 1:Jesus and you just walk up and turn all the blood in your body into wine, or healed you so much that you died of cancer.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Jesus murder method. I'm like, alright, good, we're on the same page again.
Speaker 2:Right, and then she almost gets labeled as a heretic because the powers that be don't want anyone to realize that healing mages can actually just kill anyone by touching their mana, and just done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fair enough, clerics are the most busted class.
Speaker 2:But you know, quite within the context, that's just the wrong way to use healing magic.
Speaker 2:It is ridiculous that clerics get heavy armor and martial weapons and are full spell casters like how the wizard in plate mail is some nonsense, anywho but okay, so then the final tendency to jump on is that, uh, I was a reading paranoid mage like oh, the wrong way to use healing magic. Wasn't there a show on Crunchyroll called the Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic? And I was suddenly very curious what exactly this show would constitute as the wrong way to use healing magic. Oh no, are you familiar with the show? Yes, have you actually, like, watched the significant portion?
Speaker 1:of it. I think I watched the first three episodes before ADHD kicked in.
Speaker 2:Right, Well see, I made it through the whole thing. I was invested in discovering what it figured was the wrong way to use healing magic.
Speaker 1:And they reached the conclusion to being balky.
Speaker 2:No see, that's not the wrong way to use healing magic. That's a sensible way to use healing magic To work out until your muscles are too sore to continue and then heal them so you can work out some more. That is a sensible way to use healing magic girl was such wasted potential.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, but soccer could just have done that well, okay.
Speaker 2:So I'm like, okay, well, obviously that's not the wrong way to use healing magic. Why, why is this even the the show? And then his commander like uh, gets attacked by a demon and the demon summons blades of wind around her and he's like, ah, you can't get out of my wind prison because you'll get cut to shreds. And then she just walks through because she has healing magic and she just heals herself as she walks through the blades of wind.
Speaker 1:Best way to play D&D, by the way, is just to heal yourself, never your party members, and just do it to your ridiculous flexes.
Speaker 2:Like you fall off that hundred story cliff, get back up, snap your legs back together and continue on right. Um, but uh, finally, the 11th episode. Uh, and there's only 13 episodes in the first season the 11th episode actually comes clear. Uh, the wrong way that he uses healing magic is, uh, he is strong enough that he can uh literally like shatter a boulder with his fist. Yeah, uh, which, if you're going full strength, uh, you can't really safely use against an opponent you don't want to kill, and he's not exactly a pacifist, but he's also a 17-year-old student from modern-day Japan who doesn't really want to kill anyone?
Speaker 1:Have you seen the new season of Invincible, or any season of Invincible?
Speaker 2:I watched the first season.
Speaker 1:I haven't watched any of the subsequent seasons, so not to spoil too much, but there's a scene in Invincible where he punches someone so hard he breaks his arm. Okay, it was the most hardcore thing I've ever seen. Like cast punch is cool. Shattering your fist into bone fragments to embed the bone fragments in someone is cooler fair, um.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if I would necessarily say this is cool, but it turns out the wrong way to use healing magic is you imbue your fist with healing magic so that when you punch someone with enough strength to shatter stone, uh, they get the feeling of all the impact and all the pain, but you immediately heal their wounds, so they don't actually have any lasting damage you know that's such a richard ass way to fight like, could you not picture me doing that where I'm like, yeah, I hit you as hard I can but heal you at the same time so you just pass out from the pain?
Speaker 1:That's such a me move. Like I got game, respect, game yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean that's like a sack of oranges logic. I don't really. The isekai is a worthless framing device in my opinion.
Speaker 1:I don't think it added any to the story. It's not that hard, yeah framing device. In my opinion. I don't think it added anything to the story.
Speaker 2:It's not that hard, yeah, but when it finally almost an entire season through got to him using magic, healing magic in the quote-unquote wrong way, it was actually moderately interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, that's kind of my entire angry rant with the genre. Is that, like Free Run for example, you could just draw a map like pour some coffee on the paper and outline it with a pen, name some things, and not have people bring in their high school drama?
Speaker 2:You could just set your series there.
Speaker 1:Like Delicious in the Dungeon is great. It could have been a unique aside had it come from the real world and be a monster eater, but it gains nothing from that. I think that's my problem with the genre as a whole Is you gain nothing from character development, plot or setting from Ikasai as a high school student, because they're not ever bringing anything with it. There was one Ikasai that was called Tokyo Gate, where a portal just opens in Tokyo and the military goes in.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:That Ikasai was great because they killed a dragon with a rocket launcher and we're like giving rations to like the peasants and then at some point they have like elven archers holding rpgs to shoot down a dragon and I'm like, yes, you brought the premise. You can say it's only interesting if what you're bringing from the mundane world does something right, like being a normal person wasn't helpful to the plot in wrong way to healing magic. If he was just a dude from that setting, it would have worked just as well yeah that's my entire problem with it.
Speaker 1:Like soul leveling, you can argue that yeah, well, solo leveling isn't an ecocide because, like yeah, instead it's just for some reason their world's running on D&D rules, not D&D rules, wow rules, for some reason, meh.
Speaker 2:I mean there's a bit more nuance than that. They do eventually explain the system and it's a reasonable explanation, but regardless, I don't want to spoil it for anyone.
Speaker 1:Anywho, the topic of this week's episode that was like two weeks ago's episode, I don't know. Find it, use Google. We believe in you. Remember when we used the promo things on this podcast? Ah, what a time. But now I'm like nah, my writing's got too much better. I don't want people to read my first novel, then they'll hold me to that standard.
Speaker 2:Anyways, what's new with me is that I've been doing a lot of reading of Paranoid Mage, because I highly recommend the series. The special thing is you can get it on Royal Road for free. That is good advice and then also that I uh watched the entire first season of the wrong way to use healing magic, and the isekai portion doesn't really do it for me, but so I also kind of recently watched a terrible, even though this is not our episode.
Speaker 1:So I watched the red power ranger reincarnated in another world for a few episodes, okay, and it's literally you watch an episode of Power Rangers at the start like they're fighting the evil Empire. They make their Megazord, they blast the guy, kill the evil Empire and guy falls in a portal. He's in this new world but he gotta keep his Power Ranger stuff. So, like an evil golem appears, he just morphers himself into a Power Ranger and lightning punches them and everyone's just like what is happening. And I'm like it's funny. Because it's like, yeah, the red power ranger would be great at being in a fantasy setting. And he's like, yeah, I kind of low-key, love it here.
Speaker 1:And I'm just like, oh man, the sheer peppiness of a power ranger, instead being a depressed high school student, was enough to be like I'll give this a few episodes because this is fun. It's like trying to explain to the wizard. You have to do the dramatic pose to make the thing work. And it was like that makes literally no sense. And I'm like, oh man, this is such a dumb mashup that I'll allow it.
Speaker 2:Do you think that time I was reincarnated as Yamcha was a decent series?
Speaker 1:So that might have been one of the strongest Dragon Ball series, but it also requires so much meta knowledge that it's practically useless. So like I'm playing Dragon Ball Sparky Zero, for example, where literally the game mechanic was branching plot point, timeline things, right, mm-hmm. The best thing they could have did but they didn't is they should have put in a Yamcha campaign. That was that manga Like.
Speaker 1:That would have been such a good use of that To open with like with like the yeah, you're yamsha and then to go through all the yamsha story missions and like where the story branches have a branch, like the manga did, and then end with the beerus cut scene, like it was fun and it would make a great side story in a video game. But you know my rule like I cap things at like a 7 out of 10. If you had to read another series to read this one, you lose points. It's like, yeah, this was the best Dragon Ball Z spinoff Because it's fighting against Bojack or the Dragon Ball Super manga, and I'm like, yeah, this was probably better.
Speaker 2:But speaking of reincarnation, I believe our actual topic for this episode is lives in mini in video games yes, man, we so could have eek aside this entire episode.
Speaker 1:We're like at the halfway point and I like had other things about the what's new with me, but we just didn't really get to them well, okay, I guess.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I did kind of skip over what's new with you because you inserted a rant into in the midst of mine.
Speaker 1:Well yeah, my rant was great, so instead of giving what's new with you, because you inserted a rant into the midst of mine. Well, yeah, my rant was great. So, instead of giving what's new with me, because our audience just doesn't get that information now, I said I'm going to quote a conversation that happened three minutes before this podcast started. Okay, so I'm sitting in my living room drinking some water, hanging out with Mr Meeks, like you do, and then, I'm talking about Carl to my roommate, like I do, and he's like you know, carl doesn't exist, right, he's imaginary.
Speaker 1:And I just think to myself and I say to him Carl is literally the person that I have the most evidence of existing of anyone on this planet. Or people have listened to 90 plus episodes of a podcast where I talk and then there's pure silence and then I'm like talk again and the idea that there is no Carl and the idea that there is no Carl. What a wild trip this podcast would be, with its massive, long, uninterrupted moments of silence followed by me making a quip or two.
Speaker 1:Like if my life was imaginary, you would be by far the most entertaining for this context alone. I mean assumably you're speaking my lines, but I mean no, it's silence, it's just me nodding my head right now.
Speaker 2:I can't even see you nodding your head.
Speaker 1:Exactly all I hear is me nodding my head blank. Noise exactly Like that is a truly funny bit uh-huh, hopefully I actually exist yeah, for me it's like graduate soon, master's programs, chatting with profs, preparing for future stuff, but like it's really-y things because I don't like to gloat about things until I actually have them in writing, so I'm just going to be vague and sneaky about it.
Speaker 2:Okay, but I do have a question for you, since you didn't actually directly answer my question when we were texting back and forth Nice Can you take electives that would directly apply towards a future master's program?
Speaker 1:So what's interesting is I was talking with my prof about it and how it would work is you can get electives swatched with other school things if you have like the permission of program coordinator level person.
Speaker 1:But it's not that it would reduce or affect my course load, because the master's is pretty locked in of like three courses and then a big scale project and then like a thesis, da, da, da, da da. But what you can do is say I had an elective that was literature and I'm like, actually, I really want to take this grant writing class because I'm a horribly boring person. It's possible for the person to be like okay, I'll let you take that in place of an elective, but the other option is I just do one master's program and then the other afterward.
Speaker 2:Right, right, right. I mean that kind of just makes sense.
Speaker 1:But I was literally talking about it to a professor that, oh yeah, if you really wanted specific courses, you could just ask to take those courses as your electives. And, at the end of the day, if you have a master's in something, let's use fake ones. If you have a master in baking versus a master's in cooking and you lose your job because you went with baking instead of cooking, that's almost on you at that point for being bad at selling yourself, because it's like you should be able to be like, but it's a master's in a culinary art, right? So yeah, I can't go into particulars because I'm still like in limbo, accepting offers, negotiating, playing coy right, right, but I do fully intend to go into a master's program in the fall.
Speaker 1:I think I could show that on this podcast and they can congratulate me for my success and I'm not going to give any further information until I start dotted and T's are crossed and what have you. But yeah, that's pretty much. All that was new with me was weighing various program options writing a book, doing school assignments, having to teach a class as part of a class, which is a whole thing, having to teach a class as part of a class, which is a whole thing, having to teach a class as part of a class.
Speaker 1:So one of the classes I'm doing right now which I can talk about is pedagogy of creative writing, which is learning to teach creative writing to people.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Our assignment is. They put us in a group, we write a lesson plan and then we have to go find a group of people and then teach them something. So, like, a bunch of people went to their like former high school classrooms to teach a creative writing lecture, my group has booked a thing at a library to do like an adult learner's lesson, because there's less chance I'll get myself cancelled there, right, because my one F-bomb in episode rule doesn't apply to sixth graders, turns out. I see how that works and it's like I wonder how that works. I see how that works. I wonder if that's an intimidating ass assignment. Go find a group of people and teach them a thing, good luck. But also for, like the kind of like master's program, teaching assisting things you typically end up doing, it's like extremely relevant practice for me, right?
Speaker 2:So I welcome the challenge but also it's like then there's logistics.
Speaker 1:Because they're not going to let you come teach when you would normally have class, because life just isn't that easy. I mean they might, but that's not how it worked out. So it's like, with my final four weeks of my degree left, what's new with me? School work, yeah, that's about right. And some game stuff that'll come up when we get back to our actual topic. So lives and gamings. I've prepared a statement, but I refuse to do research because that's my day job.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So it's like today I literally went through like 10 academic articles and wrote summaries. So for my podcast I'm just going to pull random crap and see what happens. I'm going to say the first video game to use quarters in place of lives was Pinball.
Speaker 2:Was Pinball.
Speaker 1:Pinball. You didn't need electricity really for a pinball machine, but the idea was you turned a coin into a number of stocks and then, when those stocks died, you lost the stock and that was probably the first life in gaming, Because most sports use a timer for points. Instead of when you run out of points, you lose because they want the game to last long enough.
Speaker 2:Where any game that has a coin slot, you want the game to last exactly long enough that they give you more money, right, right, I was going to say that, or I am going to say that old school arcades, which have mostly fallen out of style, are probably the source of lives in contemporary games, because, like you say, you turn a quarter into a certain number of lives and then your goal is to get a high score before you lose all your lives.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, so I was watching a good friend of mine do a Dragon's Lair playthrough on Wii. Are you familiar with Dragon's Lair at all?
Speaker 2:Sounds familiar, but I don't know.
Speaker 1:So Dragon's Lair was early laser disc technology and the idea was the game played animation cutscenes and gave you a quick time event of you had to push one of four directions or the sword button and if you successfully completed it, you either played a video clip of you moving to the next room or, you like, being squished by an ooze, or your flying horse flying into a wall or what have you?
Speaker 1:The game was literally, you gave it money and then the game would just be like push the right button or die Haha, you don't get more story and button or die Ha ha, you don't get more story. And that was like its entire business model. Huh, it was literally like it was just one quick time event and you had to do enough consecutive quick time events before you had to give some more money.
Speaker 2:Hmm Interesting.
Speaker 1:So, like on the notion of lives is, personally I believe lives are charating time for progress and some games just do it badly and other games do it well. But I do think like there is a place in modern gaming for lives in some games, but it's changed shape a lot. So one thing I was prepared to talk about this episode was Hades.
Speaker 1:You only get one life and when you die you get more story, you get more power-ups, you roguelike, and then you go through it again, which the roguelike is like the modern arcade game of it's an arcade game, but you get to actually keep progress between each play.
Speaker 2:Makes sense.
Speaker 1:But Hades still has lives. They just have a you know death defiance and you keep going from the spot. You don't respawn from a screen because a lot of games are lives. Let you retry within a reasonable distance and then a game over puts you back to like the start of the game, like your mario games are the life. Lets you retry from a checkpoint and then the game over game overs you and then they're like actually not just gonna say here we go again and give you a timer to taunt you.
Speaker 2:Well see, what actually inspired this episode was that, relatively recently, the Nintendo Switch added Donkey Kong Land 1, 2, and 3 to the Game Boy emulator for the Switch Online.
Speaker 1:Do I have you on my family plan? I feel like I should you definitely have me on my family plan.
Speaker 2:I feel like I should. You definitely have me on your family plan. I think you might have kicked Aaron off the family plan or he lost it somehow. He was saying he doesn't have access anymore, but I'm fine with that.
Speaker 1:One of the two of you buys me things once in a while.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:That's true, because I did kick off some like random co-workers and things off the family plan and I think I like didn't know which one was his email address and I'm like whose email address is this? And I'll clean it up. My logic was, if anyone cared about it, they would message me fair enough and I'd just add them back on if there was space anyways, um, because I don't know. I need to be clear. I need all eight slots always filled on that.
Speaker 1:So I'm getting maximum dollar value from nintendo most it's like I have to use every penny of my student benefits every term, even if I don't need more glasses.
Speaker 2:It's a concept thing right, uh, but so donkey kong land, um, you can easily find is exactly what you described, where you have a certain number of lives. If you die, you can restart from a checkpoint. If you get a game over, you have to restart from the last time that you saved, which saving modern modern games basically hardly even use the save function. It's like there, everything just auto saves all the time.
Speaker 1:So on that note, like so, I've recently picked up like every Mega man game ever made for five bucks on a sale. It was like the X Collection, the Classic Collection, mega man 11, and the ZX Collection.
Speaker 1:No Battle Networks, sadly, but like the old Mega man games were interesting because they used lives for something really specific and I don't know if it was deliberate. So Mega man games like to kill you to the point where on the recent collections they quick key map the rewind button In Mega man 1, they're like, yeah, no, you can just use a bumper to rewind time if you're playing the collection on collection mode, because who's beating Mega man? But like how it worked out in practice for, like Mega man X, a game I really liked is if you make it to the boss with a life left, the boss kills you once and the life lets you respawn at the boss. So it's like if you get respawned halfway through the level, that's kind of handy, but really the goal is I want to make it to this level with at least one extra life. So when I fight the boss and he kicks my ass, I know his pattern for the rematch.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So for those games it's like okay, the point of the lives are like, how many retries do you get against the boss after beating the stage? And the Mega man X ones are like no, we're not giving you like infinite rewind, we already gave you a dash button and a charge gun, you don't need more pitting from us. But like it's funny because the early Mega man games I have no problem using the time rewind, because I hit a Melville in original Mega man where I got like softlocked myself when, even though I could rewind time freely, I still couldn't beat the stage.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, I needed ammo for a specific special weapon to make a jump and I didn't. I had used that weapon earlier. It's like hell sucks to be you. You just can't beat the stage now because we don't care, we're normal Nintendo, get good Scrub.
Speaker 2:But so, like the concept of lives, I think Mario, like the concept of lives, I think Mario, like Super Mario, games are almost the only game that actually use lives as we've described here. Where it's you have a set number of lives, you can restart from a checkpoint. If you die, if you lose them all, you have to restart from the beginning of the level.
Speaker 1:So it's like it's changed shape a lot over the years. So to kind of give like a different example is for lives in. Like the classic way for something like let's take. Let's take dark souls. Yeah, dark souls is when you die your max hp is cut in path and you have to go pick up your corpse.
Speaker 1:But their actual life system isn't lives, it's you get three flasks you get to use to heal up. So it's like instead of you getting lives, they super limited your healing. And then, like Armored Core for example, you get one life when you die, you replay your stage it blew you up, but they'll let you resp one life. When you die, you replay your stage it blew you up, but they'll let you like respawn from where a life would normally bring you to a checkpoint. You just get to keep respawning at the checkpoint. Rebuild your mech in the new Armored Cores, because new games be like that. But also, if a game has no lives at all, it loses a lot of its intensity, like, even if it only just makes you restart the fight you're in, mortality is kind of important, like monster hunter, for example, is its life system is mean, because your party has a shared pool of lives. When you run out, you lose and the game calls you bad. And then you get wheeled away on a corpse board because you suck.
Speaker 2:Okay, but so, like Yoshi's Woolly World and the other Yoshi games, do you think they benefit from not having lives then, or do you think that they become too easy?
Speaker 1:Wally World and a lot of Kirby games too, have a weird thing is action platformer and collector platformer or cozy platformer have different goals. So a cozy platformer your goal is to find the secrets right and Yoshi's Wally World. Kirby Epic Yarn do a particularly good job of you. Feel smart. They're like, sometimes they're puzzles and some, and sometimes they're blowing the mic to have Kirby blow on a flower to then spin a gem.
Speaker 1:But you're not really caring about the intensity in that situation, because the theory of death isn't where you're getting the adrenaline. You're instead getting dopamine, not adrenaline from woohoo. I used fire on the vines to get the cake. Yay'm great. But then later stages of kirby like actually no, your lives matter because we're gonna have you fight the god of the multiverse and you will suffer.
Speaker 1:Kirby has a weird blend, so right so lives, I think, only matter if the punishment is proportional. I don't think games should really have lives anymore at all, like for that Monster Hunter example where you blocked the death laser with your shield and I died from the cold air from standing behind you. Right, the live system didn't make us feel good Because it's like we're already getting less rewards, but it's like, no, you've just lost your time. That may have prevented us from continuing to play that game at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm pretty sure that that was the end of our time trying to play through Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate together. Because in that game At least I think so yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that game we lost lives not because of skill but because of gear score.
Speaker 2:So it didn't feel like the worst thing was that that was an extremely high skill move to put up my shield, block the ice laser and have you behind it, and then it just failed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the game was just not at our level Would have worked in Sword Art and we'd both still be alive and not dead in Sword Art. But yeah, like so for Modern. Like I think I was telling in our geometry episode, that triangle strategy put in the mechanic where when you lose a fight you keep your experience.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Where Fire Emblem, you just get game overed. Fire Emblem, three Houses kind of have lives, because you can rewind time five times in a fight. So if you lost you got to rewind the number of turns.
Speaker 2:Hmm.
Speaker 1:Which is like, oh, you added lives to a game where it was, if your main character died, game over. But really in Fire Emblem, if someone you like died, it was game over because you just soft reset like a little punk.
Speaker 2:I mean that's definitely true Super Nintendo Fire Emblem is. I definitely had a few character versions where I was like no, I gotta save Scum this because I like this character too much and also like you invest a lot of time and energy into the relationships between the characters for the second half of the game and then if one of them dies, it's like all for naught.
Speaker 1:And then you need to get them to the end, to actually see their ending with their like, dialogue and such. So they added lives to it. And it's like between triangle strategies. You get experience every time or fire emblem. You get five rewinds, because if you get an unlucky roll and get crit twice and die, you would scave scum. So instead of having you save scum, you can use one of your five retries to rewind as many turns as you like.
Speaker 1:It's actually like cutting down the time boot up effort of the save scumming you would normally do.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And it's also like if you use up all five and the character still dies, I found that I was less willing to save scum at that point, like, okay, I already tried this five times, they're just dead to me. I'm sorry. The lore has determined that they don't get to live through today and I think that was good. But then you get to the Mega man collections, or the Sonic Origin collection did this. So the Sonic Origin collection just removed lives completely, right, and wherever a life was, you instead got a coin box that gave you coins to spend on, like background music and artwork and things okay, and they just got rid of lives because, like no, you just restarted a checkpoint, they do.
Speaker 2:You think that improved the overall experience then?
Speaker 1:it did because the game was hard enough that the game was still hard, so it's like if you die. You went back to a checkpoint, which was already relatively punishing, and, like the boss of the game, took me like 30 tries because you had to beat two stages on the one go.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I absolutely wouldn't have gained anything having to occasionally, after five losses, give me a title screen and put me back even earlier.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So it's like not having the game over screen meant the game could be harder, but I could practice the part I was bad at more. So, like Mega man, zero Collection as well, did away with the lives in a checkpoint system where instead, you went to the last checkpoint and at any time you can push a button to warp to the checkpoint. What was really cool about that game specifically is the game had a system where it counted how many times you got hit, how many enemies you killed and how fast you beat the stage to give you a letter grade right and on a max letter grade is the only time you got this special weapon from the boss.
Speaker 1:So the game became a different game. My first time playing that as a kid it was like I need to beat this, and this is desperate and hard. I'll use every resource I have in the collection it was.
Speaker 1:I need a flawless every room because I get to just retry the section until I beat it like an absolute badass. No, I'm getting these s ranks that I never would have got in the original design because I just wasn't that good. Because I'm like, oh, I can make sure to get this buzz jumping puzzle down perfect and literally jump, slash back, flip, catch in the air and then do the next chunk. I'm like, yeah, no, I feel awesome in this game because I got a like you hit points or like I beat this boss, but if I click the button to rewind I can beat it better to get the bonus thing. So it's like that specific design of we give you a letter grade based on how well you do, paired better with infinite lives, because if you get game overed when you die you're not going to willingly die to make sure you clear the room better. So for that game, lives were a downside that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Because, even as I was saying, when I was playing through the classic Mega man games, the design note of the lives are like oh, you have to repeat the stage if you don't do, it was only a good design note when you had one game with eight stages to last you a year. Now I want to beat a Mega man game in one sitting.
Speaker 2:So because I have 20 of them.
Speaker 1:I don't need it to be a three-day endeavor because I have 20 of them for 20 bucks so essentially, you know what.
Speaker 2:What you're saying is that lives were uh artificial way to increase replayability because, uh, you basically had to replace stages more often if you got that game over.
Speaker 1:Correct. It's weird. I'm not so much against lives as I'm against game overs. So in a recent game I was playing Metaphor, rotefanzio, something or other, which was the new Persona-type game. That wasn't Persona, it was Medieval, and you're on an election tour bus that had legs. It's a sweet RPG, great game.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So Pokemon never had game overs. You lost some cash and then went back to the Pokemon Center.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Pokemon caught on really well. If Pokemon actually gamed you over, I don't think it would have caught on well. I think if you died to that first badge and it sent you back to Pallet Town and you had lost any Pokemon. You caught between that and your last save because in theory, pokemon is the most save, scummable game of all time, because you can save at literally any point and just reload people picked up on that pretty early into the franchise of oh, I'll just save in front of Moltres.
Speaker 1:You never expect to die in Pokemon. So if Pokemon had permadeath, where you just got game overed and you had to reload your last save and you just died to a random Graveler in the cave?
Speaker 2:you would stop that game.
Speaker 1:If you were halfway through Mt Moon and game over, you'd never play that game again. But it sends you back to the Pokemon Center and you keep your experience and you keep anything you caught. If you had lost every Pokemon you caught from that lap before you died, that only has to happen once before you give up on that game.
Speaker 1:So the Persona games have always been dick move games where enemies will literally have attacks that just kill you and then you just get game over and have to load your last save and the first time it happens you're never prepared for it I was like three hours in the middle of like the fourth dungeon, persona 5, and an enemy just cast charm on all of my party members, so I didn't get any turns and I just died before I could do anything.
Speaker 1:And then it gamed me over and sent me back two hours of my life and I never beat that game because I'm like no, screw you game. Why, in 2024, would I need to manually save? So this metaphor game, which was like a runner up for game of the year and most things are one game of the year for some things I think accidentally fixed this problem, yeah so it looks like it was designed to not have auto saving because there's physical save points but the game auto saved whenever you picked an item up off the ground.
Speaker 1:Oh and auto saved like before, bosses and I think it was to stop like a duping, glitch or something like. I don't think they meant to do this, so the game would still occasionally just kill you from bad luck persona style. But in a game where there's items in every room on the ground, it would only put you back one fight at most. Right, and I think that saved the game, because in a jrpg now, if you Right playing it.
Speaker 1:If its original design was, you can only save at these save points, I don't think it would have won any awards and I don't even think they realized that they accidentally fixed this Because it doesn't feel like a developer thought we should make sure it saves every item so you respawn more frequently. To me anyway, if it auto-saves because you picked an iobomb off the ground, it tells me that was more about not duplicating the item than a deliberate design choice. Right, and it made the game immensely better for it.
Speaker 2:So then, are you against replacing lives with the save point system? Because, I mean, it does seem like most games have, in fact, done away with the save points.
Speaker 1:I agree within reason. So most games now just auto-save on you, which the trick is if your game auto-saves, you can't also have save points like if you're good at creating an auto-saving game. Auto-save it like Baldur's Gate. Sometimes will be like oh, when was my last auto-save? I only really save this game when I go to turn it off. Not great, baldur's Gate was just good at literally everything else, so whatever.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:But you have to space it and you have to understand what's time-consuming in your game. So, for example, the final boss of Metaphor, refuntazio, had three phases After losing because it has a bullshit instant kill. Attack in the third phase, like JRPGs are one to do for some reason, which, by the way, just have tech say in two turns, an attack's coming, or something. Don't just kill your entire guy off. That's some bullshit. It sent me back far enough that I ended up dropping the difficulty to just see the ending. That's bad game design to be like oh, you fought this entire game on this difficulty, but we are so annoying at the end that, for the sake of time, I'm like no, just put a save point between the two phases of the boss. Right, if you're going to give him an instant kill, you attack after 20 minutes of fighting him, don't.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:It's also weird game design Note. I don't like bosses and games getting stronger as the fight goes. It's a weird JRPG trope where it's like no, you don't have to get stronger as you fight, you have to get weaker as they fight Because then you're winning. Like let's take Pokemon, which is the most successful JRPG of all time, by like a lot when you're fighting Lance, yeah, his Pokemon get higher level, but he has less of them because you're winning.
Speaker 2:If you're fighting.
Speaker 1:Lance and you beat him. So instead his Dragonite gets an attack that attacks all of your bench Pokemon and drops them to 1 HP for some reason. You would just call bullshit. Pokemon's big design note is it was fair. Anything the enemies could do to you, you could do to them. That's just good game design, although most Digimon games were in fact better than Pokemon games, but that's a whole other debate. Pokemon's put out some garbage recently. I don't reject my statement.
Speaker 2:I guess the other question is do you think that lives do have a place in modern video games?
Speaker 1:I think they do as death's defiance perks. So, for someone who plays games like Armored Core and occasional Dark Souls type things, and Monster Hunter specifically. I'm going to give you need to be able to lose or else you're just matching X till you win. Like as we bring up in D&D a lot, you have to have the fear of death to hit that sweet spot where you get invested.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And that fear of death is important, but I think that lives have changed. Instead of it being a life, once you retry from 10 minutes ago and a game over restarts your entire game. It's moving more towards death defiances Like Hades' death defiance of hey. When you drop to zero, you get back up twice. I think it's a better way to lives to go Right now it's still you have to manually heal the Estus flask mechanic of you.
Speaker 1:get three or four healings, the game just gives you as a substitute life system is flawed because you can still get cheap-shotted and lose. But having three lives while hunting a Rathalos, for example, means that you can screw up three times before you lose-lose and then your blood pressure gets really high near the end of the fight. But I'm not a fan of wasted time To be completely wasted in my ripe old age of 35 approaching, I don't have enough lifespan left to just waste my time. So the compromise now is I like games that still give you prizes when you lose.
Speaker 1:So, some of the newer Mega man games. Things drop little bolts when you're fighting through the stage and when you lose you keep your bolts. You can use those to buy extra health or extra lives or extra whatever to be like. Oh, next time I fight this boss, I now have a full heal or two as a result of losing the stage a bunch of times.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:For Monster Hunter. You should keep anything you picked up in that fight every time Because it's like, yeah, no, you almost killed Arathalos, you should get some stuff Right, because then it kind of undercuts it. So my thoughts for lives is lives should be instant. Now your one-up just gets you right back up when you die and your game over brings you back like 15 minutes or so, but you get half the stuff you would have got normally had you won.
Speaker 2:It's kind of where I'm at.
Speaker 1:Like in Pokemon, for example, if I were to update it to my modern thoughts on lives, you would keep all the experience. If you killed five of Lance's Pokemon. At the sixth, you would keep all the experience. If you killed five of Lance's Pokemon but the sixth, you'd keep all your experience and it'd bring you back to Lance, not back to the start of the Elite Four Although the boss of the game can be a little more tricky with it and the thing is.
Speaker 1:Gen 1 Pokemon did that, I think. I think when you whited out, you still kept any experience for any Pokemon you knocked out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm pretty sure you kept any experience. You kept any items, but you just have to travel back from the Pokemon Center to wherever it was that you were going to. Then all the trainers that you ran across would also still be defeated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it wasn't that far between these points.
Speaker 2:Not usually no.
Speaker 1:I think in modern game design I wouldn't really change Pokemons. I think Pokemon had it. Although this Monster Sanctuary game I was playing recently, your punishment for losing a fight is you lose the fight and then you'd have to refight them.
Speaker 1:You just heal the full outside of fights and you can switch out your roster whenever you want. Right, and they're like we made these fights hard. But what happens if I lose the fight? Literally nothing. You just exit the fight animation and you can just leave, Go do something else, or you can try again if you want and I'm like yeah, that's pretty much perfect design.
Speaker 1:They also have platforming with no punishment other than you fell and you have to try and do the platforming again, which I think is the perfect punishment for a platformer again, which I think is the perfect punishment for a platformer, I suppose so.
Speaker 1:Well, like even modern platformers like let's take Donkey Kong or Mario Falling in a pit being instant death almost goes against some of their game design. I would have it like if you fall in a pit, I would have you respawn next to the pit and like lose some HP or shrink to little Mario, because instant death just isn't really a thing in games anymore.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, but then, like you say, with cozy platformers, it's like there's no. I mean, I guess you're looking for a different rush because, like you say, you're looking for secrets rather than for precision platforming and feeling awesome that you completed a difficult task, but also then it becomes like when something is difficult, how do you reward the player?
Speaker 1:Well, that's the trick, though, is it's about making the difficulty come in bursts now. The trick, though, is it's about making the difficulty come in bursts now. So if we look at some of these modern platforms that did really well, like Super Meat Boy or Celeste or even Metroid Dread, to a certain extent, is you're only clearing one screen or one room, or like four rooms linked together at a time, and those rooms are hard as fuck.
Speaker 1:It might take you a hundred times to clear that room, but once you're through it, it's done, it gets. That is a much better difficulty curve than you clear a hundred rooms and you die in room 99 and have to go back through all a hundred of them.
Speaker 1:So, you can absolutely give someone infinite lives in a platformer and give them that rush of intensity. You just have to make the thing they have to do match the challenge. Like you make it that the boss is a big enough badass and you're like yeah, I get infinite tries to do this, but if he hits me three times I'm just dead and I have a butter knife and he's Sephiroth, I better bring my A game. It's funny because the hard games, like the Mega man ones, I like to reference because they're recent, fresh on the memory. I was fighting the second last boss on Mega man 11.
Speaker 1:And I'm like okay, I have like 10 lives stocked up, like 10 full heals. He's like cool, I turn into bricks, fly across the screen, fall down from the screen, grab you and throw you into lava. I'm like okay, all right, you're not going to make me replay the stage because I bought a bunch of items from like giving me things. Nor should you have to because I have to fight. Like I think it's Mega man Zero. Infinite lives is fair when you're fighting a falling space colony and the boss merges with it and you're fighting him during atmospheric reentry as the space colonies trying to punch you to death. Like you're like okay, during atmospheric re-entry, as the space colony's trying to punch you to death. Like you're like okay, even though he has to hit me ten times, he has so much weaponage going on. It's the Dark Souls tactic. Like Dark Souls, you technically have infinite tries, you just lose stuff, Right.
Speaker 1:And the newer Dark Souls actually have, like the save spots more frequently placed.
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 1:I think Citation needed. So yeah, that's where I'm at. The idea of the old-school platformer getting game over and replaying everything just doesn't vibe with me anymore and like save states just aren't aesthetically pleasing Like. I'd rather just the game, just have sensibly placed checkpoints.
Speaker 2:But as a side side note I'd mention that the game that that put me onto this topic was donkey kong land. Um, I, uh, I, just I really like donkey kong land, nostalgia from when I was younger. I, I think I probably played it when it came out, which was like 1994, 1995 you know I love the classic game boy graphics.
Speaker 1:By the way, before they got colored, just the green on black, I don't know why, it just makes me happy well, I had the game boy pocket which had the uh, the darker black and then the lighter background.
Speaker 2:I kind of like the game boy pocket personally, more nostalgic, uh, but both reasons. The original game boy had more accessories. So I I traded my game boy to my brother for for my game boy pocket to my brother for his game boy because he had the accessories.
Speaker 1:And then years later he told me that he traded it because he accidentally peed on it you know, I'm not even gonna follow that up with a comment, I'm going to just let that go.
Speaker 2:Anyways, I beat original Donkey Kong Land 100% without using any internet FAQs or walkthroughs. I knew I could do it. I did it as a kid.
Speaker 1:That's me with Mega man X.
Speaker 2:I was a little bit disappointed because that game in particular, apparently excluding game overs, it only took me like just under three hours to complete. I was like, hmm, I really like this game and lives are supposed to artificially increase playtime. But, dang, I didn't realize it was that short.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the thing. Like Mega man, games are like two hours long, if you're good at what you do.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But also like it's weird because you know I love to give rants that video game devs have gotten lazy in a lot of ways and a lot of games just aren't actually that much better because they don't try and up the scope, much Like Mario Wonder's. Like look how fancy this is. I'm like why does it have less stages than Super Mario World and why don't they branch and why does it have less power-ups? It's like, well, no, it has more.
Speaker 1:It really doesn't, though, and that's like the thing is yeah every Mega man game is eight stages, unless they feel like being saucy with it and maybe they'll throw in some intermission stages, Right, and I'm like yeah they just kept making the same game because it was doing good. Fair enough If I were to make a new Donkey.
Speaker 2:Kong game. If I'm like make Donkey.
Speaker 1:Kong Land 4, you mad lad. I would definitely switch out lives with checkpoints. I would absolutely have banana shops more prevalent where you could buy power-ups and upgrades, so if you fail a stage you can exit and get new stuff, and I'd make it have more levels than 1 through 3 combined. I'd probably include as bonus stages every level from 1 to 3 as hidden unlockables. It's like you could put the entirety of every Donkey Kong Country game in a new Donkey Kong Country game if you wanted to okay, well, just random side tangent it is what we do here.
Speaker 1:when I talk to the silence, when Bye tangent, it is what we do here when I talk to the silence.
Speaker 2:Firstly, maybe you actually know games that have done this. But what if, instead of distinct stages, you actually had one large stage that was encompassing every other distinct area? That would have been a stage before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're called Metroidvanias. What are you talking about?
Speaker 2:Is that really?
Speaker 1:You don't have distinct stages.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, okay, metroid Dread. Metroid Dread was pretty fun, so I always have. I was just imagining a Donkey Kong game that would use a Metroidvania-style app.
Speaker 1:I guess I have mixed feelings on Metroidvanias, so the last Metroidvania I really liked was that Monster Sanctuary that broke into Pokemon fights instead of actual Metroidvania fights. The problem I found with Metroidvanias is they usually design them to have a lot of backtracking.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Like by design. But also, what I like about the Mega man game stages is each stage is distinct and, as I was kind of saying, where I'm like, I like the perfection of jump in the air, cut a thing in half dash, shoot it, kick up the wall and throw a lightning bolt at an armadillo. The run-based of oh we do these eight separate stages has a certain perfectionism quality to it, where the Metroidvania is a more methodic, slow and steady style game, just kind of by design. Say, we made a Mario Metroidvania which I'm sure people have in the modding community Billion percent chance. Part of the novelty of Super Mario 3D World and what made it so sweet is each stage was so distinct that it was like, oh, I liked Super Mario 3D World more than I liked Odyssey Odyssey. It would have been really easy to make it the 3D Metrovania, aka the open world, breath of the wild all you'd have to do is link all those zones together around a globe right right
Speaker 1:like it wouldn't have actually been hard and I'd bet money that the switch 2 is going to have the first open world mario game just feels obvious at this point. But there's a certain value to like doing the stages in a vacuum that I like. So it's like if you want Donkey Kong Metroidvania, you absolutely could. I don't know if it would scratch the itch for me. I think I'd rather like go Donkey Kong ton of stages, branching exits and make it like just a massive web of stages branching exits and make it like just a massive web of stages that's true.
Speaker 1:That is one thing that Donkey Kong doesn't have a lot of, which is branching stages or like like the Metroidvania Donkey Kong game would be interesting, don't get me wrong, but I think for that to work I would need characters to be what you unlock and set powerups like a normal Metroidvania, like you'd like. Find the Diddy barrel and just have Diddy and be able to swap to him for the rest of the game and go through your gas that way.
Speaker 1:Because, the Metroidvania design is to reuse areas on the map. You have to have new abilities to come back to them.
Speaker 1:If you wanted to more pull a fire on them. Each stage is just attached. You'd have to either make them open swirl, like you'd have to either make them open world, like you'd either have to make them Metroidvania, where you double back with new power-ups, or it'd just be like one really, really big stage, because if you weren't going back to old areas and it weren't non-linear, then you're just making one super huge stage. I don't know how I feel about that. I don't think I'm against it, but I do find that breaking up gameplay styles is my personal vibe, like in.
Speaker 1:Mega man Zero. Between the stages you'd go around the base. Talk to the mooks for a bit, upgrade your stuff. I think the camp is an important part of Monster Hunter. Like a Monster Hunter, that was just. Oh, you go out here and your goal is to kill all 50 monsters while you're out here at once. I think it doesn't vary the gameplay enough. I kind of like the cat animation of cooking the meal and breaking up. I love the painting of the gunpla.
Speaker 1:It'd be a way to break up the action stages, although the last Gun to Breakers. Stages themselves are mediocre, but that's just a different thing.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think we've gone on enough tangents. Maybe it's time to find out. The random question of the day.
Speaker 1:If the concept of left suddenly ceased to exist in all forms directional, political, metaphorical what is an unexpected consequence that would ripple through your life?
Speaker 2:The concept of left. Hmm, so you would be unable to turn left. Hmm, so you would be unable to turn left.
Speaker 1:Thankfully, three rights is a U-turn. Hmm, Well so I'll start with me a bit, if it's okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I can't do Eft and Rive anyway. Directionally, stay the same. I would love it politically because the analogy is too fucking simplistic, because then people would actually have to list their platforms instead of just putting it on an arbitrary-ass axis.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:As an unintended ripple. We just lost axes. We can go X and Y accesses. We can go x and y but we can't like. We oh man, that's rough humans love putting things into grids and we've lost the ability. We have curves but we can't like sort as arbitrarily left and right things. I hope it would just make us more complex. Life forms like we'd evolve better, even if we have to do three right turns to actually go the other direction from now till the end of time.
Speaker 2:Hmm, the concept of left, but not the ability to.
Speaker 1:Thankfully the Earth's, so we're fine.
Speaker 2:Well, no, I'm just like thinking like uh, we in in English, we read from right to left yeah, so we're switching to kanji well, yeah, like are we gonna have to start reading up and down? Does that mean, yes, that, uh, each page can only contain one, one line. Because you can't go right with the, we're going to do the arrival thing with the septipoids where it's a circle and you read it non-linearly. Ooh, you read it in a spiral. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Oh man, controllers. The Wiimote becomes a superior controller yet again. You know, I think Mario is fine as a game. Somehow in this scenario there's no reason to ever go the other direction. A surprising number of games. You would just play them as normal. That's kind of shocking how many games from the Super Nintendo era are fine.
Speaker 2:Okay, so a surprising ripple of not the concept of left disappearing, or maybe not surprising, but lefty loosey, righty tighty. We wouldn't be able to open any of our sauce bottles at work.
Speaker 1:So I love the visual where you have to like stab the top of it with a knife to like break the seal.
Speaker 2:Either the bottles are no longer resealable or we just can't open them.
Speaker 1:I'm loving that we've replaced all bottles with soda tadpoles All of them Just and then start pouring out your pineapple. That's the exact kind of dumb consequence I'm sure they were looking for. Oh, this last one. Remember this question, and there's a disclaimer here don't be racist.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:If colors had legal representation and could sue for how they've been historically used or misrepresented, which color would have the strongest case and what would its argument be? Note we're talking primary rainbow colors.
Speaker 2:Which color would have the strongest case for how it's been misrepresented?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so immediately, immediately. I am representing red Because people are like anger, stop displeasure, blood. And I'm like tomatoes, strawberries, fun Christmas.
Speaker 2:Nah.
Speaker 1:Red is like such a soothing, cinnamon, happy color that has been co-opted by the warmongers of the world. They're like red is intense. I'm like pink isn't even a color, it's just chill red just chill, red, it's like pink. You just have to move the saturation slider, you get light, blue and blue. You don't just go from blue to blink. Man, this law case, I'm like I got Red's back here. We are suing. So much for slander and damages.
Speaker 1:Although, because it's you, I could just be like representing Orange and suing the crap out of you for just hate crimes. You're like pumpkin is some bullshit. Both the fruit and the pie Be apple or be nothing.
Speaker 2:I do have a disdain for the color orange, but colors could sue, hmm.
Speaker 1:I feel like purple has a pretty good case against the French. Laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs, laughs.
Speaker 2:The color white and the color black, both because when you're looking at color theory, you can have additive color theory or you can have subtractive color theory.
Speaker 1:You're on such a thin razor's edge right now. We don't need lives to make this exciting.
Speaker 2:The point is that black as a color isn't really a color, it's just the absence of color. It's a placeholder for a monumental placeholder for a lack of information, visually like light information, but then you know, in additive color theory it's the combination of all colors, and so I think there's a lot of legal merc there about what exactly black is and what does it actually represent Because it's. Is it nothing or is it everything?
Speaker 2:And if it's I don't know what kind of legal. And then the same thing for white, where it's like, in additive color theory, white is the absence of color, uh, where in subtractive color theory, uh, white is the presence of all colors, right, like. So it's like I think there's a, there's a lot of I don't know exactly what you would sue for, uh, but the misrepresentation of what they actually are, I think, would have lots of legal repercussions if they could sue to go the exact unintended direction where whoever sent us this question did not want me to go.
Speaker 1:White has such legal grounds to sue because human beings are not white. No person born on this earth can you hold up the color swatch of Snow White 00000 hex code or is it FFFFFFF hex code and have it match up human being. That person is dead. They are deceased. They're either deceased or have a podcast. Either way, they're not a person so like in the color ceiling. It's like nuh, uh, you're beige, fuck right off. That is my use of the F-bomb for this episode. I stand by it.
Speaker 2:I think that's your second one, actually, but that doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1:I just thought I'd get away with it. I really hope at least one listener and possibly Aaron after I reinstate him to the family plan, after we update that information goes through it and counts the F-bombs to see if it was one or two or three, because at some point I just ranted about Bort for no reason and it's entirely possible I snuck one in there.
Speaker 2:Ooh yeah, it might be three.
Speaker 1:Oh man, do I hate Bort. They're doing a Final Fantasy fight where three people are standing in a line on each side and bouncing. And with that, thank you for tuning in to Richard and Carl. Percent deep space and dragons, where we talked about lives and gaming, we talked about bruno the dog, which I don't actually know if that went anywhere uh, brutus, brutus, thank you is the dog brutus and pixie.
Speaker 1:I don't think we actually went anywhere with that. I think you're like and on that note, webtoon, I'm like it's funny because we did a full episode of.
Speaker 2:Webtoon. That was the segue. It was anti-disastrous humanitarianism to Korra, to Brutus and Pixie, pet foolery, to Webtoon, to Paranoid Mage, to Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic.
Speaker 1:It's just so funny on our podcast to take that route when we were already at webtoon. Right, because you're like, that's how I ended up on webtoon, that website. You guys did a two-hour episode on two weeks ago and it's like, yeah, but you also just have that tab saved, like yeah, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:The. The actual point was the admission that I don't use this for facts, because I said that Paranoid Mage, which I read on Webtoon, was a manhwa, when in fact it is just an adaptation of a North American book series power on his sword to then prove to his mother, to then smash the sword against Inuash's sword to give Inuash a better sword so he can then get his actual sword in his arm back.
Speaker 1:It's like such a journey for nothing to have actually accomplished anything. Such a journey. But yes tune in, follow us. I don't know, maybe buy my book.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of hesitant now I don't know any books or anything to plug, so, uh, if you're gonna buy a, buy a book, you should probably buy his although also you can check out my globe and mail piece.
Speaker 1:That was actually pretty good bye, that's true. I get nothing for that, literally nothing, nothing. In fact the Globe and Mail may get something, so I made negative dollars. But whatever, I think newspapers should exist so we can continue to get the funnies at least.
Speaker 2:Newspaper funnies.
Speaker 1:Honestly, maybe that's when I should have got my master's in just newspaper funnies and brought them back.
Speaker 2:That'd be pretty funny. That's literally where I cut brought them back. That'd be pretty funny.
Speaker 1:That's literally where I cut off the episode is? It'd be pretty funny.