Platformers & fighters, watching color classics from the 1930s and breaking into virtual photography. Join Willie and Taylor as they interview Joseph about his experience with video games.
Platformers & fighters, watching color classics from the 1930s and breaking into virtual photography. Join Willie and Taylor as they interview Joseph about his experience with video games.
In this episode, we focus on Joseph's gaming experience and interests. We travel back to 1990 to hear about Joseph's earliest SNES memories and learn he was a Legend of Zelda game counselor for his stepfather. Listen to stories of rage and competition against his friends and how they shared game cartridges among their tight group. Willie asks about gaming restrictions, favorite genres, and video game rental stores. Somewhere in the mix, Joseph and Taylor talk about losing a parent and the perception of time. We wrap with recently played games, breaking down GoldenEye 007, and hearing how Joseph broke into virtual photography.
The games briefly mentioned in this episode: Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Mortal Kombat II, Street Fighter II Turbo, Cuphead, The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, Super R-Type, Super Ghouls N Ghosts, Battletoads, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Halo, Gears of War, The Last of Us, God of War, Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, Control, Elden Ring, State of Decay, Dying Light 2, Halo Infinite, Splitgate, Duke Nukem, GoldenEye 007, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Ghost of Tsushima, and Assassins Creed Valhalla.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Joseph: But we all had-kind of, did our fair share of, like, getting angry at the games or getting pissed off at each other because, like, somebody was spamming, you know, like a low kick or something, in Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter, and they had us pinned in the corner, you know?
Taylor: [laughs] yeah.
Joseph: So we're, we're mad because they're just spamming the same move over and over and, like, accusing them of not being able to beat us in any other way?
Taylor: Oh yeah, and even though there's a thousand other moves you can do–
Willie: [laughs] Yeah
Taylor: –to get out of that [laughs] you just instead blame them. Use the verbal move. That's, that's right.
Joseph: Yeah, or, people are, like talking about the controller–
Willie: [laughs] Yeah
Joseph: –having issues, you know like, button sticking, and stuff like that.
Taylor: [laughs] Yeah… If Johnny didn't have his stupid sticky-ass hands on it, man.
Joseph: Yeah, let's switch controllers. Let's switch controllers then.
[Willie laughs]
Taylor: Yeah, see what happens.
Joseph: You know, do stuff like that.
Willie: Yeah
Joseph: So that kind of stuff happened all the time, man.
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica ]
00:01:04
Joseph: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Berries and Blades, a place where we analyze and breakdown some of our favorite video games. My name is Joseph Bullard, and I'm here with my friends Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. And we're just three regular guys sitting in our bedroom studios doing shots of tequila every time we die in the Lands Between.
But, I digress. How are you guys doing?
[silence]
Taylor: Doing good, man. [laughs]
Joseph: [laughs]
Taylor: Sorry about that. I forgot I was the first one to go. [laughs] I wonder if you could put a break here, and then, uh, start again.
[beep]
00:01:38
Taylor: Doing good man. So I'm completely fucked up from all these deaths [laughs] then, if uh, that's our drinking game. Uh, otherwise, been doing good man. I'm slowly recovering from some, uh, minor injuries from bails that I've taken on the Onewheel as I, uh, careen around the yard. Uhm, otherwise been playing some games; still on that Atomicrops. And uh, I don't know, just looking forward to see what you guys are up to this week.
Willie: Same, uh, doing pretty good. Finally got the AC working again which is nice to have, AC.
Taylor: Mm, that is nice.
Willie: We're not living in the single room of our house anymore that had cooler air in it. [laughs]
Joseph: Word
Willie: I'm just excited to uh, again get back into this conversation. It's interesting cause I think both of us are going to have a lot of questions for you, Joey, this time, that might fall outside of the normal questions. Just because, you know, we've been hanging out for a long time, but I also, I don't know a lot about how many games we actually play that overlap.
Joseph: Mmhmm. So if you missed our first episode, you should go back and listen to us chat with Taylor about the kinds of games he played as a kid.
And in this episode, we'll be digging into my gaming history, so I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you guys.
Taylor: Nice man. Can't wait to find out a little more about you.
00:02:55
Willie: I guess let's start at the beginning. How long have you been playing video games?
Joseph: Dude, I don't know. So Taylor said he'd wh– 1985, I think he said, yeah.
Taylor: Kind of, yeah.
Joseph: Wait, no, was that what it was, 1985?
Taylor: Whenever, yeah, whenever the Nintendo first dropped in the US that was, that was when I got one was that year. I looked online, and it said 85, but you know that goes; like maybe it got into my area later than that or something. I'd say between 85 and 87.
Joseph: Mmhmm. So I don't know, man. After, after Taylor said that, I started thinking, like, when was it? I'm going to just guess I was like 5 years old
Taylor: When about was that?
Joseph: So that've been like 90.
Taylor: Oh, OK.
Joseph: Yeah, so I was born in 85, so yeah, I mean it could have been right around the release of the SNES, and that would make sense because that was the first console that we had in the house.
Taylor: Yeah, I bet that was a first for a lot of people.
Joseph: Yeah, I would say probably 1990.
Willie: When you're thinking about that, what is like, sort of the first memory then, that you're like, if you're trying to draw back to 1990, what is… was it like a game that you were playing or was it getting a first system or what?
Joseph: It was hard for me to pin that down too, but I think the two earliest video game memories, or games I can remember playing are going to be Super Mario World and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Taylor: Oh, right, cause SNES. I did not catch that. Ok, wow, so Super Mario World was a big one, bro. You could murder Yoshi in some interesting ways.
[laughter]
Joseph: It must have shipped with the Super NES.
Taylor: I believe, yeah.
Joseph: Like I think it was the box game that shipped with the console, and that's why we had it. So I think, I think that's probably the first game I played. But then my step dad, he bought Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. So he's the reason I was– well I mean he bought the console too, so. I think it was a Christmas gift for us, and then we started playing from there. But it had to have been later that he got Legend of Zelda because he actually played the game more than we did.
Taylor: Hmm. Interesting.
Joseph: We did start playing it ourselves, and then we got to the point where we knew more about the game than he did. And then he would play on his own and he would, like, yell at us from across the house to, like, come into the living room because he had a question about the game–
Taylor: [laughs]
Joseph: –because he couldn't remember where, like, the ice rod was or something, something in the game. So we were like feeding him–we were like his player manual. It was pretty funny. It's pretty funny to think back to for sure.
Taylor: Oh, hell, yeah. And there's so many mysteries in that game that if you don't know exactly where to go or what to do, you are fucked. Because it's like, you know–
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: –if you don't bomb the exact right place or or whatever, you're not gonna, you're not gonna find that thing.
Joseph: I mean, the game does a decent job of kind of like, pushing you around at the beginning of the game to like go and get the three pendants and like to go talk to the old man.
It does a decent job, but there's just a lot of stuff in the game that you don't necessarily have to collect to finish the game, like, like something like the ice rod comes in handy for one of the bosses, but like you don't have to have it to finish the game.
Taylor: That's true. That's true. You could just be baller status and, and just defeat it without.
Go underwear-man [laughter] Elden Ring-style.
00:06:14
Taylor: Was that the time where you were young enough that you were just playing anything that you could get your hands on? Or were there any specific early on games that you were really digging or got you heavier into it?
Joseph: We were definitely those kids, where we, we really only played what was accessible to us. My parents didn't have a lot of money, like while we were growing up. So like, we would play the same game over and over and over again because it was just like, the, the shit that we had.
Taylor: Mmhmm. There's still new tech too, so it’s that, it’s that kind of thing where when you have something that's interactive and you know, features art and all these different, uhm mechanisms working together and put that in front of a kid, I feel like it's a no brainer that that's, that's a perfect entertainment for kids.
Joseph: And we had some good games to just keep playing over and over, you know, so we didn't get bored.
Willie: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's just, that's, that's a good place to start, with both of those cause I feel like, they seem so big as a kid, and I'm sure that–
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Willie: Yeah, sorry. You were going to say something else, though. Like what else was there?
Joseph: Oh, about not getting bored. Something like A Link to the Past, maybe you found a Nintendo Power, and it had some walkthroughs, but you just didn't–there was nowhere to go to find out how to play the game and where to find all these objects. So you either had to talk about it at school, and find somebody that had played it and knew the secrets. Or you had to just play it long enough to figure these things out. And so like, it really extended the gameplay, I think for, for a game like A Link to the Past.
00:07:47
Joseph: But we had a lot of fighters too. Mortal Kombat II, _Street Fighter II Turbo_–
Taylor: Oh, nice
Joseph: –were games that we played all the time, and like you could play each other at those games, so that helped us not get bored. But also like, made those games like, last a really long time.
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: But when I was talking about not having access to a lot of games, eventually we, you know, we collected more and more, and we played more and more games or we were renting them from the local video game store. But it also happened to me with cartoons, and like Disney films. One of my favorite Disney films is The Lion King, or The Fox and the Hound or Aladdin, because those were the VHS teps that, VHS tapes that we had, so we just watched those over and over again.
Taylor: Mmhmm. Well, those were winners. Those were–
Joseph: Yeah
Taylor: Those were just as legendary as Mario or Zelda. You know, those were, those were just as big when I was a kid, too, or whenever they came out. Like those things were, you know, timeless, and you can still watch them now. Like, I'll watch them with my kids at some point, for sure, for sure.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor. Amazing. Like, those are video games as movies basically, like the two are, are one and the same sometimes.
00:08:51
Joseph: Something unusual about, about my childhood is that [laughs] I watched a lot of rubber hose animation cartoons.
Taylor: Nice.
Joseph: So like a lot of the Color Classics from the 1930s. I saw an unusual amount of those, I think, for a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s.
Taylor: That's the like, uh Mickey Mouse, like the old, old kind of Mickey Mouse cartoons, those kind of things where they're all like fucking whistling and like [sings] “doodle doodle dee”
Joseph: Mmhmm yeah, yeah. And their arms? They don't have like, joints. They're just kind of–
Taylor: Yeah, they didn't walk like humans.
Joseph: –they’re rubber hose, yeah.
Taylor: They walk like fucking spaghetti walks or something.
Joseph: It's basically the animation style and the art direction of Cuphead.
Taylor: That's fucking weird. How? Were those like cartoons you were catching on TV or something like on cable? Or was that something that you guys had recorded or bought?
Joseph: These are like VHS tapes that we somehow got ahold of at like, garage sales or some shit.
Taylor: Crazy.
Joseph: And we had them in the house, and we would watch them all the time because we just didn't have new stuff to watch, so we were just going through our catalog of VHS tapes. So it was like Color Classics, The Lion King, The Fox and the Hound, Aladdin, and then we just keep going around that circle because–
Taylor: Nice.
Joseph: –we didn't always have cable. So we watched a lot of PBS stuff, and like, rewatched all the same VHS's.
Taylor: Yeah, kids are that way though, man. You, you glom onto something, like, it's your favorite. I was the same with uhm, Ewoks. I don't remember if there was a name to that movie, or what even. But it was the one where they, like, went to the Ewok planet, and it was all about the Ewoks. Like man, we had that thing on VHS; I guess I taped it or we taped it at some point off TV. And man, I wore that motherfucker out. I watched it over and over and over. I loved those Ewoks.
Willie: It’s the uh, Battle for Endor. I think the full title is actually Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, but–
Taylor: Nice. What about you Willie? Did you have uh, any– Do you remember any show or anything that you just watched the shit out of when you were a kid, like over and over?
Willie: I'm trying to think if there's something I watched like, constantly. I have seen The Lion King a ridiculous number of times–
Taylor: Same same
Willie: –and Aladdin.
Taylor: And Aladdin.
Willie: Aladdin was my favorite growing up, so yeah, I still do, I like, I'm pretty sure I still do.
Taylor: Yeah
Willie: We had all kinds of stuff we recorded off of TV when we did have cable, and like would record movies off HBO and stuff. Yeah, I remember just having– we have a huge collection still at my parents’ house of VHS tapes that are just like all kinds of stuff.
Taylor: That’s insanity.
Willie: And this is something we'll get into at some point, I didn't have a lot of restrictions as a kid as to what I was watching most of the time. There were a couple of like, games that my mom was like, hesitant to let me play, but at some point it was just like, they were just like, oh, I guess he's mature enough to do all this other stuff. But uhm, in general I was just watching all kinds of different things with my parents or with my brothers and sisters.
Taylor: Oh yeah, siblings always affect that too.
00:11:50
Willie: Which is kind of, I think that's kind of where I want to go, Joey, like, did your siblings have a huge effect, on like how much time you got on the console or what games you were playing? Like what sort of– what were your interests versus their interest, or were they shared?
Joseph: Uh I think they were kind of shared. Like I can remember my older brother playing Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, and some of the fighter games and maybe even like Tecmo Bowl.
Taylor: Ooh. That was a good one.
Joseph: I don't think we owned an NES, but we had friends in the neighborhood that had an NES. So like between the three or four of us, we had a bunch of different games. So then we would go to each other's places, so that we could play those different games.
And we were playing some of the sport games on the NES, and then I, yeah, I think I remember him playing some of those games, but it's- it fell off.
Taylor: Did you ever get the splitter for the SNES? Uh, where you could play with, I think four–
Joseph: From our controllers?
Taylor: Yeah, four people could play at once or something. Or maybe even eight–
Joseph: I don’t think so man.
Taylor: If you hooked up two, man that got wild.
Joseph: Oh my gosh. Yeah
Taylor: Everybody trying to like, be– Yeah, go on though. I was just curious.
Joseph: The Super NES had one too. Right?
Taylor: Yeah, now that's the one I'm talking about.
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: Oh yeah, the NES had one as well. I was thinking of the SNES. We used to play Madden.
Willie: Those were always just myths to me because I never knew anyone who had one.
[Laughter]
Joseph: Right, right.
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: Those are like impossible items to come across.
Taylor: The family I grew up with at that time, they, they came across all that stuff cause they had four kids. So that was the babysitter essentially. You know, whenever the parents had to go and work and stuff like, the oldest kid would take care of everybody, but you had to get them something good. So they– [laughs] they didn't break the house apart.
Joseph: Mmhmm.
00:13:34
Taylor: Yeah. Oh man. Oh, so before I forget, Street Fighter though. Who was your main back in the days? Like, who did you go to the most whenever you would play against the siblings?
Joseph: Probably Ryu.
Taylor: Oh damn.
Joseph: Yeah, I think Ryu.
Taylor: You all about them Hadouken and [gibberish]. Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Chun-Li was good too.
Taylor: Ohh yeah. Oh yeah. And, and the characters like that with just the tap tap tap tap like her, E. Honda, Blanka.
Joseph: E. Honda, yeah, yeah. So she had the– she had the wall bounce man, which was super helpful, in like, you know, transitioning to the other side of somebody.
Taylor: Oh really?
Joseph: So I remember really liking having that ability where you could jump off the wall.
Taylor: So she would jump against the back wall and then bounce over someone– see I didn't even know about that. I I played Street Fighter a bunch on SNES, but I was a fucking button masher, like that was all I did, was–
Joseph: You could bounce off the wall and then she’d do a backflip.
Taylor: Hmm
Joseph: And you land on the opposite side of the opponent.
Taylor: I remember, when you said that, I remember the animation now. Like she does this like glorified fucking beautiful like back flip and and lands on the other side. Yeah.
Joseph: Mmhmm yeah. Super graceful.
Taylor: She's badass. The character designs on that game. Ooo.
00:14:49
Joseph: Willie, going back to your question. I think… my older brother, he only had a little bit of influence over the games that we were playing because in the neighborhood there were a lot of my friends that were around my age. Those guys had way more impact on like, what I was playing at the time than my older brother did, probably cause the age difference.
Taylor: How many siblings do you have?
Joseph: I have one half brother and one younger half sister
Taylor: Ok. You got a half sister–
Joseph: We all have different gaming experiences, man. Like my sister, she's five years younger than me. She grew up playing games on the Internet, but when I was a kid, we didn't even– my parents didn't have Internet in the house until I had already left. Like after graduating high school. So it was like well after–
Taylor: Oh, wow.
Joseph: –after I was eighteen that there was even Internet in our house.
Taylor: That's crazy.
Joseph: Yeah, it's wild to think about–
Taylor: Different world.
Joseph: Yeah, to think about now, it's wild that I only experienced the Internet in school.
Taylor: Because it was, yeah, it was out while you were a kid. Like, it was there, uhm, I mean it–
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: –what, 93 is whenever it became like, uh, kind of widely accepted or started becoming accepted or whatever so you were– That's crazy, man. That's uhm, sounds like your parents preferred more of a traditional household in some ways, with that? Or or just couldn't, couldn't afford it at the time to like get service installed? Maybe a little of both?
Joseph: I think it was where we lived, so geographically it mattered.
Taylor: Ah
Joseph: And then and then affordability. I don't know. It's just one of those things that at the time it wasn't necessary, right?
Willie: Yeah
Joseph: Like you could still, you could still get by and, like, be normal without having Internet and then being on the Internet because it's just before the time everything was connected by the Internet.
Taylor: And, and it's something that I forget about. Living in a small area where we grew up, we were close to the uhm, we we're close to the phone company. Uh, like to the local phone company or kind of close to it. And my step mom at the time, she worked at the phone company, so I don't know if that helped or what, but we were able to, to get the service. So it might have made it cheaper or more affordable or like–
Joseph: Who knows, right?
Taylor: Yeah, that's something I never– you never consider– like you said, these days, it's everywhere, all the time. Uh, but when you put yourself back in those days- that's, that's wild.
Willie: I'll probably talk about this in my episode a little more, but yeah, I, I agree, Joey, that I had the– a similar experience, I should say, that I didn't have it until, I guess I was a senior in high school, which would have been before–
Taylor: Wow
Willie: –before you're talking about, but I didn't have it until, like, right when I was leaving my parents’ house, and that was just for like the last like six months or so. And then it became more like, readily available to me as well. But I did have friends who had it like, uh, where Taylor and I grew up, uh, that, yeah, I would go over to their house, and it was like, very common to like, be on the Internet.
Taylor: Go see a set of boobies. Go see 'em load up line by line.
[Laughter]
Willie: No, honestly, I remember a bunch of, uh, a bunch of Yahoo Messenger or that sort of thing.
Taylor: Yep. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The- where everybody's like, I'm ahotguy15 or whatever. Like back when you didn't have to get real squirrely with the names. Yeah. What was that? AIM? AIM was a big one that people were always messaging on.
Willie: Mmhmm.
00:18:22
Taylor: Oh my god. Yeah, I remember, uh, one time, just as like, uh, [Laughs] a small side tangent.
I remember my dad getting mad, like, uh, my stepmom– I, I had been in some heated, uh, chats with this, with my girlfriend in Oklahoma that I met on the internet.
[Laughter]
You know, it's like real early shit, and, um, so we were, uh, we never, it was never like, dirty or anything. It was always just like, you know uh, "I love you. I wanna meet you one day, and I'm gonna kiss you right on your face," or whatever. You know, like, [Laughing] you dunno what the fuck you're even doing.
But, uh, I remember like my stepmom was pissed when she saw it. She went through my messages, so she was mad because of like, how, like how intense it was. It's like, you know, "you shouldn't be saying you love somebody you've never met" or whatever, you know, so she was, she was mad about that.
And my dad was mad too, but he thought they were mad for the same reason. He was mad because he was reading the messages and thought they were, they said massages. So like every time that- [Laughing]
Joseph: Oh wow.
Taylor: -It was like, “I'll message you in the morning,” or “I'll message you later.”
[Laughter]
Taylor: He thought they were massages and so, so like, during the conversation, he is just, he is just coming down like, "what are all these massages about?"
[Laughter]
Taylor: Like, he was onto something, you know, later on that would, uh, be a bustling industry. But, um, yeah, at the time, but anyways, I had to throw-
Joseph: Yeah, he knew it.
Taylor: -that out there before I never think about it again.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. Since we're talking, talking about early Internet shit
00:19:41
Willie: So far, Joey, you talked about some of the games you grew up playing. Is there anything that you would consider sort of, um, a sort of favorite genre that came out of that?
Joseph: Definitely platformers. So growing up, platformers, fighters, actually, that's it. I'd say that's it for growing up. Now, I definitely like an action, something that is like, um, driven by narrative and just kind of like the main storyline.
Um, so, so something like, uh Last of Us. Something like Gears of War, even if it is kind of linear, like Gears of War, I can get behind that or something that's like RPG, but open world, so like Elden Ring. Like totally fans of all of those games, but growing up it was probably platformers and fighters.
Taylor: Do you ever play any strategies or anything like that or you just not, um, interested in that, in that kind of realm of gaming?
Joseph: Not really, man. I definitely didn't, did not play those as a kid. And even today, I, I don't play them often because, probably because I didn't play them as a kid.
Taylor: Same. I feel that. Like they really gotta speak to me. For me to get into a strategy, it has to be clicking. Every single aspect of it has to be firing. That's cool, man.
Joseph: Are you talking like League of Legends strategy or like uh, Command & Conquer?
Taylor: Yeah. My terminology may be bad, but, but things like city builders or, um, you know, management type games, those kind of things, manage the numbers.
Joseph: Ohh I toyed around with a few of those.
Taylor: Okay. I probably called it the wrong...
Joseph: Not, not something I've ever played heavily.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: Yeah, so there's, I guess there's a little difference there too, I don't know that I have all the correct terminology for that either, but I think some of those are more simulation and the other ones are, are, uh, a little bit of strategy. You know, real time strategies like Command & Conquer and that type of stuff, like, I definitely have played a little bit.
Taylor: Oh, the simulation too
Willie: Uh, the simulation stuff, like I, I would think like a city builder sort of thing would be more like on a simulation side, and I don't know, I don't know what the difference is. Maybe we should probably look that up at some point. Figure out where those lines start to blur.
Taylor: Mmhmm.
00:21:45
Joseph: But I have Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts for the, the SNES on my list, and that was one of the games that we would rage so hard. We'd rage so hard because it was so hard.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: This is like a prime example of a game that was like, hard in the way games are not at all anymore. And Battle Toads too. We played a lot of Battle Toads, NES.
Taylor: Ohh yeah.
Joseph: And that game is extremely difficult. Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, extremely difficult.
So we would just try, man, over and over and over to get farther in the game, or to get farther than our friend; to be like, the person that could get the farthest was a big part of like, the way we played games together.
Willie: And you sort of had me thinking about like, how many friends I did grow up playing games with, and I could probably put a list together, but maybe I'll do that later during my episode.
So, where were you going to play games with friends? Like how you, you mentioned like, going over to, to play the NES, but is that sort of just how the, the trend continued? You were just bouncing from place to place to try out new systems? Like how many people would you say that friend group sort of consisted of to, to get in all of your gaming experience?
Joseph: Yeah, I think it was four of us. So there was me- yeah, four of us. And like between the four of us, we all had consoles. Some overlap between the consoles that we had, but most of us had different games that always brought us to everybody's place for one reason or another, so that we could play those, those specific games.
Or somebody would walk over with a cartridge and then we would play there. I don't know. It was all balancing back and forth between like, who could go outdoors, who could be out, and who couldn't be, and who could have like people stay over for the night, and who couldn't. So then we would just like, work around those schedules, which is pretty interesting to think about, cause they were like- [Laughs] They were like our schedules as kids, right? Like-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Some of us had to be home before the street lamps went on, you know? Or like the sun set completely, and stuff like that. But we grew up in like, uh, it was a trailer park, so like, we all lived in different mobile homes in this trailer park, which meant we were all walking distance from each other.
Taylor: That's cool.
Joseph: And it also meant that we spent a, we spent a ton of time, like at each other's houses and just outdoors. Both my parents worked, so I don't know. They had this unusual amount of trust in me, like as a kid. More- more than-
Taylor: [Laughs] Dude, that's back in the days too.
Joseph: Yeah, dude. Totally of its, like the time because that would not happen today.
Taylor: Yeah, like you could use a fucking stove at four years old with nobody home and shit, [Laughter] like, yeah. Stuff that is unheard of. Um, let me ask you this, cause-
Joseph: Yeah man, totally unheard of.
Taylor: Did you have any, um, did you have any friends that would go ballistic when you played games or anything? Like, was everybody pretty much your same mentality and everybody was cool about it? Or did you have any that were-
Joseph: Yeah dude.
Taylor: -you know, a little nuts? [Laughs]
Joseph: Definitely we would rage. We would all rage.
Taylor: Nice.
Joseph: Like, um, you know, we would all curse and get mad-
Taylor: Oh yeah
Joseph: -and stuff like that. And every now and then somebody would throw a controller at the tv, you know, and like, do some like, outlandish stuff. And these were like, CR- uh, like the tube televisions.
Taylor: Oh yeah. Oh. If you break that shit, you're gonna have a bad time.
Joseph: Yeah, dude, you can't, like if you throw a controller at that tv, it's not breaking. The controller's gonna break.
Taylor: It's true man.
Joseph: Versus like an OLED. If you throw a controller at that, that thing's probably gonna shatter, but those TVs were so durable, man, that you could throw a controller at it, and it's just gonna bounce off to the other side of the room.
But like, some like, Street Fighter, uh-
Taylor: Ooh
Joseph: I had a couple friends that would just like, slam the controller or throw the controller at the TV.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Um, so that definitely happened. And I had one friend in particular, which if he ever hears this, I'm gonna call him out by name. His name is Gary, and–
[Laughter]
–dude, this guy would rage.
But we all had kind of– did our fair share of like, getting angry at the games or getting pissed off at each other because like, somebody was spamming, you know, like a low kick or something in Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter and they had us pinned in the corner.
Taylor: [Laughs] Yeah
Joseph: You know, so we're, we're mad because they're just spamming the same move over and over and like accusing them of not being able to beat us in any other way.
Taylor: Oh yeah. And even though there's a thousand other moves you can do to get outta of that.
[Laughter]
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: You just instead blame them. Use the verbal move. That's, that's right.
Joseph: Or people are like, talking about the controller having issues.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, like button sticking and stuff like that.
Taylor: [Laughs] Yeah. "If Johnny didn't have a stupid sticky ass hands on it, man." Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah. "Let's switch controllers. Let's switch controllers then."
Taylor: Yeah. See what happens.
Joseph: You know, do stuff like that.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: So that kinda stuff happened all the time, man.
Taylor: Nice.
00:26:30
Willie: I, I don't know why this got me thinking about it, but, um, and this goes out to both of y'all. Where, where was the console hooked up? Like, in your own house, I should say, like, where were you playing? Did you actually have a TV that was like in your room or something that you could hook it up to? Was it or was it like, in the living room, and other people had to like not be watching TV while you were playing?
Joseph: So for me, early days we had like a shared bedroom where it was like, um, me and my brother in the same room, and we had a small TV in there.
So I think we had, like, a short TV stand. So like some of the time the TV was on the floor and then the other half of the time it seems, it was like on the TV stand. So we would just hook up, and of course all these consoles are wired, you know, and all the controllers are wired back then. So we would like have the TV on the floor and the console on the floor, and then we'd be sitting on the floor, [Taylor laughs] playing in the bedroom.
But it was on the other, it was on the op- opposite end from where my parents' bedroom was.
Taylor: Smart.
Joseph: So we're like all the way at the other end, and we're playing in the bedroom. But that changed. That changed when we got Nintendo 64. And for some reason the Nintendo 64 was always hooked up in the living room, and I think it was because my dad was playing like, Ocarina of Time. And he would play A Link to the Past, like he continued playing A Link to the Past, and one other game that's on my list, uh, called Super R-Type. I don't know where this game came from, but he must have bought it somewhere. But he played Super R-Type a lot, which meant that we played it a lot.
Taylor: That was like one, one of the floating shooters right? Like where–
Willie: Yeah
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: –you were a, a plane or a ship or whatever. Yeah. That was a cool ass game.
Joseph: So, yeah, we played that a lot, man. So, I don't know, the consoles kind of bounced back and forth. Willie, when you asked me about my older siblings and like, what role they played and, uh, whether they were an, an influence, what would happen is, because I knew my brother was going to play, I would wake up super early.
I would wake up super early, and I would play with the volume off, [Laughter] so that I would keep people asleep, but I could play, before like, it was this fight to like give up the controller, you know, after so many attempts or the kind of like, "let me try, let me try, let me try" like, "hold on. No. One more time. One more time." Because that was happening all the time too, like regardless of who was around playing.
Taylor: Sounds like me and the baby, but you basically were a baby back then.
[Laughter]
Taylor: Like, it's funny you were having to do the same shit, where I'm like learning to be a ninja so that I don't wake this dude up. Like, "I need these 30 minutes, bro. I need this," so-
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: Yeah. That's, that's funny.
Willie: That definitely-
Taylor: yeah. Ours, um-
Willie: Oh, go ahead Taylor.
Taylor: Oh, sorry. I'll go. Um, so I was just gonna throw in there, um, ours started in the living room when it was nice and cute and new. And my parents were like, "haha, look at the man fall, and then the child gets angry." And then, uh, and probably by the hundredth or thousandth time that that happened, they moved it into- we had something called a gaming room after that. So the opposite of Joey's journey, the console journey.
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: Ours got further and further and further away from anybody and any civilized people that might see or hear what's going on in there.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah. Just got banished away.
Taylor: Yeah, [Laughs] exactly.
Joseph: Exiled.
Taylor: Yeah. Precisely.
00:29:48
Willie: You talked a little bit about what games you had, and you said something about renting video games earlier, and you asked Taylor in the first episode, what was the place that you rented from. Do you remember what place you rented from or what the name of it was?
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah, it was called Barry's. [Taylor laughs] And, uh, I don't remember. Yeah, just Barry's.
Willie: Like the name, like the owner's name? Yeah. Yeah. [Taylor laughs]
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah. It was definitely not a chain store, but it was called Barry's, and it might have had some, some, little subtitle-
Taylor: It's not what you based this podcast on? It was Barry's? [Laughs] Damn it, man.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah. [Laughs] Barry's. Berries and Blades. Yeah, that's where that name comes from. Uh, we just spell Barry's differently.
Taylor: And you're a huge fan of Blade.
Joseph: Yeah, for sure.
Taylor: Actually Wesley Snipes, but also, you know, Blade.
Joseph: Like it was a convenience store, man. When, when I asked you, Taylor, about the store you were renting games from, and you're like, yeah, it's our local grocery store, or supermarket or something.
This is a very similar situation, but it was like literally a gas station, like that kind of convenience store where half of it was a video rental place, and then the other half was convenience store, and it had like, gas pumps out in the front and stuff.
Taylor: That's what this one was, but it was half a florist shop and half a video store.
[Laughter]
Taylor: It's weird, like the, the things that were beside these– like, I guess that was just a regular thing back then. You just have a big space and you run it out to two businesses. That's crazy.
Joseph: It was like what you would expect, Willie. It was like, um, they had a whole bunch of cartridges, like boxes on display, and then the actual games would be behind the counter.
So you'd like, take a box up to the counter, and then they would give you the game, and then they had systems and consoles that you could rent too. And it was like, I don't know, maybe a three day rental was like the, the kind of base rental amount, the rental time.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That sounds right.
Joseph: Of course, we, you know, we didn't know the late charges and shit like that. Or we'd take it in and go and re-rent it immediately so that we could finish playing it and stuff.
Taylor: God, that is just extreme nostalgia.
Willie: Yeah [Laughs]
Taylor: Just those feelings of going in and renting a console and you're bringing that technology home for the first time. And I don't-
Joseph: Right, right.
Taylor: -Remember what I did it with. It, it might have been the Genesis, like before I got one. Maybe that was the one that I was, uh, renting sometimes and bringing home, and it blew my mind.
So for some reason that, the Genesis like, it-- just because they were the more gritty style as opposed to the SNES was kind of like, kind of the Nintendo or, or I guess they are a Nintendo, but, but they were even the Nintendo back then where all the, all the games were like more polished and family friendly and anybody could play it.
Sega was like stuff that would make your mom puke. You know? It was gross. There were guts coming out, and [Joseph laughs] you could almost tell they were guts. It's crazy. I didn't expect so much nostalgia to come up here, man.
Willie: Same Taylor. I, a lot of things I, I want to say and add in, but I'll, I'll, I'll say them whenever we, we get to, to my episode because I– I'm not gonna forget them. And I, uh-
Taylor: Mmhmm.
Willie: It is the same sort of thing about where you rent from, even how many days you were renting them. And I, I have some very specific memories, some nostalgia that goes with all of that. So, yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
00:29:48
Willie: Sort of what Taylor was talking about, so that, you know, Nintendo early on being sort of, um, more family friendly stuff, and Sega being a little grittier-
Were there any gaming restrictions or rules that you had in place? Maybe about the content itself or just like the, how long you were allowed to play? You talked a little bit about- Taylor, talked about it being sort of a babysitter for him, and you've talked a lot about like–
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Willie: –going over to friend's house and just playing for a while. But were there ever, ever any sort of restrictions or rules in place around it?
Joseph: Uh, I don't remember any, man. Because we were on the other side of the house, like we could have been playing any damn thing back there, you know?
And my parents, or, I mean my dad, he knew more. I mean cause he was playing Super R-Type. He was playing A Link to the Past and other, uh, Legend of Zelda games. He was playing things. But my mom was like, up until the day she died, she would not know how to hold a controller the correct way to play a video game. Like she barely even used a smartphone.
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: And didn't even want to know how or ever learn how. So she, she probably had no idea what we were playing; see it on screen, but like, was not at all concerned and-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Yeah, like Taylor was mentioning, like sometimes it acts as a babysitter. It definitely did for us. And if it wasn't the console, we were out hanging out with each other. So like we were literally just babysitting and taking care of each other all the time.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Because if we weren't playing video games, we were out riding BMXs or–
Taylor: Oh, yeah.
Joseph: –you know, doing stuff out into the sticks because there was some wooded areas near us, man, I don't know. Very independent as a kid. And my mom like, instilled a lot of trust and was just like, be careful and be home before dark. So maybe timing restriction is probably the closest thing I can get to, where if we were up too late, my mom would come in and like, bug us about going to sleep because it was a school night.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: But I think that's about it. Content was never an issue. Even for games like Mortal Kombat that were like, especially brutal at the time. The kind of introduction of seeing gore in a video game, like
Taylor: [Laughs] Yeah
Joseph: -it wasn't ever a problem.
00:35:05
Taylor: That's cool. How, uh, when, when did your mom pass away? When did y'all lose her?
Joseph: Uh, 2018.
Taylor: Oh, wow.
Joseph: Yeah, it was just on, on June-
Taylor: That's not too long-
Joseph: June 20th, last month was like, uh, was the anniversary of her death date.
Taylor: Those are tough. I think that's the year we lost my stepdad too. I wanna say the same- on Mother's Day. It's wild how that shit happens.
Joseph: It feels like forever, man.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: It doesn't, in one sense that it, it hasn't really been that long. Like if you think about what we've done since 2018.
Taylor: Right.
Joseph: It's like, oh yeah, that kind of makes sense. Like it, it's not that long.
Taylor: I think it always depends how you look at it. Like, um, if you look at events like that on paper, they have a different feel than if you look at them through the timeline of your, of your mind.
Joseph: Mmhmm. Yeah.
Taylor: That, that can really, it's like two different worlds happening there, you know, cause it- yeah, it's wild how that can happen. And even in your mind, it can feel like it was 10 years ago, but it can also feel like it was a year ago. I, I think maybe it just depends on your state of, uh, thinking at the time and, and like how your memory memories, but man, that's crazy.
I, I, I never knew that, uh, Um, that you had lost your mom. We've just, we, aside of gaming and stuff, we, we have never really, uh, talked about, you know, life. I, I don't think very much unless it–
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: –pertained to beers or pizza or games or kind of like what was going on at the time, so-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, that's what I was hoping for was to learn a little bit more about you guys too, cause there's a lot outside of gaming.
Joseph: Just last month, I was like, man, it hasn't been that long. That same kind of way of thinking where you're like looking at it as a timeline or on a piece of paper.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: But then when you think about specific memories and you think about, man, I, I have not seen my mom in all of those years. I haven't heard her voice.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Then it feels like a fucking eternity all of a sudden.
Taylor: Yeah, dude, yeah, that's-
Joseph: And it's like this weird push and pull dude. Where you're like, no, it's not that long. And you're like but, damn man. Like–
Taylor: Yeah. Is–
Joseph: –am I starting to forget what my mom even sounded like? Am I starting to forget what she looks like? You know? And then you have to like, remind yourself to like, focus on an image of what she looked like. So like that, those memories just don't fade away.
Taylor: Yeah. And you almost have a Ken Burns going in your head, right? Where it's just like– oh yeah, that's, yeah. And I– yeah, it's wild. It's wild how, um, the memory can be like that. Like it's, um, I don't know. It is. This is just like this infinite circle that we're all on and never stops until it stops and then it just keeps going. [Laughs] Ugh.
Joseph: We should talk about this more offline.
Taylor: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Willie knows all about it, man. Willie was there like when I was going through that entire journey, but the short story is my mom got stage four throat cancer.
Taylor: Oof.
Joseph: And then, like, just kind of withered away.
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: Just like a steady decline.
Taylor: Oh, stage four is brutal.
Joseph: We didn't find it until it was already progressed to stage four, just because, like, the throat has a lot of open space that masses and tumors can grow really large without, you know, giving you any symptoms.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Doing anything to make you think that something's wrong, but that, that happened to her. And it was stage four and uh, she had to have an emergency tracheostomy, and so she was living with a trach tube, so like, we had to take care of her.
Taylor: Oh yeah. Yeah. That's–
Joseph: Pretty much 24, 24/7.
Taylor: –that's a different lifestyle.
Joseph: And it was, yeah, dude, it was a beast. But yeah, Willie was around for all of that, but we'll have to chat about that more offline. It's good to exchange stories and stuff.
Taylor: It's good to have good friends around– Oh yeah, yeah, we will. Sure.
Willie: Yeah. I appreciate you sharing, uh, what you did cause yeah, it is good to know. It's good for Taylor to be able to hear a little bit about that and I, I think that's part of, yeah, part of this podcast is sort of getting to know each other more. Cause like lately, all- most of our contact, especially, you know, me and Taylor not living in the same city and us not living in the same city for a while, it's just like–
Video games have done this thing for us where we get to just hang out and like, chat about whatever. And sometimes, you know, real shit comes up and sometimes it doesn't. It's just about whatever we're playing. It's good to be able to check in with people like that, but yeah, it's also good to start this thing so we can just, check in about video games, about those memories we share with them, and yeah, all the stuff that it brings up. Cause I think there's a– it's definitely a– even if we don't get to play all the time, it's like, still a big part of what we enjoy doing and our personalities. So I'm, I'm glad uh, we get to talk a little bit about that.
Joseph: Yeah, same.
00:39:43
Willie: I, I wanna talk a little bit about, you know, sort of the games you're playing these days cause it is how- one of the ways that we like, all keep in touch pretty regularly. Is there, is there something that you're playing right now or something that, uh- something you're looking forward to?
Joseph: I thought I was gonna fucking finish The Witcher 3 before we recorded this episode, [Taylor laughs] but I actually haven't even played it since we recorded the last time.
Twice now I've got to a point in The Witcher 3 where I was like, "oh, this is the end," and then it kept going and now I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna stop predicting when this story is actually gonna end.
Taylor: Wait till you find out that the final boss is actually King Gwent and you-
Joseph: Oh my gosh.
Taylor: -And his name is Gwent Stefani. And [Joseph laughs] you haven't collected enough Gwent cards, and he just destroys you every time. So then you have to double back and get all of the Gwent cards and then go-
Joseph: Oh my gosh. I'll probably stop playing if that happened.
Willie: Are you playing the, the DLC as well? Because you bought, like- or you picked up the like, whatever version was on-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Are you playing- what are you playing on actually? On PSN or Xbox? You're playing Xbox, right?
Joseph: Yeah, Series X. I do have the DLC, but I don't think I'm gonna play it. I'm definitely not gonna play it immediately cause I'm kind of over the game. So I think I'd rather move on to something else. I think I'm gonna play Kena: Bridge of Spirits after The Witcher 3, because I know Bridge of Spirits is a really short game, and I love the animation style in that game. And I think that game is awesome, even though I haven't played it.
So I'm probably gonna play that next. But I think in general, I mean, I play some shooters. Third person- third person shooters are my favorite kind of shooters. I almost stay away from first person shooters exclusively, unless it's like a Halo.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Platformers. Still really big on platformers. Some of the games I mentioned before. Gears, uh, looking forward to playing both of The Last of Us, looking forward to playing God of War, looking forward to playing Spider-Man. Uh, and then Miles Morales.
Taylor: Mmhmm.
Joseph: Those are some of the games I own that I haven't played. Horizon Zero Dawn, I have that game too. But a game like Days Gone or Control. Elden Ring. Those- all those games fit in, like my favorite kind of games.
Taylor: Nice. Days Gone was fun, man. I enjoyed the, uh, spectacle of technology on there. Just the-
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: -the sheer amount of zombies and, and all that stuff. I really, I enjoy that, that kind of tech being pushed to its limits and, and what happens when you have uh, 300 of these little things wiggling and writhing and glitching and doing whatever.
Joseph: Dude, one thing I give Days Gone is the feeling you get from the hordes.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: I don't know if I've experienced that feeling of just like, tension.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Actually like, kind of fearing for my video game life. Days Gone, has done that in a way that no other game has.
Taylor: Did you ever check out State of Decay? Um, the Xbox game?
Joseph: Mm-mm.
Taylor: It's interesting. It's, um, it's definitely not- it doesn't have the polish and the AAA feel of, um, of Days Gone. Um, like Days Gone is just a hyper polished version.
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: State of Decay had some interesting concepts where the hordes were a little simpler, but you could lose your characters. You would go out in the world, find a badass character who has really good stats and does something for your camp, and bring 'em back.
And then the next thing you know, you're like, oh, my camp's under attack, but let me go ahead and go get this, you know, gasoline or whatever real quick. And you come back and there's your favorite character being ripped apart in half by some giant tank zombie. Uh, that had a very similar vibe where you- it just was very bleak.
Uh, let me double back, before I forget, to Witcher though.
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: I would suggest the way that I did it, either if you finish it or if you put it aside. For me, the best thing to do was when I came back, I finished it and then I started Blood and Wine- was that the name of the-
Joseph: Yeah, mmhmm.
Taylor: -That last DLC? That one was like starting a brand new game. Like from beginning to end, they like, start you-
Joseph: Yeah. Cause you go to a different area, right?
Taylor: Yeah, yeah. You, I mean, straight up you ride into a new area on your horse and it's a whole, whole thing, and it's beautiful. It's like wine country and-
Joseph: Oh, nice.
Taylor: Um, that, I think that's a great way to get back into it later. Um, because you get back in and it's like starting a new game and, you know, a new old game anyways.
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: Just wanted to throw that out there. You're making a good decision. Don't burn yourself out on it too much.
Willie: Back to State of Decay and, uh, Days Gone. Those are two games that I haven't played enough of. I'd never played Days Gone at all, actually. Just seen gameplay and then State of Decay, is something I started and then didn't play too long, but they fit right into the genre of things that you would think I would play, and I just never- it's,
00:44:29
I think it's one of those things where, as I've gotten older, I'm just like trying to figure out where I put time in, right? If I'm playing those games, I'm not playing something else that I'd like, really want to be playing, and there's so many good things to choose from that- it's like, I don't know.
Taylor: It's a big deal. Allocating your time. Um, that's-
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: That's the crunch that I'm running into with the baby now, is like, you know, where I thought that I had plenty of time, now I have this baby. And then, it's like every step I take to get more time, I feel like I have less time. Like I, I, um, quit my job, and I thought, oh, I'll have plenty of time to take care of the baby, and do, you know, the music and the podcast and like all these different things. And what you run into real quick is like, this baby doesn't give a shit about my schedule. [Laughter] And, um, just demands everything. And if I don't, the state comes and gets me so, [Laughs] it's like, you know, also love or whatever. But it's–
Joseph: “Or whatever”
Taylor: –it's wild having, having to suddenly allocate your time to be smart about it.
I, uh, whenever I- the day I quit, um, one of my buddies, uh, he's- he, you know, congratulated me. I, I talked to him cause we're working on a project and he immediately bought and sent me a book called The ONE Thing, and I'm still reading it now. Um, one of the chapters in there is literally about scheduling and time allocation, so I'll let you know if it, if it does good things for me, man, I'll, I'll–
Joseph: Nice
Taylor: –let you guys know cause yeah, that's, anything like that as you get older, I feel like is a huge tool and a great weapon to like, defend yourself against wasting too much time on bullshit.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like even working from home, man, it's tough.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, it's tough to not like, go into the kitchen and grab some, like snacks and stuff, right?
Taylor: I would argue that it's more tough working from home. Uh-
Joseph: Yeah
Taylor: -as somebody who worked from home for like five years or six years, however long now it's tough to stay on task, man, when you look around and I've got-
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: -a guitar there, a game controller there, a TV there, a baby there. Uh, like, I could look at any direction-
Joseph: [Laughs] A baby there.
Taylor: Yeah, he was over there in the corner behind all the other things. But [Laughs] yeah, he is on the Onewheel kind of under it crammed under the front part that's sticking up. But it is hard, um, to stay focused and that, that was why I think that book was like, a real good find. I'm not done with it yet, but, so far it seems to be on point.
00:46:54
Willie: All of that honestly for me is just to say that um, we should play Dying Light 2 at some point, [Laughs] actually, cause that's another game–
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: Gotcha.
Willie: –that, it doesn't quite fit into the- those other genres. It's a game that I want to play cause I really enjoyed the first one,
Taylor: Yeah I did too.
Willie: -And I think you would enjoy too, Joey, even though it is a first person game. That's the one reason that we don't play a lot of shooters together, I think, is just because I think I do prefer first person shooters. And you are the third person shooter person. So, um, you know, we've played- there are a lot of- there's some crossover for sure for third person shooters.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Since you have given Halo a try recently, one, I can't wait for that campaign stuff to come out. Whatever that ends up being, cause we need to play at that.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Willie: But also we should play Splitgate sometime. If you like the feel of–
Taylor: Oh, yeah, that one's good.
Willie: –the Halo gameplay. I feel like you'd like the feel of- especially if you liked Infinite, right? Like, I feel like you would like Splitgate in, in, in its-
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Willie: -use of, of movement for sure.
Joseph: Gotcha. I mean, Halo is so polished man, like Halo, I mean, they got it down. And that game is definitely a game- and just a franchise that I will always play, even though it is first person. But I mean, I played some growing up too, like, Duke Nukem, uh, Duke Nukem, Doom, like those were some earlier first person shooters that like, I actually enjoyed playing.
Taylor: Did you try Duke Nukem Forever or whatever the new one was that came out?
Joseph: No, I didn't.
Taylor: It honestly doesn't seem like they've come very far-
[Laughter]
Taylor: -engine wise and everything. Like-
Joseph: Oh, that's not a good thing.
Taylor: If anything they can put, um, they could put more people on the screen and they can, there's more weapons and stuff, but to be quite honest, like that game still handles like you're driving a dumpster, you know, down an ice patch.
Joseph: Oh man.
Taylor: Like, it's, it's weird, but it, it is also is just as like, stupid and crass. One day, maybe we'll load that up and play through a little bit of it.
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: Like, I feel like we should do some of these just to, um, even if it means-
Joseph: -Run it back?
Taylor: -that we get into it- and yeah, -and we burn the whole thing down because it's so stupid and, you know, asinine, it could still be a lot of fun.
00:49:06
Joseph: 007, uh, GoldenEye, I mean, definitely played so many hours of that, you know, like one of those first person shooters that was, I don't know. It was just the shit!
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, and they're remaking it. I believe.
Joseph: So good.
Taylor: I think, I wanna say there's gonna be a remake of it coming to something.
Willie: I did see that somewhere and I, I don't- I didn't like look into it, so I'm not sure what that story was about.
Taylor: It's been in the works or in- rumored to be in the talks with Xbox for a while, because some achievements popped up at some point on the 360.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Either the 360 or the Xbox One. Um, some achievements just popped up outta nowhere that were for 007 or for GoldenEye. And um, so there was a lot of speculation about it, and then it kind of died down, disappeared, and then I think there was a legit announcement about it or something. Maybe in the last couple months, either that or maybe a new leak that kind of reinforced and solidified everybody's suspicion.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah. I don't know any of the details of that. I assume it's like, caught up in the licensing.
Taylor: I wanna say, either somebody I was listening to recently- somebody got their hands on it and played it, or they played one that was using a two axis controller and they said it just did not hold up well, or something like- They, they said it, it seemed like- he, uh, didn't want the N64 controller back per se, but it sounded like the game just worked better as that thing. With the, you know what I mean?
Joseph: That's interesting because I think that's what would make the game amazing, right? If we modernize-
Taylor: Mmhmm.
Joseph: GoldenEye 007 with two joy- joysticks, like-
Taylor: That's what he thought too.
Joseph: -most modern shooters. It seems like that would elevate it to the next level.
Taylor: Exactly. And that's what you would think by default. And that's, that's exactly what he said was, uh, you know, I, I expected it to be way better with two joysticks because-
Joseph: Dang.
Taylor: -the N64 controller is just awful. But sure enough it just felt weird or something. But I don't know, that's-
Willie: I'm looking at some stuff about it now, and it's interesting cause it seems like people are thinking- I don't- this is just one article, but it looks like people are thinking that there will be something this year, like within this year, that there might actually be some announcements.
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Willie: About a, a remake. And yeah, all the stuff you're saying about a leaked version and someone playing it, and I'd have to dig into that more.
We don't need to get into this right now, but I'm also curious, just what- I'm sure other people have already done, the sort of dissection of like, what made that game so good? Like why is that such a memory for all of us? It wasn't the first, first person shooter. Right? Like there's- there are games-
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: Yeah
Willie: -like Doom and Wolfenstein and other things that came.
Taylor: Oh, and even the Dark Forces or what? Uh, the Star Wars one that was-
Willie: Yeah. Star Wars Dark Forces. Yeah. That was a great one.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah, that.
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: Yep, yep. There were some good ones.
Willie: I don't remember the timeline on that. I don't remember if it was on PC before it was on like, PlayStation and stuff.
Taylor: It was, yep.
Willie: All of that is thinking around the same time as, like, N64. I don't know what it was that made that game so great. But I do also remember playing a lot of it, right? I remember playing a lot of GoldenEye.
Joseph: I think for me it's like, the- the thing I feel makes it so great is the couch co-op. Like it was the ultimate couch co-op game. Where you're playing with your friends and you're all in the same room, and because it's like, split screen, local multiplayer. It just like, brought so much, like that dynamic to the game and to the, just the atmosphere. Because like, you know, you'd have to like, try to convince people not to like, screen watch.
Willie: [Laughs] Yeah.
Joseph: You know, and you'd be accusing people of screen watching and cheating and stuff like that. And it was just like, that's the one thing that I think is just gone forever, in like modern games, you know cause like there are no games where- that just kind of like, require you to play like couch co-op, like that.
Willie: No, that's a, a really good point. There's something about that experience of being in the same room with people and playing, in that version, and getting that sort of tension between everyone on the same screen.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: As soon as someone picks Oddjob, you're like this motherfucker, dude. [Taylor laughs] And then you gotta make the rule: No Oddjobs.
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: No screen peeping, even though that's impossible.
Joseph: [Laughs] Yeah
Taylor: You literally, [Laughs] your screen is touching three other people's screens and- but no, don't look, don't you dare.
Joseph: You know? And then you gotta convince people that you weren't doing it, but like you can see through it.
Taylor: Yeah. No, man, I wasn't, I wasn't-
Joseph: You're like, bullshit dude.
Taylor: -I can't even screen peep. I can't even look to the side, bro. I was born without any kind of, uh, peripheral-
Joseph: Peripheral vision.
Taylor: -vision, yeah, whatsoever. I can't.
00:53:41
Willie: Before we forget and before we end up wrapping up, I want to, I do wanna touch on one thing we haven't talked about at all, Joey, which is, um, when you started gaming a little more, like within the last, I don't know, year or two, like as you, like- you've always- I've always known that you game, but as you got into more like, story mode stuff, uh, you started taking a lot of pictures and posting them on, on an Instagram channel. What was it that sort of sparked that?
Joseph: I forgot about that. Yeah, I didn't even think about that for even talking about that today.
Taylor: Was that before Ghost of Tsushima? Like did you do that before then, or?
Joseph: It was the start of it.
Taylor: Okay. Okay.
Willie: Control was after that then?
Joseph: Control was after. So Ghost of Tsushima was the first game I was like, oh man, this photo-
Taylor: Mmhmm
Joseph: -photo mode is fucking awesome! And, and Ghost of Tsushima's, uh, photo mode is amazing man. Like it had music in there.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: So like, you could just straight up listen to full soundtrack, you know, music and songs and stuff like that. So like, I spent as much time in photo mode as I did playing the actual story in that game-
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: -because you could just jam in the music and mess around with all the different camera settings. But like that, that was it, man.
Taylor: That photo mode was unparalleled. Like I've, I've played a ton of games with photo modes. Uh, the _Assassins Creed_s have been doing it for a while, really well. To have it where they did it in the live mode was so-
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: -freaking genius, like to have like, fil- live filters essentially, where you could throw your filter on, you could have the grass blowing, the leaves blowing, change all the texture of stuff blowing through. Like you said, change the music and just make a thirty second clip or whatever you want of it. Oh my God, that was-
Joseph: Yeah, that was so sick, man.
Taylor: I don't- I can't believe we haven't seen it since.
Joseph: Yeah, on that level? I don't think- I haven't played another game that's that good. That has a photo mode that good.
Taylor: I'd say Valhalla is close, just in the sense that the game is super beautiful, and the photo mode is fairly capable, but it's, I guess it's not even close. It's not close at all.
Joseph: Yeah. And now it's just becoming more and more common now because I think virtual photography has like, picked up and there are a lot more people doing it. And I think a lot of studios are realizing that people like to do that.
Taylor: Oh, yeah
Joseph: But yeah, that was a game that kind of broke me into it. And the reason I kind of got obsessed with it immediately is because I didn't even realize it was a thing, you know? Like I had played games with photo mode before, but I had no idea that people were taking amazing photos. Until like, I started digging through Instagram and I was like, holy shit, there's a lot of people that are doing this and there's some like amazing virtual photographers.
And I'm like, mind blown because I don't know how you get this shot out of the game I've been playing like, how did you do that?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, so then that led me down the road of just like, exploring all photo modes in- in the games that I was playing. In, you know, Control and, I mean, Red Dead too. Obviously a lot of people take shots from that game. And Horizon Zero Dawn. But yeah, I- it was just fun for me.
Taylor: I like on Valhalla, how you can, um, pop into photo mode at any moment. It's one of those, um, which I think _Ghost of Tsushima_-
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: -did really well, but like, so if you're decapitating a guy, you know, you can just [Laughs] pop it at that exact second, and you just get this dude's face like, AHH, and he is like, decapitated-
Joseph: Yeah
Taylor: -and his head's flying off and- so freaking cool. You really-
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: I, I wanna say I may have done photo mode even more than playing Ghost of Tsushima. I mean- not really by choice. I don't have a PlayStation right now, or I might do more. But yeah, I wanna do that with, uh, Spider-Man. I'd like to join you on some of that stuff and we'll go back and forth sometimes on a game that maybe we're both playing.
Joseph: Oh, yeah. Spider-Man has a lot of great shots too.
Taylor: Oh man, I bet.
Joseph: Wait, you can- you can play the game multiplayer? What are you talking about?
Taylor: Oh, no, I just mean in general, like if you're, if you're taking screenshots of stuff, maybe I'll play that game and do some screenshots too, and we'll see like what kind of shots we can, we can come up with and-
Joseph: Oh, yeahh.
Willie: Do you have any favorites, Joey, that like, stand out? Like when you're thinking about all that and like seeing all that for the first time, is there a-
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Willie: -you have anybody that you saw on Instagram? Or, or whatever, wherever that you just like- it was like, oh, that was the shot. Like that, that was- this picture stands out?
Joseph: It's interesting because some virtual photographers have a style, you know, like a lot of- some people will take like, really, um, backlit, silhouette photos, you know, and then other people take like kind of really obscure angles of kind of non-important objects in the game, right? Like they're focusing on the environment instead of like, the main characters and like the- the- the main kind of, plots and stuff like that.
There's a lot of people I've followed that make me just want to quit. Like, for real, for sure. I'm like, nah, I'm never gonna be this good, so maybe I'm just wasting all my time. But it's fun-
Taylor: But that's everything in life, no matter what you do.
Joseph: Yeah, exactly.
Taylor: There's gonna be somebody, [Laughs] there's gonna be some Davie504 out there. You're just like-
Joseph: Yeah
Taylor: I mean, even that guy, you know [Laughs] -
Joseph: That's my entire design career.
Taylor: Yeah, that's true.
Joseph: My entire design career is wanting to quit because other people are better than me.
[Laughter]
Joseph: But yeah, man, there's a lot of people I follow. Yeah. And just amazing shots, man. And it's just the vision, dude. Like the vision. Now I don't have that, like some of these photographers, I don't have their vision where you're like, how did you even think of that angle, man?
Like, that's blowing my mind that, yeah, that's your capture. Like your mind just works differently than mine. And that's what's most impressive about like, some of the, some of the really good accounts that I follow that have, you know, tens of thousands of followers and they're cranking them out, dude, like, I don't know how.
I don't know how they play the game and get the full game experience, and then also capture such beautiful shots without ruining the in-game experience.
Taylor: I bet it's just like photography, man. And the difference of like, me going out to shoot a model, I get 2000 shots, and there may be 50 good ones. Where somebody good goes out and they shoot a model, and they get 200 shots and 170 are good. You know?
Joseph: [Laughs] Yeah
Taylor: Like it's the same kind of shit. Like that's- um, once you're doing it enough, especially if you're working for a gaming mag- magazine and like, you're always capturing those shots, and it's always an, um, imperative part of it. You'll get better at it too. Like as we do it more and as more games come out with, um, better photo modes and, and newer ideas-
Joseph: Mmhmm.
Taylor: -and stuff, you know, that'll just give you more compulsion to get in there and do it and try it and keep releasing new shots. And I'm sure it just gets easier as all things do. I would like to get better at that too, cause it's a different type of photography. Like it's not the type of photography like out in the real world where you can also change those settings real quick. Take a snap, look at it, redo it. You kind of have to put a different amount of thought into it.
Um, I'm with you though. Angles are always blowing my mind. Even people streaming on YouTube and I'm trying to stream, you know, like, how do they find these awesome angles? How do you, how do you angle yourself perfectly to look so good in your scene?
And it's just- it is wild how people's brains work in that, in, in that kind of 4D realm.
Willie: I was gonna ask if you want, uh, you could definitely drop your, uh, Instagram handle here so people can go check out your stuff that you've done, or we can definitely put it in the show notes.
Joseph: Mmhmm
Taylor: Oh, yeah-
Joseph: Yeah. It's just @PikkleJoe.
Taylor: -drop it.
Joseph: @PikkleJoe on Instagram. And that- that account is, I think, up until this point, been completely just dedicated to virtual photography. But it's still up. I haven't posted in a long time, uh, and maybe because I've been playing games that don't have a strong photo mode, so I've kind of fallen off in terms of how often I'm posting.
But there are definitely some games that I think when I eventually play, I'm gonna get back into kind of, posting on Instagram. Oh, I remembered what I was gonna say.
The thing that really made virtual photography interesting to me is that you can get some amazing shots, but it's also like a- there's a sense of fantasy, right?
So like, you can play something like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, or I can play Days Gone, and I can capture like, good landscape shots of like, a mountain scenery, you know? And like, I can't do that in real life.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I can't capture the things I can capture in a video game in real life because I lack both the equipment, the time, the money, and just the kind of, like, geographic resources to like, create these beautiful images.
Taylor: Yeah. You can't just roll over to the- can't just go to the Colorado foothills or something just willy-nilly-
Joseph: Exactly man.
Taylor: -because you feel like it. Or, or California in, in the valley. Yeah. That's maybe- GTA 6, you know, might be one of our next big bastions of um, kind of next gen, next next gen or whenever it comes out, you know. Uh, some location with prime beautiful real estate to take photos of and a good photo mode.
I'm, I'm curious to see what's next. Like, what's the big badass, luxurious photo game that we get?
Joseph: It gives me a lens, like when, when I normally don't have a lens to like capture these things.
Taylor: That's cool. That's cool. That's awesome, man.
Willie: When you started that account and just started- started the Ghost of Tsushima stuff, like that's- even just seeing that photography is one of the things that made me want to play that game. Just be like, oh, that's a like, really beautiful place to like, go visit and just be in for a little while.
Joseph: Gosh, that game is beautiful, man.
Taylor: It is.
I, I am regretting getting rid of my PS4 Pro now because, uh, I really want to rehash some of that stuff, but I'm still gonna try to get a PS5. And cause I've got so much stuff that I need to go through, and I haven't even finished God of War, like a lot of stuff like that I started, but just never finished because once a new gen console comes out, it creates this weird sense of like, I don't wanna play any more of this right now because I'm gonna want to play it on the new hotness later. And so I just put it on the back burner.
01:03:30
Willie: I guess the last thing that I, I would ask, um, is just- simple question: uh, we asked Taylor, uh, have you ever dressed up like a video game character for Halloween or for any other thing? You ever cosplay as anything?
Joseph: I haven't, but I, I've done something that Taylor said he did and dressed like a ninja, many, many, [Taylor laughs] many different Halloweens. That was just like my go-to costume. But I don't know, man, I've always been bad at cosplay. You know, like even as an adult. Um, man, there's a real world of cosplay out there that if you're listening, you know of.
Taylor: Yeah, I don't think that ever goes away, that sense of like, I want to be this character-
Joseph: [Laughs] Yeah
Taylor: -you know, I wanna look like this dude at a thing where people were like, I want a picture with Mugen from, you know, fucking Samurai Champloo or something.
I'll always want to do that. I think my problem is that, I've always- I haven't had enough money to buy cool stuff and I've never had the patience to make the cool stuff. [Laughs] And cosplayers gotta have both, right?
Joseph: And, and then just the crafting skills too. Like I think I lack some of that. I just don't have any experience doing it-
Taylor: It's tough.
Joseph: -I would love to like, I would love to be a Tusken Raider.
Taylor: Nice.
Joseph: That's like, probably at the top of my list, man. If I had to choose a costume, it's like, man, Tusken Raider, one of my favorite, just kind of, Star Wars characters or races or groups of people. I didn't do it because I was just awful at it, man, like piecing together or creating all the things to, to, to create a good cosplay. I just never did it.
Willie: It's good to know about the Tusken Raider. I feel like we should make that happen. I can definitely make that happen.
Taylor: Oh yeah. That'd be a fun project. That'd be cool.
Willie: Between a few of us, like, you know,
Joseph: Meg and I have talked about it a bit.
Willie: I mean, Meg's a badass at crafting. Yeah, I've got some skills. Barbara's got some skills we could make that happen.
Taylor: Do those guys have kind of horns, like they have kind of, uh, horns on their head or something? Am I thinking of the right? Um, like they're the snipers out in the desert, typically...
Willie: They are, but they don't have, like- they don't have full on horns. They have- they're- the stuff that they wear, like the wraps they wear have like, weird like, little gadgetry on them sometimes that look like little like, knobs of stuff.
Taylor: Ohh ok, got you. Got you. And they have like a hamburger for a mouth or something like that, kind of. Okay. I know what you're talking about now.
[Laughter]
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah, those are them.
Taylor: Yeah. Hamburger mouth.
Joseph: Yeah, even in like the- The Book of Boba Fett, man, like I love that they brought Tusken Raiders into it. So like those first couple of episodes, it's just like, damn, those are so good.
Willie: Yeah
Taylor: That series was so good. I didn't think they were gonna do better than Mandalorian, but they did. They- I was very skeptical. Um, but they kept it coming.
Joseph: Oh, I disagree with you. I think Mandalorian'_s better than, than _The Book of Boba Fett.
Taylor: Oh really? I liked both-
Willie: I think so too.
Taylor: I liked both a lot. Uh, it could be that maybe I was just so thirsty for more that whenever I finally got uh, Book of Boba that
Joseph: That's how they get you.
Taylor: Yeah. It's how they get you. It is like, oh man, this is way better. But it's just cause it's new and you're watching it now-
Joseph: It's Disney man. So yeah, they're definitely gonna get you like that.
Taylor: Disney make you dizzy. I- just made that up. TM.
Joseph: That's pretty good.
Taylor: Trademark.
Willie: Any last questions, Taylor, that you wanna ask? Anything else that came up?
Taylor: I don't think so, man. I, I feel like, um, I feel like that was a pretty robust list of questions right there. And we even got some side questions and, um, somehow did it all without a baby screaming, so it's turned out really well.
Joseph: Oh, yeah.
Taylor: I wanna let it- let it, uh-
Joseph: Wait, I didn't hear the ambulance. Did the ambulance take off already?
Taylor: Uh, yeah, you know, you know they came, they grabbed him, he looked at me, gave me a look.
[Joseph laughs]
It's all good. But Rebecca left, uh, probably 10 or 20 minutes ago. So I was, I was, uh, on the edge of my seat, but no, can't think of anything else.
Willie: Yeah, I don't think I have anything else.
Joseph: Cool.
Willie: There's- I mean, there's plenty more episodes to come, so we got lots of time to, to touch on all of the other stuff- all the other ideas that I have, all the things that, uh, you reminded me of, like Taylor said, that nostalgia-
Taylor: Mmhmm.
Willie: -there's definitely some stuff I wanna touch on when we get to my episode and, and moving forward.
01:07:34
Joseph: It'll be awesome. So part three is gonna feature Willie and his background and history with gaming, and it'll kind of close out this three part series that we're starting the podcast with. And I, I don't know, I'm looking forward and it's exciting to get past these intro episodes so that we can actually start talking mostly about games.
I think it's gonna be badass.
Taylor: Agreed.
Willie: Yeah, I think that's about it for today then. And, um, we'll see y'all again real soon.
Joseph: Word. Peace.
Taylor: Thanks everybody for tuning in. Have a great day, week, night. Take it easy.
[Background music]
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades.
Until then, thanks again.
[Music ends]
01:08:30
Joseph: Alright. I'm just gonna skip [Laughing] "Hey everybody."
Taylor: [Laughter] Yeah. Yeah. Dude, we fucked that up.
Joseph: Now you're Dr. Nick. [Willie laughs]
Taylor: Yeah, Backstreet-
Joseph: I shouldn't have done that.
Taylor: [Singing, interrupted by laughter] Everybody. It's me, Dr. Nick. Everybody. Doc-tor Nick. [Speaking normally] Yeah. You're fucked now. Don't do it. Don't do it.
Joseph: Oh man. We got to rewrite this shit again.
Taylor: [Laughs] Yeah.