Backyard wrestling, getting dissed over a Nintendo 64, and surviving Resident Evil. Join Joseph and Taylor as they interview Willie about his experience with video games.
Backyard wrestling, getting dissed over a Nintendo 64, and surviving Resident Evil. Join Joseph and Taylor as they interview Willie about his experience with video games.
In this episode, we focus on Willie's gaming experience and interests. Willie explains how he convinced his parents to buy him multiple gaming consoles and let him rent Mortal Kombat for the first time. We blast to the past with the Atari 2600 and remember the ridiculousness of an NES game called Bad Street Brawler. We also get Willie to revisit his backyard wrestling days with his tag team partner, Pyro. His story wouldn't be complete without mentioning Resident Evil, a video game rental store called Videos To Go, and playing pc games with his oldest brother. We wrap by talking about button-mashing techniques for Caveman Games.
The games briefly mentioned in this episode: Resident Evil, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, God of War, Sonic the Hedgehog, X-Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters, Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Bad Dudes, River City Ransom, River City Girls, Duke Nukem, Bad Street Brawler, Double Dragon, Batman, Pro Wrestling, WCW World Championship Wrestling, WWF Royal Rumble, WWF SmackDown, The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants, The Simpsons: Bart vs. the World, Paperboy, Super Mario 64, Pilotwings 64, GoldenEye 007, Sonic and Knuckles, Earthworm Jim, Altered Beast, Splatterhouse, Mortal Kombat, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Smash Bros., Pikmin, Overlord, Resident Evil - Code: Veronica, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, Destiny, Halo Infinite, Caveman Games, Myst, Descent, and Zork Nemesis.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Willie: Yeah, there was a lot of good stuff. I mean there's, like I said, I, I would not have considered any of the consoles mine until the Sega, but I played a ton of Nintendo games. It's funny 'cause you also just brought up not being able to beat the first level or whatever in um, Bart versus Space Aliens* or whatever that game was.
I think there were so many games that I played that I never beat like Batman, which was one of my favorite games. Like, I remember as a kid definitely never beating that game and I don't even know if as an adult I've gone back to beat that game. It was one of those things that I played a lot, and I remember my brother like waking me up as he was like, at the final fight, to watch him [Taylor laughs] beat the last part of the game.
Taylor: Nice. Well, that was, [laughing] uh, that was kind of him.
Willie: I feel like that happened a lot. Like I remember that happening with Super Mario Brothers 2 as well. Like I remember him showing me like the end of that game when he finally got there. It was like 4:00 AM and he like woke me up. He was like, this is it. I think I'm at the end.
Taylor: You had to do that. [Willie chuckles] You had to do that. You, somebody had to witness dude, he, that was basically uh...your Mad Max.
Joseph: Uh-huh, you needed to prove it.
Taylor: –Yeah. He was like, [imitating yelling] " witness!" And you're waking up to that and he is showing you the beauty to behold that is the end of that game, 'cause it would've been too much to set up a, a camcorder and tape over your parents' wedding to watch it. So you just gotta wake up your little sibling and be like, "come watch this with me."
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:44
Joseph: Hey everybody. Welcome to Berries and Blades, a place where we analyze and break down some of our favorite video games. My name is Joseph Bullard. I'm here with my friends, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. We're just three regular guys sitting in our bedroom studios staring at our feet, wondering how in the world people live on this planet without shoes. But I digress. Anyway, how are you guys doing?
Willie: I'm good. Taylor might be frozen, but I'm good. I don't even know if, uh, he is to you.
Joseph: He is frozen. Taylor, can you hear us? Can we hear you?
Taylor: Yeah, I'm here.
Joseph: Oh, okay.
Taylor: Can you hear me, okay? All right. Good. Yeah, now, I'm just frozen as far as a mental state, but it's funny you said feet–
Joseph: Cold as ice son.
Taylor: –Yeah, dude, I, I have, uh, some, a brutal wound on my, one of my feet because of that Onewheel.
[Willie chuckles]
Joseph: [laughing] Oh seriously?
Taylor: Yeah. I've been riding it. Uh, I've been riding it, uh, barefoot. Just one moment of like, uh, just not paying attention. I, uh, stepped off of it–
Joseph: That’s all it takes.
–Yeah. Stepped off of it in the wrong way and the board itself scraped my ankle and just took a good amount of skin with it.
Joseph: Ooh.
Taylor: So now I'm healing from that. It's definitely the most gross skin wound I've ever had, which is saying a lot–
Willie: [chuckling] It sounds bad.
Taylor: –because I've had a lot of wounds.
Willie: Yeah. Sounds really bad.
Joseph: Just like a scrape wound. What, um, were you wearing jeans or like shorts and some like knee high socks or something. [laughs]
Taylor: Naw, just shorts and barefoot, dude. Because, because, um–
Joseph: Oh, damn.
Taylor: –Well riding it barefoot, it's a lot like surfing where you can feel, uh, because you're going over the grass–
Joseph: Oh, you get better feedback.
Taylor: –Yeah. And when you're...I find that when I wear my shoes and do it, yeah, my feet are obviously way safer, but there's something about like, you're real heavy footed with it, if that makes sense.
Joseph: Mm-huh.
Taylor: Like you just feel a little more, like, you just don't feel as much, you're not as…as sensitive with your feet. Um, and it really, it really makes a difference because it's that electric motor and all that stuff. But anyways, yeah. I'm all right. I'm alive.
Joseph: Word. I finally finished Witcher 3 last night.
Taylor: Yes. Glad you wrapped it up. Do you know what's next?
Joseph: Yeah, I'm sticking with the same plan. It's gonna be Kena: Bridge of Spirits.
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Joseph: Shorter game, and then probably God of War, 2018.
Willie: Yeah, I think I'm about to get into that too. I almost started it yesterday, actually. Thought about it.
Taylor: On pc?
Willie: No, on PlayStation 4.
Taylor: Okay.
00:04:05
Joseph: Yeah, same. I'm gonna play it on PlayStation 4, but today we're here to dig into Willie's background history of gaming, which I, I don't know if we should go all the way back to the beginning, but I do want to go like most of the way back to the beginning and Willie ask you if there was a game you played as a kid that was like the mind blowing, eye-opening gaming experience that has led you to continue playing games for the rest of your life.
Willie: I think the game that got me back into gaming and gaming all the time was probably Resident Evil. I definitely played a lot of stuff before that and grew up always renting games and stuff. But I don't know what it was about that game in particular that just got me back into…I just want to play everything.
Joseph: I'm guessing you're talking about the first Resident Evil, right?
Willie: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Gotcha. Which was just called Resident Evil?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Shit. And that was PlayStation. Got it.
Willie: I don't remember when it came out without looking, but I would say it was somewhere around like '96 I think, or something like that.
Joseph: Mm-huh.
Willie: I would also say like, the PlayStation, no, that's not true. I was gonna say the PlayStation was like my first console. That was like my console. That's not true either. ‘Cause I did get a Sega before that.
Joseph: Sega Genesis.
Willie: Yeah, but it's interesting cause I got both in the same sort of way. I don't know why. I was definitely spoiled as a kid for sure. I somehow talked to my parents into getting a Sega on the way back from a trip. Uh, I think it was after we had gone to like Mexico to see some family or something, and uh, got back from that trip, and I don't know why or how I talked them into like going to multiple stores to find a Sega, but we did, we found one at like KB Toys or something.
And it was the same thing with the Sony, uh, with the PlayStation. We had gone on vacation to see family in California or something, and on the way back, I don't know why...what had gotten into me that I was like, I just, "we should like get a PlayStation when we get home." And somehow I talked him into it and got a PlayStation when we got home.
And the first game I got for it was Resident Evil. Invited a friend over, and like we just sat there, and like played all weekend.
Joseph: I remember one specific jump scare, I think it was in the first game. But there was like a dog jumping–
Willie: –oh yeah
Joseph: – through the window.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: And I remember that being one of the only times I've ever been like, legitimately jump scared by a game. And it was dark. We were playing, I was playing in the dark. So like that kind of ruined me a little bit. Now I feel uneasy about playing this game, and that has me like worried about every corner or every hallway.
Willie: Yeah. That's definitely classic. That jump scare. I think anybody who's played that game knows where that is, in that specific hallway. I felt the same way. And I think I grew up watching a lot of scary movies that I should not have been watching. It's not that I was too young to be watching them, but like my parents didn't really care, and my mom and my sister used to watch scary movies all the time with me in the room...always watching scary stuff and enjoyed, you know, the eighties scary films.
Taylor: Well, older siblings–
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: –That was why I watched Freddy Krueger when I was like fucking eight years old.
Willie: I have three older siblings and, uh, but my mom and my and my sister really enjoy like, scary films and horror films, so classic stuff like The Thing or Carrie or also the... yeah, Nightmare on Elm Street movies and Friday the 13th and it felt like they always had something scary on, on the weekends. And so I saw a lot of that stuff.
So Resident Evil being like an interactive scary thing that you could do, like, I don't know, it was... it was like, sort of right up my alley, even though sometimes I, it was sort of terrifying. Like I wouldn't play that game after dark for a while. Mostly because my brother, he had a, a really nice stereo system, probably 5.1 surround sound system.
Yeah. Pioneer, set up in our room, and if you sat in the middle of the room, like you would hear stuff behind you while you were playing that game. And if it was after dark, it was like just creepy, like growls and stuff behind you and be like, no, that's it. I'm done. I won't play this game past 9:00 PM
Taylor: Yeah, sun better be out–
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: –for me to fuck with this. Yeah.
Willie: But uh, yeah, that started me just like playing a lot of other things.
Joseph: Remind me how many older siblings you have and then what the age difference is.
Willie: I have three, the closest is eight years older than me, and that's my sister. And then I have two brothers who were 13 and 14 years older than me.
Joseph: Damn.
Taylor: Damn, you weren't escaping that, uh, horror influence then.
Willie: [chuckling] No.
Taylor: Like I just had a older sister that did that stuff. You know, I didn't have parents that were into it as well , like multiple siblings and a parent into it. I feel like every time you walk in there's gonna be some horror on or something. So, maybe it got you saturated with it.
Willie: My brothers did watch horror films and stuff, but it was definitely mostly my mom and my sister. That's who like got me into that.
Joseph: Did they also watch you play games like Resident Evil.
Willie: My mom probably watched a little bit of, of that game 'cause I remember when we got the PlayStation, I like set it up in the living room, on the living room TV and my friend like stayed the night that Friday or Saturday night and we...that's all we were doing, were playing. So like people definitely saw what we were playing, just planted in the middle of the living room.
Joseph: Is that where the console lived permanently?
Willie: No, like it eventually went to, uh, the other room, which I, I don't remember. It's complicated, but I, I don't remember if that was necessarily my brother's room at the time or a room that we shared. 'Cause we like sometimes shared it and sometimes I just slept on the couch. So my living room was basically my bedroom for a little while too.
Joseph: Mm-huh.
Willie: Sometimes it stayed in there, sometimes it went to the other room.
Joseph: Taylor, when we were playing Elden Ring before, you've mentioned like scary moments of the game. When you were a kid, did you play games like Resident Evil, like late at night with the, the lights turned off and stuff like that in the dark?
Taylor: I mean, I did play Resident Evil, uh, I played horror games. Y'all said that was PlayStation? That was like the PlayStation One time. Yeah, I w...I definitely played that one. I don't know, something happened as I got older that I, I like horror games and I'll definitely watch somebody play one or play one with people watching, but to sit down and play it by myself with headphones on and fully immersed into it, just scares the shit outta me.
00:10:29
Joseph: [laughs] Willie, let's go back e-even farther in time. What's the first console that you remember owning as a family? The first console that was in the house period.
Willie: I think it was an Atari 2600. I only kind of remember it, but like I was looking at pictures of it and I definitely remember all those switches on the console itself. I know we had an Atari 5200, 'cause I...like that's...we still have that at my parents' house.
Like I've, I like took it out and fixed it when I was in high school to like try to get it working again, trying to make the controllers work again. And it was working and it's just in a box now, actually.
Taylor: Did the controllers just stop working because dust and such got inside?
Willie: Pretty much. And, and one of the controllers had some like wires that were sort of pulled out that needed to like be re-soldered–
Taylor: Ah.
Willie: –and it was fine. Yeah, the number pad on the controllers for the 5200, which is a weird thing that there's like a, a number pad at the bottom of that controller.
Joseph: Mm-huh.
Willie: That thing wasn't registering, like clicks anymore, at some point. And I think taking it out and cleaning it and stuff like was enough to, to make at least one of them work. I know we had that, cause I like continued playing that like after I fixed it, there was like River Raid on that. And I think there was a, I'm pretty sure we had a Pitfall that was on that as well.
Taylor: Ooh, Pitfall was good. That game was a banger. It didn't matter what you played it on. It was always good.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You mentioned in some off air comments that there seemed to be a distinction between like consoles that were maybe your older brothers and consoles that were actually yours.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Is that what was happening? And if so, what was the first console that you remember owning yourself?
Willie: I think the first one that I, that was like, I would have considered mine was the Sega Genesis. That was the one that I, the first one that I had gotten my parents like, convinced them to get me.
Joseph: Did that matter, like in terms of what you could play? Like were you prohibited from playing like your older brother's console or something?
Willie: No, not at all actually. I mean, they were around all the time. I don't remember playing the 2600 that much, but I do remember the console itself. Like I said, I remember those buttons and stuff. And I remember very vividly that I'm pretty sure it was 2600 games that we had a bunch of, like in these giant notebooks. These plastic binders, basically. You just open them up and there would be like slots for cartridges, like on either side of the, the notebook. It was like a weird plastic case that opened like a notebook.
Taylor: Those were pretty chunky cartridges, right?
Willie: They were big. The notebook itself, or whatever it was, was like a solid, like 18 inches tall or something, and like 12 inches wide.
Taylor: Ok
Willie: It was a ridiculous like–
Joseph: It's like an old IBM mainframe computer.
Willie: It was ridiculous.
Taylor: God dang.
Willie: And, but the thing is, the reason I remember that is 'cause I, those got stolen, like I think my, my friend's uncle stole them and then they were just all gone.
We lost like 20 games or something, or 30 games between two, two of those notebooks. And so then we didn't play 2600 anymore.
Taylor: What a dick move.
Joseph: Dang.
Willie: I don't know, I, there was never really like, no, you can only play when I'm not playing or that sort of thing. My sister never really played at all, so it's just my brothers and even my oldest brother didn't really play on consoles. Like me and my oldest brother played stuff on PC together later, but he actually didn't, didn't play on consoles really that much.
00:13:59
Joseph: Can you remember any of the games you had on, uh, the Genesis?
Willie: For sure. I mean, I think I still have most of them, obviously some Sonic, X-Men, which was one of my favorite games. Sonic 2, I have that one still as well. I had this weird Battleship game that was on Sega that…I kind of barely remember, but it was basically just Battleship on a console.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: And maybe had some weird animations for when you like blow up ships and stuff. You were just playing Battleship, like picking squares on a, on a grid and then watching what happened afterwards.
Taylor: That's weird, [Joseph chuckles] especially in a, uh, before online age.
Willie: Yeah, it was just a computer that you were playing against or whatever. And I think the other one that was, I liked but was slightly disappointing is, uh, I really liked the Ninja Turtle games growing up. On Sega, as far as I know, the only one I had, well, well the only one I had was a, a fighting game. There was like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fighting game, and I don't remember what it's called right now off the top of my head. That's the only thing you could have on Sega was whatever that fighting game was.
Taylor: Was it just every Ninja Turtle's character basically, as a fighter?
Willie: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Taylor: Huh. I vaguely remember that, but I, I don't...definitely spacing on it too. Trying to recall an image.
Joseph: I can't tell if I remember this game or not.
Willie: Oh, it was just called Tournament Fighters. Uh, it was on Super Nintendo too. That's what popped up first when I looked at it. But that's what I had on, on Sega, and I feel like that was the only one, the only Turtles game that was on, on Sega. So it was just like, "well, I guess I'll play this."
Joseph: Yeah, that's probably true.
[Willie and Joseph laugh]
Taylor: What a cruel joke. I'm looking at screenshots and it looks like a, a Ninja Turtles arcade game, but…but it's just side by side fighter. That's the worst joke ever. You could play on somebody, especially if you already know what Ninja Turtles arcade games are.
Joseph: Mm-huh.
Taylor: You're just like, why can't I move any way but...
Joseph: Oh, like side scroller.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Mm-huh. Yeah, it looks just like it. I mean, the graphics are super similar and...
00:16:19
Willie: And I knew that's not what it was, but it was still like, you know, even before I bought it. But I was like, “well it's, I'll try it out 'cause it's, it's Ninja Turtles.” I loved Ninja Turtles as a kid, so it was like, “might as well.”
Joseph: You mentioned liking X-Men and it being one of your favorite games, what was your favorite kind of game to play growing up?
Willie: Growing up at that...yeah, at that age it probably was that type of like side-scroller, a little bit of a platformer, but like, just like beat 'em up, sort of side-scroller thing.
Joseph: Those were super popular. Like _Double Dragon_–
Willie: Yeah, exactly.
Joseph: –Final Fight. Streets of Rage.
Taylor: Well, and what's the one before all that? The one where you're the guy, um, uh, drop like you're, oh, what the hell is the name of that? You drop out–
Joseph: I like that. I like that explanation.
Taylor: You're the guy. You're–
Joseph: You're the guy. [laughs]
Taylor: –Come on Joey. You idiot. You're the guy. Oh man. It's, it, it was like an earlier one, it's not quite Atari, maybe it's Sega Genesis.
Oh, I'm totally blanking on it. The dude drops in from the sky and he is like in a futuristic, um, dystopian future. It's like cyber punky. It's like the first kind of cyberpunk game where you're going from one panel to the next and...
Willie: Could be anything.
Taylor: It's one of those things where–
Willie: It could be anything 'cause I'm remembering…
Taylor: –Another, another life or something, or ah. It'll come to me as soon as the podcast is over.
Willie: About all those games, like...I'm trying to remember one that I played on Nintendo a lot. It was not Bad Dudes, but it was something similar to that.
Taylor: Oh, Bad Dudes was good though.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That game was so good, man. I burned so many quarters at uh...Stop-N-Go, playing that in town.
[Willie chuckles]
Joseph: Willie, was I talking to you about River City Girls and River City Ransom recently?
Willie: We talked a little bit about it, yeah.
Joseph: Okay. That just popped up in my head when you said Bad Dudes. I remember that game art, which is, uh, it seems surprising to me that I remember that.
Willie: Man, I wish I could remember that title of that other one. It's one that I played a lot that was on Nintendo, that I don't feel like a lot of other people had. I feel like it was the knockoff version of all of those things, but it was, um, the guy on the cover looked a little like Duke Nukem, but not quite.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Very blonde, yellow hair, wearing like shades and like a tank top or something on the cover. And I can't remember what that game is called right now. That was one that I played a lot. That game had some weird moves. There was this one move where you would walk up and the grab was like, you would kind of just roll them up. Aw, I'm gonna crash now, just so you know. So I'll be back.
Joseph: [chuckles] Oh man.
00:18:57
Taylor: And crash break.[8-bit sound effect] [in announcer voice] This crash break brought to you by Crispy, Crunchity–
Joseph: Sega!
Taylor: –Sega!
[Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Sega Flavored Pringles. Sega! In a can.
00:19:22
Willie: One of the weirdest things I remember about that game was the grapple move. You know, every one of those fighters has some sort of weird grapple that you can do and throw someone over your head or something. But, you walked up to them and squatted down while you were holding them and like squished them sort of to the ground into a ball or something like it wasn't actually a ball.
You just like force them to the ground for a second and there was this weird animation of you like kind of just rolling 'em up on the ground and then you stood up–
Joseph: Weird
Willie: –and they stayed there for a second. It was so, so weird. I also, I had a second and I looked it up and it was, it, it was Bad Street Brawler, that's what it was called.
Joseph: Bad Street Brawler.
Taylor: Oh, that sounds familiar.
Willie: Yeah, I don't think, I don't know that many people played that game. Maybe they did, maybe, but it was not, it was not Double Dragon, it was not any of those other games. It was very weird.
Joseph: I don't know if I've ever heard of that.
Willie: And I feel like in–
Taylor: I definitely never played it.
Joseph: It sounds like it looked awful.
Willie: I don't know. It was, it was weird for sure.
Taylor: That's what I was thinking by that explanation. That was my first thought was it sounds like that developer was definitely embellishing what the fuck a human body do based on their own limitations. Almost like a song where you need something to rhyme with Chicago. So you gotta make up a new word called–
Joseph: Bladago.
Taylor: –Yeah, bladago... It's my uncle, RIP, Bladago.
Willie: I feel like in one of the like second or third levels, I think maybe you were supposed to be in New York City or something. I don't remember actually. But in one of the second or third levels, I kind of remember like, some sort of apes throwing bananas at you or something too. Or like fighting you, holding bananas. It didn't make much sense.
Taylor: Maybe there was a zoo escape or something.
Willie: Yeah, exactly. Something like that.
Taylor: I could see that happen.
Willie: That was a Nintendo game. And one of the other Nintendo games that I really liked, uh, growing up was Batman. Like that original Batman, the movie game. That one was awesome.
Taylor: Yeah.
00:21:24
Joseph: This next question is important. If you did, what wrestling games did you play?
Willie: I played. I just don't remember their names well enough.
Taylor: I was just about to ask you, there was like a, all star wrestling that was my favorite.
Willie: Yeah,
Taylor: That... right...that had the Star Man and he had the star on his face. He was a pink dude and...What was that? Was that, is that what that was called? Was All Stars Wrestling?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: It had to be Nintendo or SNES.
Willie: Yeah, there was, there was one that was NES that I think had that guy you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking–
Taylor: Maybe it's Starman.
Willie: –at, it's actually just called Pro Wrestling.
Joseph: Oh.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: Yeah. He's got a pink mask on with a blue star across his face.
Taylor: Oh, I'm looking at it right now. Oh, snap.
Willie: I played that one for sure at some point, but I, I'm looking at more right now cause I-I was curious cause I would not have remembered these names, but there is one that's just called WCW World Championship Wrestling, and I do remember playing that one 'cause I remember the cover of that game. I didn't own it, but I, I, that was one that I rented from the store, for sure.
Joseph: My favorite game was definitely the Royal Rumble, WWF Royal Rumble on Super NES.
Willie: That one was good too. I didn't own that one, but that's one I played with a friend a lot.
Joseph: I also have to say, the games that were like N64 and PlayStation One, looking back at those games, they look awful man. I would totally rather play an SNES game than anything in the like really...the intro 3D designs where they're like, basically polygons.
Willie: I really like SmackDown on PlayStation. That was a fun one to me.
Joseph: Yeah. Was that one of those games? That had like really blocky figures?
Willie: It was, it was on PlayStation. I, I remember it looking good, but I don't know. You know, it was just...
Taylor: Oh, that was prime Rock days.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Taylor: That was, yeah.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: Up until that point actually, I was really into wrestling. So yeah, I would play whatever those games were that came out. 'Cause I-I, there might have been multiples of those, but I definitely played SmackDown. I'm looking at a whole, like, looking at pictures of them and like, oh yeah, I remember all of these things.
Taylor: Oh, the photo realistic one you mentioned, uh, really brought back memories for me with the, the character cards. How you had the big square, the rectangular character selection menu, and you know, all the characters, they look real, they had a look to 'em. Almost like Mortal Kombat at the time, I guess, that same kind of style. And that was bleeding edge technology whenever it came out.
Joseph: You know what's interesting to me is that the arcade games, which is…like the actual standup arcade cabinets, all of those graphics look so much better than anything that was like on SNES. Like it was like super 3d, the way the wrestlers are rendered. Like there was way more detail and I like, I don't know why, that they look so much better.
Taylor: Maybe that cabinet was designed to play that exact game, so they were able to like optimize it a lot better. Whereas on a, a console, the console has to play tons of games or all games, so they have to optimize the game for that or something. I wonder, I wonder if it's that or maybe–
Joseph: Yeah so it must be hard...hardware.
Taylor: Yeah, maybe the console just has better. Yeah, exactly. Uh, that, that was always interesting. The Ninja Turtles looked amazing on...
Joseph: That's the same kind of quality I'm talking about. It's just like, the having the board in the arcade cabinet.
00:24:52
Taylor: The Simpsons. Same way, when you played that on console, I think Sega was the one that had The Simpsons arcade game, but it just wasn't the same experience at all.
Willie: I don't remember playing a Simpsons arcade game on a console. That doesn't mean it didn't exist, but I, I remember, well, there was a couple, but Bart vs. The World** was one that I remember playing a lot of.
Taylor: Oh yeah. That and, uh, Bart, uh, the...aliens–
Willie: Yeah it was...was it just Bart vs. The Space Aliens* or something like that, or...
Taylor: Oh, and those were hard ass games too.
Willie: They really were.
Joseph: They were.
Taylor: Oh my god.
Joseph: Is that the one with the spray paint?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Where you're like spray painting things.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Yeah, the one with the aliens definitely is–
Taylor: ...was it.
Willie: –I don't remember. I don't know if that mechanic was in the next one, but it probably was.
Joseph: That game was difficult.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, y'all got me wanting to go watch some speedruns or something, of some this stuff now just to see, and I'll probably hate whoever does it. I don't know if that game had levels or what, but I don't even think I made it through the first whatever.
Joseph: Right. Right.
Taylor: [laughing] I think I would just give up.
Joseph: You know what else was difficult and may...Willie maybe you played this game, Paper Boy.
Willie: Oh, yeah.
Taylor: Ooh...
Joseph: That game was hard as shit, man.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: But fun. So much fun.
Willie: It was difficult. I didn't ever own that one, so I only played it at a friend's house, and so I never got that much practice with it, so it was definitely not, not easy.
Joseph: It's an interesting concept for a game. Like pitching the idea for that game, I don't think it would go over very well today . Like we just wanna create this game where you're like delivering newspapers, as a kid on a bike. But the asy...the...not the asymmetric, the isometric kind of angle of that game–
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Uh-huh
Joseph: –I felt made it really difficult to like stay on the line that you were trying to stay on.
Taylor: Absolutely. I bet if you made that in an alternate reality, it would be like uh... IRS Man or something and he would, he's–
Joseph: Yeah, the Tax Collector.
Taylor: –driving little IRS cart. Yeah. Or you can make a Steam game now for that, for the nostalgic folks and have a dude pushing a little cart and he just throws it into the person's desk receptacle. God dang. I'm talking about some bangers right now.
Willie: Yeah, there was a lot of good stuff. I mean, there's, like I said, I, I would not have considered any of the consoles mine until the Sega, but I played a ton of Nintendo games. It's funny 'cause you also just brought up not being able to beat the first level or whatever in um, Bart vs. Space Aliens* or whatever that game was.
I think there were so many games that I played that I never beat, like Batman, which was one of my favorite games. Like, I remember as a kid definitely never beating that game, and I don't even know if as an adult I've gone back to beat that game. It was one of those things that I played a lot and I remember my brother like waking me up, as he was like at the final fight to watch him [Taylor laughs] beat the last part of the game.
Taylor: Nice. Well, that was, [laughing] uh, that was kind of him.
Willie: I feel like that happened a lot. Like I remember that happening with Super Mario Brothers 2 as well. Like I remember him showing me like the end of that game when he finally got there. It was like 4:00 AM and he like woke me up. He was like, “this is it. I think I'm at the end.”
Taylor: You had to do that. [Willie chuckles] You had to do that. You, somebody had to witness dude, that was basically your, uh, your Mad Max.
Joseph: You needed to prove it.
Taylor: Yeah. He was like, [imitating yelling] "witness!" And you're waking up to that and he is showing you the beauty to behold that is the end of that game, 'cause it would've been too much to set up a, a camcorder and tape over your parents' wedding to watch it. So you just gotta wake up your little sibling and be like, “come watch this with me.”
Joseph: And the games were different. There weren't campaigns that you could save progress on and reload. So like you couldn't just rely on word of mouth, right? Like you couldn't beat it while there were no witnesses. And then when they're around, be like, I beat it because you were never gonna bl-be believed.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Or they just wouldn't care because it wasn't the same if you didn't see it, it was videos or it didn't happen back in a time where it was very hard to get videos.
Willie: Yeah, I don't even think we had a camcorder, like we didn't, so like there would've been no proof. He would just…would've, he would've told me about it.
[Taylor chuckles]
Joseph: We didn't either. I mean, the closest we could get to that are just undeveloped, disposable cameras.
Willie: Yeah.
[Willie and Joseph laugh]
Joseph: Those sitting around the house.
Taylor: That's peak eighties, nineties stuff right there.
00:29:11
Joseph: For anybody listening right now, you won't know this, but Willie's done or did a lot of backyard wrestling growing up, so I'm curious if any of those, any...anyone in that crew you were playing video games with, or was that even in your neighborhood? Like was that walking distance from you?
Willie: No one in that crew was walking distance from me at an early age, but like we grew up in a small town, so we like, during the summers and stuff, we would just ride all over, like wherever. As I got older, I should say. In NES, Super NES days, in NES, Sega days, I should say, it was just my neighborhood. I had a couple friends, like one who lived two houses away, and one who lived three houses away, that I would go over and play Nintendo at or Sega at, depending on which one.
And then like right across the street, my best friends who lived across the street had a-a Nintendo. And as far as the, the wrestling people go though, the guy who was my tag team partner, actually we were friends since like second grade, truly in second grade. Um, were friends. Like we knew each other since kindergarten 'cause everybody knew everybody.
But like in second grade is when I started going to stay at his house and stuff. And that's when, um, we would play games together. My friend Scott, also known as Pyro, that was his wrestling name in case you needed to know.
[Taylor laughs]
Joseph: Taylor, is that somebody you know?
Taylor: Oh yeah, Scott, uh, Lindsey.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: The Cheeser. Yeah. Oh yeah. That guy is, so–
Joseph: What did you call him?
Taylor: The Cheeser, he’s uh,
Joseph: The Cheeser.
Taylor: Switz, SwitzCheeze is his uh gamer tag. But yeah, he's, he's a very, uh, funny, like animated dude. He's a, exactly. Honestly, all the, all the guys that did that backyard wrestling were the...kind of the perfect people to do it because they were all into it and they were very animated about it, and they did the acting and they did the fake slams and everything and tried to do 'em good and...it was legit. It was a lot of fun and it was funny, like it was almost always hilarious.
Willie: For sure, there was always some hilarity. The other day, I guess when we were talking about, uh, when we were interviewing Joey, Joey was talking about playing games like quietly in the morning before anybody woke up. It's funny cause you were saying that, and I was remembering actually staying over at Scott's house and I feel like that dude always got up at like 7:00 AM.
[Joseph chuckles]
Willie: I would wake up to the sounds of like the controller clicking, like that's a very like [Taylor chuckles] vivid memory to me. It's like I know what that sound is, where he's just sitting on floor in front of the TV, and there's just like the controller, just like making that clicking sound.
Taylor: You feel betrayed as a kid, right? You're like, "this motherfucker–
[Willie chuckles]
Joseph: Uh-huh
Taylor: –just woke up and started playing without me."
Joseph: Yeah, early bird gets the sticks, man.
Willie: He was just always up earlier than I was. He and I played a lot of games together.
Joseph: So I'm guessing it was kind of like my experience where you had a group of friends that were close enough, you could visit pretty easily, and then you all had like a different collection of games, so you would just play different games at different people's houses. Yeah, just continue that cycle.
Willie: For sure. And Scott was the one who had the Super Nintendo, and then the N64 later 'cause I didn't, I didn't own either of those things.
Taylor: Crazy that that's how people stayed together back then. Like it still got people together, but it was in a physical form. Like, I guess it's not crazy, is-is not the word, but it, it's weird to think back that, that was getting people together and then now you hop on online. It's still how you keep up with your friends–
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: –and a lot of those people in instances too. It's just you don't hear from somebody for months and then you see 'em online. You can catch up real quick.
00:32:52
Willie: It's been a huge connector for me. It definitely was that with, with Scott, that was one of the things we bonded over and would play through anything new that came out together. It's funny 'cause I do remember, and I probably, maybe have told this offline. Taylor was talking about renting video games, or consoles, or other things from, from the store, from the grocery store.
You could do that at that, that grocery store. And I remember, I was like, the plan was to rent an N64 and have Scott over for the weekend, and a couple friends actually, and just play Nintendo 64 all weekend. And, uh, Scott like backed out and then I found out like two or three days later that he backed out because his mom had bought him an N64. So he was just staying at home–
Joseph: Ooh...
[Taylor laughs]
Willie: – [laughing] to play his.
Taylor: Getting that practice.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Dude, that's an O-OG dis.
Taylor: Yeah, it is. I feel that, I respect that.
Joseph: Didn't even get an invite either.
Willie: No, instead I just had the, the one that I rented, I like rented it on the day it came out and he ended up getting one. Like, he got one like that weekend when it came out or whatever.
Taylor: What did it come out with? Do you remember? Did you play Bond? Was that the...or, or obviously Mario 64.
Willie: It was. Yeah, it was Mario 64. And. I d...I think that's the only thing that I had. Cause I remember going over to his house, like, you know, within the week and it was, we were playing, um, Pilot Wings. That was the other one, that he had.
Taylor: Ooh. I think Mario 64 was all you needed at that point. ‘Cause it…that, that game was amazing. Just the secrets and the open world and everything. And it being Mario, people were already, fully in love with Mario.
Willie: It's been so long though. I don't remember. Did it have like a built-in save feature on that console? It did, right?
Taylor: I think it had cards that you popped into the controllers or something.
Willie: Yeah. I knew it had that, but like, was that the only way to save the game?
Taylor: I don' know.
Joseph: I think it depended on what you were playing, 'cause like Ocarina of Time, that definitely had like, you could save the game in game without any kind of hardware, like memory card or anything like that.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Maybe it saved on the cartridge. I don't remember.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. . Yeah, I think it just had memory.
Willie: Because I couldn't remember if like, you know, playing Mario, like I got to save any of that progress. But I, I guess I did.
Joseph: I'm pretty sure that game probably worked the same way.
Willie: Yeah, it was definitely over at Scott's that I beat that game though. Or like was there when it got beaten because that was one of those games that we would just trade off on.
00:35:18
Joseph: I mean, this might be, this is kind of jumping ahead a little bit so we don't really have to talk about it, but Mario 64 is probably one of my least favorite, Mario games.
Taylor: Oh, yeah. Well, and that center stick situation.
[Willie and Joseph laugh]
Joseph: The N64 controller?
Taylor: For me to ever, yeah, to ever go back to that controller would be the worst. I work too logically minded now where I would put my hands on that and think, "no, this needs a different, this need..." But from what I heard, I don't know if I already mentioned this or not, but I did some looking into that to see, you know...did people play that with a Xbox controller and enjoy it?
And it sounds like people weren't super happy with playing some of those games, going back and playing them with, uh, twin sticks and actually having them updated seemed like it maybe didn't, the magic wasn't quite there without the, without that original controller.
Joseph: Yeah, you talked about GoldenEye, but we didn't go any farther than that.
Taylor: Yep. Oh, okay.
Joseph: So was it, you heard about people playing other Nintendo 64 games too?
Taylor: It was in general, uh, just GoldenEye was one that came up because people were thinking, obviously it's a first person shooter.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: You would think that just pop in a Xbox Controller. So it'll be interesting to see, I guess the optimizations that they do, if they do release a new Xbox version, I'm sure they will have optimized the heck out of it and it'll play smooth as butter.
Uh, maybe before it modded, you know how they do sometimes it's just straight up left is, left, right is right. Everything is black and white, exactly the same. It's also weird that it, there's been scuttlebutt about that game for years through two or three consoles and it still hasn't dropped. Makes me wonder as well, maybe it doesn't translate well, but there's also all the licensing and everything when Nintendo, so who knows?
00:37:11
Joseph: Right, Willie, thinking back to the consoles you owned as a kid, nothing older, sorry, nothing newer than like PlayStation 2, which ones of those consoles do you feel like you had the most experience on?
Willie: Probably the, the Nintendo. I'm pretty sure.
Joseph: NES?
Willie: The NES. Yeah, even though that wasn't mine, like per se, cause my, my brother had bought it, we had a lot of games on that thing. Like I remember he had a little like cartridge container thing that sat on the top of the dresser that had, I don't know, 30 or 40 games in it.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: And there was probably more than that. And then, even though we didn't own them, like we rented a ton of things all the time.
Taylor: That's a cool thing about having siblings that were also gamers is that, um, you've got that power for each of y'all to pick up games as you wish and just add them to a collection. That's pretty cool. Whereas I had to rent–
Joseph: Stacking carts man.
Taylor: Yeah, like I didn't buy many games. I probably never owned more than like five or 10 total. It makes total sense, where when you have siblings who are into it, just amass a collection. So anybody can pop in anything, whenever they want to.
Joseph: Yeah, it's like your dollar cost averaging into games. [chuckles]
Taylor: Yeah, exactly. For the ultimate, uh, moonshot, which is fun.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: I would say it had to be Nintendo because for Sega I had like less than 10 games, I'm pretty sure and just rented some for that. And then PlayStation, I owned quite a few things, you know, cause that was like when I got back into gaming. I felt like I rented a lot of stuff for that 'cause I couldn't just be buying, you know? Now, now games were getting up to be like, you know, 50 or $60 or whatever and it was like, no.
Taylor: That's what I was thinking. That was, that's peak rental era right there. Um, through those consoles, you could go to any store. They had the Blockbusters, the Hollywood videos, everybody competing for your buck.
Joseph: Mm-huh.
Willie: I mean that was still back home though, so that was still like, you know, just going to the grocery store and renting whatever.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: Good old grocery store. It's funny to me that that would even seem weird to some people.
Willie: Yeah, that's just normal. That's just a thing.
Joseph: Definitely younger people.
Willie: I do remember going to Videos to Go though. I do think that is the name of that place that you were talking about, Taylor, because I do remember also every now and then getting games from there.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: I think the town I went to high school in had a Movie Gallery, but that was way after, way after the days of rentals at Barry's, the convenience store.
Taylor: Hmm. It's ridiculous.
Joseph: My Genesis experience was similar to yours where I only had like a few games, but outside of like the first three Sonic Games and maybe Sonic and Knuckles, Earthworm Jim, I didn't have a ton of cartridges for Sega.
Taylor: Altered Beast–
Joseph: I don't know why.
Taylor: –Did you have that one?
Joseph: No, I know that game, but I didn't have that.
Willie: I didn't own that one either. That's one that I went to my neighbor's house to play. That's actually the first time I ever played Sega was over at my neighbor's house, a couple houses down and he had Altered Beast. And something else...I'm not gonna remember now, but those were the games I was like, oh, I should have a Sega.
A Sega would be cool if I could play that all the time. And then I never got Altered Beast. I just like played at his house anyway.
Taylor: [chuckles] It was one of those you only need to play twice anyways. I agree. I, I had the same experience except the second game was, um, Slaughterhouse***. The guy had Slaughterhouse*** and it was, you chop a dude in half with a chainsaw. It definitely had me interested.
Willie: I don't remember what else we really played on that, but that, I think it was Altered Beast was the, again, it's that side-scroller sort of beat 'em up thing that, it's easy to get into.
Taylor: A transformer side-scroller–
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: I don't, I can't think of any or many of those where you just gobble a thing and then you're a, you're a swoll dude or then you're a beast, or then you're flying and you're...don't know, never got there. [laughs]
Willie: Thinking about it, there's like each, each one of the levels I think had different, or maybe it was each character turned into something different. I can't exactly remember.
Taylor: I couldn't tell you. Will never be able to tell you.
00:41:31
Joseph: I think I know the answer to this question Willie, it sounds like you didn't have any rules, any restrictions on you, in terms of like when you could play and what you could play.
Willie: Not a lot. I do remember going to try to rent Mortal Kombat for the first time–
[Taylor laughing]
Willie: –and my mom being like, “no.” And then I talked her into it, like probably not more than like a couple weeks later. I remember just being like,
Joseph: It's just a game, Mom.
Willie: I was just laying out some sort of logical argument about like, out of all of the things I've seen, all the horror films I've watched–
Taylor: Mm-huh.
Joseph: Mm. Smart.
Willie: –how is this any worse? It's gory, but like, it's not even real. Like it's not, it's not even close to what I've seen in movies.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's so much more realistic than what these games are doing in 16 bits.
Willie: I feel like that was the first game that was like a," no, we're not gonna do that." And then I still ended up, I ended up renting it like, you know, not too long after that.
Joseph: Interesting.
Willie: Like I said, I was a spoiled kid, being the youngest of four. And because my…most of my time when I was playing games later, like was without siblings around because they were so much older. Like so I was just on my own. That's just how I occupied my time. If I wasn't out with friends, that's just what I was doing to occupy myself.
Joseph: And your sister was closest in age, and you mentioned that she wasn't really gaming or playing anything.
Willie: Yeah, no.
Joseph: Word.
Willie: I can't remember her ever playing. I don't think that's true completely because I feel like her kids have played stuff now, so like, I think she did later on.
Taylor: It's hard to never play 'cause there will always be that one thing where even if you're not a game, you're like, oh, I'm a little fox and all I have to do is lean from side to side. Oh, okay. Bam. You're playing a game. [Joseph laughs] It happens to everybody.
Joseph: You got duped. You got duped into playing a game.
Taylor: Yeah. The Wii Bowling, Tennis moment for everyone. It happens. I mean, once AR is in everyone's eyes, no one will be... every day life will be a game. Everything you look at will be a game.
00:43:35
Joseph: I forget about the Wiis so often, man.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Willie, did you have a Wii or a Wii U?
Willie: Did have a Wii for a while. Yeah.
Joseph: I'm not gonna lie, I think those games are kind of, I think those consoles are kind of garbage.
Willie: I'm trying to think what I had on there that was like actually really good. I guess I'll say this before I forget. I feel like the GameCube was just one of those things that got overlooked, but had a lot of good games on it, and I did have that too.
Joseph: The Game Cube for me was like the Genesis. I only had like a handful of games on the GameCube, and I don't really know why, but it was like Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Smash Brothers, and I almost don't remember any other games besides those.
Taylor: Hmm. You had the essentials.
Willie: I don't think I owned many games for that either. I just like rented those too eventually. Like that was a, yeah, when I did have access to a Blockbuster and stuff, but I remember, I guess Pikmin was my favorite.
Taylor: That's the only one I ever played on Game Cube, but it was amazing.
Joseph: I don't think I've ever played that.
Taylor: Oh, that's so good. Or it was.
Joseph: P-I-K-Man.
Willie: M-I-N, yeah. Pikmin
Joseph: Oh, M-I-N.
Willie: M-I-N, yeah, Pikmin. Yeah, that was really good. Like strategy sort of game. I don't know what to call that actually, but yeah, that was... that was a fun game.
Taylor: Army chucker, like it's one of those where you, you amass a army of little cute things and you just throw them at people, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tut and have them do things, throw 'em across a river to chomp a tree down or something. It was really good.
Willie: Each color of Pikmin has like a, a different power. So some can withstand fire and some can like breathe underwater. And some you can throw really far. So like you just, you collect them and grow them and then you, like, they pick up pellets that will grow more of them and then you like attack things and knock down walls to like, you know, get through puzzles with them. But that was, that was a really good one.
Taylor: Agreed. There've been some since, Overlord and things like that, that played on that. But that one is one of the, one of the best.
Willie: I don't know what it is, but for sure, like none of the other games like that have ever like, captured me like that game did.
Taylor: Sometimes it's that Nintendo polish, they just have a certain amount of polish that just will not compromise. They...it has to be a certain way. And it's one of those, one of those things about Nintendo that's a- awesome, and it results in some amazing products, but it also, uh, makes them very difficult to deal with sometimes as a fan, just depending on the situation.
00:46:05
Joseph: I somehow have a memory that you owned a Dreamcast Willie, is that true?
Willie: I did not, but I rented one. I rented one from the grocery store.
Joseph: [chuckling] I don't know why I was thinking you owned a Dreamcast.
Willie: Yeah I don't know. I may have told you this, this story before that I rented one and I only rented it to play Resident Evil: Code Veronica, because it was the only system that it was on at the time. I had been playing for like five or six hours and my mom like called me to dinner or something. And so like I was on, on…in one of those little gaming chairs, which we had like my entire life, I feel like. That...you know that's, on the ground and rocks?
Taylor: [chuckles] Oh yeah.
Willie: We had a, we had a couple of those in my bedroom and, uh, I like rolled forward, hit the console like power button for a second, like had, after I'd been playing for like five or six hours and like I realized like in motion while I was holding it, I was like, oh, this was dumb. Like I can't, I don't have a memory card or anything for this. This is not saving anywhere.
Taylor: Oh no.
Joseph: Ouch.
Willie: So I like double-tapped the power button and it stayed on and kept the game going.
Joseph: No way.
Willie: I was like all right, well this is cool. I didn't just lose all my progress, but like I did it without thinking. I don't know why I thought that that was a good idea at all–
Joseph: Mm-huh.
Willie: –But somehow I managed to save all my progress by just like double-tapping the power button so that it never powered off. Like I was holding the button and I was like, "shit, what do I do now?"
Joseph: Dang, that's clutch. That's like stepping on a landmine, man. [Willie and Joseph laughing] You're just like I can't, I can't step of this right now.
Willie: Yeah. Gotta figure something out.
Joseph: I remember playing Dreamcast, but I have no idea where I played it. Honestly, I couldn't name more than five games on the Dreamcast. Did it even have more [Willie chuckles] than five games made for that console? [laughing]
Willie: So that might have been the only game that I ever played on it, was Code Veronica.
Joseph: I remember Ready to Rumble Boxing.
Willie: Oh, I do remember. I remember that title.
Joseph: That boxing game is–
Taylor: Oh wow. Yeah.
Joseph: – is what I remember the most.
Willie: I do remember that title. Was, was Nights on that game or was that on, or was that Saturn or on that console?
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Knights. That doesn't even ring a Bell. Knights with a K,
Willie: No, what is that? Was that on Jaguar? What was that thing?
Joseph: Uh, that was a Sega console. I think.
Willie: Was it?
Joseph: If it was called Jaguar, I think it was called.
Willie: Okay. One, I think Nights was like an answer to, to Sonic, but I don't remember what console it would've been on, I guess.
Joseph: Oh, maybe it wasn't a second console...the Sega.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: That's what I was trying to figure out what it would be.
Joseph: Yeah, it doesn't ring a bell for me.
Willie: I don't know either.
Taylor: Unh-uh.
Willie: There's a, Sega Saturn game called Nights, but that's not what I'm thinking of...
Taylor: So like Clockwork Knight or something else with Knight in the name.
Willie: I don't also remember any other Dreamcast games. I'm pretty sure.
00:49:04
Joseph: What about now? How often are you playing games now, Willie?
Willie: It comes and goes now for sure. Like I'll have stretches where I'll do, I'll be playing every day for like three weeks or something and then I won't play for like a month or two months or something ridiculous like that. I'd like to try to squeeze in gaming like every day, every other day, honestly, something like Halo or Destiny and just like, make it a regular thing again.
But sometimes like, you know, with Destiny, like played so much of that first game, collected so much stuff. It was constantly like doing everything you could, like beating every nightfall, you know, getting together a group for do... to do a raid and just collecting stuff. And now it feels so daunting to like try to get back into it and be like, I don't know what my light level is. I don't even know if it matters anymore. I like, [chuckling] I don't, I just don't know if I have, like equipment to like play the game.
Taylor: I know that feeling. That's, that's always been my concern about ever being able to truly get back into it, is that if things haven't changed drastically enough, I have already played so many hours in their worlds that I could see it being hard to justify getting back in there and doing any of it over again. I feel that.
Willie: It's funny cause I mean I still like... Bungie in general has built pretty cool worlds to live in. I feel like they've been doing a lot of work to like make Destiny 2 better than what Destiny 1 was. Destiny 1 was interesting to me because there was some lore in the game, right? But there was also a lot of stuff you couldn't even pick up and read actually. Like you had to go look at grimoire cards like online when you like unlocked one to like go see stuff. And you would read that and you'd be like, oh, this is like, actually really interesting.
But like you didn't know, if you didn't go online to go find those things. And then other people were doing the work of putting everything together. And it seemed like they fixed that a little bit in Destiny 2, that they began adding more stuff into the game itself. But I don't really know if that's true 'cause I think I only played through the main game and the first DLC for Destiny 2.
Taylor: Mm-hmm. Spoiler alert, light versus dark.
Willie: I have picked it up a couple times, like, you know, between then and now and like played a little bit of a different DLC, but not to the point that I like actually played through it.
Taylor: It's always interesting to get in and see the art and stuff they've done because they have great character design. They do innovative stuff with AI and, and the way that it battles you and their planets, and they always have such interesting stuff to look at. I'm always down to look at it. And then after that I think is where I, where I run out of steam 'cause I just, I enjoy all the stuff that they do, but especially when presented with a very finite, uh, timescale.
It's tough man. It's tough to cram in the right games, but I don't know. I'm definitely, if there's some stuff that's available on the, on the free to play side, I'm definitely down to get on there sometime and just look at any of the new stuff going on and see what they've done recently.
Willie: Between that and Halo Infinite, those are the things that I like…I would like to get back into and like make them more regular. But yeah, as a part of that first question–
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: –like, I just don't make time to like play regularly. It just comes in like, yeah, there'll be a new game that comes out and then I'll just be playing that for two or three weeks straight.
And usually it's, it's what Taylor said, it's like this co-op thing that's, that's how I can connect with people. Other people are playing it, or there were definitely a lot of first person shooters that we'd pick up and like play together with a group of friends and that's just the easiest way to stay in contact with each other. And that would just be a regular thing.
00:53:01
Joseph: Willie, is there anything else that we didn't touch on that you really wanna talk about before we wrap up?
Willie: I thought a little bit about the pen on the controller sort of thing. Trying to remember like what games would I have played?
Joseph: Oh, the, pen raking.
Taylor: Oh, yeah.
Willie: I don't really remember many of them, but I do remember one of them called Caveman Games. That was on, on Nintendo as well, on NES.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: Caveman Games...
Willie: It was like the Olympics–
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Willie: It was like Caveman Olympics. [Joseph laughs] All of the–
Taylor: Yes!
Willie: – the like events were like very weird. Like pole vault over the, uh, brachiosaurus head.
Taylor: Was there like, you threw [Willie chuckles] somebody too?
Willie: You threw your partner, like who, your husband or [Taylor laughs] your wife, if you... depending on who you picked.
Taylor: [laughing] Yeah. There we go.
Willie: You threw your partner, like swung them around like a hammer throw, by the feet and then tossed ‘em. [Taylor chuckles]
And there was, uh, a fire starting one where you had to, like, you had to tap the buttons back and forth really fast and then like duck your head down to like, blow on, blow on the smoke, and do that repeatedly until it started a fire.
Taylor: Oh, that was one of the major pen ones–
Willie: Right.
Taylor: –There was a–
Willie: All of those were, every single one, you needed the pen for–
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: –because every single one had some element of tapping back and forth, which, like for pole vaulting, you were like, you know, you were running with the pole. And then for the hammer throw, you were like spinning and the only way to spin, I think, was to tap the buttons. And like that entire game, all of the events were basically hit the buttons as fast as you can. A pen definitely came in handy to like rake over the buttons.
Taylor: I'm posting a link in the, in the chat here in the room, that will take you to a thing with screenshots and it's got the, the hammer throw and it's fucking hilarious. The lady's hair, straight out where this dude is clearly spinning and throwing. Okay, there's the fire competition.
Willie: Oh–
Joseph: oh wow, this doesn't look familiar.
Willie: –the saber race.
Taylor: This is a very niche one. This is one of the renters that I got.
Joseph: I'm not gonna lie. I like the typography on the cover where it says Caveman Games.
Taylor: It's pretty cool.
Joseph: But then it looks like complete garbage in the actual game–
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: –on like the title screen.
Willie: This was probably one of my favorite games just because it had lots of replayability and it was like not easy. I remember it being very difficult to do some of these things without raking the pen over the buttons a bunch.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I think only like one of the games was not a button masher, which still was sort of a button masher, but it was like there was a clubbing, like a fight thing that you had to do, but that's the only one that it was not beneficial to like use a pen on. But everything else had some mechanic that you might as well just be raking a pen over the controller as fast as you can.
Taylor: We'll have to try that one day on somebody's Nintendo who doesn't care that we break the controller.
00:55:57
Willie: The only other thing that I would touch on is the, I did get into PC games at a semi-early age, but like it never really stuck 'cause I didn't have a PC, but my oldest brother did. And so when I would go stay with him for the weekend or whatever, I would play things like Myst or Descent or the Star Wars, like what were they called? The tie fighter game and the like X-Wing games?
Taylor: Descent. Was that another _Myst_- like, one where you clicked on things and–
Willie: No.
Taylor: –it was a mystery, kind of a scary mystery? No?
Willie: That was like a 3d, like first person shooter. But you were a ship, an alien spacecraft.
Taylor: Oh, that's right. Okay.
Willie: I don't know if all of the levels were this way, but they were all sort of maze, like you were just in hallways flying around and shooting stuff and picking up keys to open certain parts of the maze that you were sort of flying through.
But yeah, Myst was like definitely a big, big game for me and my brother to play through. And then another game that was like that was Zork Nemesis, which was much darker than Myst, even though Myst is kind of ultimately in the end, pretty dark.
Taylor: Oh yeah. Yeah, once you started unraveling that story. Man, Myst was... there was a re-release of it or something recently.
Willie: There have been, yeah.
Taylor: Is that just what it is, is they just redid it? That was pretty cool. I definitely would wanna play through that with my kid as he gets older. Just the feeling of un-uncovering those puzzles. Finding out that the piano was gonna do something, back then that was revolutionary.
Willie: Barbara and I played through that recently 'cause she had never played through it.
Taylor: Oh wow. How'd she like it–
Willie: I think she liked it. Yeah.
Taylor: -playing it later like this?
Joseph: I've never played that game.
Willie: It's good.
Joseph: Know of it...know of it but never played it.
Taylor: I wonder how it would hold up. It was great back in the days. I loved it. It was aggravating because it was at the beginning of the internet days, so to find out inter...answers to how to do a certain puzzle was pretty difficult.
00:58:00
Joseph: Speaking of Zork, was that our episode one sponsor, Taylor? You did that little–
Taylor: Zork.
Joseph: –bit the first episode. Was it Zork?
Taylor: I don't remember.
Joseph: It was something else that started with a z.
Willie: I think it was Zarg.
Joseph: Zarg.
Taylor: We have so many alien overworld...or overlords that it's hard to keep up. Yeah. [In announcer voice] This episode, brought to you by Schleen.
Joseph: Schleen.
[Taylor and Joseph laughing]
00:58:22
Willie: The last thing that I would say is, uh, I think I was listening to that first episode and I realized that I totally messed up the date for Back to the Future. Cause I think I said 2018, it was like, that's not it. That's totally not it. It's 2015.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Willie: Because they start in 1985 and go back 30 years in the first one, and then they go forward 30 years in the next one so it would be 2015
Taylor: Okay.
Joseph: You know what's funny is Meg and I watch... Back to the Future last weekend in Chattanooga 'cause it was on at the hotel.
Willie: Nice.
Taylor: Ah...sweet.
Joseph: But funny that it happened in between that original conversation and now the, the date correction.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: It's always wild how the universe loves to do that. Just throw something at you the day after you hear it, or talk about it, or think about it. Boom, there's...that happened to me a week or two ago with Grumpy Old Men. For some reason, I was just thinking of Walter Matthau. And, uh, the other dude and, and some of their antics.
And then I was flipping through channels for no random reason. I barely ever watch actual TV and bam, it just landed on Grumpy Old Men and I immediately had to watch that. The last half. And it just also kind of made me sad 'cause those older movies, it's tough. I get it. The older you get, you see that stuff and you're like, oh man, good times.
00:59:46
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Joseph: Well, this has been pretty cool. I mean, just to catch up and learn a little bit more about each of your backgrounds, and just growing up in general and how games fit into that. But I'm kind of looking forward to moving on beyond these kind of, "hey, get to know the podcast host" episodes and dig into some games specifically, have a more targeted conversation about video games.
Taylor: I agree.
Joseph: Cool, man. Well, anyway, thanks for listening.
Taylor: It's been a pleasure.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
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.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Taylor: I was just thinking there are three different Resident Evil games [Willie chuckles] there's three of us. There's the, the remake of Resident Evil 4, and there's Resident Evil 7 in VR, and there's a Resident Evil 8, not VR. So we could set that up where one of us plays one. I could, I could play the VR one if people just wanna see somebody [Willie chuckles] really be a little bitch [Taylor laughing] and get fucking, you know, uh, living their nightmare, which I, I feel, I feel like people like to see that for whatever sick reason.
Editor’s Notes:
* The game being referenced is actually called The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Space Mutants.
** The game being referenced is actually called The Simpsons: Bart vs. The World.
*** The game being referenced is actually called Splatterhouse.