 Welcome to the Nintendo Prime Podcast episode 30. Happy to be here. How about you, Mr. Eric? I'm here. You're here. Well, it is the final podcast of 2021. So that is always exciting when we get to the final one of the year because it's where we get to look back on the year that was and look forward to the year that will be. And for Nintendo fans, it's really exciting at the moment because we're sort of at the peak. Is it the peak? I don't even know. Are we just entering the peak in the next year? I have no idea, but we did bring a special guest on today specifically to talk about this. I really wanted him to recap the year. Wasn't sure if he would be back to reality yet, which it sounds like he's not quite all the way back to reality, but we got Mr. Andres restart here. How's it going, buddy? What's up, man? I'm doing good. I don't think I'm ever quite fully into reality. So, you know, it'll be fine. It'll hopefully be fine. Hopefully. It'll be fine. No, we're gonna be great. Yeah. That's good. All right. So, yeah, we obviously have some stuff to talk about. First off, I wanna get into our, what we've been kicking off our pockets with lately and that's what have we been playing lately? If anything, I'll start off first this time just to kind of break the ice, I suppose, because I've been playing four different games. A lot of the same stuff you guys have heard about before I've been playing a little bit of Madden 22 and some leagues for that. I've been playing some Halo Infinite. I've been playing some Age of Empires 4 and finally getting some of the multiplayer on that game. Age of Empires and me go way back to the 90s, have a lot of fun with that on PC. And obviously I've been playing Pokemon Brilliant Diamond every single Tuesday here on the channel. Are you guys gonna tune in? I'm gonna be done with that before Arceus comes out. So, I think I'm onto my fifth badge and I'm done after the Elite Four. I'm not trying to 100% to get all the Chinese or anything like crazy crap. Just beating the main story and calling it good because people wanted to torture me and I said, fine, let's just beat a Pokemon game for the first time. And I don't even know. I mean, I guess technically I beat Pokemon Let's Go Eevee but I don't really count it since it's just a remake of a generation I already beat before. So it was more of a nostalgia trip and then seeing the Pokemon out in the wild was really, really cool. Which you sometimes see in this game but then sometimes don't. It's really weird. I don't really know. It's like they brought the element but then they didn't commit to it. It's just weird. Brilliant Down and Shutting Pro is kind of weird in general because it's not made by Game Freak. So, like I think overall the game is solid but in terms of glitches and the stuff it's there there have been more there are a lot more common than other than the typical Game Freak Pokemon game. Now there have been updates to sort of like rectify this but there are still sort of glitches like the game. There are little details about the game that just don't feel quite like Game Freak. Like I actually like a day or two ago I played finally I beat the Elite Four in Brilliant Down and Shutting Pearl and typically when you try to use an item in a battle and it will not work it tells you it will not work but it picked a particular item and instead of it telling me it will not work it then went into the battle and it just said oh this item does not work and my entire turn was wasted. That has never happened before when I played a Pokemon game. So, you know there's just like little things. That's exciting. No I was saying yeah buddy isn't that exciting when things don't work the way you expect. Yeah so Brilliant Down and Shutting Pearl is interesting it's still fun I still enjoyed it. I'm not saying it's like glitches abound it's just you can kind of tell that it wasn't made by Game Freak. Sure I mean I get that. I get that. I wouldn't know since I don't play Pokemon games so I don't notice these things. I haven't played Pokemon really much since generation two. I have dabbled once in a blue moon played some demos and some things but hasn't really excited me and the thing is a lot of the stuff that as I'm playing that people ask you how's your opinion change has this change? Who needs to really get into it because you want to drag in Pokemon and it's like sure it sounded exciting for half a second when someone borrowed it up and then okay there's all these pre-rex before I can go do it. By the time I hit those pre-rex I just don't care anymore. So the problem I obviously always have a Pokemon in general is well this is really a problem this is what the game is I just don't enjoy it anymore. It's very tedious, very grindy and also really easy. Now it can get more complex multiplayer other things I hear the Elite Four in this game are actually quite difficult compared to prior games and that's exciting. I am looking forward to the Elite Four but then again it's like but here's the thing. Okay so the Elite Four is hard. Okay so what that tells me is I'm just gonna be grinding my perfect party that is the perfect counter to each one of the Elite Four back to back to back to back and I'm just gonna be grinding and grinding until I get to max level. Okay well that doesn't really sound like an exciting thing. Well I mean you don't have to grind you just play for strategy I guess. Sure you could but like- So I think the ideal way to play the game is not to play it where you just over level everything you just kind of explore the world and enjoy it for what it is at your own pace and if you do that and try not to fight every single trainer and kill every single wild Pokemon you're actually gonna find yourself under leveled and the game will be more challenging. That's how I played through it and I found that to be more satisfying. But I mean yeah if you just stick back and grind which will be tedious and annoying and but then also when you find progress in the game it'll be very easy and unsatisfying like I don't think that's the right way to play the game. Well so everyone's got their own ways to play of course. My thing is what happened is I got to the first gym and their Pokemon were like eight levels ahead of me. And even though when I got captured the right Pokemon for the thing it didn't matter cause even you know non-effective attacks are taking away three quarters of my Pokemon's health and my attacks are only taking away like an eighth of theirs even when they're super effective. So the thing is it told me I'm under leveled. So then what did I have to do? Turn around and go grind until I was leveled up. And by the time you do that you fight some of the trainers along the path I barely even fight the wild Pokemon. I'm already significantly out leveled and I'm not even trying to be. I was under leveled for gym one and now I'm just over leveled for everything I've come up against since. Now the thing is I don't mind being over leveled. I don't mind it necessarily being easy to be fair guys. I always thought when I was a kid that the gym people were easy because they're all one type of Pokemon. And if you know what the gym is you and you can find out literally when you walk and it tells you you just change your team up and wreck face anyway. So like it was never really challenging when I was younger either to be fair but I played Pokemon for a very different reason when I was younger. And that reason to me is gone. It's been gone for a long time. And that reason is gotta catch them all. Had nothing to do with being nearly four. Had nothing to do with being a Pokemon master and getting all eight badges. Sure you did that along the way. But it was about spending all this time running around in the grass trying to get Pokemon to spawn and capturing them. And I don't care about the shinies I don't care about any less of just getting one of every Pokemon mattered to me when I was younger. And even if I got like the first evolution instead of trying to catch the next one I would just level up that evolution until it evolved. So it was how I played. It was all about the gotta catch them all which was beaten to me with the TV show. The TV show beat that into me. So that's how I played the game. That was the exciting part. Problem is- Kirk said he's gotta catch them all. Yeah. See, but the problem is as you get into a couple of generations later now they've added like 400 more Pokemon. It's just not exciting. It seems daunting to try to catch them all now. Yeah. And I actually think with Legends Arceus the game that's coming out about a month from now. Yeah. I'm actually looking forward to that one. Of course it's very different. One, it's very different but it's also it is more focused on actually collecting the Pokemon. Like that seems what the game is actually built around as opposed to the other Pokemon games where yes you can collect them but kind of catching them all feels more like a tedious experience while in Legends Arceus it seems like that's what the gameplay has been built around. Like they come up with new and fun ways to collect Pokemon and capture them. It's like all more of a seamless thing, you know? So I think it's gonna be different there but also there's not as many Pokemon in Legends Arceus. It's not nearly as daunting. Like I don't know if we know the exact number yet but it's looking like it's basically gonna be kind of like a synodex and that's pretty much it. Not like all near a thousand. There's not a thousand Pokemon but if you account for different forms and stuff like that it does get a lot more. By next gen there will be a thousand. Yeah, there's a lot. A lot a lot. But yeah, in terms of games I've been playing I have been playing not a lot a lot recently. I'm still playing through Breath of the Wild. Again, I don't know if I've mentioned that here if I mentioned them. At some point or another on the internet I mentioned within the last few weeks that I've been playing through Breath of the Wild again and I am trying to decide if maybe it's my favorite game of all time. We'll see. Jerry's still out there but you know it's holding up pretty well. It's been ongoing for again. Yeah. But besides that during my trip back home to see my family for Christmas my brother had gotten one of those little arcade cabinets that have the different games in there and we just started playing Pac-Man the entire time. The entire time we were just playing Pac-Man trying to get the highest score possible. It was sort of fascinating to me that we were playing Pac-Man again that came out in 1980 compared to everything else and that was just like really fun like just getting into this game that is sold but the gameplay is kind of timeless. So yeah, that's what I've been playing lately I guess. That's nice man. Eric, you been playing anything lately? Besides getting your ass kicked and Madden being frustrated? Yeah, no, not really. I haven't really had a chance to play anything else. I mean, yeah, no, I've been over here a couple of days we played some Madden. And yeah, it's pretty much been it. So basically he hasn't enjoyed playing a game in a while. Not since, well, your trip that you went on two weeks ago now, you got to play some games then. Yeah, I would say I was... You finished Odyssey didn't you? Nope, up to Bowser level. Up to Bowser level, yeah. Almost, almost. Cool, that's really cool man. So yeah, I think we can just kind of we already slowly actually talked about obviously a game that came out this year, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, Shining Pearl. But one thing I actually want to talk about is really just the year that was because it was kind of an interesting year for Nintendo. Obviously Switch sales are incredible. They've been incredible for like three straight years. So 2019 was already really incredible for Switch, had Smash Bros kind of kicking it off from December of the prior year and had an extremely strong end of software for the last six months. They just killed it at the end of 2019. With a lot of their smaller IPs I would say, but smaller IPs that have been doing well of late, especially with the 3DS. So it was kind of like the rush of 3DS kind of games coming in, obviously Pokemon Sword and Shield being part of that as well. Again, first new generation of Pokemon on a thing that's intended to be used with your TV. What Nintendo calls a home console. Still argue it's a handheld, but it's the most powerful handheld Pokemon's ever been on. Well, I mean, some of you guys are obviously emulating and doing your thing, but you know what I mean? Intentionally released on a powerful hand, gaming platform. And then we move into 2020 and obviously, we all know it was like Animal Crossing and Hyrule Warriors and not really a whole lot in between. A few sparing games here or there, nothing too exciting. But again, pandemic, tried to give the excuse there was like no Nintendo Directs all year. Very weird year. Since 2020, my favorite game of the year might have been Paper Mario, The Origami King. Paper Mario, yep, that was their summer game. That was their big summer game. I mean, thinking about it, like it was Animal Crossing, which to me is a great game, but it's not really my cup of tea. So we had 3D All Stars, which is three old Mario games. Pikmin 3 Deluxe, which is an old Pikmin game. Age of Calamity, which is developed by Koei Tecmo. It's a spin-off warrior style Musou Zell game, which was pretty good as far as Musou games go. I think it's like the best Musou game, too. So like it was pretty cool. But in terms of like brand new original titles from Nintendo, I think it was Animal Crossing and Paper Mario. We did get Zimba Chronicles of End of Edition, but again, that's a remaster, right? So like, yeah, I think for me, probably, yeah, I think Paper Mario The Origami King was probably like my personal best gaming experience from last year. I did play the Future Connected, the epilogue story from Zimba Chronicles of End of Edition this year. I finished it, then I beat the first part of the game in 2020, and that was pretty good. But yeah, I didn't mean to cut you off because I know you were like sort of building up to 2021. No, you're, dude, you're all good. You're always free to cut me off, man. Someone's got to do it. Otherwise, I won't shut up. So obviously 2020 kind of came to its close and we got into 2021. And, you know, it was an interesting year this year. There was obviously some surprises in there. Metroid Dread obviously being one of the biggest ones because people didn't really expect it to fight. Some rumors of a 2D Metroid, it was like we didn't know it'd be Dread, necessarily. So that was like the big, oh man, really? And having the Dread name was a total surprise. Like what the game was, gameplay-wise, like everything they did with the changing camera perspectives and like, you know, the 2D style of gameplay, like that all sort of saw coming. But when they towed the Dread naming, that was just that blew my mind. Yeah, I bet. So yeah, it was a very interesting thing. I got really excited when they announced it at E3. You guys all saw my live reactions. If you guys didn't, you can go back and watch it. You can go back and watch Andrey's reactions and everyone else's reactions on YouTube because a lot of people were going nuts over it actually being Metroid Dread, not just being a 2D Metroid game, which a lot of people did expect, even without rumors, after Samus Returns was a fairly well-done game by Mercury Steam. We just probably should have been on Switch at the time. It kind of felt like an ill-time 3DS release. But Nintendo was hedging their bets because they weren't sure at the time if Switch was actually going to be what Switch became. Which was why, technically, they still have not said Switch is a replacement for 3DS, even though they no longer make 3DS. But again, they said the same thing about Game Boy Advance and DS. So it's called hedging their bets. If Switch flops, they want to release a sequel to 3DS. Well, Switch didn't flop, so they don't got to worry about it. So in hindsight, yeah, they probably wouldn't put that on Switch and it would have just been another banger in 2017 on Switch. But we get into this year, and obviously the Metroid Dread was a big one. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, Shiny Pearl, obviously sells really, really well. Some people love it, some people don't. That's just the way it goes with Pokemon pretty much all the time regardless. And then we have to consider things like the beginning of the year. So they started it off with what I thought was a really interesting title. And that was Bowser's Fury. So we got Super Mario 3D World, which everyone expected was going to be ported at some point because they've been porting almost everything from Wii U. We're kind of getting down to the bottom barrel of what's left to port from Wii U. Obviously, everyone knows about Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD. But yeah, we still have things like Xenoblade Chronicles exploding out there if they ever decide to bring that over. You know, Devil's 3rd technically Nintendo paid for, although ended up not being a great game. And who knows? There's probably a couple other guys can drive you up. I don't think the Paper Mario games coming over. I think they've kind of just moved on and just made new ones. But there could be a few old titles from Star Fox Zero, another example of a game they could potentially bring back if they wanted to. But I look at it as, I didn't care about the Super Mario 3D World aspect because I already played the hell out of that game and beat the hell out of that game. I was a Wii U owner. Pretty much all the Wii U games I had already played a lot. And back when the Wii U came out, I only had like a single child at the time. So I got to game a hell of a lot more then than I do now with three kids. So what's nice about, oh yeah, Nintendo's filling out the slate with these Wii U ports. It's like, that's good, good. You're filling out the slate with games I don't need to play. Thank you. But Bowser's Fury was something I couldn't ignore because everything they showed about it leading up to release was like, wait a sec. This isn't just some like side dish mini game thing. This looks different. Feels different. So I get the game. Very first night we have it, Eric and I are playing it. And my God, am I impressed? I came away after I finally beat it. Like a few days later, the Bowser's Fury part as I won an entire Mario game built around this concept. And I didn't think I wanted a Mario game built around any other concept, but more Odyssey. And now I'm like, I'm confused. This is like an open-ish world kind of thing that slowly opens up like a lot of open worlds do. And there's all this crazy crap happening all the time. And yeah, I know you probably aren't gonna reuse the whole Bowser mechanic that kind of made that whole thing tick and also to me made it feel a little bit cheap. This is how I kind of knew this wasn't a full game is it's all built around the same base concept and just eventually getting to the point that you could take them out. Geez, that was a loud dud. Don't know if you guys heard it. But yeah, so there's all that. But honestly, I thought it was a great way to start the year. One, you're starting with Mario. And two, you're starting it with something new for everybody. Didn't play 3D world, fantastic game. Enjoy it. Also, if you did, Bowser's Fury happens to be pretty fantastic and almost worth the price of admission on its own. Like, what did you guys think about Bowser's Fury to kick off the year? I thought it was pretty awesome. I really very much enjoyed it. I actually bought 3D world plus Bowser's Fury. I played through Bowser's Fury. I didn't touch 3D world. So. Yeah, I didn't touch 3D world either to be honest. I mean, I already 100% 3D world back on Wii U. So I didn't really have a strong urge to do that. And also I let a friend borrow it so they could try it out afterwards. So like, you know, I may go back to it and play a 3D world again on there, but my primary intent was just to play Bowser's Fury. And it was great. I enjoyed it. It was fun. It was like what? Like a 15 hour experience, something like that. I got every single little thing I could possibly get in it and it was a good time. I definitely kind of agree with you that like, I would love to see a 3D Mario game sort of built around that concept in full. Maybe not entirely exactly like that, but you know, I like how they're playing around with that with how you would explore an openish style Mario game. And then obviously there's what they did with Odyssey. I do feel like they are headed, they are gonna maintain that sort of direction of an open style Mario game. And it's clearly performing better than previous Mario games. So, you know, I think they probably should do that. That doesn't mean that like the Galaxy style isn't good, but like you can still get that type of gameplay in pockets. Like that's kind of like how Odyssey worked where there were side areas that you would go to and have that sort of linear A to B sort of like obstacle course. You can still have that mixed into the open style of gameplay. So you can still kind of get the best of both worlds. So, you know, when we do get the next 3D Mario, which I don't think is too soon from now, I think we probably have to wait at least a couple of years. It'll probably be like that. Nice. What'd you think about it? Well, first off, to hear you say, you know, next Mario game that a couple of years, that's insane with how many years it's already been. 2017. An actual new game. So, you know, five, seven years. It's been a lot of ports. It's been a Mario game. Like an actual like. A lot of ports and spinoffs. It's new Mario game, I should say. That's insane. But no, I actually loved Bowser's Fury. I mean, as much as, you know, playing what is it, Bowser Jr. flying around and with a little paintbrush. It'd be great to actually see a game like that, but like full two player cooperative almost in a way where even if you do kind of split off a little bit, it splits screens. And then if you come back together in the same area, it just molds back into one. That would be cool. That'd be freaking insane. That's a really neat concept. I'd really like that concept a lot. Holy crap. But no, that'd be just awesome. Because you could like, necessarily be working on two different things at once because you got to stay in the same world area, but you could be working, you know, you don't have to be, oh my God, this player's running this way, but I want to quick check. I saw something, I want to run over here, but the camera's following this guy. You know, I want it to make a quick little jaunt off to the left. I can't. Yeah, it would be interesting to see if like, yeah, when you're playing, if you're close enough to it, it could all be on one screen, it's on one screen. But if it's possible to do that and have it split to like a split screen thing, like you said, I wonder how that would work. Like if that would work well, like visually, we haven't seen it really done. I don't think so. It'd be interesting to see if they could pull that off and it would actually work well. Yeah, no, I don't know. I just thought of it now. I wouldn't be surprised if they even considered something like that before. And but I would imagine that one sort of hurdle there would be performance. Oh, you know, because whenever you do like a local multiplayer frame rate goes down and you know, if they're going to be targeting 60 frames per second, now moving forward Mario, having it switch to split screen like that, having two different players play in different parts of the map. It's a technical hurdle. But if we're talking about switch pro, but if we're talking about switch two, yeah, then maybe, you know, that's not as much of a hurdle, but then also like how would it look visually? Would it work visually? Obviously, we don't know, right? That's something that they would have to test out. But I like the idea like. Yeah, no, it would. I just like to see a game that's kind of along this lines, but, you know, more full multiplayer, you know, where this one was multiplayer, but you know, not really multiplayer because the second player only did. Oh, so much. So yeah, no, I liked it a lot. I could see how you could blend the Bowser's Fury and Odyssey kind of together to get kind of a really interesting, fun gameplay. Yeah, I really like that concept. This is... Is this markdown as one of Eric's like greatest ideas ever? And this might be the greatest idea you've ever come up on the podcast to be honest. Good one. Yeah, it's a good one. I mean, it's good. It's original. I've never heard of it before. Anybody else? Like a lot of things. Like I'm on the internet all the time covering things and watching people's videos. Like I hear a lot of ideas. So sometimes for me, it's hard to come up with my own original one because I'm just in kind of blends from others that I hear. But damn, I like it. I mean, it's a solid idea. I think what would help is like I said, you can't go to different like... Oh, I'm giving me a motto on the phone quick. The world parts of the map. But if you're in the same like little area and you know, you could just jaunt off a little bit and be on your own little screen and then come back together. I think would be freaking awesome. Of course I got the busy signal, right? That bastard. Really good idea. So I guess kind of move down the line of the games. First, before I do that, I want to make sure that I acknowledge all of the Super Chatters because we had quite a few of them kick off this thing. I kicked it off and kind of jokingly started a Super Chat game. And the game is definitely on at the moment. So Veneta712 said two can play this game. Also, by the way, we had a new member pop in there from Derek Lee. Thank you so much for becoming a new member. By the way, if you want to support the podcast directly guys, it's patreon.com slash Nintendo Prime. That is literally money that's directly for the podcast. So like, if you want to just support this show, if you want to support the channel in general, keep doing what you're doing. You got the, then I decided to one up them with 10 bucks. Logan Laban comes in with a dollar. And I've been doing drinks this whole time without acknowledging any of these. You guys have seen me do it. And here's the problem. Veneta's came back with 15 bucks and I said game on at 20. And I was probably going to stop at 20. And taker610 comes in with two and is talking about, you know what, or remake. So thank you so much for the two bucks taker610. But then Veneta 712 passed over the $50. And he says to kick it up a notch. And what Veneta 712 may or may not have known is that tonight tequila shots are 50 bucks. I mentioned this on stream yesterday. Oh boy. And I wasn't going to talk about it on the podcast, but I also didn't expect it to happen. So not only the Veneta 712, and I text Yulia, Hey, is it all right if I donate some money to top Veneta 712? And I was just going to do $55. Yulia comes on and says, now we don't go no $55. She drops the hundo and says, love you. She does love you. So, oh boy, she's at work. That's nuts. I'm not going to like looking at the bank account later. That's okay. Okay, we're all good. We're all good. We're coming up on multiple paydays. Everything will be fine. But yeah, thank you so much guys for that crazy support. And Veneta 712, good luck topping Yulia. She's now the top chatterer. I think she might have won the game. That being said. Damn, I've never lost the game. That being said, what was the next game released after Bowser's Fury? I'm literally trying to do this off the top of my head. And that's really upsetting me that I'm kind of drawing a blank. I'm like, because there are games before Metroid. Bravely Default 2. Bravely Default 2. Okay, yep. That was definitely a decent one that came out. Better than decent. It was actually a really good game. Yeah. There's another game that came out in March that I absolutely adore. It's one of my favorite games on Switch. And I think it probably should have gotten more game of the year nominations. What's that? Monster and a Rise. Oh yeah, Monster and a Rise. There you go. Yeah, and that sold a lot. It's like over 9 million right now. It's crazy. Yeah, it's selling incredibly well. It's reviewed incredibly well. From a technical perspective, it's arguably the most impressive Switch game. It's got hours of hours of gameplay. But not the 7-12. Hold up. Technically, but not the 7-12 is winning the game because he beat out my fiance by a penny. By a penny. By a penny. Honey, it's on you. You have to, okay, go on higher than that. All right, go on now. The difference of that penny adds a whole other digit. Yeah, I know. Honey, $100 and one cent? Maybe. Actually, she did it from her iPhone. So like the next, I don't even want to know what you're doing next. Anyways, go on. Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt, but when I see a Hundo drop, I got to recognize. For sure. No, no, I'm just, I just, Monster and a Rise was just a really, really good, it is a really good game and we're going to get Sunbreak next year to expand upon it. It was nice to see a third-party effort, a ground-up exclusives, well, timed exclusive for Switch that pushed the system. It showed that, hey, look, we can have really visually impressive games on Switch that appeal to the core gamer that can sell really well. Like Monster and a Rise is, and this is something that I think, Nate, you agreed with me, but I predicted would go down as the best-selling third-party game on Switch and it's looking like it's going to be that. Like it's just selling it phenomenally well and I expect that to continue and especially with Sunbreak coming out next year. It's just a good time. Like I really enjoyed, you know, just getting into hunts with different friends and playing that for a good while. I still haven't finished it actually so I've been kind of waiting to play with a few people but it's just, that was a good, good game to come out early in the year. Yeah, it really was. And one thing I liked about Monster and a Rise in particular, it was the debut of Nintendo's new online servers. And to date, I still think it has like the best online gameplay for a Switch, you know, quote-unquote exclusive. Very clean. But what also sucks though is because it's using Nintendo servers, it's not cross compatible with the PC version coming next year. It's going to use completely different servers. So like there is that where I almost think that might have been a mistake on Capcom's part to not use their own server structure instead of Nintendo's. But I can also understand that they did build the game from the ground up for Switch. It doesn't even look like a game that should even run on Switch because of that, because it's so custom built for Switch. Obviously that means the PC version is not going to be like the greatest looking game of all time. You know, it might not even look as good as World did but still. Part of me is also wondering if Nintendo didn't kind of, well, there was money. Oh, there was money involved. There was a table saying, hey, how about you put this on our, on our, holy Christ, how about you put this on our server and my God. Honey, I love you. We're not going to have any money left in the bank after today, are we? Yeah. I mean, I get paid next week, so we'll be okay. But she, she was not, she was not going to let that stand. For those who don't know, you're listening to the audio version. My fiance, Yulia, is in the chat. We're getting married August next year. It's going to be a good times. Here's the thing. She's in on the game. And the problem with getting her in on the game is she doesn't like to lose. So when I just topped her with a penny on the donation, she said, screw it, I'm donating 200. Well, technically 199.99. So this is officially the most amount of super chats that we've ever had on a podcast in terms of revenue. I guess we're having a very merry end of the year, although I pay like part of that to Google, but it's okay because other people are donating that kind of sort of makes up for it and then some. So this is insane. I guess, honey, I don't know if you're going to be top today. Holy shit. All right. Sorry, I'm just taking a back at the moment from the hundo, the hundo, the two hundo, back to back to back. That's Eric. How many shots of tequila can you handle? Cause I can't do the three in a row. That's why I put one in front of you. I don't want to see that. I saw that. I was like, you know, I can't do three in a row. Yeah. Yeah. So you got to do some of that. I would share it with you, but I didn't bring any liquor. This ain't no cheap stuff. This is top shelf. Well, kind of top shelf. There is top shelf behind Don Julio. So what came out after Rise? Well, actually. Oh, I'm not talking about stories too. Dead, but what? It came out around June or July. Yeah. Apex actually came out. Apex Legends. Apex Legends. Yeah, on Switch. It doesn't run very well on Switch, unfortunately. I found the list of games. Yeah, you're on the Nintendo's website. Yep. After Monster Hunter Rise, do you want to do this first? Yeah. Well, let's get him started on the next game. Next game would have been Pokemon Snap. New Pokemon Snap. In April. Oh my gosh. How did we forget that? I actually beat, well, I didn't beat the new content they added in. I still have to go back and play that. But dude, you still have to see new Pokemon Snap. See this game, yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Am I turning on my Switch and you're just gonna play it while we go? You're right. No. We can wait. Are you sure? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's fine. I still want to use Switch. You've been waiting 20 years for this game. I know. I know. And I've had it this whole time. I know. We just haven't had a chance. What's wrong with you? We just haven't had a chance to play it. We've been not doing it. I've had a chance to play it. I own it. Yeah. I've been busy as fudge this year. So yeah, new Pokemon Snap. And you know what I thought was exciting about this one was the whole thing I was worried about new Pokemon Snap was, look, I have a lot of nostalgia for the original. What can they really do here? It's a game where you're on rails taking pictures. What's the big deal? You know, how is this gonna be exciting in 2021? And I gotta be honest. I don't throw this out often, but for the kind of game and for what they were doing with it, I can't find a flaw with new Pokemon Snap. And I can find a flaw in anything. My favorite game of all time, Breath of the Wild. I can pick out dozens of flaws. But I can't with this game. I could argue it's perhaps a bit too slow paced. But that's what it is. It's a picture game. It's Pokemon Snap. It's supposed to be slow. It's slow paced. If you've ever done real photography, it's very slow. I'm just saying, like, if you want me to split hairs. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. It's great for what it is. It's absolutely great for what it is. I think it's an hour-long part. And there's like nothing like it out there. That's the one thing. It's like it's a unique experience. I mean, it's a unique experience on Switch because technically there is the N64 one. But it's not a usual style of game. Like a game where you're just on rails taking pictures of Pokemon, examining the wildlife in that way. Like it's just cool. It's a cool, cool experience. Like, yeah. Good game. Great game. Yeah, it's a, I absolutely love it. Like it is the most enjoyable Pokemon game I've probably played since I was a kid. And guys, I'm in my mid 30s. So it's been a while since I've been a kid. And it depends on what you consider to be a kid. I know some people are like, oh, if you're in your early 20s, you're still a kid. I only call people, by the way, in their very early 20s, still a kid, if they act like one. Right. If you act like you're a teenager, I'm gonna treat you like you're a teenager. It's kind of how it goes. My perspective is you're a kid until you have a kid. Oh. Well, fuck. I will say, when you have a kid, it's a whole new level, whole new level of life. And by the way, not everyone has to have a kid. That's why I'm not gonna go as far as saying you have to have a kid or you're a kid until then. But I will say- If you don't have a kid, then it's a decision. Yeah, but even then- Is it a decision, Eric? Is it a decision that by now you don't have a child? Yeah, right. I'm not so sure that it's a decision for somebody. No, no, no, no, no. What I meant was it's a decision to become an adult as opposed to being- Oh, yes, yes, yes. What even then though? Basically, you become an adult by either having a kid or deciding you were an adult. Yeah, and I frame being an adult, guys, by taking on adult-like responsibilities. This would be, you can rent your whole life. I don't care if you rent your whole mortgage and own a home, that doesn't matter to me, right? That's all gonna be putting on where you live, income levels, all that. But you're an adult when you're willing to take on to meet the responsibilities of being one. Paying all your bills, by yourself. Nobody helping you. Hand me out. Literally, you take care of everything on your own and you're willing to do it. Your car breaks down or gets wrecked and you can actually go get a new car somehow, some way. Or if you're in, maybe you're lucky and you live in the city and you don't use any car, maybe you just buy a bike or you do public transit, whatever works for you. But the point is, is you take responsibility for everything you're doing. Not just partying all the time, which I very much was doing in my early 20s. Not exactly a fiscally responsible thing to be doing. Basically when you're being fiscally responsible. But not the 7-12 was not gonna let that stand. But not the 7-12 was now the leader. Is now the leader by a penny. Honey, I don't even know if the money exists to top that but you can attempt it. I won't stop you, I won't be mad. Oh Lord. Because this is insane right now. Literally, if Yulia tops that and then the 7-12 comes back and tops it again, that beats our E3 stream. That becomes the most we've made in a single stream ever. But to be counted as most we made, we gotta subtract our money from it. Yeah, right. But still, one cent again for real. Yeah honey, that's because when you donate from an iPhone it goes by the 99 cent because that's how Apple Pay works. And he's donated it from a computer or an Android which goes by the dollar. That's why he could beat you by a penny. And I don't even think on an iPhone you could type in like $1.99 or like $2.01 or something. I don't even think it works. You gotta do it from a computer. Anyways, sorry guys, I'm heavily distracted because when I said this was gonna be the most super-chatted stream of, the most super-chatted, not sure, the most super-chatted podcast we've ever had. I did not expect this at the beginning. So I am just in utter shock. Thank you so much, Banata 7-12, for participating in the game. The game wouldn't be worth playing for us if you weren't, to be honest. All right, so as I pour a couple more shots of Don Julio, which I might get up to three shots tonight in a row anyways at this rate. This is your last one. As I say, usually you stop it too. So looking beyond New Pokemon Snipers, what did Metopia come out? Well, next was Famicom Detectives. Oh, Famicom Detectives, yeah. They brought that back, yep. And then Metopia. Never been released in the US, by the way, until that. That's crazy. In the NES days. Metopia then came out in May of 2021. You want to keep going after that? Yeah. Metopia, by the way, fun fact about that one, that's made by Grezzo, who brought that over. And Grezzo is typically one that works on Zelda remakes. So what's coming next from them? That's interesting, yeah. I'm just saying, Metopia is out all the way. Metopia too, baby. Metopia too, it's coming out next year. You heard it here, third. Please, come on. Like, Arcadia Time and Majora's Mastery, come on. Bring them in HD, let's go. Come on, come on. Metopia too, though. Metopia too. What's going to sell more? Come on, Nintendo, smart decisions. Business decisions. Metopia too, literally. Switch built a massive audience for that game that I don't even think sold a million units. I have no idea. Because they announced all million sellers and I don't think it's among them, so. And yeah, I don't know. I would love to see Arcadia Time and Majora's Mask in HD, given an HD sort of cleanup. That'd be nice, but we are getting them on 64 online. I understand that there's some controversy around that. I just don't know if that's what they're gonna do. I'd almost like to see Grezzo sort of be at the helm for just a new 2D Zelda or a remake of something else. Like an actual remake, not just like an HD upscale. Like what if they were to take, I don't know, for example, Minish Cap and put that into a 3D style. Kind of like Link's Awakening, but not like that Chibi look like they would choose like maybe a different style, you know? Would you like to see that Chibi's Zelda look come back for anything at all? So I actually like the style for Link's Awakening just for the record. I'm just curious like if there's a world where they can reuse it for another one. Even if it's like, what if there's a brand new Zelda game? It's just I think Link, the style for Link's Awakening works because of what it is. Lots of Mario elements in it. It's like a dream-like thing, and then there's a Mario elements. So it kind of fits for that reason. I think that, I mean, it could be a style that's maybe comparable, but I would expect a style to be a little bit a little different from that. I'm not asking for like a gritty, like, you know, 2D Zelda. Well, to me, like if it's a brand new Zelda game, like, you know, brand new because Grezzel has, by the way, worked on a new one, like Triforce Zeroes. Like, I'd be okay if it was the same art style because even though like you can look at it and go like, it might not fit for other Zelda games. Well, how many different art styles has Zelda had? Like, let's just be honest, like any art style at this point pretty much could fit with the Zelda game. When you can go from Arkham Rune Time to Twilight Princess, The Breath of the Wild to the Wind Waker, down to Zelda 2 being a side scroller, like you could pretty much do any art style you want. With Zelda, I think it just depends. I mean, heck, do we really want to get to the CDI games and their style? So like, Zelda's been across the spectrum. You know, like even Mario seems like it's more consistent in its art direction than Zelda is. And that's crazy to me to even say that. I think it just depends on the feel of the game though too. Sure. I mean, ultimately, if a game is good, who's no one's gonna give a shit about it. Does the art style match the feel of the game? That, and I think Zelda has done a great job of matching up the art style with the feel of the game. Like Wind Waker, I can't imagine that in any other art style at this point. Like, I've seen Unreal Engine Reman. It's just not the same feel. It makes it feel too gritty compared to like the open free-ness and airiness and like floatiness of the gameplay. And like just, it kind of feels like cartoony style. And I like that. It's like a happy feeling. I get a happy feeling when I play Wind Waker. And I think that was the intent. Even though you're dealing with some dark stuff and there's a very interesting, to me it's still the best Ganondorf story of all time. Cause it is not really the villain per se. He is, cause he's doing bad things, but he's sorta doing it for the right reasons. It's really an interesting- You know what, I actually, I kind of feel you on that. I mean, again, he is the villain, but at the same time- Yeah, he's doing bad things that you shouldn't do, but I understand why he's doing it. Cause he feels guilty about something that happened. I don't want to spoil it for people in case it does come to switch. Yeah. But you know, think about it though, you could argue that the gods and the Wind Waker are the real villains. You know? Oh yeah, you could. They're the ones that chose to destroy, to just fully destroy Hyrule. They're the ones that flooded it all. They're the ones who had the Gerudo suffering the way they did in the desert, you could argue. Like they created that world, that environment, those conditions where there was that kind of suffering. So you can make the argument that perhaps they are the villains, you know? I don't think it's that deep, but there's an argument to be made, right? There is one. Yeah. I would actually love it if they were to maybe go in that direction for a particular Zelda game. Like what if after Breath of the Wild 2, which may have a finality to the Ganondorf story, maybe after that, what if the next Zelda game is like, you know, there's no Ganondorf and it's more about, maybe there's still that history of like that reincarnation evil spirit from- I have a theory of Breath of the Wild 2, but- But like after that, like- I think it's gonna set up a trilogy, but I think they're gonna go away from Ganonor. And maybe that third one is more towards what we're talking about here. How like the real threat here, the real issue is what the gods have created, these conditions that lead to this repeating cycle of pain and loss. So- So were those- Those are the things they could do. Those are the plays Skyward Sword. Because there's been references to things like by in the first Breath of the Wild. And I think there's gonna be more Skyward Sword references in this game, although it won't be like a, oh my gosh, this is based on Skyward Sword. But I get this feeling that like in the first game, Breath of the Wild, we kind of dealt with Calamity Ganon and Ganon. It wasn't really Ganondorf. That felt like just raw evil Ganon, captured, breaking free, putting them back down. And then obviously that somehow is remanifesting into Ganondorf who obviously was captured or something happened. And that's what we're gonna be dealing with in the second game. And hence why Zelda kind of mentioned at the end that like they're not done. There's more going on. Like she kind of said the journey wasn't over. I see Calamity Ganon, not even as Ganon, just as vestiges of Ganon escaping. And what we're really dealing with in the sequel is the actual true source. Like so we'll fight Ganondorf from the true Ganon. So there'll be a greater perceived threat. But Ganon was literally in Breath of the Wild. After the Calamity part. Calamity Ganon. But then, okay, anyways. I'm just arguing that like all that is from the mouths of the horse. By the way guys, we're speculating, Andre and I do this all the time. We have different ideas of what's gonna happen. So like, we just like, we could venture off for hours on this. My, to get to my idea, all I would say it is I kind of think no matter what happens in this game it's gonna like conclude Ganondorf for now. It's not. I mean, we agree on that. It's not forever, it's not forever. I could come back someday. These two iconic just like Bowser never gonna go away, go away. But I do think that Nintendo isn't dumb. Breath of the Wild's a 25 million seller. Breath of the Wild 2 might not get there cause Switch might not be around as long forward to get there. But Breath of the Wild 2 could be a 10, 15. Maybe it hits 20 million. I have no idea. Maybe it sells better. There's more Switches out there. Maybe everyone who bought Breath of the Wild is gonna end up showing up day one to buy Breath of the Wild 2. I have no idea. Nintendo I don't think knows either because Zelda's never been this. Like Animal Crossing became this kind of after New Leaf. It sold like 11, 12 million. And then look what it did on Switch. So, yeah. I'll tell you this. Cause we've had this discussion before. Yes. Cause I feel you've made the argument that because there are more units out now that they install base will is more likely to buy the more recent game. More of the install base. I think that's, I don't think, by the way, I'm on record to say and I don't think Breath of the Wild 2 is also in the original game. But I think if it does, it's because the install base is bigger. There's been 25 million or so people who have played the first game that might want to play another one. And this is something I never brought up. It could end up being another cross-generational game. Or even if it comes out on Switch first, it could come out on Switch 2 as an enhanced version with all DLC included. And that's what I kind of was gonna get to as well. Like I think if Breath of the Wild 2 does it, one, it's not gonna be coined as Breath of the Wild 2. It's gonna have its own name, which will allow it to stand on its own. But also it'll sell it, whatever it sells on Switch. But then, yeah, if there's a Switch 2 a year or two down the road, they can have a Game of the Year edition that's in 4K that has all the DLC. They'll call it probably definitive edition because that's, yeah. Yeah, whatever they wanna call it. They can do that and that, and if it comes out early on, like that's gonna, it's gonna sell well on Switch 2. Like that, and there's gonna be double-dippers. I'm gonna double-dip. I'll be one of those double-dippers. They won't, but if they put some collector's editions out there and be all over there. Like my whole thing is, I think Nintendo knows, no matter what number it sells, 10, 15, 20, more. Like, even if it just sells 10, which to me is like a bottom, no, I think it's massively underselling the potential of Breath of the Wild 2. I mean, you look at the trailers themselves almost have 10 million views. Like this game's clearly gonna do phenomenal just based off of that because more people buy it than watch the trailer. That's just what happened. So, and obviously there's a switch effect of everything sells better on Switch. I don't think that's stopping in 2022. You look at that lineup, we'll get to it in a moment, it's gonna continue. My theory of Breath of the Wild 2 is that it's going to not want to end the best Zelda's ever been in terms of sales. They're gonna wanna set up a third. Even that third's not till next gen, which clearly wouldn't be because they, heck, this is a direct sequel using the same engine, they still took five plus years. So, it'll be a next gen. But, but, I think they're gonna set it up as like an arc. So, you had Calamity, which was like raw evil. Now you have Ganondorf, which is like what we're kind of used to, it's gonna be more established, what we're used to seeing, take care of that, whatever the hell happens in this game. And I think what's gonna happen is gonna set up the return of Demise for the third game. This has been these hints for Skyward Sword along the way. Now we're literally in the sky. Demise finally breaks free. He's been sealed this whole time. He's the one to cast the curse. You defeat him, he says, no. My curse still stands. It's just gonna be me this time. I'm coming back. And that's gonna be kind of the setup at the end of the game, where he's not gonna necessarily be there. We're not gonna know he's the bad guy yet. We're not gonna know till they unveil the next game. But, I think there's got, I don't think this is gonna, like, like Breath of the Wild. I always said I wanted Breath of the Wild to end with a cliffhanger. Then we got the, if you got the true ending of the game, it doesn't end with a cliffhanger. So we didn't exactly get that, but it did end with Zelda basically saying, we're not done. Come with me. We're not done. There's more to do. And you're like, what do you mean there's more to do? I just did the thing. How is there more to do? What there is. And we just didn't know what it was. We never thought, you know, maybe we thought we'd find the conclusion of the DLC. Didn't really get it in the DLC. So we're like, okay. So obviously it was setting up Breath of the Wild too. Got Breath of the Wild too. I think there's gonna be something like at the end of this where maybe even it feels like it's done. But then something happens off in the distance. You're like, huh? And then boom, it just ends. And you're just like, what the fuck? What now? Clearly there's gonna be a third one. I'd even love it if it ended by saying see you in Breath of the Wild 3 or something like that. Or whatever they call this game. We have no idea what they're gonna call it yet. It's just called the sequel to the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, the moment officially. Anyways, well, let's circle back. I know we could talk about our ideas on this forever. Let's get in the 2022. Let's get back to 2021. Yeah, we did have one thing though. One thing about the whole sales potential thing. Because I was just trying to think of an example of a game that's came out on Switch and then a sequel comes out that sells better. I don't know if we have one yet, but Pokemon Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl last I heard technically is outpacing Sword and Shield. Now I don't know if long-term if it will actually be a better selling game than Sword and Shield, but it is currently outpacing it. So there are some signs suggesting it may. I feel like it won't, but maybe some of that could be attributed to the larger install base to your point familiar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, go for it. We love it. Guys, you can't tell Zelda comes up. It just doesn't stop here. No, for sure. What I'd like to see something like even for the third game maybe, say in the story apps of the trilogy, but an enemy of my enemy is my friend type of situation where all of a sudden the big bad in three, you have to team up with Ganon to defeat and you run through three different stages of the story. One with Link, one with Zelda, one with Ganon to finally come to the final boss where all three of you are fighting together to defeat the big bad. And the big bad will be aliens. Right, could be. They're a Majora's Mask. Aliens exist. Aliens are canon in Zelda, by the way. They are. And they were actually gonna be in Breath of the Wild. If you guys go back to the early development documents, there were aliens in Breath of the Wild. You just have to take, yeah, but also you can make the argument that everything that's being showed with the Sheikah technology is a hard reference to ancient aliens. So what if there's like this ancient race that comes in and sure they were somewhere left behind that were good like the Sheikah, but then there's like an evil force that's even stronger, even greater, more powerful. So that could be that unifying, that reason to unify against that. Yeah, well, this was a fun clip for the podcast. Yeah, right? Yeah. Let's get back to the 2021. By the way, I don't want to dismiss Famicom Detective Club, by the way. I haven't played it. It's not a very popular style of game to be clear. It is a very niche style of game, but I will say it's a good style of game. It's actually really good. It's just not, it's kind of like when I praise things like Return to Zork. It's not the kind of game I expect 99% of you guys to know about, care about, or even enjoy if you do try it. But people that are into this point and click games into these kind of storyboard style games, it's phenomenal. It's kind of like Ace Turning Guys. I don't know what's into that whole thing. Yeah, I don't know. But it is really good for what it is. And that's what Famicom Detective Club, for the genre it's in, there isn't a lot better than what it does. There is another game that came out that actually had me even more excited than Famicom Detective Club. You mean every game that came out in 2021 besides that game? Well, I mean, there's actually no one in particular that I think is rather impressive. Topia, we just talked about that. I don't know, there's another. Topia too, come on. Ooh, no, there's another. Game Builder Grouch? It actually released on June 4th, 2021. Yeah, there you go. Yep, it was by the title of DC Superhero Girls trademark team power. Heck yeah. You know, that game's actually good. Have you played it? No, no I haven't. It's actually a good game. The problem is totally made for kids. Which isn't, there isn't a problem. But like Nintendo featured that in one of their like directs or something and it was like, what is this game? It's like, guys, it's fun. It's just, the title alone guarantees you're not getting anything, but like it's very specific kids that are into this very specific thing. You're getting teens to play it. Yeah, like you're not getting teens to play this game. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, guys. Pre-teens. This is pre-teens. This is early childhood who wants to be cool playing this game. It actually is a solid game, but what I found interesting is what came next. And that was what? Game Builder Garage? Yep, Game Builder Garage. And like, I'm gonna be honest, guys. I haven't played Game Builder Garage. I have watched videos on it. I've watched reviews on it. And the whole reason I haven't played it is, I bought Labo VR. I could already make my own games in Labo VR. And everything I have seen in reviews and videos of this is just the Game Builder mode from Labo VR, no longer in VR with a few additional features to make it a little more enticing. I personally, well, I've seen some cool things. Let's just be honest. I'm a Nintendo guy. I love Nintendo. This is not nearly as good as Dreams on PlayStation. I'm afraid on Randall's point. Sorry. Stop insulting this game. This game is great. Game Builder Garage is one of the best games to come out in 2021. It is awesome. I love it. Don't you dare insult this game one more time. I will slight you. I'm just kidding. But I definitely really liked the game a lot. I thought it was awesome. It's released with like 30 bucks or something. Like it's cheap. Yeah, it was 30. And even though there are limitations, there's still a lot of really cool things you can do with it. And the way it sort of teaches you, I think that's what makes it different though, is it sort of teaches you sort of like philosophies behind game design. And it's kind of like a nice starting point there. And it's just a very funny game. I've built like a whole platforming level that had like dynamic music and stuff. And it was just cool. I know you don't go outside Nintendo very often. Have you ever played Dreams? I've seen what some people have done with it. Well, yes. Yeah, everyone's seen some of the insane things you can do with it. So not only can you build all basically entirely full games and Dreams, it also teaches you the basics of game design concepts. And it does it better. Like Game Builder Garage feels like some cheap indie game knockoff. Attempting to be something that it can't. Which by the way, I'm not surprised because after seeing Game Builder Garage, it's literally, they just ripped out the Game Builder Mode from Lab OVR. Now, maybe you didn't play Lab OVR. A lot of people did by the way. I own Lab OVR. I'm a proud owner of Lab OVR. I spent a lot of time in the Game Builder Mode in there. It looks a lot like that. It's like they just took this, what was a neat idea, and said we're gonna throw this on its own and see how it does. Didn't do very well. Isn't promoted anymore. Heck, they don't even discount it because nobody wants it. And it was just sad because Nintendo has been dabbling in Game Builders. Mario Maker, Mario Maker 2. They've been dabbling in Game Builders. It's just, I have to get Sony props. Sony funded a better game. They funded a better game that does this. That's my knock is like, I can't help but compare Nintendo's Game Builder Garage to Sony's actual Game Builder and Dreams. Like Dreams is just fundamentally in every which way a better game. I think this is just speculation, but I think that Nintendo intentionally restrains their Game Builders because they don't want people to make too much on there to the point where it could perhaps take away. Like imagine if you could just build a full-on 3D action adventure that looks like Legend of Zelda. You know, then people can just download those games and you play that. And then, you know, maybe you're less likely to buy Breath of the Wild, for example. You know, like, I think there's perhaps some of that that is considered. That's just me sort of spitball on here. Maybe I'm even dumb to consider that. But I just kind of wonder, like, you know, maybe Nintendo doesn't want people to be able to have full-on control to create basically whatever you want to the point where people will just get Game Builder Garage and basically get nothing else. Like they don't want that experience to invalidate other experiences that are already on the system. No, I can hear you. I think that's, personally, I think that's a dumb way. If that's what they were for you in it, I think that's just the wrong way to view it because a thing where you literally build your own games can't invalidate other game experiences because other game experiences aren't about building your own game. Even Mario. It's about building Mario levels. You can't build Mario levels in dreams. It's just not really how it works. Yeah, I guess I mean, just another simpler reason is just that, you know, they just don't want to, like, R&D and test out even more concepts because that would be a much bigger budget game were to do with that. Like that might be perhaps the actual reason why there's not- They're the richest company in Japan. Who gives a shit? I don't care what they do with their money. They have a hundred million plus switches out there at massive profit levels. They're still selling Breath of the Wild, although discounted this holiday, but up until this holiday, still selling it for $59.99. Like, I understand Amazon, you can get it for $45. Just because that's what Amazon is charging doesn't mean Nintendo lowered the price they charge Amazon for those copies. So like, Nintendo's still making the same amount of money. But that still lets you know that Amazon's still making money. Yeah, well, Amazon- Otherwise they wouldn't be making it. Amazon's one of the richest companies in the world. Of course they can afford to do it. They want you to give you their business. If you buy Breath of the Wild, they're hoping you buy other systems there as well, and then they make money. But like, the thing is, like that's a whole retailer's rule all the time. Like why are games $10 cheaper at Walmart? The idea is to get you in the door so you spend money on other shit, not because they're gonna make money on that $50. They're still making money on it, but- Mm-mm. They actually don't make any money on the $50 games they sell. They actually cut out their profit margin. That's how they're able to do the $10 off. So Walmart actually makes $0 when you buy a switch game from them. In person. You buy it online, you're still paying the whole price. But when you go in person and get that $10 discount, they make no money. But I don't care, because if you're in, maybe you buy a soda when you check out. Well, there you go, they made, you know, a buck there. Maybe you end up buying other accessories while you're in there. Or you see the arcade one-ups and you're like, oh man, dude, I really wanna get one of these. I've always wanted this hands-mitting into turtles game. Like in my house as an arcade, this is cool, I'm gonna spend 200 bucks on it. Like they're hoping to get you to buy other shit. Walmart's entire strategy with, you should know this by now, their cheap prices on some things isn't because they make money on those. Because once you're in the door, how many times have we all gone to stores? We plan to buy one thing, I'm on with a couple bags worth of shit. But I'm going to Walmart to buy a specific game for $50. You just buy the game, you want to fucking buy the game. That's saying I don't go to Walmart, I buy stuff at Walmart, I'm not sure. Yeah, you're not one of those like, oh, nope, like Walmart, like there are people like that. Yeah, I'm not fat. But when I'm going to Walmart to buy a game, that is what I'm going there for. That is it. So that strategy does not work on me, but I can see like people, if people just kind of go to Walmart to shop, they'll buy the game, or maybe they go in to get the game and they do buy other stuff. I mean, it makes sense. All right, why else would they do it? It's all a marketing thing, and obviously they do a lot of research on that. All right, so next up on 2021, was it at Mario Golf? Mario Golf Super Rush. Mario Golf? So Mario Golf Super Rush to me was kind of like their paper Mario of last year. Their big summer game. At least that was the intent. They did double it up this year because we got discovered sort of like a month later. So it kind of gave us a double way. I mean, in the summer of this year compared to one game last year, because I think the one game last year was probably a bigger release in comparison to Mario Golf. Because I think it has better sales potential. Mario Golf was the interesting one to me. Eric and I both got that game. And I enjoy the game play. The actual raw hitting the ball, doing the courses, even the rush modes and all the different modes. Like they're fun. It's fine. I can't imagine the gameplay itself being fundamentally different. The issue I have with this game, and I'm pretty sure Eric agrees at least. And I don't know, did you play Mario Golf, Andres? No. Okay, so you remember the Nintendo Directs and the commercials for it at all? Oh no, of course. Yeah, I was into the idea and I liked how they had the open area running sections and stuff. Like that was really cool. Yeah, so they were advertising the single player a lot. And they were advertising it as an RPG, which obviously got a lot of people who have played former Mario Golf games excited. Because I'm not sure if you're aware back in the Game Boy Color days and such like that, Mario Golf and Mario Tennis both were very different games than they are today. You would create your own avatar. You would have an actual RPG where you're trying to become the champion. You're trying to become the best. You're climbing the ranks. It was really fun. Yeah. And yeah, it was made by Camelot. Yeah. The same company that makes them to this day hasn't changed. So when they come back and they say, we're making an RPG single player, which they have not done in Mario Golf since those days, it obviously raises the expectations of that single player mode who mentioned something that hasn't existed in 20 years. So then you go and you play it. Yeah. I mean, there's the RPG elements, but... I wouldn't call it even an RPG. You do level up. Yeah. But for what? Purpose. There's no purpose to the leveling up. You don't actually compete. Right. You do one tournament at the very beginning of the game. One actual golf tournament where, by the way, it doesn't matter where you rank in it. Of course, I took number one, but it doesn't actually matter if I took number one or not. You just have to do it. From there, you spend the rest of that game cleaning up the courses. Which is great. Which is fine. But to me, that's fine as a preliminary. Teach you new aspects of the game, new modes of the game, new ways to play by making you clean up the courses. I'm cool with that. But then when we're done cleaning it, let us have a tournament. Don't just be like, oh, thank you for cleaning the course. Now you move up to the next rank. What the fuck do you mean? How do you even know I can golf? You're right. How do you know I can golf? And then you get the platinum rank, which is where you want to be. You want to be in the upper echelon to finally, like it teases Mario at the very beginning. Mario's the best. He's the champ. And they're playing this battle arena mode, which by the way, isn't even in the single player. Looks badass. Just to even attempt that mode, which isn't even normal golf. You get the platinum rank and the game just ends. It's like, now that I'm here, now that I'm the same rank as Mario and actually get to face him, I don't actually get to face him. That's what you're saying. It's a very click baity game. It's, oh, it is like click bait to the extreme. It is like, I'm not saying it basically, here's what it is. It's a glorified tutorial to how to play Mario Golf. Yeah, no. Which is not what an RPG is. RPGs aren't glorified tutorials to go and play multiplayer. That's not RPGs are standalone experiences. You don't need, it's not a tutorial of how to go play online matches. And what it sucked at launch is there was no point to play in the online matches because there was no ranking systems at launch. There is now. They did rectify that with an update. But at launch, you beat single player and you're like, why the fuck do I even wanna play multiplayer? But there's nothing outside of just making the competition with Eric. Like, all right, if I win this match, you do a shot or, you know what? You know, you buy dinner or you this. Like, what's the point? You can do that with Smash. You're just making up fun things. You're not the game itself, like Smash Bros. has rankings. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has rankings. It gives you a point to try to be good at the game. Mario Tennis has tournaments. You're trying to win and become a champ. There's no point to the online play at launch. I know today it's different, but at launch there wasn't. And then the single player was a promise that never was realized. Which by the way, that's pretty much what Mario Golf and Mario Tennis has been for a long time. Our promise is unrealized. Mario Tennis was also let down with a single player. Is there even an option to do like Mario Kart, like online tournaments in Mario Golf? No. Why? There are rankings, but not, but no. It's just like Madden. You go on and play a ranked match. Yeah, I know, but that'd be freaking awesome. Could you imagine that? Like doing an actual tournament, like. Oh, you mean like the original Mario Tennis in Mario Golf? No, Mario Tennis did have tournaments. No, no, no, I meant like in Mario Kart. You know how you can, we can do an online tournament with all our viewers and stuff like that? Yeah. To do an actual tournament with our two, with our, with our viewers would have been freaking awesome. So like, I love Mario Golf. It's just stupid. Gameplay-wise. And now that it has rankings, it's okay. It's still like empty promises. And I should be used to this by now. Most Mario spin-offs are a lot of empty promises these days. And for my kids, they don't really care. And to them, that's fine. You should learn from Mario Tennis. But like, I want better for these franchises because they've been better. Some people feel that way with Paper Mario, by the way, they feel like Paper Mario has been better. I think Paper Mario is fine the way it is today. It's just not what it used to be, but I think what it is today is- Different style of game. Yeah. It has its own complexities and its own charm to it. And it's just, it's not what Thousand-Year Door was, but it's also not like a bastardization of the franchise. It's a different thing. I think more of an adventure game with light RPG elements. Yeah, yeah. They changed up a bit about the style of Paper Mario. Whereas with Mario Tennis Mario 8, it's like they don't know what these games are. Oh, they're arcade games, but like arcade games that we're trying to give purpose to, but then we don't really want to give real purpose to. We just want you to play it on couch because it's fun during a pandemic. That makes sense. Not. Then we have Skyward Sword HD, which I don't know. I don't even need to say anything about the game. I'm just glad we got it. Still haven't played it, but yet. I mean, I've watched the good played. It's good. I mean, the button controls were better than I expected. I still feel it's better as a motion control game, but there are some people hate motion controls, so. I played it mostly with a touch control, not button controls, I should say. Button controls. It was fun. Yeah. You know, you brought up something earlier that I just thought was just sort of interesting to consider. We were just talking about how, you know, just summer releases, right? How like this year, Nintendo had Mario Golf and Skyward Sword. And I just decided to just take a look at, like, you know, some major releases year by year, right? So this summer we got, I don't, I don't know if I should even count it, but I'll just be fair and count it. So just the months of June, July, August, right? Like the three summer months, DC superhero girls, Game Builder Garage, Mario Golf, Skyward Sword HD, that came out in the summer months this year. We look at last year, 2020, the COVID year, right? I mean, it's been COVID for two years already, but whatever. Oh yeah. We got Clubhouse Games, Jump Road Channel, which is a free game, and Peyramar the Origami King. So, yeah, you could, definitely I would say that this year had many more than last year. But then we go to 2019, 2019 was crazy. 2019, we had, you know, just those three months, right? Cadence of Hyrule, that came out in 2019. Mario Maker 2, Dry and Quest Builders 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Fire and the Three Houses and Astral Chain all came out between June, July, and August. Like that's just crazy that all that came out in 2019. And then for 2018, it was interesting. Fortnite finally released on Switch that time during the summer, we got Mario Tennis Aces, Wolfenstein 2 finally came out on Switch then, Captain Toad, Treasure Tracker, and Overcooked 2, let's port it over. And then for 2017, it was just Arms and Splatoon 2, which are two major games. Yeah, those are very big games, yeah. But those are the only published releases during that time. Out of those, what do you think is the best summer? I think, for me, it's fairly obvious, but what do you guys- For me personally, it's still Splatoon 2 this year because I played more of that than any of these other games. And Splatoon 2, by the way, I have a bias for that, Splatoon 2 has an affinity with this channel. I started my live stream journey on this channel, playing Splatoon 2 all the time. But the shots that we do tonight started by playing Splatoon 2 and people being like, hey Nate, you wanna do some drinks while you play? Of course I do. So like, thank you to Splatoon 2, thank you to Splatoon 2 for starting the drinking journey on this channel. Anyone bother by the fact that I drink on my channel for starters? Sorry. It blames Splatoon 2. If it didn't exist, it would have never happened. I would say that 2019, it's pretty good. Arguably better because during that time we got Canes of Hyrule, Mario Maker 2, Marvel to the Alliance 3, Fire Emblem 3 Houses, and Astro Chain. But if you are just like Splatoon 2 more than all those other games, then there you go. But maybe I would put, I don't know, I think Astro Chain and Fire Emblem 3 Houses to me are about as good as Splatoon 2. And I would put Mario Maker 2 above arms personally, but at least arms is like a brand new thing. I would say 2019 and 2017 had the best summers for Switch. Yeah. No, for sure. Yeah. So let's see. What was next? The next game was Pokemon TV. That was an August of 2021. Yeah, they added Pokemon episodes and movies and stuff. WarioWare, get it together, what was that? September. Okay. And WarioWare is always good. I feel it's an underrated franchise for what it is. I mean, it's a mini-game collection, so like obviously it doesn't have like the mass appeal. It's a party game, it's not a party game, but it pretends to be a party game because that's a WarioWare. It's widely discounted at $50 as opposed to 60. Yep. And it was brand new. Like this isn't, you know, like old games. So I did enjoy what I played of it. I found it to be really entertaining. I always enjoy WarioWare. By the way, if you're ever looking for a game to become a drinking game, WarioWare is the perfect one. And WarioWare, while you're playing the game, the way he lasts it, you almost encourages you to have more because like, I'm telling you, you turn WarioWare into a drinking game and you will fully understand the power of WarioWare. I feel like that's the way the game was meant to be played. Just be honest. Forget Smash the Drinking Game guys. Everyone knows Smash the Drinking Game when you're an adult. Everyone's done it at least once. Played with a friend and you lose, you drink, you die, you drink, whatever rules you want to make. Maybe, maybe Andres over there hasn't done that. But in my reality, even people who don't game that much have done Smash the Drinking Game at a house party at least once. Mario Kart Mario Party. Was it Mario Kart Mario Party for you? Yeah. Yeah. Around here was Smash the Drinking Game. For Smash, maybe that's after. The best players, every time they even lose a stock, they have to do a shot because we're trying to bring them down to everyone else's level. And by the way, so there's a lot of gang ups on the best player. That's just the way it goes. So yeah, WarioWare got together. I thought it was a solid game. And then obviously we get to the big ones at this point. One of the biggest ones would be Metro Dread in October. Which we already talked about a bit. It even has a game awards banner, which is neat. Yes. What is your thoughts on Metro Dread? I'm assuming you played it on it. You mean you literally have Samus behind you? Yeah, right. I played it three times already. There we go. That's why I wanted to get your thoughts. Like, Eric, I know hasn't played it, so I'm throwing it to you. Like half the videos of my channel have been basically about Metro Dread since its release and before the game. Yeah. Love it. Metro Dread is my game of the year. It's the best game that I think has come out this year. There you go. We already got his goatee for Switch this year. It's been an absolute delight. It is basically everything I sort of hope and dream for for 2D Metro Dread game. I think Nintendo and Mercury Steam hit it totally out of the park. I absolutely love the direction they're taking Metro. I absolutely love how Nintendo is pushing this game. We are seeing some pretty healthy sales. Like, it's at least looking like it's going to be a better seller than the likes of Astral Chain, Fire Emblem, Xenoblade Chronicles 2. So that kind of puts it above that tier of Nintendo game. And those Nintendo games get follow-ups. So if Metro Dread is at least selling better than that, then that's probably enough for it to get follow-ups, right? So that's promising. That means, hey, look, we're probably going to get more Metro Dread games. So games are awesome. Prime 4 would be in the next one, but we mean more 2D, more side scrolling. At least more 2D Metro Dread games. Like, it's shown that that can sell. So, you know. Please become the best selling Metro Dread of all time. Please. I'm really hoping. We don't have any actual sales data, but I'm hoping. It seems likely. I hope. I hope. Yeah. Yeah. The thing is, that's the thing. Metro Dread's never been a big seller. So I'm hoping for something that's never happened. But Switch is where dreams become reality because Metro Dread even exists in the first place. I mean, let's say sales to go to come to a screeching halt and we get an update. Yeah. Like, if it only sold in its launch week, and then just died off. But like, it's still going to be over 2 million, and that's only like a few hundred thousand shots. I will say this. I don't view Metro Dread as an evergreen title. It's not going to keep selling tons and tons of units, I think, past the first few months. That's my personal opinion, but that's also because the genre it's in doesn't continue to sell for months and months and months and years on it. It just doesn't. Like, it just stops and then people move on to the next one. That's been traditional with the genre it's in. What is it that makes a title evergreen, though? You know? Like, what is it about? I don't know. I just had this on a video I did today. I talked about how like Sony has an incredible amount of exclusive games that come out and they rate really well. They're even starting to sell in the tens of millions. Sony's doing really well for themselves with their exclusive games, but none of them seem to hit evergreen status where they're selling, and this is what I consider evergreen, at least a million extra units a year for multiple years after the release year. And Nintendo has that happen with a ton of their games. Breath of the Wild is still selling three extra million per year. Mario Kart 8 is selling five plus million per year. Like, it's insane. Like, Animal Crossing obviously has already done that for its second year on the market. Like, it's insane to me how many games Nintendo has that doesn't. And, you know, I'm just trying to... And they're doing it at $60 a pop. Everyone else is discounting and they can't do it. Yeah. The kind of games that do it, though, are the kind of games that people are like, they buy a Switch and you're like, oh, I have a Switch. What are those games that... What are the must-own Switch? Yeah, they're like the games that Switch is known for, right? Oh, gotta get the Smash Brothers. Gotta get the Mario Kart. Gotta get the big Zelda games. Gotta get the big Mario game. The big Splatoon game. Like, those games sort of continue to sell. Even the Splatoon is not really as big, but Animal Crossing is. But Splatoon is, though. It sold almost 10 million on the Wii U. It's not as much of a seller as the other ones I mentioned, but I mean, it absolutely is. It's growing. It's like almost at 15 million right now. And that's only the second game in the franchise, massively growing over the first game. The second one, or the third one, I wouldn't be surprised, especially since I think it would be important to the next platform. We'll end up probably being a 20-plus million seller, all combined. Maybe. I look at this as Nintendo as it's not like... I think Splatoon is a very interesting franchise to look at Animal Crossing as well, although that's a bit older at this point. But Splatoon's like a really recent franchise they've created. What's created on their worst-selling console of all time has absolutely started to blow up. And the thing is, I bring this up because a lot of you can think, oh, Zelda, Mario, these games have just been around forever. People know it. They're known properties. That's why people trust it. They buy it even though Breath of the Wild is completely an outlier. Zelda hasn't traditionally been an Evergreen title. It sells everything in the first six months and then dies off. Is Luigi's Mansion 3 an Evergreen title? I don't know. I have to go back and look at the sales data. It did sell a lot. It sold a lot. I think it sold over 10 million. But it sold a lot of that in the first three months. The question is, is it the kind of game that continues to sell? We have to look at that. I think Luigi's Mansion 3 is closer to a Horizon Zero Dawn situation than it is an Evergreen title. But I have to go look at sales data over time for that to know if it's really Evergreen. What's interesting though is that we look at all these games and you think, okay, so if the idea behind them is that when people buy the Switch, they're like, okay, these are the premiere experiences for the Switch so I should get them which is why they sort of continue to sell. What about Pokemon? Because there are multiple Pokemon games so there isn't necessarily a specific one but the different Pokemon games continue to sell. People are going to continue to buy Pokemon Let's Go. People continue to buy Pokemon Sword and Shield and I wouldn't be shocked if people continue to buy Pokemon Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl. So Pokemon's an even more different beast than your typical Evergreen things. It's just like, I think people just buy Pokemon games. I think for Pokemon, you get a system and you just make sure to get every Pokemon game you can. That's it. It's very interesting. So for Metroid, I think it's fair to say that Metroid is going to surpass the Fire Emblem Three Houses, the Xenomy Chronicles 2. Those games itself pretty good but they're not Evergreen. They're not the Megaton sellers either. Dread right now, at this point, it looks like it's going to be somewhere in the middle between two and 10 million, right? So maybe it sells like four or five, which would be great. But does it get to that point where it's like a thing where people buy a Switch and they're like, oh, gotta get the Metroid game? That's what Nintendo wants for Metroid. That's what I believe. I don't think Nintendo would have been pushing Metroid the way it has if that wasn't their goal. I disagree a little. I know we're on Metroid Dread right now. I disagree a little bit with Metroid Dread. That's what they want. I think Nintendo would want every game that released to be Evergreen. I think that's obviously always a back of the goal. If you can get a game to sell at least a million units every year for multiple years, that's a big win for Nintendo, especially since they don't lower prices. So they're doing this at full MSRP. Like that's huge. But also, Nintendo knows the importance of the games that are between the Evergreens and that we can't forget those games as well. That's why I said like Luigi's Mansion, if it turns out Luigi's Mansion 3, I think Eric's going through sales data right now. If like, he discovers that since it's launch year, it hasn't sold over a million units in any single year. Okay, been two years now. If it hasn't sold over a million, I wouldn't consider that Evergreen. And if it's not Evergreen, that means that, well, it sold really, really well. Those games matter to Nintendo too. Like arms isn't Evergreen, right? It blew its load its first year and that's it. And I think Nintendo still knows the importance of those games. Kirby is never Evergreen. It's an example. I don't argue most Pokemon games aren't even Evergreen. Now they come out too often. So Pokemon's kind of become like Call of Duty where it's like, is Call of Duty Evergreen? It's Evergreen because they release a new one every year and Pokemon releases almost a new Pokemon game every year. I would say that the Pokemon games fall into your definition though. If they sell an additional million per year. Sword and Shield's not even in the top 20 sold Nintendo Switch games of this year. That's Sword and Shield. They've had the entire year since 2019. Like that's not Evergreen to me. I'm sorry, if you can't sell two years after launch you're not Evergreen. And why isn't it selling? I don't know. I don't know why. I have no idea why. Like it literally hit 20 million in like its first eight months and it's just been sitting there. It hasn't like, the needle hasn't moved. It's weird. Pokemon's very weird. If you actually go look at the sales of Pokemon they die off very quickly. They just sell a shitload really fast and then just die. Now my theory is because they release them so damn often. So it's like at Sword and Shield you can argue you had some controversies that maybe turned off some people. Although it's still sold phenomenally well. It's still one of the best selling Pokemon games there is. Like, and I know you're looking up some data over there. Andra's trying to see if you can disprove me and that's fine, go right ahead. I've done some of this research. So it's cool if you want to disagree and you can find the evidence. I appreciate it actually. I like to be disproven. But I've done a lot of research in the Pokemon and like it sells a shitload in the first year and then just kind of dies. And my whole theory about that has always been it's kind of like Call of Duty. Most Call of Duty games die after its first year too because the new ones out. Nobody cares about the old one. What's the new ones there? And Pokemon has gotten to the point that it's almost, I mean think about this. We just got Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl and we're about to get another Pokemon game in January. Now we can argue it's a completely different game. Yeah, but do you think it's not gonna negatively impact the sales of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl? I haven't another Pokemon game come out so soon. I think it is gonna negatively impact it because people only have a finite amount of time to play. Especially Pokemon, which requires a big time sink. All right, so just for the record, apparently I'm looking at this article here. Yep. Right, as of March 31st, 2020. Yep. So basically- So end of last fiscal year. The last year and a half. Well, actually this is- Wait, that's 2020. That's back in- That's a few months after launch. This article's from the previous fiscal year. So basically- Wait, wait, wait, hold on. Yeah, are we talking March 2021 or March 2020? 2020 would just be three months. Talking about between March 2020, all the way up until- Until March of 2021. Yes, and it's sold in addition to- So last fiscal year. Last fiscal year. Last fiscal year. Okay. So- Where was it at? Right. It was at 21 million as of this article from May 6th, 2021. All right, and let's look at where it's at right now. If it's at 25. I don't think it's at 25. But maybe it is. If it's at 22, then I see your point. But if it's at 25, it still sells 3 to 4 million every year. Hold on. I forgot what the name of that website is, hold on a second. Of course, on the spot, I don't remember it. IR information, that's what it is. Nintendo IR information. That's what you're looking up. I know what you're talking about, yeah. Yeah, but that's what I was like, God, what's the name of that website? All right, video game sale units. Let me just glance. I don't know it off the top of my head. I know it's in the top 10. That's the- Absolutely. Solar Shield is at 22.64 million as of- Yeah, it's at 22.64 million. So like, to me, that's not like a huge- It's still the million and a half the last year. So there is a drop-off, but I'm just, you know, it's still over a million, right? So like, you know- But like, okay. So I- There is a drop-off. Like- There is a drop-off, yeah. We can recognize the drop-off. But it's still selling over a million every year. Do you think it's gonna sell another million next year? That remains to be seen? Well, I'm asking because to me, Evergreen's not just the following year, it's years up. Moving forward indefinitely. Yeah. It's like- Not even indefinitely. At least until like, the platform's no longer relevant. Well, but that's where things get kind of tricky though, because once we're talking about next year, we're talking about perhaps the end of the Switch's life cycle. But are we? No. I mean, we'll get into 2022 in a moment. Well, that's a strong lineup. There's no way- There's no way it'll sell. It's also tricky though, because, you know, the year that- Perakawa just said, they're not gonna have enough units to even meet demand in 2022. Yeah. So it's kind of like one of those, why would Nintendo end a thing that can't even keep it stock? Another thing to consider here though, right? We're looking at these sales numbers, but this isn't a full fiscal year yet. Well, yeah, we're not gonna have a full fiscal year. We're saying that it's only sold about a million and a half since the previous fiscal year, but it hasn't been a full fiscal year yet. So, you know, it may end up being perhaps, this is the Christmas time though. This could be the time it was sold the most during this time. So maybe it still ends up selling- Or it doesn't, because they're pushing brilliant damage on you. Three million might be a stretch, but, you know, over two? Not so much. That's not that much to deal with. Well, that's not that much more, yeah. So like, you know- We'll see. So yeah, three months from now- Like, I'll give an example of a game that I definitely don't think is evergreen. And it's been in the top 10 for a while. Super Mario Odyssey. Something's evergreen to me. It sold a couple extra million, I believe, at the end of the following fiscal year. And we've been years since then, and the numbers have barely moved. It hit 20 million like that, and then it's just kind of slowly every year gets, you know, a couple hundred thousand, a few hundred thousand added. And the last weird thing about Breath of the Wild, like end of year one, it was not even at 20 million. Mario Odyssey was actually out. So even though Breath of the Wild came out first, Mario Odyssey passed it pretty quick. Yes. But then Breath of the Wild was like, hey, I'm creeping back up. Yeah, just the same. Breath of the Wild just keeps selling that two, three million every year, and it just doesn't show any signs of stop. And I think once Breath of the Wild 2 comes out, sales of it will probably slow down. Maybe I'm wrong. I think I've talked about this before, but I've actually argued that Breath of the Wild will actually go down to the third best-selling game on Switch. Right now Smash Brothers- Do you think you can pass Smash? Hey, I'm very curious now that DLC's done with Smash, if it'll pass. I do. DLC has obviously helped continue the popularity of Smash. Yeah, I did one with Breath of the Wild 2, and just the- Smash kind of dies off. Breath of the Wild. Yeah. So, you know, Smash is going to continue to sell, but I think Breath of the Wild is going to be selling at a greater pace. Yeah, no, I hear you. It has. So yeah. And it's just a million and a half behind, basically. Sure. And next year's going to be a big Breath of the Wild style year, so. Yep. And the thing is, by the way guys, my definition and all of our definitions of, and your guys' definitions, listening in of what Evergreen is, can be totally different. Like, I'm using at least a mill. It may be for you guys, it's just anything that's selling half a mill. I don't know what you guys wanted to find Evergreen as. I don't know. It looks like Nintendo. Nintendo has an official Evergreen title list. They do. By the way. Between April and September of 2021, the Evergreens are- This is Nintendo. What Nintendo calls Evergreens. Breath of the Wild at 1.7. Mario Kart 8 at 3.2. I mean, that's a given. Splatoon 2 at 0.4. Mario Odyssey at 1. Yeah. Mario Party at 1.6. No, no, that's the original Super Mario Party. Yep. Super Star is on the top yet when that list was made. Has that time to become Evergreen? Yeah. Has that time to be Evergreen now? Sword and Shield is 1.6. Okay. Yeah, that matches up with what we saw. Smash is 1.7. Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe is 0.9. Luigi's Mansion is 0.7. Animal Crossing 2.4. Super Mario 3D World Borrowed is 2.5. I don't think I can call it Evergreen yet. I don't think it's been out long enough. 2.4 and then Ring Fit at 1.8. Ring Fit's a weird one too. That would have really low sales at launch. The lowest one is Luigi's Mansion at 700,000, which is still a- No, no, no. Splatoon 2 at 400,000. Now, this is about Nintendo calls Evergreen, guys. Obviously, again, everyone has their own definitions. To me, 400,000. It's a lot of units, but for a thing that's sold 12 million, that's not a huge dent in that. This is 400,000, what, five years later? Yeah, another game that they don't really support anymore. Right. So does that still consider it Evergreen? I mean, that's almost a half a million. I mean, selling 60- For Nintendo, okay. I want to be clear. For Nintendo, any game that's selling hundreds of thousands of units every year at $60 a pop, five years later, they're going to call it Evergreen. They're still making millions of dollars. Yeah, why wouldn't they call that Evergreen? They're going to call it Evergreen. If they could sell it at $60 a pop and sell hundreds of thousands of units. It's a profit margin for a $60 game. Like how much does Nintendo make from that? Well, it also depends on how much are digital. Because their profit margins are digital, I'm asking. They cut out everything. It's just pure, it's almost pure profits. Can we just ballpark it? No, I don't know. I don't have. I would say, I would say probably, I mean, if you combine digital and physical, I would say probably anywhere from 35 to 40 bucks a copy is pure profit. Okay, especially at this point, because the game already paid for itself back. 40 times 400,000 is a lot of money. It's 16 and then six zeros after that. Yeah, it's more money than a lot of us will ever see in our lifetimes. It's $16 million. Of course, Nintendo is going to consider that Evergreen. That ain't no small chunk of change to them. Even though they're a billion dollar company, that's free money to them. A game they're not even supporting. A game that came out five years ago, basically at this point, almost five years as of next summer. It will be five years. It's like, and they're gonna have a new one come up. And that was just between April and September. And it was probably profitable literally after the first week of it being on the market. They probably already paid back the development. Wait, what was the window again? It was like a six month window? April through September of this year. Yeah, okay. So the last financial update. The last official financial update. Half a year. So that's just half a year. Yeah, half of a fiscal year. Yeah. So it's gonna be over. It could hit over a million with the holiday period and all that. So let's say Splatoon 2 made them at least $15 million in a six month time span. Four and a half years at four years after it's released. Right, exactly. They're gonna call that everything. So like when I talk evergreen guys, me personally, I'm talking about what I consider to be a title that's still arguably a system seller today. I don't think Splatoon 2 is still a system seller. I do think it's still a seller. I don't think anyone's buying a switch today. I think it was a system seller up until Splatoon 2. I don't think people are buying a switch today to play Splatoon 2. I think it's a game that some might consider getting because their friends have it, but not because that's not why they... People buy a switch and they're like, oh, what's a popular game? Oh, Splatoon's one of those Nintendo games. Yeah, look at the top 10 selling games that see Splatoon 2. I gotta go check that out. But it does look like Luigi's Mansion falls in that category. Yes, yes. So it's gonna be interesting as if Metroid can get... Yeah, right. And again, it's gonna be... We're not gonna know guys for a year and a half before we really know. And I don't expect Metroid Dread to sell like... We even think about that. Like 700,000 and a half a year. Like for Metroid, that'd be incredible. If Metroid is selling 500,000 copies year by year. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, that's insane for Metroid. So let's say Switch gets support until 22,000. I mean, that's a mega hit. That'd be the best... I mean, I think Metroid Dread, by the way, is gonna be the best selling guys, which means it has to hit 4,000, which I think it's going to. It only has to hit 3,000. Well, it's like, yeah, but it's not exactly 3,000. It's a little higher than 3,000. No, Metroid Prime still 2.5 million. Metroid, I thought it told 2.9. I don't know. By the way, we don't even know if these figures are exact because they didn't have exact figures back in those days. Nintendo did not officially report numbers like they do today. But maybe, did it hit top 10 on the system? Let me see if they have, maybe they have some official figures on this IR website for... I don't think it hit top 10 for GameCube. They don't even have GameCube listed, so I can't even go back. So for the Leaky's Mansion 3, between April 20th, officially. April 20th and March of 2021, it sold just over almost 9.6 million. Leaky's Mansion 3. That's between April 20th and March 2021. So it's first like full year on the market. It's a couple months. We're missing between October and April. I'll just tell you that on VG charts, right? We were just talking about Metroid sales, the best selling Metroid game, according to VG charts is Metroid Prime at 2.82 million. So it has 10.3 million. Yeah. I mean, I think it's hit three already, to be honest. But again, we don't know. Like people always expect, by the way, it's weird. People expect Nintendo to brag about sales. And they do, but they usually do it around when they report the official numbers. It's very rare that they go outside of the regular... They work back about transmitting game awards. Like some people are like, oh, Nintendo Switch hasn't sold 100 million yet because Nintendo hasn't said so. It's like, well, yeah, they literally have a financial briefing coming up in like a month. They're gonna tell you then, they're not gonna tell you now. Because by then, they can maybe tout, it beat we. So like we need to sit back and Nintendo's not gonna tell, because they're still compiling. They still have the biggest sale season in Japan happening this week. So like they have that to consider. They're not gonna wanna give you numbers now. When they know the numbers might be more impressive by the time they actually get to their financial briefing. So, by the way, I mean, who knows for the fiscal year? I have no idea what it's gonna sell. I mean, I have no, like, Animal Crossing really helped switch move units plus the pandemic last year. I'm curious if Legends Arceus pushes units. We'll see. Well, yeah, that is me a big, we'll see. I think the answer is probably yes. Probably. Well, the thing is we gotta compare that last, because the last quarter of every fiscal year usually isn't like a big quarter for Nintendo. You move like two to three mil. The holidays are the big deal. Yeah, holidays are where they usually get 10, 11 mil every year. Yeah, we'll see. Because of that, Legends Arceus may end up not selling as well as Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl. Purely just because it didn't get a holiday boost. Because Game Freak made it in every one. He's like, I'm more high for it, but I'm also not someone to play as Pokemon. Are like the big Pokemon fan base on the whole. Legends Arceus is like the game that is supported and discussed throughout the year. Maybe it has some DLC, and there's like a DLC. I guarantee you the DLC. Arceus Edition that releases at the end of 2022. Oh, it's like a holiday special bundle. Yeah, once that Christmas goes by, then I think for sure Legends Arceus will outsell BDSP. Because there's an open-ish world Pokemon game. We don't technically know what BDSP sold yet. But if we're talking about my day in this fiscal year. We're presuming 10 mil at least. It's gotta be up there right. Let's go, levels, at least. We'll see. I will presume because Pokemon always sells 10 plus mil. But just going back to the Metroid Dread thing, Obviously guys, we spent a lot of time on Metroid Dread because it's a big deal. Yeah, this is a big deal game. For us, it's the only game, it's the only game from Nintendo that won an award at the game award. And the Nintendo has made sure to bring that up to people that, hey, this game won best action. Yes, they put it on their official website. Yeah, and it was up for game of the year. And by the way, guys, won some game of the year awards at other outlets, Time Magazine. You guys might not care about them because they're not like a very video game specific outlet, but they said Metroid Dread is the best thing they played this year. So they got some good taste. Yeah, I think a lot of Nintendo fans started to respect Time Magazine after that pick. It's like, who has ever gone to Time Magazine for anything video game related ever? But hey, it's Time Magazine game of the year. Well, there was a time that Shiyami Yamota was in the top 100 most important people. Okay, but like, again, that's just arbitrary opinion-based rankings has nothing to do with, like, who... Have you ever opened a Time Magazine in your life, let alone have you cracked one specifically to re-gaming stuff? I don't think magazines are really even the thing anymore. Time Magazine is still a thing. You can get it to your house. Well, obviously it is because we're talking about it. But I just... Yeah, but it's mostly an online publication. Back when I was a kid, there were magazine sections at the grocery store. I haven't seen one lately. Oh, there's still one at ours. There's still one at ours. They're very, very, very small. We actually... Have you been to the downtown one? Yeah. I'm surprised, actually, how big that section is there. There isn't one at my grocery store out here, but if I go downtown... There's tiny ones at the checkout. I don't count the National Enquirer thing. They're trying to sell you when you check. Oh, man, so-and-so has got tits the size of Mars. Okay, that's great. Yeah. Do you even know how big Mars is? Yeah, let's just... Okay, National Enquirer. You can... Yeah, no. I'm talking about an entire wall. Yeah. An aisle. Well, I mean, you can say that about bookstores in general. How many bookstores even exist these days? I mean, we still have BAM in our area, but God, it used to be like two other different types of bookstores, and I don't know how long BAM is even going to stay around at this point. Yeah. But anyway, the point I wanted to make is just that, like, you know, I think that Nintendo is using the game board, it's like, hey, look, this game wins awards, right? Yeah. So just to get people to be aware that, hey, look, this is a high-quality game. So if you have a Switch, check out this game. Buy it. Yeah. You know, things like that could help, perhaps, Metroid fall into that category of, oh, wait, I've heard of this game. I have a Switch now. Maybe I should give this a try. And I think the interesting thing about Metroid is that when you compare it to the other types of games that Nintendo makes, there is a difference in the aesthetics, in the tone, in the gameplay style compared to other Nintendo games. So like, it actually, I think there is an opportunity for Metroid to become a consistent evergreen kind of game if it can gain that sort of, like, overall sort of public reception that people were just, the casual person is like, oh, I remember hearing about Metroid. Well, that's like that sort of shooter, darker Nintendo game. I have a Switch now. I should check that out. You know, like, if the Nintendo can get Metroid to be like that, then all of a sudden, Metroid is evergreen. But will they get there? Well, yeah, hopefully. Because Metroid has never done it. But a lot of things that have never been done are happening right now. Right. And if Dredd doesn't do it, it doesn't, it, Dredd doesn't even have to be the one to do it. But if Dredd sort of starts, it starts getting it, metering that discussion. Then when Prime 4 comes out with the. Yeah. But I think Prime 4, there's a whole debate before even getting this generation at this point. I'm just talking about Metroid becoming evergreen. I'm not even talking about if it happens on Switch or Switch 2. I'm just talking about it becoming evergreen. I'm just going to forever be the pessimist that says that genre has never been evergreen. So it would have to do something that genre has never done. And I just don't know if it can do that. But that doesn't mean it can't sell a shitload. And end up being awesome. And the Switch effect goes into effect. Next thing you know, Prime 4 is a 10 plus million seller on Next Gen. And we have no idea what the fuck is happening anymore. And suddenly we're talking about it as one of the best selling top 10 games. Or I have no idea. Yeah, here's the thing. We don't know. It's a lot of hypotheticals after that. I know we had Nintendo Switch Online stuff that came out and then. Some people, by the way, we we dismiss it and I think it's a ripoff. A millions of people are playing it. So it including me. Yeah, no, it is what it is. I didn't have to do better. I have not put the money down on it. I refuse to until they provide a better service. I would just pay for the basic online package to get access to play games online. Without that, I wouldn't even be paying for it. So as much as they got me by the balls, I'm playing games online. So I just I just haven't haven't done it yet. Next one to come out would be Mario Party Superstars. Big deal. Really good. Yeah, big deal game party gone in years. Do you think it'll outsell the previous Mario Party game? That's tough. That's really tough because it's a better game. It's but I think it's significantly Super Mario Party has the advantage of being first on the system, longer shelf life, the longer shelf life. So again, we don't know, like, remember, we're only the mid midway through switch, so we have another five years that I mean, I mean, think about it like this, like we presume like, oh, switch to in twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty one of the records. Nintendo has been saying we've been halfway through this through their cycle for two years already. OK, we were hearing that technically, they didn't say halfway through at the beginning of last year. They started saying at the midpoint of last year. So it's been about a year and a half is still I'm I know it's splitting straw, splitting here. Nintendo. Nintendo wants us, by the way, the only thing I can say is Shintaro for Akawa said he wants us to be the longest generation Nintendo's around. It's I don't know. It's already basically is like, no, it's not. We've had we've had eight, nine years. You get the Ness era, man. That's all around. That doesn't count. I wasn't alive. I was alive. You weren't alive in the nineties. What? It was around in the early nineties. First of all, Super Nintendo came out in ninety one. So I was the Ness, the Ness, the Ness, OK. And the PlayStation three came out when it came out. PlayStation two still existed for four years. What's your point? I'm just saying that, like, if it's still in production and still being sold and still being advertised, the generation didn't end. There's just a better product. It's kind of like iPhone twelves are still being sold. Well, iPhone thirteens are here, so. Yeah. Brand new iPhone twelves, by the way, not used ones to be clear. I think I think that the switch is going to be available in the market at least until twenty twenty five. And that that's at least eight years. I think switch two will be out by the end of twenty twenty three. But, you know, I'm in total with COVID and the semiconductor things that maybe that that is pushed to like early twenty twenty four or something. I don't think switch two is even in the works right now. But that's that's that's a different debate for a different time. Maybe we'll talk about that when we talk about twenty twenty two stuff. OK, I think I think Nintendo is not doing a traditional generation. I think it's just going to be a mid-gen refresh that's upgraded that we can consider a new gen, but it's not really. It's all cross gen. It just keeps going. Oh, man, that is that we'll get there. Yeah, we'll see. And again, this is obviously something I hope Nintendo would do. But I think Nintendo and Chintura Furukawa is not an idiot. And he sees what Switch is doing and he doesn't want it to end. And it's going to be a perpetual thing. There's not going to be like, here's a new gen cut off. Nope, we're keeping it going. We just happen to have even better hardware now. But all the games will still be on the old switch that we have coming out for the next few years. But we'll see. Again, we don't know. We're talking hypotheticals. Nintendo's also never done that, by the way. So that would also be new territory for Nintendo. But I think and my whole theory behind this is just listening to the way Furukawa has talked since taking over very different than prior Nintendo residents, even before Oata. Very much, I know all the problems we've had in the past. I know about the cliff. I know about the fall off. I know about the mistakes. And now we're about to enter the sixth year of Nintendo Switch. After March 3rd of next year, we begin the sixth year. We don't call it that officially to the sixth birthday, but we will have experienced five full years by March 3rd of next year. So we are technically in the sixth year while we have this extremely strong lineup hitting. And Nintendo has never had a platform have this strong of a lineup in year six, which already suggests that Furukawa knows I ain't repeating mistakes in the past where we abandon platforms. Yeah. So. And by the way, he'd be stupid to. It's literally peaking. It's still peaking. Like, Switch hasn't really slowed. The only thing holding Switch back is their ability to make more at the moment. We'll see if that continues next year. He knows it will continue at the beginning of the year. We'll see if it continues all year, which, by the way, I think with that lineup, it's pretty safe to say it's going to be a problem all year to get a Switch. They're not going to be readily available any day. You want to walk into a storm by. It's just not going to. That lineup is too big next year. Yeah, the Switch is going to be doing great next year. For sure. Then this is regardless of the pandemic. There's so many big games. Like, well, I think what Nintendo wants is not it's your point. It's to maintain momentum. We don't want a situation like the we were that last year. It's basically just a wasteland. Yeah. No. So the question is, do they PlayStation and just keep releasing bangers all the way to next gen or do they just say, fuck it, we're not doing traditional generations. That's the question we don't know. They do a cell phone, like upgrade the iPhone root like cell phones don't really feel like new generations when you get. Like you buy an iPhone 13. It doesn't really feel like your oh my God, this next gen they can call it. They can call it switch to and still sort of do that. It just kind of depends on the compatibility and the transitions and how well, you know, so like it's there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of ifs there, right? And there's there's there's a lot like a lot of movie parts. The name. Yeah. So I think we both agree that we both agree, though, that there's not new hardware coming out next year, right? I will say this, I think it is more likely than not that there won't be a caveat if the plan was to release it this year and switch all levels sort of the stop gap because they couldn't get enough of the new chips. That means they're manufacturing the chips now and it would be able to release next year with rest of the wild too. Will they do it? I don't know. I think a big a big idea of them doing it is if at some point by summer next year they discontinue the OG switch model, the version two switch model goes away, switch OLED is now the base model and switch light and they're not even making that other model anymore. That's a big indicator to me. They're about to move into a next model to keep the three model system going. But again, this all presumes by the way, this is me giving massive benefit of the doubt. I have no inside information on this guys. People I know that have access to dev kits, they have no idea what's going on with manufacturing. So it doesn't even matter what they can do and what what Nintendo's told them doesn't matter because they don't know what Nintendo's actually building in them and the factories. What I can say is I know a single developer just one. So again, not very strong that has worked with a more powerful unit than is currently on the market. What that means, I don't know. It could still be next gen. It could also, if it is next gen, I think it would be very disappointed with what next gen is. I think I think that very tricky here, right? I think Nintendo had a plan that was meant to be the upgraded model this year. But it fell through because of manufacturing problems. But they had all these switch OLED screens. It's easy to make the shells because that's not relying on chip shortages. And they just said, screw it. We'll just put the old system in here and we'll release it for $50 more because that's what we were going to release this damn thing at it anyways. And they knew it was going to sell out because everything switched itself. Video game shit selling out. It's just what it is. They could have released it at $400 to probably what it sold out. In hindsight, they probably wish they did because they would have just made that much extra money. But I think the 50 is a key thing. Nintendo doesn't keep that $50 price unless it's a launch price of a brand new system. Like they kept Wii at $250 for a long time. But they traditionally don't do that $50 thing for very long. Like even when new 3DS launched at a higher price, they quickly like a year and a half later lowered that price and kind of got rid of the old model. So I think there is this mindset that we need to see how next year progresses as it gets to the point that we don't even see regular switches on shelves anymore. It's just lights and OLEDs because that's a really big indicator. Nintendo just stopped making that other model without telling anybody and they'll announce it at some point and that announcement will be when they're willing to slash the price of the OLED to meet what the old model was. And I don't think that's going to be announced until summer next year and that would be around the time that they would even consider marketing a potential new platform. Now again, I'm not saying it's going to come. I'm saying I'm not going to rule out the possibility that all these Switch Pro shit that we heard this year was bullshit. Because if it wasn't bullshit, if Bloomberg was correct, that game developers, and I know of one, but again, one is not enough to really come to a definitive conclusion on what if they aren't full of shit, if Eurogamer wasn't full of shit, if all these outlets that no developers supposedly that were working with 4K and Nintendo Switch dev kits aren't full of shit, then that suggests to me the only thing that stopped it was manufacturing problems. So why wouldn't it just come out next year when they've had an extra year of manufacturing? I'll tell you that over the last few years my... And to answer some questions, people want to know if I know any specific information from this developer on chip sets or anything. No. They were not willing to break NDA to that level. They were just willing to say they know it exists because they worked on it and that's all they could say. Yeah. So what I was going to say is that I think that whatever... The big thing that I think has sort of impacted the the reliability or the claims of a lot of these different sites like Eurogamer and such isn't so much the content of what they're saying. All of that there is also an issue there. I'll get to that later. It's more of the timing. I think oftentimes people hear things and there's an estimation upon when they think it may come and that estimation is just completely wrong. So, you know, perhaps it is the case that, you know, they're hearing about this 4K, whatever, and sure. Yeah, I agree. Nintendo is working on 4K stuff. We've literally seen patents for it. Like there's no denying it. Yeah, there is no denying it. Nintendo has patents around DLSS like technology. It's obvious. Yes. We know Nintendo is doing it. Whether it ever comes out or whether it's coming out soon. When are they going to use that technology and if they'll use that technology? Right? Like they are working on the technology. And I think the biggest issue here is really just timing. So, you know, I think the timing is not within the next year. I don't think that's likely. I think right now they're just trying to sell Switch OLED and with the semiconductor shortage, like that's even going to be hard to sort of get out there and selling really well. And when you take into consideration the timing of releases between the different revisions on Switch and then you also take into consideration how the 3DS is handled. We never saw a revision come out within a year, a little bit over a year, but never within a year. It just seems incredibly unlikely. If it comes out in November, that would be a little over a year. Barely. But it's still over a year. Because you got to consider this. Well, we're talking about revisions. Switch Lite was an obvious thing. Smaller, no detachable joy-cons, more pocketable, more kid-friendly, more durable Switch, right? Made sense. Kind of like DS Lite. 3DS Lite. Like these smaller 2DS even. Kind of like made sense in some ways, although 2DS' design was a little weird, but technically more durable. Got rid of the hinge and then they eventually brought the hinge back for it. But it was one of those made sense, even though some people always mock 2DS for getting rid of the whole point of the 3DS, the 3D part, but whatever. Just like Switch Lite gets not for getting rid of the Switch part of the Switch. But you can see the point of a smaller, more durable, kid-friendly Switch. Make sense. And it's cheap, 200 bucks. That's always been a sweet point for Nintendo handhelds. $200, that's always been like, yeah, that's mass success of $200. Okay. And by the way, Switch Lite is still not even, like it only becomes the best selling unit when everything else is sold out. So even that, it's not even the most popular selling unit. I don't know that Nintendo is necessarily pushing Switch OLED to, like, you've got to get Switch OLED out. We can't get enough Switch OLED out. I think Switch OLED is the odd ball. It's the odd ball. Like we can call it, oh, it's a 3DS XL. Fine. You can call it the XL Switch if you want. But it doesn't do anything. The old Switch doesn't do already. Just look at the quality of life improvements. Just look at the marketing on it. We heard about it originally. And we haven't heard about anything since. And they don't even really market the Switch OLED. That's the weird thing. There isn't like, once the last time you've seen a Switch OLED specific commercial that's like, let me tell you to go buy this Switch OLED. They don't do it. Now you can argue they don't have to because they can't get enough of them out there. Anyways, but it's weird because I sit there and I own a Switch OLED. There's like three of them in my house right now. Like Switch OLED, great. I enjoy it. It's basically a Switch XL with more quality of life improvements than the 3DS XL. Great. But it's still the same fundamental Switch. It's basically the same form factor in general. It's not really something like if you own a Switch, you need to go get this thing. It doesn't significantly change the way you plug. Switch Lite, some people actually prefer playing on Switch Lite and some people will prefer the better OLED screen and that's fine. I understand that that can be an enticing prospect because I like the OLED screen. But I also think it's the only iteration of Switch so far that it's kind of an obel, it doesn't make sense. It's basically just a replacement for what you already have. There's nothing new really about it and notably, OLED's like a subtext. It doesn't even say OLED on the Switch. It doesn't say OLED anywhere else. It's very clearly just a Nintendo Switch. And when you go in, and this is something I noted this holiday season, because I paid a lot of attention. So many damn trips to our local Walmart over the last two months, it's been insane. Hate saying that, cold and everything. People are like, why are you going there so much? Sorry, I have a family, okay? I'm like, we just buy things as we need it. We don't just stock up for like six months at a time. Like some people do. And like every time I see Switch in stock, it's not the Switch Lite. It was the Switch Lite, by the way, before the holidays. Switch Lite was in stock everywhere. At least some color variant of it somewhere was in stock. Now that's been kind of out of stock. I have not seen the OG Switch in stock in person since OLED came out in October. It just hasn't been in stock. Now you could argue, because it's selling really well. It is, and we know in Japan, we see Japan sales. We clearly see they're still making them, because they're selling them every week. So we know they're still being made, but we're starting to see even in Japan what's happening. Switch OLEDs are starting to outpace the OG Switch. And then we know they're sold out in Japan because all of the retailers keep, they just did a lottery last week at two retailers in Kyoto. Like that's how in demand it is. They can't keep it in stock. So if they're selling every unit they got basically, and Switch OLEDs taking the lead, that means they're making more Switch OLEDs than the OG Switch, which tells me they've gotten to the point that they're prioritizing OLED over it. One, it makes more money, it makes more sense. And two, I think that's just already begun the phasing out of the old one. I literally think all OLED like, and we saw this with 3DS, 3DS XL, the old OG 3DS just died. In six months, it was just dead. They didn't even make it. And if that happens now, like the 3DS XL to the new 3DS had about, I think it was like a year and three month gap from when the new 3DS came out to the XL. I had to double check. Pretty sure it was about a year and three months. So let's say it comes the next environment. It's only a year and a month. That's not really that far off from what Nintendo's done before. And I don't know, obviously, you know why they didn't just do the new 3DS. Earlier back then, 3DS was having issues originally at launch. So I have no idea what the logistics were with that. Maybe they were just happy to get their feet with the 3DS light, which really helped take things off for them. But I do think that they need to, or that the realistic opportunity for 2022 is that I fundamentally don't think Takahashi Matsuzuki is full of shit. He literally said, he thought the Switch Pro would be announced at E3 because several developers he talked to wanted it to be announced because they were working on games for it. And if that many developers wanted to be announced so they can announce their projects, 2023, that is a long ways away for these people that wanted their projects to be announced this year. So to me, this is a lot of faith of, I've looked at Takahashi Matsuzuki's track record and I know a lot of you guys are gonna say he's full of shit. Well, look at his track record, it's impeccable. This is one of the few times that he looks bad, which means he probably had real information. Maybe his pushing that it would be announced imminently was the wrong thing to do in hindsight. Because he didn't know that it would be. He clearly didn't know that it would be. He thought it would be because so many developers were telling him that like they want, basically I think the developers were playing around with him and wanted him to pressure Nintendo into announcing it. I think that's really what it was because developers would obviously know if it was gonna get announced soon because then they can announce their games. Well, and I think, didn't there come out before COVID was like really... No, that was this year. COVID, that was this year. That was literally this year. Like that's why this was a big thing in the top in 2021 because Switch Pro rumors were a big part of this year. The summer especially, huge part of summer of Switch Pro rumors or whatever it ends up being called if it even is called or if it even is a thing. We don't even know. None of us really know. I haven't held one. I haven't seen one. I don't know. It could also be a thing that's scrapped and Nintendo never releases. I just think that when you look to 2022, I look at it and go, why not? They're gonna have new factories fixing chip shortages in 2023, which you can argue that's why they should do it in 2023. But if they've already were making the chips this year, and if they have a bunch of dev units out, like all these other outlets have claimed, well, if they already have a bunch of dev units out, that means the chips are already in mass production. They just aren't being mass produced at a good enough rate to release during a holiday season. Like it just didn't make sense to release it now because there just isn't enough. I mean, heck, it could even release before. I think it'd be weird if they release it before holiday because I think they wanna give at least a year between and they wanna be able to just, they don't want four models out there. I think they would discontinue the OG switch before that, but it's one of those that I don't know anything. Other than, I know one person who claims they have done some development work on a switch dev unit that is more powerful than the current. That's all I have been told. I haven't even seen it myself. So this is all even for me, it's like second hand information, it's not a first hand, it's not me. And then I know that I'm a nobody that just happens to have met a couple of people at E3, a couple of developers, otherwise I'm a nobody. I don't think Takahashi Matsuzuki's a nobody. Tom Phillips is a little bit of a different story, a Euro gamer, because he was kind of the source of a lot of stuff and he's actually, I don't wanna throw shade at Tom. He's been right on some things, but he's also been wrong on a lot of things that he says is happening. He seems like a bandwagon reporter and he was the source of a lot of Euro gamer. Oh yeah, we can confirm with our own source. He's been wrong on a lot of stuff. Takahashi Matsuzuki has it. So the fact that he told, said that there was that, like guys, our entire reporting on this, that people got pissed about over the summer was basically based on Takahashi Matsuzuki. We could talk about other people piling on and reconfirming and doubling down. It all started with him. He's the one that said we were getting it this year. He is the one who said it was imminently gonna be announced. He is the one who said all these developers have dev kits. He is the one that said everything we knew that ended up being true about Switzerland, the seven, I mean, you know the thing, give him some credit. Seven inch OLED display. True, better kickstand. True, like he was right on everything except the actual chips inside. I'll tell you that. That's just my take. If it comes out November, because I also expect Breath of the Wild 2 to come out November. And because there is a history of using Zelda to push hardware. And there's rumors out there right now that every major game being developed next year has an alternative 4K, the LSS version. Yes. That's a rumor floating out there by the way. It's just a rumor. Doesn't mean anything yet. It's not, I don't think it's far fetched, but the same time I think it's also should be noted that every revision on Switch has been at least two years. We look at the 3DS, which had a lot of revisions. Would Switch all that have been last year if there was no pandemic? See, we don't know. There was a pandemic. Right, and that definitely throws things for a loop, right? But if we look at the 3DS, everything was a year and a few months. So even if we do see the Switch 2 or Switch Pro come out November, that's just a 13 month gap, which is a very short gap even for the 3DS time. And it would be more powerful too after we have just got the Switch O, which is already more, I mean, not just more powerful, but this works with the presumption that it was supposed to be this year. Right. We couldn't get enough chips made because of the pandemic. But then screw it, we already have all these shells made. We already have all these screens. We gotta do something. You take that into account on top of the fact that there is a chip shortage. It just seems, there's information on both sides. Like there's information suggesting yes and there's information suggesting no. Well, the information suggesting no is mostly that there's a chip shortage. But like that hasn't stopped anybody else from releasing new products. So why would we think Nintendo wouldn't consider releasing new products? I also think that if you're arguing a mid-gen refresh in 2022, five years. By the way, it lines up with Nintendo saying, more than five years and a half. The only credit I can say is, new president, new wave, hardcore releases next year, and Shintura Furukawa doesn't wanna let things fall off a cliff. Well, how do you not fall off a cliff? Keep your platform as relevant as long as you can. A new, more powerful platform next year that replaces that 350 price point, even if it comes out of 399. In the midst of you still selling out, I think there might be a presumption that they won't have that problem by then, although obviously any new release, any new platform will sell out during the holidays. That's just what happens. But I think there's a theory that can exist where this is a very different Nintendo doing very different things with a very different business-minded president that said, you can argue, you've always been talking two years about this, being the middle of the Switch's life cycle. Yeah, because he wants to extend it as long as he can in the pandemic through it for a loop. Last year was supposed to be in the middle. Well, everything got delayed a year because of the pandemic. So now this year is the middle, which means there's another four, five years of Switch. And I know you said, oh, Switch will go until eight years, right? It'll be in existence in manufacturing till 2025. And that's cool, but I actually see a world where we don't even get a Switch to till 2025 because of this. This is the thing that makes Switch last pretty much as long as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Because this gives us, because the thing I'm talking about, by the way, guys, with this new chip that might be in manufacturing, we don't know. The thing I'm talking about isn't some ultra-powerful next-gen, like we're talking about 4K through DLSS, something Nvidia already does in his old technology at this point. We're just talking about taking games today and making them look even better on your TV. We're not even talking about some next-gen evolution in visuals and graphics. It's about companies being able to bring their games over to PlayStation 4 and or slightly less than PlayStation 4 levels of power, but because of the power of DLSS, still having it look almost as crisp as, I don't know, a PlayStation 4 Pro or an Xbox One X or whatever comparison you wanna make. We can't know until it's here. Like I'm not talking about something that you would consider to be next-gen. Switch is more powerful than PlayStation 3. Already between PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 and power as it is. We're not, PlayStation 4 level of power isn't that big of a leap actually from what Switch is today. It just has more RAM and more CPU. It's not a huge massive leap. So like, I think a next-gen Switch would be at least two or three times more powerful and that's not what I think this thing is. I think people are overestimating what the revision is. I think the primary focus of the revision is DLSS, taking today's games, making them crisp around your teeth. Improving performance somewhat and- And I think it'll still be a 720p screen. I think that they ain't going away from that. I don't think that was ever the plan, but also now when you play like the Witcher 3 that down samples to 240 because of DLSS, it still looks like it's a native 720p image. Like I think a huge focus of this isn't about, as we should know by now, Nintendo hasn't been big on power. It's about being big on staying relevant in the current market. And since 4K has become such a big thing and 4K TVs are becoming so cheap, Nintendo just wants to get their 4K out there in a way that makes it look like it's competing, but isn't really. Like, and you know what's funny? This was in today's video. I mentioned Horizon Zero Dawn in my video today and I showed some footage of it. I'm sitting there watching this footage as I'm editing, because I put in like a minute of it. And it looks incredible, right? I mean, these are visuals well beyond anything Switch can do. Very clearly. I mean, even if you dumb it down, it just wouldn't, it'd be blurry. Don't even know what's going on mess. It's insane. It looks great. Here's the thing about that game. And I'm starting to notice this with a lot of these quote unquote, next-gen games. The entire game, the main character is clipping through all the foliage, like it's not even there. There's no interaction with the environment. There's interaction with the enemies. Interaction with their hair flying all over the place. These hyper-realistic, these amazing looking visuals, but you're not interacting with the environment. The environment is just kind of a backdrop that exists, but is not impacted by your presence. And I'm sitting here as someone with Breath of the Wild is my favorite game. Every blade of grass moving when I walk through it. That was happening on the Wii U and we're talking PlayStation 5 is not doing that. Now, granted, that's not the PlayStation 5. And, obviously, it's that the games we have made our focus so hard on trying to be, when you take a still shot, this vista shot is the most visually impressive thing I've ever seen in my life. Which, but the gameplay breaks the immersion because it's like the world isn't there. It's like it doesn't exist unless you stop moving. Once you move, your clip, and I noticed this, I noticed it in Returnal a little bit. I even noticed it in the medium on Xbox. A lot of clipping. And when the hell the gamers start being accepted of clipping, that used to be a massive criticism again when you're clipping through walls. Okay, well, you're not clipping through walls. No, you're just clipping through a table like it's not even there. You're clipping through grass like it doesn't exist. Well, this bush is taller than you, but you just walk through it and the bush doesn't even react to you. Games like Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, and Metroid Dread, there is a focus on your interactivity with the environment, how you move about the environment. Nintendo in general has been really good with that. Those three games I mentioned, you'll notice that the movement in the world is very fluid and dynamic. Yes. That's something they focused on for all three of those games, and they all three are gonna probably go down as the best selling for their respective series. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if Mario is gonna pick it up there. Well, it already is. They're, it's a 3D Mario. Okay, you wanna tell us 3D Mario. It's the best selling 3D Mario. Yeah, okay. Sure, I can give you a 3D Mario. I was gonna say it's technically part of the mainline series, which does include the 2D one. So best selling Super Mario, not maybe not best selling Super Mario Bros. Okay. Yeah. But you get one. I'll give you that, I don't have a caveat. I'll give you that. It's, they're all mainline. It's kind of like there's top-down Zelda and 3D Zelda, but they're technically all mainline Zelda games. That's the way I view Mario. I don't really separate the sales like that, but I understand people do that with Zelda too. They'll say this is the best handheld selling, this is the best 3D selling, but I think it kind of gets all muddled, but that's not even there. I mean, to me, the gameplay style is different. So therefore, they should be different. But is it just platforming? One's in 2D, one's in 3D. I'm saying it's still platforming. It's just a different perspective. It's still platforming. Like that's the thing that I mean. A platformer is a platformer. We don't call it a 3D platformer, we call it a platformer. All right, well, let me know at that point, like, you know, I think you could argue is Sonic a platformer or a racer? It's a platformer. Sonic's always been a platformer. It's not been a racer, not racing anyone. You're just fast. It's a speedy platformer. But it's a platformer. Sonic is literally less than as a platformer for his genre. What are we talking about? I'm not saying it isn't a platformer. Racing involves competition against somebody. You're not competing against somebody in Sonic. There are some racing eats are more about. I think a better definition is, do you consider it a runner versus a platformer? That could be a fair argument. Because runners are not a racing game. They're just slightly moving your character on an infinite running path. Just because it falls in a almost, perhaps a blanket type of genre, I don't think that makes the same. It's still different. Still different. Well, here's the way I look at it though. Like, I like this conversation here because there are different types of platforming within the platformer genre. There's different types of action and adventure games within the action and adventure genre. Different types of RPGs. Different types of JRPGs. Both action adventures, but no one's going to argue that Breath of the Wild and Metroid Dread are similar games. Some might, but I won't go there. Well, I won't go there. They're both adventure games, but it stops there. Well, there's puzzle elements. Metroid and Zelda have been massively compared a lot over the years. People don't consider it action event. It's officially listed as action event because Metroidvania is not technically an official genre. But everyone is recognized. Like gamers that kind of recognize Metroidvania as like a dome thing. Most people who are going to wholeheartedly agree that Metroid Dread and Breath of the Wild, they're very, very, very different. Sure. I can agree that they're very, very different. But also a lot of the things that make an action adventure game and action adventure game are in both of them. Puzzle elements. As an example, that's a huge part of both games. Sure, but going back to what I was saying though, Super Mario Odyssey and... And when we're comparing Mario to Mario, I think the differences are even less. They are incredibly different. They are so different. So, yes, they both technically platformers, but they... But what's the difference? A 3D plane? You're still running. You're still jumping. You're still stomping on enemies. You're still throwing items. You're still doing power-ups. What's the real fundamental difference besides running and agreeing? You're doing all that in Smash Bros. too, so... Sure. But that's a fighting genre. That's a party game where, well, some people argue it's not a fighting game, it's a party game, but... It's listed in the fighting genre, officially. Even Nintendo has it as a fighting thing on their web. Yeah, I agree with that. It's a fighting game. But here's the thing, the difference there is, you're playing against other players. Mario's about stomping on AI enemies, you know? Like, I know you can do that in Smash as well, but that's like not the point of Smash. What I'm trying to, I guess, fundamentally get at here is that, especially with Mario, platformer's a platformer. You can call it a 3D platformer. I call it a 3D platformer versus just platformer my whole life, right? Mario 64, 3D platformer, Super Mario World platformer. And I'm actually curious for Eric here, because he's got a lot of experience with Mario too. Like, to me, a platformer's just a damn platformer. No matter if it's in 3D or 2D, the concepts are fundamentally the same. It's just the perspective at which you're platforming at. Like in Mario 64, you're still trying to complete this jump to get to a certain place and do the certain thing, and you're doing the same thing in 2D Mario just from a different perspective. So to me, they're still both using power-ups. They're still jumping. You're still stomping. You're still shooting. You're still just trying to get to different levels of the thing. And they're still in every single one of these 3D games and end to the level, just like there is in 2D. Now, the levels are bigger. They're more expansive. I feel like it's just too vague. I think it's too vague because, I mean, if you start breaking things down like that, like almost every game is the same. Most games have movement. Most games have- Games within the same genre, games within the same genre can sound the same. And they're both platformers, and they both define platforming. So like, to me, as someone who grew up with Mario, Mario's always been Mario. Here's the other point though. Just because they fall in the same genre doesn't mean they're the same series. No, that's a Mario's Mario, it is the same series. But that goes back to the overall point I'm saying though. They're more than different enough to be considered two different series. The gameplay styles- I don't think so. I find- Eric, do you think 3D Mario and 2D Mario are completely, like if you get rid of the Mario in the name, they're completely different genres, completely different games. I wanna drag you into this because you're a big Mario fan, so. I wanna get your perspective. Got it. Him and I can go back and forth this whole time. We obviously disagree, so I wanna get a third perspective. I- God. It's okay, there's no, by the way, there's no right or wrong answer. I wanna be clear here. These are just personal opinions. No, they're not answer. No, they're not, because they're both- You're right. You're right, you're right. The right answer is, they're both listed as platformers. 3D platformer isn't actually a genre. Mario's Mario. They're all part of the mainline series, officially in a Nintendo- Mario book. They're different kinds of games. They're different, their tree has different kinds of games. They're platformers, how are they different? Mario Kart is different. Their different series is my point. There is Super Mario, and then there's Super Mario Bros. And by the way, chat, who's watching? I wanna get your guys' thoughts on this as well. It's okay if you guys all disagree with me, it's cool, I'll be a lone man. You guys know, I'm perfectly fine being a lone man on a lone mission. It's all the two, before Breath of War came out, was the greatest all the game of all time, Ocarina of Time, not even in the top 10. I'm very used to being the controversial guy. We're already in a label here, right? What is the value of a conclusion with this argument? Like, it is just- The value to me is people devalue certain games based on this fundamental concept that they're too different. As an example, most Zelda fans, and I grew up in the Zelda fan base massively, Eric knows all about my history there. A lot of Zelda fans will literally, all their top Zelda games, will be all the 3D Zelda games, and then all of the lesser top-down Zelda games. And I'd ask them, what fundamentally is different about them? And I asked us about Ocarina of Time specifically, because they always bring that one up as a huge example, because that's when it started. And I go, but everything done in that game was already done in a top-down Zelda game. What are we talking about here? The only difference is the plane in which you're moving in. The verticality of that plane that you're moving in is the difference, because there's not really, there's a verticality in two of these Zelda games, but it's not the same sort of verticality because of the perspective you have. I'll, I'll, I'll, okay. I'll, I'll, I'll attack that question. So the transition to 3D change will obviously perspective, but with that perspective change comes a change in gameplay style in terms of combat. Combat, very, very different. How you go about combat is different. No, there's more to it than that. The, the, how you position yourself is different. You have different sword attacks and how you go out and the same is true in 2D Zelda games. And there's also different items you can use and use them in different ways. Also the puzzles are entirely different too. And then, you know, in terms of why you push a block and then climb on top of it, they are different. There's a lot of differences. Also the audio is like a 3D audio as well. Like, so the environment is different. Like there are people who can play or create a... No, I can already call that bullshit. Zelda's been using MIDI files all the way through. There's no such thing as 3D audio in Zelda. Has a, literally has never existed. All right, go ahead. Look up, arcane time, beating, being beaten blind. Look it up and you'll see that you're wrong. Yes, you can... Oh my gosh, that's just in... Yes, and you can also hear which direction enemies are coming from and the link between worlds. What the hell's your point? That's not 3D audio, that's spatial audio. That's been in gaming, dating back to the SNES era. That's just an advancement of technology. That's what I'm trying to argue. It's just an advancement of technology. Yes, there are different things that can happen in these 3D games to me, whether it's Zelda or Mario. You can do more things in certain ways. Absolutely. I'm not arguing that there aren't more things you can do in a 3D plane versus a 2D plane or a... I mean... Hold on a second. Here's a game that models the money for what. Just hold on a second, because I want to make something very clear. Yes. When I say they are different, I'm not saying one is better than the other. No, no. I know. That's a different argument. With this grand battle because of the Zelda fans. I'm totally with you there, that 2D and 3D are different, but one is not inherently better than the other. However, there is a thing in terms of public perception. And when we look at how mainstream media is and how gaming media is, and to your point about how... We see a lot of Sony games, for example, that seem to have more of a focus on just how a screen shot is going to look, because the point is, it's just easier to market. So, Nintendo Academy did a $5 SuperTaker, by the way, thank you so much. And he said, pretty much the method hasn't changed. Just the over design and the way you go about interacting with your environment. And that's kind of what I was arguing. There are different ways you interact with a 3D environment versus a 2D. Still the same fundamental concepts. The concepts have like... Zelda is like... If you play Link to the Past and go play Zelda, they both feel like Zelda games. There's a reason for that. They're using the same fundamental base concepts underneath all of it. That's what makes it Zelda. That's why some people, by the way, some Zelda fans don't actually like Breath of the Wild because it actually breaks a lot of those concepts. That's a whole other debate because that's a very different kind of Zelda experience. So probably the debate we'll have after Breath of the Wild 2. Because we're going to do 3D Mario per second, though, because with the advent of Mario 64, there was a shift in Mario-style gameplay. Because before, it was very linear. Mario 64 started to give us non-linear gameplay. So, you know, that does change things. Yeah, sorry. I was trying to get them a drink, and I gave them one that looks like it's like an ice or exploded or something. I don't know. I'll also say that, like... I mean, I do understand your point in terms of, like, there are certain philosophies that carry over. I mean, heck, when we talk about Breath of the Wild, you know, Nintendo was very big on talking about how they went back to the original NES, Legend of Zelda, and looked a lot of those design philosophies and tried to carry them over to Breath of the Wild. Like, so, you know, I don't, like, 100% wholeheartedly disagree with what you're saying. I get it. There are philosophies that carry over across both things, but they're also very different experiences. I think they're different experiences, and they are different. So, you know, and even if you want to consider them the same genre, just because two games are in the same genre doesn't mean they can't feel very different and be considered two different series. So, going back to the initial, initial point, even though 2D Mario and 3D Mario may share some gameplay philosophies, although a lot of the 3D Mario's are more open, but there are exceptions, obviously, they still feel so different, and they are two different experiences that they should be considered two different series, and the naming schemes for both of them are, in large part, different. So, you know, I stand by my initial point. But I also, you know, I also want to give you that they do share a lot of elements. There are similarities there. If you're playing a Mario game, be it 2D or 3D, there are going to be some things that are shared across both of them that will bring in a lot of similar Mario fans. Not all of them will. I'm glad we're having this talk. This was obviously not a planned subject today, but that's why I love having you on because we come up with some fundamental debates because I'm just restarting. I obviously, if you guys don't know from prior episodes, him and I often have some fundamental disagreements on certain things and all which love and respect. None of us, we're literally, when we're done with this, we'll probably end up bullshitting for a little bit. Just a minute, it is what it is, mixed for fun debate. But Eric, I want to give you a chance to actually finish answering it because obviously we got some interruption there from probably on my part because I do that all the time, Eric. Sorry, man. It's funny, Natsu's over here in the chat, like, man, Eric is so polite. I'm like, yeah, I know, I just interrupted him, he just didn't care. Anyways, go on now. No, I mean, to me, up until Bowser's Fury, a Mario game is a Mario game. I know what was common. I'm going to go around and jump on Goombas, smash some blocks, do anything like that. I mean, I knew what was coming and to a certain extent, Bowser's Fury's kind of the same old shit, different, just a different way to do it. But it just kind of has, again, the overall feel as Mario. And I mean, so I'm not saying that, 3D, 2D, you know, it's hard to, it's hard to, you know, say that- And then even 2D's got the model of Mario, 3D world, 3D land and stuff, really awesome model things. Right, I mean, it's not like they're, you know, the same, but they can't be the same because they're in different dimensions. But at the same point in time, it does feel relatively, I'm jumping on this platform, jumping on this character to get to a flag at the end of the, at the end of the- Well, even when you think, like, I go back to like, think about the boss fights in the 3D Zelda games, right? Like, if anything should be different, it's those, and what are most of the boss fights coming down to jump on their head? Avoid their attack and jump on their head. That's a lot of the boss fights in 3D Mario games. There are some exceptions, of course. Throwing them off platforms, stuff like that, obviously, which is an expansion of being in a 3D plane. Not that you can't do that in a 2D plane, but it's obviously a little bit of a less exciting fight in a 2D plane that way. The biggest difference in boss battles is Mario 64, which, yeah, you're- Well, like, even like- You don't really get boss battles in 2D Mario. What? You don't really get, like you do, but there's not really too many boss battles in 2D Mario, like you have. I mean, there's the Koopalings, and then like- And all the castles. You get, you just gotta jump past them. In the early games, yeah, I was jump past and landed on the thing and fall into lava or whatever. But like, that's, and obviously, it's evolved since then. You know, like even going back to Mario Brothers 3, you were jumping on boss, you were fighting the Koopalings and jumping on their heads and stuff. But the other thing though, we haven't had a modern 2D Mario. Yeah. Yeah, so. Depends on what do you consider modern. What a 3D world is the modern. But it's not 2D. But why do we have to define it by 2D? It's literally 2D concepts in a 3D playing. No, hold on. When 3D World before was fully announced. 3D Land, by the way, came out first. So we should give credit to that one first. Right, but when 3D World was in development before was announced, a lot of it say we have a new 3D Mario Adventure game in the works, and it was 3D World. It was treated as like the big 3D Mario experience for the Wii U. But I think you can agree it was designed in a very similar way to the 2D ones. Absolutely. That's why I didn't like it. I liked it. I'm just kidding. You just didn't like it as much as like something like Odyssey or Galaxy. Right, yeah, yeah. No. And for the record, I actually really enjoyed 3D Land. Really enjoyed 3D Land. I know a lot of people like 3D Land, but weren't a huge fan of 3D World. Yeah. It seems to be a common opinion. Part of the issue with 3D World was the multiplayer aspect of it. But you don't have to do that. So why does that matter? Well, when I did it, I didn't like it. And then also I didn't like it. I mean, it's part of the game, but you don't have, just noting, like you could play it single player all the way. But imagine if they had focused on something else. Right? And then also, for me, I didn't like that your camera was limited somewhat. Granted, the Galaxy had that issue too. And I still like Galaxy more. We have a number of little things about 3D World. It's still great. I won 100% in 3D World. Yeah. It's not like a game like a game. You gotta remember, when we talk about these things, it's like talking about our least favorite of things we actually enjoy kind of thing. It's like, okay. Yeah, I still enjoyed the game. It's Mario. I still, I bought the game twice. It's gonna take a lot to not actually like the game. I bought 3D World twice. I got it on Wii U and then I got it on the Switch. Well, you could argue on Switch what you could have said was Bowser's Fury. You even admitted it. You didn't even admit it. It was Bowser's Fury. Like, would you have bought it if Bowser's Fury wasn't the best of it? No, I already have it on Wii U. My thing with World, I actually enjoyed World More Than Land. But that's because I have a very unique experience with it. It was the multiplayer. It is to date, the only video game me and my fiance have beaten together. That's awesome. And that's a special experience. Does it mean it was the greatest co-op experience? No, of course. I would have rather us have been like tropical freezer. And we did play tropical freeze together back on Wii U. And we did do other games. We tried playing Pikmin together a little bit. It had some multi, it wasn't like great. It's kind of like when you were playing, oh, there's multiplayer in Galaxy back in the day. Someone could like star, but it's not really that great. It's kind of like the multiplayer of the Odyssey. It's like, okay, it's not really, like I prefer 3D World. We're actually our own characters doing our own thing. But the camera was obviously a little wonky. I think the camera is mostly what made that feel a little weird to me. However, it was still really enjoyable and Wii 100% of that game. She doesn't 100% in any game. And we 100% of that game together. So I have a, you know, I really enjoyed that one. But the reason I brought those games up is because I feel like they muddy the water because they're 3D. They were talked about as 3D games, especially 3D World. I don't remember 3D Land interviews too much. I was not a big handheld gamer at that time. So I did play 3D Land, but I just didn't pay attention to interviews and coverage of the game. But I did for 3D World. And what Miyamoto called it a 3D game, which by the way, I don't think what Miyamoto says actually matters. And I know that's like me. It was a water. A water, even then. Neither one of them make the game. I care about what the actual developer and the actual people working on the game think that it is. And I don't think that they think in terms of 2D and 3D when they develop games anyways. I don't think that's even a conversation they have. I think that's just marketing spin. They know if they say something's 3D, it's gonna sell better because it traditionally has sold better. So call it what you want. I guess from my perspective, this is just a roundabout conversation because we're not gonna, or it'll just be another agree to disagree thing. It's just how it is. Is for me, as Eric kind of said, he kind of summarized that a Mario game is a Mario game. Doesn't really matter if it's side scrolling. Doesn't really matter if it's in a 3D plane. It's all sort of the same thing. You do some different things in every game. Like as an example, there are things in Super Mario World you don't do in any other Mario game. Where are you putting on a cape and flying in other Mario games? Well, three, and that's not a cape. And that's a temp. Even then, it's a different type of flight, right? You have the tail that goes up and... I know you don't think of it this way, right? Oh, yes, of the boot. I do feel like this is slightly, is a bit of a slippery slope to just call a 3D Mario 2D Mario. Oh, they're both Mario games and that's it. Because then there are people who call Mario Kart a Mario game. There are people who call Mario Party a Mario game. That's different. I'm telling you, mainline Mario games are mainline Mario games. Spinoffs are different. Those are completely different genres. Mario Kart's not a platformer. It's a racing game. Kart racing game, specifically, but racing game, right? You know, I think where it gets a little interesting is when you start to talk about, oh, what about Paper Mario? Well, that's more RPG, but then it's done less RPGs. What is that game exactly? Where does that fit in the mix? That one kind of muddies the water. And then with the two origami kings, more of an adventure. Yeah, so that's the thing, that muddies the water. But it's an adventure game that we consider. An action-adventure, and then Mario is an action-adventure. You can argue what makes Paper Mario separate from the mainline Mario series is mostly just the combat system. It's just, it's not the same thing. It's a more tactical, skill-based turn, sometimes turn-based, depending on which one you're playing, experience, versus running freely and jumping on an enemy, which is what all 3D and 2D Mario games have in common, is you're running freely and jumping on an enemy, or shooting it with a fireball, or whatever item power-up you're using at the time, stopping around as a T-Rex. Which to me is almost fundamentally a similar concept to when you got the big mushroom in the 2D games and you're stomping through as well that they did with the Super Mario Bros. Wii and DS or whatever. But I understand, like, you know, I get what you're coming from because where you're coming from I think is a very popular thought process. It's one I see a lot, and it's just one I've always fundamentally disagreed with. So I was kind of fun to kind of have that conversation. To me, a Zelda game is a Zelda game, a Mario game is a Mario game. It doesn't really matter what plane of existence it's in. They all have the same concepts behind them, to me. But they're just... There's different things done in both different planes. There's things done in some of the 2D games that's not done in 3D games and things in the 3D games not done in the 2D games. But the fundamental concepts behind it all is your platforming, you're trying to get to an area through jumping and most of your combat evolves either using power-ups or jumping on enemies. Basically Mario's Mario regardless of... I mean, I think we both agree that Mario's Mario regardless of which plane of existence it's in. They're both Mario. Yeah. They're both different kinds of Mario to me. It's just that simple. And I can agree there are different kinds of Mario. I just think that they're the same genre, same difference, doesn't really matter which one is which. There's personal preferences. Obviously, the 3D Mario's have always sold better. Well, I shouldn't say that, actually. 2D Mario's always sold better. That's actually opposite. 3D Zelda's sell better. 2D Mario's sell better. It's actually the opposite of the franchise. Except they're in Switch. 3D Mario Odyssey is the best selling Mario game. It's not... If you look up 2D Mario sales, it's not the best selling Mario game. On Switch. Well, yeah, we haven't had a new 2D Mario game on Switch. No, but we've had Mario Maker 2 and we've got a new Super Mario. Mario Maker 2 is not... That's so hard to say. New Super Mario... Mario Maker 2 is a user content creation game. That's not the same thing. That's a content creator game. That's like saying Minecraft is Legos. It's not what it feels like. It's like a video game version. No, that's not entirely fair enough. Minecraft is building a Lego game, for sure. But it's not. Mario Maker 2... I'm surprised Minecraft and Lego haven't crossed it. Well, they have in real life. There's Minecraft and Legos, but... Let's see what they have for us. Sorry. Sorry. Go on. Go on to what you were saying. No, I think we should move on. Okay, good enough. So, by the way, one thing I wanted to note, because the last game we talked about was Super Mario Party. Yeah, correct. Now, we don't need to talk about Pokemon. We already talked about it at the very beginning, because that was the game I was playing. Don't forget the Game and Watch. Submarine Diamond. Yeah, the Game and Watch. Game and Watch, Game and Watch, Game and Watch. Yeah, Game and Watch has nothing to do with Switch specifically. Mario Party Superstars, one thing I want to note about that, outside of me feeling that it's the better of the two Mario Parties available on Switch. Well, okay, I guess you could... People haven't played it. People who legitimately like the levels in the previous one versus this one. Because, I don't remember. The one caveat that you could argue against Mario Party Superstars is it's not new. The online part's new. Everything else is just bringing back old stuff. Wasn't there more content in the first one, or was it the other one? No, there was... No, by the way, I think both are lacking content. But we have promise of more content for this game coming where we didn't have that before. I really want to answer this Super Chat you got from Nintendo Academy. Sure. Oh, it's for all of us. Yeah, what is it? It's for all of us. You go ahead, read the question. Yeah, so Nintendo Academy says and asks, for Nate, Eric, and Andres, question, which announced game will be the breakout game of 2022? And I thought about it for like 30 seconds, and I was like, okay, of the announced games, which one is going to perform perhaps better than it's... Better than expected, yeah. Yeah, all a breath of water. We already know how it's going to do well. It's going to do well. Yeah, I think sports of hope is probably going to be par for the course compared to the other Mario Rabbits game. Bayonetta III has an opportunity to... I mean, Bayonetta III is going to be the best-selling Bayonetta game, so you could argue that. Switch effect. Switch effect, yeah. Yeah. Everything's the best selling on Switch. The one that I think is going to be vastly different, I think is going to be Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Yeah, I was actually thinking the same thing. Yeah, Bayonetta III. Because it's in 3D. Yeah. Because it's 3D platformers. It's not even... All right, so there's a correlation, but it's not necessarily the only reason. When we were speculating on this Kirby game, because it's been developed for a while, how it's been sort of talking it up in different interviews, they kept saying this is going to be the biggest, most ambitious Kirby game yet. So when they were saying that, we were like wondering, okay, what are they going to do different? What are they going to do that's going to sort of go beyond what they've done in the past? And then the logical leap that a lot of people made was, well, it's going to be a 3D Kirby game, which I didn't necessarily believe they would do, but they did it. So in their mind, having more of a 3D adventure is going bigger and more ambitious. That's the direction they've gone in. But it all just sort of speaks to the point that they are trying to do a lot more with this Kirby game. And from a marketing perspective, 3D tends to have that effect of reaching out to appealing to more people. So I full-heartedly believe that this Kirby game is going to sell. It's going to be the best selling Kirby game ever. So I can agree that it potentially might be the best selling Kirby game of all time. Now, I don't know how many sales it needs to get to do that. I'd have to look it up. Eric's, I think I'm going to look it up right now. I'm not sure. I know that they traditionally sell between 1.5 and 2 million, but I don't know what the actual best selling is. There may be one that sold like a lot. Yeah, so. Look, I'm trying to think of if return to Dreamland back in the day, if that was like a huge... So that's one that always comes to my mind because that was from my childhood, but that doesn't mean it actually sold phenomenally well. By the way, if you Google Kirby sales, you will not get... Top one? Eric's got the list right here. Dreamland at 5.13 million. Okay, so Dreamland at 5.1. And then it's a big drop off. Oh, there are a couple of different ones in here that are... Kirby Star Allies was 3.15. Okay. That was the next biggest one according to... And Star Allies was on... Well, that's Switch, right? Appreciate that was Switch. Yeah, Star Allies sold 3.15. I think that that game is relatively shit. So I think Kirby the forgotten land is going to do really good. I enjoyed Star Allies, but it's a weird game. It's a weird game. All right, so I'm talking smack. It is objectively a solid game. I just, to me, it felt uninspired. Sure, I can agree with that. That's why I said it's kind of a weird one where I enjoyed it, but it also... It kind of felt like a retread. I'm like, it's just... But then again, I'm going to be honest, most Kirby games feel that way to me. So maybe that's why I was... I don't get every... I consider myself a Kirby fan. There are Kirby games that hold a dear special place in my heart. But I don't get every single one. Because to your point, they do feel like retreads. Which is why I stopped buying Pokemon ironically. I think there are some... I think I just enjoyed the gameplay aspect of Kirby a lot more than Pokemon. That's why I don't really mind the retread. Even though Kirby comes out every year. Something Kirby... I shouldn't say a new mainline Kirby comes out every year. That's not true. But a Kirby something comes out every year, I feel. Yeah. I know we just actually had a year without one, which is crazy. This is going to be the second mainline Kirby. So, you know... So I think it has the potential to... I'm asking what makes something uninspired. I feel like I should answer that. Sure. Sure. That's fair. Yeah. So uninspired to me is kind of like... It's lacking in sort of original thought. Something sort of new that they're bringing to the table. Something that's sort of bringing like a lot of new experiences. Refreshing sort of take on a particular series or genre. So, you know, it's just kind of more like... Okay, there's no like additional extra inspiration here. It's just kind of like... Okay, we're just going to kind of do what we've done the best. Like, there's no like... Oh, we have this new sort of angle we're going to bring into this. Something that makes this difference. Like the entire new Super Mario Bros. series of games. I would also define that as uninspired. Yeah. It's... A lot of Call of Duty games every year. Pokemon. Madden. Until Arceus. I don't think that's fair for Pokemon. Maybe you don't like it. But I think with every Pokemon game, they actually go out and travel to a different country every single generation and take a whole bunch of inspiration from the culture and the environments from there. Now, maybe you don't like the execution of it. But there is inspiration. I'm going to say this. As someone who's played every single Kirby game, you can make it almost the exact same argument. They're fundamentally different worlds with new things. It's just the gameplay feels very samey. And because the gameplay feels very samey. A lot of the worlds are very similar. I could argue a lot of the Pokemon worlds are very similar as well. You're running through grass. You're running through grass. The worlds in Pokemon are actually based off different cities. I know they are based off that, but when I'm in one Pokemon town, and then I'm in a different Pokemon town, three generations apart, it just feels like a Pokemon town. I know there's inspiration. It's mostly just a little minor aesthetic change, which also exists in the Kirby games. It's just, you don't care about it. I don't, again, I disagree with that because it's not just the environment. It's the characters. But I say this. I say this. It's mechanics in the games. But I can say this because you just admitted to it. You haven't played every Kirby game. So how would you know? I have played Kirby Canvas Curse, which I would say is inspired. Yeah, as I said, that one's a very original. That one's awesome. That's a very original. One of my favorites. What would you call any of the Pokemon games original? Besides the original? Besides the very first one, obviously. What do we want to break down as original? But that's what I'm asking you. Q-Side Canvas Curse is inspired, but it's also extremely different from all of the Kirby games. Is there a Pokemon game to you that's extremely different from all of the Pokemon games? That's part of the main series. You can go New Pokemon Snap or something. Obviously, that's what Pokemon goes. Or is Canvas Curse a spin-off? Well, I mean, I'm a competitive Pokemon player. So for every New Pokemon game, there's actually a lot for me to sort of enjoy because the mechanics, the metagame change, vastly game by game. But if you're just a casual player, I understand what for you it's like, oh, this is kind of just like the same sort of thing. So I get what I'm not saying. It's kind of like what you feel is inspired or original or unique or refreshing isn't necessarily what I feel and vice versa, right? So there's a lot of subjectivity here. Yes, of course. But the reason I'll tell you, it's like what are you doing to Pokemon today that's different than what we were doing before? It's uninspired. Like, so for example, Robobobot, that's cool. Like they had a unique idea that they went into with the design for that game and it sets it apart from different Kirby games. You know, like it stands on its own. But can you name Pokemon games I guess what distinguishes our allies is that it's just an HD and that it has co-op. Like that's kind of what sets it apart, I guess. There's a lot of teamwork based puzzles and stuff like that as well. Even when you're playing the solo, it's just all so very easy. So I just, for me, that's probably also why I feel so uninspired is that that could be why it feels to Kirby's always kind of been an easy game. Yeah, it's been like Nintendo's easy. I understand that, yeah. You know what, I'm not a fan of multiplayer platformers. There you go. Well, that can make a big fundamental difference in a lot of people's experiences. I have a question for you then. What do you think about the Donkey Kong Country series? Because it's... Love them. Love them. They're amazing. But it's been like co-op the whole time. Those games do a much better job of that. And also it's always been fundamentally co-op. It's not four players, it's two. And you can play as one character. But each of those characters can sort of work together. It's more of a neater, cohesive sort of design. I would also say there's more love and more time put into each one. There's not a yearly franchise. But for example, with 3D World or Kirby Star Allies, the gameplay feels very messy when there's four players on it. What I want to... The reason that I'm glad that Pokemon got brought up is obviously everything's subjective. But I ask you, what specific... When you think about the Pokemon franchise, is there a specific game that stands out to you as this is just fundamentally different than every other Pokemon game? Because you're talking about minor tweaks and stuff that affect competitive, mega-evolutions and Chinese and breeding and everything else that's come along. There's been a whole bunch, by the way. I'm not an expert on this, but I know about the changes. So there's been a lot of this little stuff that makes a big difference in that scene. Well, hold on a second here. I'm not going to argue that there isn't a lot of similar Pokemon game by Pokemon game. Game Freak historically has always been... Well, that's why I asked you. Is there one that stands out? Like, you can argue Canvas Curse... ...settled changes game by game. Canvas Curse is very different, and we've never seen a Pokemon... Like, so Canvas Curse is so different from a whole bunch of other... All right, I'll give you this. Kirby has done a lot more to change its gameplay style game by game overall than Pokemon has. That is not debatable. Sure. Yeah, like, that is not debatable. But, you know, when I was originally talking about, like, when I use the term uninspired, there's just some different sort of takeaways from that. Like, I do think there's more of an inspiration that goes for each Pokemon game, even though the gameplay may be more consistent game by game than Kirby is. The world is inspired by the gameplay itself. There you go. Sure, you could argue that. I also don't really think that... So, this is my argument against Pokemon, and this is for easy for me to say, because I have actually played... I have tried every Pokemon game that's ever come out. I haven't owned them, but I have tried. Whether it was my copy or somebody else's copy, I have tried. Every game. Sword and Shield is the only one I can officially say I've never played a retail copy. I've played demos. I also played R2-D3. So, I don't have a full formulated opinion on that. I haven't experienced the wild as an example in the way that it's meant to be experienced, right? An actual full gameplay setting. That's the one Pokemon game I could say, okay, yeah, count me out. I can't really talk. That's why, guys, I don't talk about Sword and Shield a lot on my channel, because I fundamentally cannot comment that much on that. I could talk about the way it looks. I could talk about other things aesthetically. I can't talk about anything else. So, anyone disappointed with the game or loved the game? I go for it. I can't really say one way or another. What I can say in my experience as someone who isn't in the competitive scene and just looks at it for what Pokemon is, I don't think it's that inspired at all. I think it's lazy. I think they toss this shit together in a year most of the time, sometimes two. I think it's basically the call of duty of Nintendo franchises. I don't think it's that inspired at all. Oh, congrats. They took another continent and they changed up the sprite artwork or they advanced the visual slightly with a new engine and just did the same shit all over again. Now, I know they've done different things. Story, there's been different things. It hasn't always been an Elite 4. I know they did Colosseum things, not necessarily like traditional badges in the latest one. Well, not brilliant, but Sword and Shield, I know they've done different ideas and tried new things, but I don't think what they're doing is that inspired because it's fundamentally the same game every time, which to me makes it not like Breath of the Wild felt inspired because of how fundamentally different it was. Ocarina of Time, the people felt inspired. I disagree with this opinion, but I understand why they feel it. It's the first 3D Zelda game. They said it felt inspired obviously because of what that game did and what it represented and what it represented for a time period when not every franchise successfully made that move to 3D. Many games tried and bombed out from making that transition. Zelda didn't, so that was a big deal. Let's be clear here, every single game that is made has an inspiration. So in truth, when I say uninspired, it's an exaggeration. Well, sure, that's always an exaggeration. Right? Because you can argue, like literally every game, there is something that inspired it. Inspired it. Therefore, it's not actually uninspired, but sometimes there are some games that give me a sense of uninspired because I don't feel that whatever it is that they sort of did to inspire them to make this game is very compelling. So for you, you don't find the Pokemon games compelling, right? So you are arguing that they are uninspired. They barely spend any time developing them when they shit them out in a year and a half. That's not entirely true. They have. Seven of the last nine years, there's been a new Pokemon game. Seven of the last nine. But they have multiple development teams. Each game has less than 250 developers. So you go ahead and tell me. Until Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, it's all been made by Game Freak. So maybe they have multiple development teams. Those are small teams for a AAA franchise working at an indie level. That's not inspiring to me. Apparently, Sun and Moon were slightly different. According to chat, Sun and Moon were different. They didn't have gyms. That's what I was mentioning. Some games didn't have gyms. They changed up the formula, which I can appreciate, by the way. Breath of the Wild changed up the formula with dungeons and everything. So I appreciate formula changes. And I was aware of this, by the way. That's why I mentioned that all of them had gyms. All of them have a leap forward. They do different things. Some of them do. But my general point is, and again, it's perfectly okay. And anyone who loves Pokemon would just be shitin' on me right now, big time, and go into all the extreme detail of all the different things. And you can do that with any IP. You can do the Kirby. You can do the Zelda. You can do a Call of Duty, which we call Call of Duty uninspired, yet it's fundamentally different in different areas, different weapons. I don't like Call of Duty. Different gameplay mechanics. I don't get every game. But do you consider it uninspired? I find the campaigns boring. There is an inspiration for each one, though. I know. I know. But the exaggerated effect of the shit out in a year. I mean, they have more than a year of development. Again, they have three development. They have three development teams working in Call of Duty. So they have three year development. Can you tell me the last Pokemon game they spent four years making? I don't know. So from the dev interviews, I think the last one that got four years into it was Gen 1. They have never taken their time making Pokemon games. But they don't. Even when they take a year off, it's because that's the year they started development on the next Pokemon. But to their credit, they sell like fucking hotcakes. We got no shit. They know what the hell they're doing. They know. Let's be clear. It don't matter what my opinions are. The Pokemon company and Game Freak are on to something that sells insanely well and become the largest IP in the world. Right now, there's a decent amount of black being thrown at Pokemon. By the way, I've been shitting on Pokemon for 20 years. So this is nothing new to me. Tell you that because Pokemon is now on the switch, there is a higher expectation for Pokemon games. And you have your expectations. You are welcome to your expectations as you should. My expectations have nothing to do with Switch. But I'll also say I see Game Freak making an effort to change and improve. They are making that effort. I want to be clear, by the way. I'm not blaming Game Freak for anything. I want to be very clear about this because this is a common misconception when I shit on Pokemon and talk about the uninsured. I don't think this has anything to do with Game Freak. I don't think Game Freak is given the resources. I don't think they're given the manpower. I think their scheduling is too strict. You mean it is on Game Freak just not on the devs? No, no. The Pokemon companies are full. Because they want everything to perfectly align. And because of the perfect alignment between their movies, their TV show, they even have a comic book series now. They're Pokemon card releases and the games. They want everything to be in sync. And because they want everything to be in sync, it leads to development that, in my opinion, is extremely rushed. And it's not Game Freak's fault. They aren't allowed the time to do more. Legends Arceus. And this is why it matters. This is the first game coming out in 2022. That doesn't seem to be attached to anything else. I mean, we did skip a game in 2021. There was Big Brain Academy. Yes, Big Brain Academy. Big Brain Academy. You don't want to skip that December. Great, great. Right. And we forgot you were going to go on Tensei 5 as well. Want to make sure that gets shouted as well. That's a really good game. And if you want like a more... I guess it's not published by them. Right. Yeah, it's not on Nintendo's website. It's not published in the United States. It's like in Japan, it's published by them, but it's not. It's an exclusive, but... Obviously, there's way more non-Nintendo games that are on the Switch. We can go over on the third party games. We could spend a year talking about it. Which is why when you see things like Fortnite Apex Legends, I'm like, okay, sure, they're there, but they've been available for other platforms for years. It's just like... It was just a publishing thing. Yeah. Anyway, so this is what I find interesting about Legends Arceus. It's not only because it's obviously a completely fresh idea, at least, for what a Pokemon game could be, and we'll see if it works out, and we'll see if it actually is something that they continue in the future. It might just be a one-off. And like Snap felt like 20 years ago, and then we just never hear about it again after next year. We'll see. That's not on us. The Pokemon Company really makes all the decisions on that. Game Freak can't even decide it. Literally, they don't get to make any decisions for themselves. It's kind of fucked up, but... Yeah. That's just the way the Pokemon Company runs the ship. Pokemon Company won't even let fans meet at a bar in a fan club if it has any Pokemon branding or naming on a fan-ran event. It's really messed up. Pokemon Company, I absolutely detest them entirely. They are so out of touch with a lot of things. The only thing they're really good at is making a shitload of money. Kudos to them for that. But they make that money by doing exactly what I think holds Pokemon back. And it isn't just a Switch thing. This is in general over the years. The Pokemon Company cares so much about the bottom dollar that every game they release is made on a shoestring budget. They don't put money into their games, whether it's on phones, Switch, 3DS, DS. They don't invest money. There hasn't been a single Pokemon game. Remember, this is the biggest, one of the biggest, not the biggest, but one of the biggest video game IPs in the world. Made billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars. What's bigger? It's huge. It depends on what you want to talk about. Minecraft is really up there right now. I guess, yeah. It's a single game, but it's an infinite game and it just keeps selling. There's other things to consider as well. The GTA franchise is way up there as well. GTA doesn't have as many releases, but each release sells infinitely more than Pokemon does. And then there's the continuous online right now with GTA 5. Which is just... I don't know what GTA 5 is. The thing about Grand Theft Auto is it's available on every platform pretty much. Again, he was just like, what's bigger? Well, okay. You can make the arguments for these other franchises. And I think there's a Wikipedia article that talks about it. Pokemon's up there, but it's not at the top. Pokemon Go, I think, is the best selling app. Pokemon Go is the most popular gaming app to ever release. At its peak. At its peak. It's not the most popular at the moment, but it's still continually in the top 10 for active players. So my point is that there hasn't been a single Pokemon game that's even had $50 million in development put into it. Hasn't happened. And it's because they don't want it to happen. They know they can release two versions of the same game. You can argue. Some people have always argued whether they should do that or not. It is what it is. They've been doing this since the beginning. Legendarceus. If they consider it mainline, we don't even know if they do. But if they do, that would be the first time they don't. And they're going to continue. Well, I shouldn't say the first time. Kind of depends on what you consider. Like, yellow came out after red and blue, but as a standalone, but it's also technically part of the same time. I don't know. Anyways, I don't want to get into that whole debate. But the point I'm trying to make is, there are made on shoestring budgets with very small teams. It's just, I'm not saying you can't make inspiring games with small teams. Hellblade was made with a really tiny team. Yeah. Hellblade's ending with sacrifice was a proving ground that a AAA game can be made with a small team. It's just this team was super highly experienced with making AAA games. So that gave them the unique advantage to make a AAA style game on a shoestring budget because of all of the games, all those people I've actually worked on. And now I've seen Microsoft on them, and now it's no longer a shoestring budget. So we'll see what happens with the next one. I think my problem with Pokemon and why it's always felt uninspiring. And again, exaggeration. I've already mentioned differences myself in some of the games, and I'm not even a fan. It's because the Pokemon company just doesn't care. They're all about milking. They're milking, and you Pokemon fans? I think you guys are kind of suckers and just eat it up. All right. I think you eat it up. I'm gonna say enjoy what you enjoy. I'm a sucker too, by the way. I'm a big sucker for, I buy Madden every year. I was just gonna say. I'm gonna say, I buy Madden every year. I'm a massive sucker. We all have those IPs, and we're just going to buy no matter what they do. It's extremely uninspired. And that happened, like Zelda. I buy Zelda, no matter what it does, but Zelda is incredible. I think there is a history of Zelda and me and purchasing more than one copy of the game. I will say this right now with Zelda. I think I've probably made purchase Zelda at least seven times for myself, Breath of the Wild. But I will make the argument, I've never done that for any other Zelda game, and it's my favorite game of all time. Why I had to buy it seven times is the total, I don't know why I couldn't get into those stories, but kids and other things, I don't really want to get. That's the stage. Let's just put it this way. I have never bought it again once I bought a digital. Once I bought a digital copy, I have not purchased another one since, which is why now almost my Switch library is digital, because it's leading to me not needing to purchase games multiple times due to my children, the dog, or any other amount of reasons that can happen when you have something physical that can actually be destroyed or lost. Or sold. Depending on the situation. Yeah. Yeah. Did you have something you wanted to add? No. Yeah. So I don't know. It's bad. Again, so like the reason I bought it is all because the first game is Legends Arceus, and I think it's the first time that Game Freak, and we'll find out in interviews. They did apparently, according to, no, doggie. Game Freak is considering a mainline. Yeah, okay. So Game Freak is considering a mainline. So I think this is the first time, and that we can safely say that Game Freak's been given a little bit of freedom to try something different and actually spend time to do it. Hence why we had our first Pokemon release that wasn't made by them. It was made by somebody else because the Pokemon company finally gave in, I think, to Game Freak's actual request to do something different. So let me, I want to expand on this. So like, because we're talking, you're kind of giving the Pokemon games plaque because there isn't as much time or resources put into them as you think there should be. And that's not it. That's the common criticism. Yeah, I was gonna say, that's not just me. That's like a, you have, trust me, there are many pitchforks and torches supporting you. Yeah, I'm aware. I especially after, I wasn't aware how big that was, by the way, until the National Dex situation came up. And then I was like, holy shit. Holy shit, people are really up on this. Too toxic. Don't want to get into that. It is very toxic. But what I want to talk about is that while there is those disagreements, we have seen a number of signs that Pokemon company and Game Freak are moving forward. They are progressing. Okay, so even with Sword and Shield, they made moves, for example, the National Dex situation in part is so they can focus more resources on the quality of the game itself. Are we sure that's that? I'm saying, do we actually know that that's the reason why we, I know what they say. Okay, well, I'll tell you. Do we actually know? Or does Pokemon just become... This is what we do know. We do know that they have more people involved with the development for each subsequent generation of Pokemon than the previous ones. Like, there's been a growing trend. There's been a very slow growth. And there's been more of a budget. So there's more money and more staffing being put into each new generation of Pokemon. So they are expanding. That's a fact. And, you know, so people like to argue, oh, they're just being lazy. No, if they're not putting... They're using their resources elsewhere. It's that's just, that is the truth. They're using their resources elsewhere into the game. So, you know, that's just what it is. But also, like, you look at what the how they handle Sword and Shield. You know, they incorporated, you know, more 3D environments. There was a controllable camera. It was a wild area. There was more of a focus on the online and things of that nature. Like, they are trying to expand. The other thing about Pokemon, though, is that you have all these creatures. And there's a lot of different facets here. Like, people will play it and you'll think there's not that much effort. But there's a lot of different things they're trying to do. So they're trying to give you a premier multiplayer experience. They're trying to give you a premier collectible experience. They're trying to give you a premier single-player RPG experience. And there's all these different things they're trying to do all at the same time. But think about it. Most video games don't try to have an incredible single-player experience, an incredible multi-player experience, and then also be casual, and then also be hardcore. Those are trying to do so many different things at once. So, like, some people like to say that Pokemon, like, Pokemon games don't have a lot of effort put into them. They're actually, it's an obscene amount of effort put into them. They're just trying to appeal to way too many different types of interest all at once. And it's hard to make everyone happy. It's impossible, really. So that's something else that should be considered. But then anyway, going back to the situation with the Sword and Shield generation. I have a theory on that. For the first time ever, we have paid DLC for a Pokemon game. And that is great, because guess what? Instead of having to buy, instead of a year later having to pay another full-price game to just get a third version, we didn't have to do that. We paid less for DLC, which amounted to actually more new content than what a third version would have been. That's a massive improvement, but not to mention that actually makes it a little bit easier for them in terms of development. What requires less resources. It's more cost-effective or resource-effective. So that's buying a little more time there. Do you think, because yes, they did DLC last year. And then we got Brilliant Diamond and Shiny Pearl this year, but they didn't make it. Yeah. If they had to make Brilliant Diamond and Shiny Pearl, would that DLC have existed if they had to make that? Yeah. My theory is, the whole reason we have Arceus is because they weren't making Brilliant Diamond and Shiny Pearl and they had a very small team working on this DLC instead of working on the next game that we had to come out to follow in year. I think there was no way there wasn't going to be DLC. Makes them money. Okay. I understand that sentiment. I mean, it's the first one to have DLC and we'll see if DLC becomes a common thread moving forward. We have no idea. Oh, it's going to be. Well, here's the thing. I also wonder like, okay, so when we talk about like the team expansion, right? How much of that team expansion is so they can support the DLC, not because the team's actually bigger per game? I mean, regardless of how I would have to look, you know, we have to look into that, right? Yeah. I mean, I didn't think it's my, a lot of my development history experience was Zelda, which is developed completely different than Pokemon is. So, yeah, like I know all, I could go way in depth. Either way, the staff thing is being used to work on Pokemon content. Like, so, you know. Well, yeah. I mean, that's a game freak makes mostly. Are they? Yeah. By the way, not just, they have had some other games. I want to be clear, Game Freak doesn't just do Pokemon, but it's mostly Pokemon. 95%, I don't know. It's a very high percentage. But, you know, you have the DLC and then they outsource Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl and their next game takes more than a year to come out with Legends Arceus. So, there is clearly a change in the pattern here. It's not a game every single year. There's a change that's going on here, but they are still maintaining Pokemon content every year, though. So, they're still appealing to the money rubbing tendencies of Pokemon company. Do you think we're getting a new Pokemon game? Next. Alanis. Well, that's where we're going to get to that, right? I mean, we're basically in the 2022 right now. So, are we going to get one? You know more about Pokemon than I do. So, I'm inclined to say that it's going to take a little longer. So, you think it's going to be like a spring 2023? I'm thinking. They have done that. I'm thinking maybe like a fiscal year ending. Yeah, like a March. Like a March. Yeah. Yeah, they've done that before. I don't have any proof to supply. Black and white too? I think they did that with? I can't remember. I think all I'm saying is I think if there is a time for the three-year generation sort of pattern to break, this is it. Because they outsource BDSP. They're coming out with Legends Arceus, the actual game for development title at the end of January. That's already a change in the pattern. The DLC is a change in the pattern. So, you know, I think this is the time. Not to mention, which means they already have a team working. Times are pointing towards a Breath of the Wild 2 November release. And that's what it feels like. That makes it less likely for Pokemon to be coming out on November as well. So, you don't think Pokemon and Zelda can release in the same month? Like a traditional Pokemon. Not like Arceus. They can. Because I don't think they have the same audiences at all. So, I don't really think there's a cannibalism there. I think there was, I think. And even then, let's say they want to split it up because they're both big sellers. Obviously, they still cross over. Let's say they want to split up because they're big sellers. What if one's in October instead? They've done that before. Yeah, they could push one into October. Like, that's totally possible. I mean, it still might be within a month of each other, but different months. I'm just saying, when we're talking about the major 3D Zelda releases, when you exclude Breath of the Wild, it's been November. So, with that in mind, and with Legends Arceus coming out late January, and we're already seeing sort of the trend towards the change in the pattern. With Zelda. I'm very curious with Zelda. Well, I think November is probably going to be it, but it could be October because Odyssey was October. So, who knows? Yeah, it could be October. It could be the occasion. October, that's what I'm saying. We can't rule out October because Nintendo, if you actually look at Nintendo, it's like a big Metroid Dread. Luigi's Mansion. Like, they've had big games. Yeah, Drop in October. And like. So. And they've done that because of Pokemon, just for the record. Oh, yeah. If you go back to before, before when it was like the handhelds and the home consoles, you would still see like a Zelda or a Mario release in November. But in the handheld side, you see the Pokemon come out around that time because they have two different platforms to support with a major game. Sure. All right. But now that we're seeing all on one place, we've seen a lot of those holiday releases come out in October. Yeah. My thought process. It could happen then, yeah. And I will say this, guys, I don't know that Breath of Wild 2 has to even be a holiday game. And there's a lot of presumptions based on history. I think Breath of the Wild also broke a lot of those presumptions by coming out in March and launching on a new system, which by the way, launching a system in March already broke a lot of traditions. So I think what's happened and I think Nintendo has realized this throughout this generation is you can release a game any time if it's a big game it's going to sell. Animal Crossing, release it in the early in the year blows up to become the, you know, the second best selling game on the platform. And, you know, less than a year. And then you obviously have seen other games come out and do big. Mario Party, Super Mario Party came out in a different month. That one blew up. Splatoon 2 blew up. And that was like early spring, early summer. So like, or late spring, early summer. So like there was a lot of Nintendo has kind of shown or at least proven with Switch. With Switch, I'm not going to say with every hardware. With Switch they've shown doesn't really matter when the big games come out. They're going to blow up regardless of when they come out. The Pokemon company does seem to care an awful lot about always being traditionally a holiday experience. Although Legends Arceus obviously breaks that. But then again, I wonder if it's It was supposed, I think it was supposed to be. No, I don't think so. I don't think they were going to double up with Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl. I don't think they want those games co-competing. It's possible that they bumped. Time frame. I think they, it's possible that they bumped Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl up to a holiday game because Arceus wasn't ready yet. They announced Arceus, but when they announced Arceus, they told us it was coming. Like, they gave us like the release of a month of Arceus like super early. Yeah, I remember right. I think we knew it before we knew Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl. Maybe. It's just very hard to sort of think like the deuce what would have happened because without COVID because COVID has managed to still maintain. They still maintain their annual release. And we always see a mainland Pokemon game come out for the holiday. So they've maintained that schedule for hours of COVID. So it's hard to say what COVID really, how COVID actually impacted them. We don't really know. Right. Yeah. Like maybe and it'll be Well, my big theory with legends Arceus coming in January is because they have another game coming next holiday. And they don't want them close to each other. Well, and I'm not talking like Detective Pikachu or something. There'll be spin-offs and all that stuff. But so I take some what have an issue with that. I, it's not just you who have argued that. I don't necessarily agree with that. Because if you look at legends Arceus, it's based off the Sinnoh region. Brilliant damage shiny pros based off the Sinnoh region. They were meant to be coming out as companion sort of titles. I think that was always part of the big marketing scheme. That's all about the Sinnoh generation for love. So I never at no point do I think it was ever a serious consumption. I'm sure they maybe debated it. But I know I don't think it was ever a serious consideration for these two games that be a year apart. No. They're part of the same sort of generational love fan thing for Sinnoh. It's all about Sinnoh celebration here. I disagree a little but I'll let it go. I don't think it's worth spending a lot of time on that disagreement. I guess my thought process is Well, I know you disagree and I know it makes a massive argument but just take into consideration that the anime and the merchandising is always closely tied to when the Pokemon games come out. So right now the all of that is closely tied to Sinnoh and they wouldn't keep that all going for a whole other year. It would be something else. I get that. The Legends Arceus takes place so long before any of that crap happens. I don't think it matters. That's basically my argument. Everything that happens in the game has never happened in the show. It's never happened in the games. It's literally exist outside of that space. That's kind of what I'm saying. Yeah, I can guarantee you that a lot of the things in Legends Arceus will show up with the cards and the anime in some way, shape, or form. A lot of the new Pokemon models, a lot of the new Pokemon types and variations that will show up. 100%. It's all merchandising. It's all about the money. Oh, sure. I'm not saying they're not going to they're not going to monetize it. Of course. All the new Pokemon forms are going to show up in the anime. They're going to show up in the cards. They're going to show up in the movies and get toys because it's all it's all I'm arguing. They could have done that at any time. Since this takes place in a time period that has yet to exist. That's kind of what I'm saying. They could have just dragged these Pokemon in for any reason. We've seen Pokemon in the anime as an example, cross zones and cross regions for different story reasons. So there's no reason to think that they could have just did that again. I think that it's more of a convenience that they were going to be doing Gen 4 at the same time that they were already working on. Legends Arceus. I think it's more so just a convenient time period where they wanted, they knew they knew they obviously, by the way, Pokemon Company apparently has a map of how they want games and the show and everything. Like 10 years in advance, it's insane. It doesn't always work out, by the way. I'm sure COVID messed with a lot of shit. But yeah, so we don't even know. We're just making guesses at the roadmap. That's why I didn't really want to talk about it too much because it's kind of like I'm just of the opinion this game, not just because it's different. Forget that. It's that it's kind of like Breath of the Wild takes place 10,000 years in the future. Well, this takes place 10,000 years in the past and a time that we've never seen. Then it really doesn't matter when they release it to me. They can monetize it. They can merchandise it. They can drop Arceus card additions anytime they want. They don't have to because it kind of exists outside of the normal Pokemon schedule. It's kind of insane. I understand that it is kind of convenient, the Brilliant Diamond Shiny Pokemon. But also the world's going to look so fundamentally different. All right. So is your ultimate point though that because Legends Arceus is coming out in January, you think that there is another Pokemon game coming out in November? I don't think they're skipping a holiday unless they have to. Well, I mean, they could have DLC for Arceus. They could. But I also look at Nintendo's release slated games and they might go, people are going to be too interested in Breath of the Wild, too interested in this unless we drop our own game. See, last year was convenient. There wasn't anything to compete with the DLC. There was no outside of Animal Crossing. There was nothing big from Nintendo to really compete. Paper Mario, is that really competing with Pokemon? 2020 is a COVID year. Yeah, I know. But that's also convenient when the DLC came out. That's what I'm saying. Like conveniently this DLC that has never happened before happened to also come out in the one year we've never had before. Save for Animal Crossing and Paper Mario, there was no original new Nintendo games that came out that year. So it's just kind of like... Well, made by, oh, I mean, that gets into the hold of it. Like Pokemon, is it made by Nintendo from the year before? Never made by Nintendo. But we're talking about for 2020. Yeah, well, there's Hyrule Warriors, Age of Calamity. Right, which is developed by Koei Tecmo, and it's a scratch. And we're, I understand that. But I'm just saying, I think, I think that Game Freak and the Pokemon Company pay, well, not Game Freak. Game Freak doesn't make any sense. The Pokemon Company pays very close attention to the Nintendo's release slate because they want to slot their stuff in where it's not going to be interrupted by something from big from Nintendo. Which is why, again, Breath of the Wild 2 and Pokemon coming out in the same month literally wouldn't make sense. Obviously, because they could potentially, here's the thing, you don't want to release Breath of the Wild 2, run out of switches before you even get to the next game coming out and then have the game come out and you still don't have switches. I think they're going to space it out a little bit. Yeah, that's why it's at least a month, if not more. But I guess my lord, and again, we'll know, by the way, guys, they announced Pokemon games some for some reason, stupidly early. So if there is going to be one next holiday, I think we'll know by some, before we even get to eat three next year. So there's, it depends because they have waited until like, close to the, right before E3 to announce Pokemon games. It sort of depends on what it is. Yeah, that's what I was saying. We will know before E3. It won't be announced at E3. Yeah, it'll be before E3, absolutely. But if there is one, which they'll probably be a Pokemon event and they'll be Detective Peak. I don't, I'm just assuming I'll tell you this, it is intriguing to see that Legend's Arches is coming out January 28th, which is a month removed from Pokemon day where we've seen a lot of Pokemon directs or presents. Yes. That was one thing I was kind of hinting at was like, they get the Pokemon, they get there, they get there. Sometimes they do announce super early. Right. Now I'll tell you there's a rumor going around that there's going to be a let's go sequel to come out next year. And that, I would say is in some way it's more conceivable than in Generation 9. Well, here's the thing. I never said Gen 9 next. Oh, yeah. I said new Pokemon. Yeah. It doesn't have to be Gen 9. Yeah. They can wait on Gen 9. They got Legends Archeous as their brand new experience. But the other weird thing about it, let's say it is a let's go sequel as some rumors I suggest. Yeah, like Gen 2 or whatever. We just got really a damaging pearl. So we're talking about getting two back to back remakes. Because Game Freak said Legends Archeous is a mainline Pokemon game. So we didn't, we got an original game between them. That's my point. That's my entire point. They can. But we're getting remakes in back to back holidays still. So that's a fact. You think that they care about that? That would be a fact. Yeah. Do you think they care about that? The money's still the same. The money's still the same. Well, the money's more actually because they're getting two, they're also Legend Archeous. Yeah. I mean, honestly, they're probably going to make the most amount of money that they've probably ever made in the next, you know, from November to November. I like the idea of them also out. So I like the idea of them just I hope they outsource more often. My, my hope for Pokemon Company and Game Freak is that they start outsourcing all of these remakes. Even if you guys don't like what they did, I like the idea that more of Game Freak's team can focus on new ideas right generations. Yeah. Any more time doing it. I think, I think what happened with Legend Archeous, by the way, I'm not saying that's the future of the franchise. We have no idea at this point. I don't think they even know yet. There's a whole lot of, it's an experiment and we'll see what happens. Legend Archeous was Game Freak revisiting Generation 4 while the outsource the actual remake. Maybe. I have no idea. It's such a different concept that I think to me personally as a casual fan, a casual player, I look at it as they're actually trying something new. They're trying to breath of the wild, the franchise. And if it works, if they can sell 20 million of this single game, which is what it took two copies of the last generation to do, that is a wake up call the Game Freak that we need to fundamentally change the way we do things. But they're not ready to do it yet. They're going to stay on schedule. It's more of a, if this game blows up, I think it's going to change how they look at Pokemon. So another thing I'll give you or throughout there is that Legend Archeous is an experiment. Yes. Typically, if you look at every Pokemon game, they always put something out there and they experiment with a little bit. Yep. Like for example, in Pokemon School Pikachu and Eevee, they experimented with finally having roaming Pokemon, like Pokemon roaming about the environment that you could interact with somewhat. Yep. What did they do? Next game, Generation 9, they had the wild area with roaming Pokemon. Yep. So like there are things that they do, the concepts that they play around with, and they do bring back eventually. In Pokemon Sun and Moon, they had ride Pokemon. They're now bringing them back in Legends Archeous. I'm just saying that a lot of the concepts and ideas we're seeing in Legends Archeous you can bet will see again in a future Pokemon game. Oh, yeah. And with Generation 9 being the second generation for the Switch, typically the second generation on every console takes a much more of a major leap. They may want to play around with these Legends Archeous ideas, so when they are finally ready for Generation 9, they have a better idea of how to do that. And perhaps having something in between Legends Archeous and Generation 9 will give them more time to see how the public reacts to those mechanics. Do you think if Legends Archeous blows up that that's going to change anything for the game for you can poke my thumb? Oh, I think it's going to put more of an emphasis on having some of that open style exploration in the mainline games. And I do think it could also be possible. But they consider this a mainline game as my point. Well, they are saying it's mainline. It is mainline. I just mean the more traditional style. But will they go away from the traditional style because of this game? So there's no world where this game outperforms traditional games that they consider doing this more. What they're going to do is they're going to fuse it so they can get the best of both worlds. The reason I bring this up because we're getting a sequel The Breath of the Wild, right? Which we might have always been getting. They have Legends Monarcher so they can follow up that game with they can have another Legends game. Oh sure, they can have another Legends game. Yeah. So the reason I bring it up is if this game does 20, 30 million in sales which by the way third Pokemon games usually can't do that with two versions. Usually that's not typical. If you go back and look at the sales there's very few gens that come anywhere close to that. So Sword and Shield credit to that. Pulled it off. But if this outsells that as a single game and say it doesn't last in a year. To me, I don't know how you don't look at that and go why the hell are we not focusing more on this and less on the traditional way we do it. Oh fuse it. But if you fuse it you might ruin what made people love it in the first place. The fact that it's not the traditional. That's why every year they experiment with some mechanics. They backtrack. They go forward. Why? I mean they do that. And they'll see what works and they... But if this game moves 30 million it works. It's not going to move 30 million because it sucks. Well here's the other thing though. Just even if Legends Arcus does sell 30 million. Which is... Yeah. Basically animal. It's a two in one animal crossing dead base. Right. If even if it does that though there's no guarantee that a follow-up will have the same sort of sales output. But when we get new Pokemon games it's pretty much guaranteed to sell at least 10 million. But you don't think a follow-up would at least sell 10 million? Probably. If it's sold 30 million? I'm just... Maybe it would be like the best selling Pokemon game to ever release of all time. If it did that. I mean I'm talking territory that's not unchartered. But think about this though. Imagine a generation nine that pushes Legends Arcus mechanics even further. Or imagine a generation nine that's just a single game built in a very similar way to Legends Arcus. Here's the other thing. Legends Arcus isn't going to be multiplayer game. That greatly hampers its sales potential. Sure. But that can always be an addition in future. Type games of that type. My point is it's going to be fused. There's going to be... There's going to be some... Not all the mechanics will translate over to generation nine but a lot of the mechanics Legends Arcus will translate over. There's going to be more of a progression there. Okay. The thing is, this is all hypothetical. We don't know what's going to happen. I personally think... I'm just basing this off how Pokemon has always handled things. But Legends Arcus isn't how Pokemon has always been handled. That's my point. DLC is not how Pokemon has always been handled. We are in uncharted territories with Pokemon. They've never had another company make a Pokemon game. What is consistent though is that they try out ideas and they see how they go and they apply them with the next... But when did they try out a mainline Pokemon game like Legends Arcus? It's never happened. It's a change of the pattern. For sure. So has the DLC. So has... It's been three things in a row that have outside of the pattern. So I'm going to say this. I feel like there's a window change. But I know you agree with me here. Window change. They're not going to just stop doing what has made... They're not going to stop doing what's been their bread and butter for years. They're going to find a way to do both. Not yet. And actually they are. They're going to start outsourcing their remakes. They're going to start doing the Legends games and they're still going to do the main... The tradition. I don't think you can do the Legends games and make a new gen at the same time. I don't think it's possible. They are. That's what they're doing right now. No. Unless a new generation comes out on holiday. That is 100% in development. But that's a fact. Sure. Maybe with a very tiny team. With a very tiny team. Unless Legends Arcus is done. If Legends Arcus is already done which it probably is at this point. It is. It's been done for a few years. So like okay. So that's been done for three months. Well sure. Yeah. Nine's in full development. After they finish Legends Arcus. No. They have... But I'm telling you right now. The kind of game Legends Arcus is needs 100 plus people working on it and Game Freak has 166 employees. They bring in talent outside. No they don't. That's actually one of the criticisms of the Pokemon Company and Game Freak. They don't bring in outside them. They just keep expanding their team. I'm just telling you. I've read how these games are made. It's literally Game Freak all the way. For them to bring any outside in. Is so great. They're so controlling. You know. What? There's also Creatures Inc. Creatures... Like you have... You're gonna bring up Creatures Inc. So there's all the poke... This is a whole other discussion. Yeah. Creatures Inc by the way doesn't make video games. I want to make this very clear. But they have like... They've been merged in with everything so long ago. They just exist as a separate corporate entity. But they don't actually make anything anymore. There was a time by the way guys you can go back. There was a time that they had their own development team but that hasn't existed for them. They've merged everything so long ago. Anyways. Moving on for the rest of 2022. I'm gonna throw this in. Yes. From way, way back at the beginning of the podcast. Yeah. Arceus as of October 31st, 2021, according to iMore.com has 108 confirmed Pokemon. Okay. So we were talking about the Pokedex size and the number of Pokemon... Yeah, but are those all new? That's the thing. No. No, they're not gonna be all new. No. There's gonna be a new form. I've seen... I've seen like... I mean the first one listed was... Arcanine. Okay. Avera is the second one listed. Oh, okay. Yeah. So yeah. I saw Eevee in there. Yeah. Okay. All right. So they're not all new. Yeah. Okay. So moving on to the rest of 2022. Let's just briefly get into it before we have to call it off here. So we were talking about the... Before we got into the Pokemon day, we were talking about what's gonna be a breakout game. I, again, controversial opinion, don't think Kirby 3D or Kirby... 3D Kirby, Kirby Forgottenland is going to actually do that well. I think it might become the best selling Kirby game, but that doesn't necessarily to me mean that it's breaking out because Kirby's done this before. I think for it to break out, it would have to significantly outsell something like Dreamland. If it just does the three to five that Kirby's been proven it can do at its best, then you're just doing what Kirby's already done. And by the way, I don't think they plan... I think they are planning for this to be big. That's the whole point of them taking more time with this not releasing a Kirby game this year, actually trying to do, again, like Legends Arceus, do something new, do something fresh, and try to see if it works. So I do think... They're a big spring game. Yeah, I do think they intend it. I think it's supposed to be a spring. What is? I think it's April or whatever. So I think it's supposed to be... I can't remember if it has an official release day. For some reason, April keeps popping out of the line. It doesn't. Advance Wars is leaked for April. Yeah, Advance Wars 1 Plus 2 Reapered Game. Yeah, I'm feeling in May for that. So I think... It could be like a leak. That it's going to do good. And we're going to be excited by the numbers. But I also think the numbers are just going to be well within reason for a top-end Kirby. Three to five mil. Maybe it ends up topping and getting the six mil. That's great. But to me, for what they're trying to do, I don't think that's that impressive. I don't think I consider that a breakout. I think something shocking is going to happen. And call me crazy for this, because we're talking about breakouts, which is just a game we're predicting to massively... Before we continue, I just want to say, if it hits six million, that is two times the sales of Star Allies, another Kirby game on the system. And it would still outperform the best-selling Kirby game before it, which came out in 1992. But would you call that a breakout game? Breath of the Wild is a breakout game. I don't know that I call a game that barely is the number one selling game in the IP of breakout. It's just, oh, they finally found a way to get back to where Kirby once was. If it becomes the best-selling Kirby game. And if there's only one other Kirby game in history that is even comparable to it, then, yeah. Okay. I mean, I could see that. Okay. Well, our definition of breakout to Star is, six million is still twice the amount of Star Allies. Put it this way. That is a significant difference. Do you expect it to sell that? I think it is for sure going to outsell Star Allies. Okay. But do you expect it to outsell Dreamland? That's tough. That's tough. Well, I'm asking because breakout games are basically games that break our expectations. Right. So there's what we expect, and then there's massively past what we expect. You know, like, if you expected to sell four million and it sells four and a half, probably not a breakout. The sells, if you expect four million to sell six, do you mean that project? Well, I mean, the thing is, the thing is, but what's cool about Kirby and the Forgotten Land is it's kind of like, oh, look, we're getting like a brand new, like, full-on ground-up Nintendo published adventure game. Sure. We haven't really had that in a while. Yeah. I think it has actually that kind of potential. I also don't think it's an adventure game, but that's another, that's another story. I think it's basically just 3D Kirby, just like 3D Mario. It's just another platformer. You can, I, okay. I'm using the term adventure lightly, platformer adventure. A Mario game is an adventure to me. Right. Is it like a continuous thing as opposed to level base? No, but it's. No, I, I, I would say, it's just like that single clear sort of experience. The adventure guys, I want to be clear with everyone, adventure as a genre crosses other genres. That's why there's action adventure, platforming adventure. There's like. Mario Odyssey is an adventure game. It's in an Odyssey is a synonymous with adventure. Yeah. So, so I, yeah, so I'm being clear. I was trying to be clear here that you're probably right. The definition of adventure game spans a bunch of different genres. I think my ideology is I just think it's going to be 2D Kirby and 3D. I don't think like it's going to be exciting. It's going to be different. There's going to be new things they can do because of it. But I mean, from what I saw on that trailer, I'm excited by the idea. I'm not necessarily excited by what I saw. It just looks like more of what we've already done. But we'll see in a new plane. It looks cool. First, first, it looks cool. First up. But I'm just saying that to me, I'm not impressed yet. I'm impressed that they're attempting it. But I'm not impressed by what they've shown. Nothing there is showing to me that. Okay. I mean, Kirby is going to feel like Kirby, but nothing in it showed to me like, why did this have to be a 3D adventure? I haven't seen a reason for that yet. The boss fights are definitely looking pretty cool. You haven't seen that much of the boss fights. In fact, mostly what we've seen, if you actually go back and watch the footage, it's an empty world. We haven't actually seen a lot of action. Now, I hope that it has a lot of action, but the fact that the game is supposedly coming out soon, and they recently showed it kind of makes me feel like, it's going to be a lot of running around doing nothing. But we'll see. Again, we don't know that we've never had a Kirby game like this. So this is the reason that I'm bringing up of the breakout game thing. Because I think defining what a breakout game is matters. Because to me, it's a game massively exceeding reasonable expectations. I would say as an example, Mario plus Rabbids back in 2017 exceeded at least my expectations. I think it exceeded almost everyone's expectations. It sold eight and a half, nine million. Like that. I don't think anybody thought it was going to sell that belt. Rabbids never sells that. And Mario, some Mario games don't sell that. They fly. Yeah. I, so Bane out of three, I expect to be the best selling Bane out of game, but I also don't think it's going to become like, I don't think it's going to sell like six or seven million. I think it probably will sell like 30 million or something. Yeah. I can't remember what the best. I was at two. I don't even think much. I don't think Bane out of three is going to sell much red lifetime, for example. I don't even know if Bane out of three is going to out sell the original Bane out of, which I know is the best selling one. There's just something about platinum games. And this is a very specific platinum game thing where they just don't sell very well. Like if Astral Chain couldn't pull those numbers, I don't know why Bane out of would. I think Bane out of should definitely out sell Astral Chain. Maybe, but I just don't know if it can out sell. Bane out of one, which was multi-platform on really popular platform. Like Bane out of was on really popular platforms. And this is a single platform. It's a really popular single platform, but it's also coming in a year packed with a bunch of stuff. And I think it's going to be the forgotten game next year. I think Bane out of three, the hardcore are going to love it. What is going to be forgotten? I don't actually think million copies. And the only reason I say this is because platinum games tend to always be the forgotten game. It's not like even an out there prediction. Yeah, but what's fascinating though is that Bane out of three is a fairly ambitious switch game. Like, you know, it would have benefited to have come out in 2020 with only one, for example. Well, that would have been nicer. It would have. Yeah, it would. Last year, I think it would. But it's coming out in a packed year and platinum games don't sell. We kind of already know about the confirmed games, right? Do you think any of the confirmed games are going to get pushed or delayed? The only one that I think will get of the known games that will get pushed or delayed. Yeah, well, it won't be coming out next year at all. Like, yeah, a spring game can push it with summer. I mean, that sucks, but also whatever. It's Zelda. Zelda is the only one I think can get delayed. I know you don't think it's going to happen, and I hope it doesn't. History tells you it's going to happen. Every time Nintendo announces a 3D Zelda game release year, it never comes out that year. It hasn't happened. Also, the other thing is different. Here's the thing. Here's the thing that is different. They've also never waited this long to give us a release date. Yes. They've literally not announced Zelda game for six years before. So I don't know what you're talking about. From reveal to release date reveal, this is the longest amount of time we've waited for a Zelda game. For a Zelda game, the longest for the reveal of the release date. Yeah. Let me see. They revealed this game E3 2019. So it's been two years since they gave us a release year from reveal. For example, Zelda U, they gave us a release year the moment they gave us a trailer for it. Yeah, they did. They said it was 2015, I remember. But that was that game. And it was probably ready to go in 2015 to be completely honest, but this Wii U was just a total flop. They didn't want to send out a game that was that big budget to die. The game had a one that sold 1 million. That's the best selling? I thought it sold two, but I don't know. Here's the thing. My breakout game is a game that is announced. I mean, by the way, the breakout game could be something we don't even know yet. But they wanted it all out. But for announced ones, I would say I actually expect Sparks of Hope to massively all perform the original game in terms of being a breakout. I, by the way, I'm only my realistic expectations of it. Now that we have a bar set from the first game, fourth the sell probably another seven, eight mil. That's what I think like a real title that comes out next year. But honestly, when I, in my breakout, by the way, when I say breakout, I don't mean like it sells a mill or two past what I think I'm talking like it, this game is going to bust out and it's going to be like a 12, 14, 15 million seller. And the reason I say this is because not only does this look so much better from what we've seen so far, so much more high budget, so much more effort. Not that it wasn't effort and love put into the first one. There was, but it was more like we're trying out this idea and it worked really well and millions and millions and millions of people loved it. Now that we know it works, let's actually put everything we ever wanted to do into this next one. And I think you have the established fan base, plus the expanded switch owner base, plus the fact that there's a big Mario game drought at the moment. I think that plays a role in it. And I think if it comes out before a new Mario game is announced or not, we'll help also play a role in it as well. Because I think a new Mario game to bring it out to a new movie trailer that can impact it as well. I don't think the Mario trailer would hurt it though, to be honest. No, it won't hurt it. I just meant in a positive. Oh, in a positive. Yeah. I think the only thing that can hurt it is of a new Mario games announced. I think there will be people that's not like a not a mainline. Okay. Well, I could see maybe a 2D Mario. Well, why do you say a mainline can't be announced more than five years after the last one came out? I'm just curious. It has nothing to do with the timing. It has more to do with just what's coming out. But 2017 had a bunch of big titles, big titles. I could have it ready. I just don't think they're going to do it until 2023 at the earliest. Sure. And by the way, I agree that it's not coming until 2023, but I also'm not going to rule it out because we got 2017 happened. What would be really cool is, and they have three extra months this year. In the Mario movie, one of the trailers is actually the new Mario game trailer. That would be kind of neat. That would be awesome. That would be awesome. Again, I don't know what to do in the hell we're doing. I also kind of feel like they're going to focus on the Mario movie right now. But I think it makes sense to tie everything together. Nintendo likes to do that. If you look at how they handle the mobile games, they focus on the mobile game first, and then that comes out. But it was in the same year. And they have a mainline game to follow that up after. They actually did a Mario run, then Mario plus Rabbids, and then Odyssey, all in the same. Mario run came out 2016. Okay. You're right. Within a calendar year. But it was within a calendar year of when it came out. Not the same ending. And that was back when they were saying we're using mobile games to push our console games and all that. Again, by the way, guys, I have no idea. We don't. That's a hybrid. Again, Mario plus Rabbids Park to Hope is the game. I think that's just going to shock people with how well it ends up doing as a breakout game. I think it's, I honestly think it's already a breakout IP. I think it outdid the original Splatoon. And if you look at Splatoon 2 and how much better that did over the original, I think there's a potential that this could do that. And this becomes a massive IP for Ubisoft and Nintendo. So I mean, that you could be right. I would say I interpret breakout a little differently. Sure. To me, when I think breakout is not necessarily like a sales jump, although there's a correlation with that, it's more of a just, it's establishing a new norm for the series. Yeah. Yep. And that's so. So you think if Kirby Forgotten Land hits five, six mil, that that's just the standard for Kirby moving forward? If they follow a similar style of gameplay. Yeah. So I have a caveat to that. Because I think it could, but I think we won't get another game like that for another two, three years. And if it's a new gen, I don't know that it would, because I don't think there'd be enough owners to push it. Could be wrong. By the way, this is going out the history of the Nintendo always squanders when they're at the top. So I'm hoping that this happens. Also like evergreen status, right? Like, you know, yeah. Yeah. And will it be evergreen? That's a whole, that's a whole different debate. We were just having that earlier. Like we have no idea if any of these games will be evergreen, besides the ones that we are always evergreen. I mean, Kirby is a known name, right? If you have a Kirby game that is a breakout that kind of pushes it to kind of like a greater level of popularity, I mean that evergreen, like for example, like Kirby Star Allies still sells, right? It's still out there. Sure. They're still buy it, but Kirby Star Allies, I would say isn't like going to be something that people remember. So I'm going to go with that example that I, I'm just saying Kirby Star Allies is not the kind of game people are going to go back and say, well, I remember Star Allies for Switch, but people will go, I remember Kirby the Forgotten Land for Switch. I agree with that. What I will say is, because we're talking about future sales after the, after that game, you know, as it's a breakout game, so it increases sales moving forward. What's that green of time, a breakout game? It's like one of the best selling Zella games ever. Seven plus mil? Yep. Yeah. It's a new standard for Zelda. So yeah. Okay. Because besides that game, no other Zelda game came close to that in sales until Twilight Princess, which took two platforms to do it, and then Breath of the Wild. And there were something like 10 Zelda games released after that. So if it's set a new standard, nothing else had that standard. But you're defining that standard as just sales. Well, you said it was set a new sale standard moving forward for Kirby. I talked about sales, but I didn't just mean sales. Okay. But, you know, that's a good question, though, right? Because like, how does... Kurt Ocarina time may have been the best, may have been, is one of the best selling Zella games, and at the time it's been one of the best selling games for at least a decade. No, no. No, Twilight Princess, I'll tell you that it just took two platforms for it. Yeah, it took a little while, but... That was kind of like everything else was worse. I want to say, and I haven't looked it up, but I want to say that Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, both are still some of the better selling Zella games compared to a lot of the 2D Zelda games. I'll look that up quick. I actually, I used to know all of this, but I don't know. Yeah, so like... I'll just use CG charts to see. The point I'm trying to argue if that backs up is that after Ocarina time, even though it's sold better than, you know, it's successors, those successors still outdid the Ocarina time's predecessors. So actually, this is interesting. So Legend of Zelda Ocarina time. We're not counting re-releases, just the original release, because obviously re-release is always money to water. So 7.6, okay? That was at the time the best selling Zelda game of all time. Before that, the original Zelda game was at 6.51. Started the whole franchise, NES era, etc. Now, after that, you know, you said like Majora's Mask. Majora's Mask sold 3.36 million. That is less than Zelda 2D Adventure or Link. That's less than Link's Awakening, less than Link to the Past. Basically less than every Zelda game that ever came out before. After it, the problem we have is we had a duality release in Oracle Seasons and Oracle of Ages, sold 4 million. Dual release, but whatever Pokemon does, it's technically outsold Majora's Mask. Let me see here. Then I'm going to the other 2D ones. I'll skip over when we can come back to that in a moment. Four Swords Adventures that obviously tanked. So the Minish Cap, poor Minish Cap. Man, I always feel bad for Minish Cap. That did not do well for a Zelda game at all. Then we had Twilight Princess, and then we had Phantom Hourglass that outsold it. Link Between World outsold it. So basically everything outsold Majora's Mask, except for like two games that tanked. So Majora's Mask is actually one of the worst Zelda games. Wind Waker is a bit of a different story. It ranks a little bit higher in some cases because it sold 4.43 million, so about a million more than Majora's Mask. So there are some 2D games that outsold it, or top-down Hando games. As an example, Phantom Hourglass outsold it. Link Between Worlds came close, but just underneath. I'm going to go in the breath of the wild because that's its own category. It's not going to go there. So those are actually some of the worst selling, and they're obviously the worst selling 3D Zelda games. Although I think Skyward Sword is pretty low. No, Skyward Sword outsold Majora's Mask, Jesus. I thought it sold less. Holy crud. The Skyward Sword HD actually almost already outsold Skyward Sword. Holy shit. It looks like it, yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. Well, that's definitely after holiday period. That's already ahead of the release. That's crazy. Is that the only one that's ahead of its original release? I think what we should consider though is that we're we're talking about the game across different parts. Oh, no, no. Link's Awakening on Switch, which it's also a remaster. So it's like a remake. I don't know what you would call it. That one sold really well, obviously. But that's obviously a totally, I think any of those Switch games come in. Isn't it crazy? Link's Awakening on Switch has basically sold the same amount as Link's Awakening and Link's Awakening DX combined. Yes. And you know what's crazy? The sales for it aren't done. I wonder if... I mean, it hasn't outpaced them yet, but it's close. No. Yeah. It's really close. And I think, that's crazy, man. Like, only between Worlds and Triforce Heroes, combined sales are less than... That's insane. Link's Awakening did incredibly well on Switch. Nintendo must be very happy with that. That's why Grezzo's gotta be working on another one. There's no way they're not letting Grezzo do another one. That's incredible. Because I know Triforce Heroes Tank, that was a very different Zelda game. Anyways. So yeah, I guess what I was talking about is like... Because according to time, has been like a standard bearer for Zelda moving forward. Pretty much until Breath of the Wild came out, I think most would agree. And then I think Kirby and the Forgotten Land could be a standard bearer as well. But I just don't know that subsequent sales are really going to match. I know you're saying not just sales, but if sales keep going down, like Zelda's sales... I mean, if you were honest, it's kind of interesting that Zelda's considered a really big IP for Nintendo when it's really not that big of a seller traditionally compared to other IPs they have. Yeah, I think part of the issue though is like... Zelda's sewing consistent. But then again, it's also... A lot of it has to do with the install base though, right? Like the amount of people who own a system that impacts the amount of people who are going to buy the game. Well, you could argue that, but their best selling home console of all time has one of the worst selling Zelda's of all time on it. So it's really... And I have all my theories on why Skyward Sword didn't sell and the release timing and who you'd be in the house. The release timing just that the Wii was a fail. But like even then... I see it fake. I just mean that Wii was very misleading with its sales numbers because most of those weren't core gamers. Yeah, like there's a lot of interesting things. You know, like Game Boy technically outsold Switch and like so we can even release in its heyday and yet the Switch version only so we can use almost outsold the two different versions. Anyway, just to make my definition clear, they all are absolutely a part of it. But it's just kind of like when I think about Breakout, it's like a, okay, we've done something with this series that puts it on a different sort of level. And that obviously sales is a reflective of that. But it isn't always, right? Like sometimes the quality of the game, we're just like, oh, that's something they've taken things to another level. I would say because to me Breakout is literally just sales. That's all Breakout means to me. It just means sales because if you don't sell, it doesn't matter what you did. But I will say this, I think what you're talking about actually gets into a debate we had earlier. It could be an inspirational. Inspirational doesn't necessarily mean Breakout. Turbine the Forgotten Land feels inspired. I definitely, I can agree they're trying something new. It feels like they're going in a new direction. And we'll see. I'm actually looking up the raw definition of Breakout to see if I'm even wrong on that. Because to me it feels, I mean, raw definitions don't necessarily matter. But I'm just curious. God, I can't even spell Breakout. Is that not a word? Maybe there's two words. It's also a game. That's why you're a Breakout. There we go. Forcible escape, especially from prison. An outbreak. Suddenly an extremely popular or successful, I think is what works. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the definition. Yeah, so like, so that's why I'm like, to me Breakout just means it's popular. I mean, and you know, so, you know, that probably is a more fair, normal definition. Right. So, you know. But it's all subjective. So the rest of 2022. So to me, I think my definition of Breakout is going to end up being a spark to hope. I'll tell you something that could, I think could be a breakout. What? It's going to be Chronicles 3. You think it's not confirmed? Not confirmed yet, though, right? But what makes you think it's coming next year? I don't know if it's coming next year, actually. That's something else I want to get into. Because we already have a pretty decent liner for next year, right? And then we have games, supposedly they could come out next year. So let's recap for everyone. The confirmed games for next year that are exclusive. Forget the non-exclusives because that could be what you heard. I got the list up. Well, it's not a full full. It's like, so on Nintendo's website. Through 2022, yeah. So all 2022 games. Um, Legends Archaeus, Triangle Strategy, Advance Force 1 plus 2, Reboot, Camp, Kirby in the Forgotten Land, Platoon 3, Bayonetta 3. And then Zelda's Breath of the Wild, too, as well. There's another thing that I think deserves to be mentioned there as well. And that's Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak. I don't think that matters as much as just DLC. I think if DLC is going to do incredibly well, I think it's a bigger deal for PC. Who's getting the first PC release of it? It's an expansion, though. And if it's anything like Iceborne, it's almost going to be a treat and a whole new game release. No, I agree there. I just don't think that matters to Nintendo. That's just money in Capcom's pocket. It has nothing to do with them. Because the exclusivity contract is over by the time it comes out. What if it gets a physical release? If it gets a what? I think if Sunbreak gets its own physical release. Well, okay. Even if it does, it's also on PC. It's multi-platform now. So Nintendo doesn't get any of that. That's all Capcom. Okay. I don't mean a good point. Um, that's why I said I wasn't called multi-platform. Because at that point, Monster Hunter is not multi-platform. Sunbreak is no longer exclusive. It's just a little bit of a blurred line of situation because it's an expansion of Rise, which is a timed exclusive. Yeah. And that's what Nintendo paid for was the timed exclusivity. Yeah. So the reason that I wanted to bring up that list is when you think about it. What are the games on that list that are guaranteed to sell Extreme Move? And I say, well, we're talking likely to hit 10 mil. Because those are system moves. 2 and 3 in Breath of the Wild 2, which is why I've argued that they're each going to kind of like take up different parts of the year. Now, go back to 2017. The closest, well, 2 and 3 is in the middle. Oh, and we know about Sparks of Hope, by the way, guys. That's published by Ubisoft. That's why it's not on that list. But it is an exclusive to consider in there. Usually, probably a summer release or something. We'll see. Um, so we think about the 2017. Right. And I know, like, you know, we can look at obviously, like, oh, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, that was just support. Yeah, but it's a port Nintendo New is going to sell because Mario Kart sells. Um, so let's say, let's say, we look at, okay. So you got, you got Zelda, you got Zelda. Right. And that's one major thing. Let's say Legends Arceus replaces Mario. Okay. So like for like, big seller. Well, let's, let's just talk about numbers for a quick second. Sorry to, so we have like a number who can kind of compare number to a number, right? So like, Legends Arceus, Triangle Strategy, Advanced Wars, Curving the Forgotten Land, Bane into the three. So 2 and 3, Mario Kart, Sparks of Hope, Breath of the Wild 2. That's eight major exclusive titles. Okay. All right. So we got eight there. So let's talk about Switch. To be, to be clear, I don't think Advanced Wars wants us to reboot games major exclusive. It's a, it's just re-releasing an old game in HD. Well Triangle, it's two games and it's a remake, not a remaster. That's a difference, but you know, it's a $60 game. Okay. All right. All right. I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you. All right. Eight, eight. I'm going to release 2017. The thing is we're also going to get a pair of 2017. I'm sure there's something comparable to that as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How many 2017 was given up? I'm looking through Intel's website just to help. And I have to remember there was three months less in 2017. True. True. So let's, let's just, let's talk about them. All right. So Breath of the Wild, one, two, Switch. I'm not going to count Puyo Puyo Tetris. Margaret Deluxe. Why? Puyo Puyo Tetris might outsell Advanced Wars, by the way. It's really popular in some countries. Fine. I'm just saying don't discount it just because you don't like it. Switch, Puyo Puyo Tetris. Mario Critic Deluxe. Arms, Splatoon 2. Pokken Torment Deluxe. Fire Emblem Moriors. Mario Odyssey. Do we count, do we want to count Skyrim? I want, I want a multiplayer game. I'd probably do that one alone. Okay. Xenoblue Chronicles 2. So 10. I mean, and that's with three months less. So like my argument is there's probably room for like 12. This, oh, this doesn't, this doesn't include Mario Rabbids. Yeah. 11. Yeah. That's 11. So think about that. I'm just looking at Nintendo's website, right? Like if it's not published in North America. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like if we think about that, that was 2017. There's absolutely room for more games next year. Oh, we only know potentially half of them. Right. But I think it's also fair to us, also fair to consider that 2017 is like arguably, not even really arguably, pretty much indisputably, like the best year we've seen from Nintendo. What's rolling the best year from any platform holder, to be honest. If we're clear. Period. And that was to push the switch in its launch year. We're likely not seeing the launch of a new system, or at least a switch to next year. Right. Maybe you could argue a mid-gen refresh, but not a whole new system. So there's not as much of a need to push out. How many of those titles next year that we know do you think are evergreen? Because what you have to remember, a lot of those games Nintendo released in 2017 are still top 10 sellers now. They don't have to be just worried about next year. They could release like between three and be like, that's going to be a big seller for three years. Yeah. So like they don't have to look at it as, oh, releasing it now, it doesn't matter for next year. Oh, it absolutely matters. It's still going to be selling system next year. I'm just saying that because it was the first year of the switch, getting older. I also think we have a unique situation because of COVID that's actually caused a lot of this jam pack in the one year thing. Yeah. But my point is simply that because it was the first year, it made more sense to come out guns loaded. Yep. No, I hear you. So, you know, and also they were definitely not releasing shit on you. All right. Because they weren't on switch. Sadine Zelda aside, because I think all of us would pick that as maybe our most anticipated game next year. Am I wrong? Am I wrong? No. I know for you, it would be for you. Is that your most anticipated or is it Kirby now? I mean, we're talking Breath of the Wild 2 here. Nothing beats Breath of the Wild 2. Okay, I was going to say. So we're going to exclude. The only thing that might compare to Breath of the Wild 2 would be Prime 4. Prime 4, okay. And that's another game that's out there that we don't want to come out next year. So, of the games we know and set up projecting what we don't, we don't a lot of what we don't know this podcast. Just focusing on what we're going to do, setting aside the one game that we all would say, yeah, that's the one we want to play the most. Of the rest that we know about, which one do each of you guys want to play the most? Of the ones we know. Not counting. Rex, I'll hold for you. Okay. Yeah. How about you, Andres? It's Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is the one that I am curious about. Yeah. All the ones. All the ones. The Legend's Arceus, it's actually Legend's Arceus. Oh, it's Legend's Arceus for you? Okay. Yeah, but Kirby and the Forgotten Land is right. It's right. It's like right there. It's like 1A, 1B. I mean, they ended in three. I mean, honestly, next year's just good. I mean, it's flooding straws. There is not, by the way, there is not a wrong answer. There is not a wrong answer. You could say Project Triangle Strategy and I wouldn't fall to. There is not a wrong answer of the games we know. There is not a wrong answer. I mean, Advance Force 1 plus 2 Reboot Game. You know what? Advance Force is amazing. And if you want to revisit it or revisit it for your first time, cool. That's if you're into big strategy games, great. Like that. There is literally, I don't think any of the games you talked about are going to be bad games. But I'm an Advance Force fan, but the only one I've actually played at length is Dual Strike. Oh, wow. The DS. So like this. Yeah, I played all of them. I even reviewed an Advance Wars-like game called Tiny Metal back in 2017. I'm not counting Battalion Wars, by the way. A lot. Trust me, most Advance Force fans don't count that game. I mean, there was a sequel, too. Yeah, I know. There's a Gamecube one. Do we like to pretend? I don't know if I can speak on behalf of the very small but very hardcore Advance Force fan base. But at least from the ones I've talked to, we just kind of pretend. That was a, that was like a spin-off that we just don't want to, we just don't want to talk about it. That was your drug ears. So, honestly. And by the way, that was one of the- There's the game I'm most excited. So there's the game I'm most excited to play, and then there's the game that I know that I'm going to spend the most time with. Pokemon Legends Arc is the one I'm most excited for, because it's the first time I've been excited for a Pokemon game besides Snap. But for a mainline Pokemon game, maybe since Gen 2, Gen 3. First time I've legitimately been excited about this new concept for Pokemon, because it sounds so far almost, it's almost everything I want. It's not fully open world, which is what I want it to be, but it's close enough that if it's anything like Xenoblade or other places that do open regions, I'm cool with that. That's basically, oh, that's basically open world, but you just get to each big region through a hub place. I'm cool with that. So I'm really excited for that one. That one has the potential to to sneakily be my game of the year next year, if it actually nails everything that I hope it nails for me personally. It doesn't have to, by the way, as you guys can tell I'm not a big Pokemon guy. So it nailing everything I want, it means Pokemon fans probably hate it. So that being said, maybe I'm wrong. That's the one I'm most excited to play, because that's the one I just have so much mystery around it. I think I have a pretty good idea of what Kirby Forgotten Land is going to be like, even though I'm excited to play it. I have a pretty good idea of what that gameplay is going to be. I already know Advance Source what that is. Bayonetta 3, I played the prior 2. I am excited for it. That's why I'm excited for it because I played the prior 2, but I know what that kind of game is going to be. Project Triangle Strategy. I've seen plenty of it now. I know what it is. No, it's not exactly like Octopath Traveler has a different combat system, different things going on. It's not even a sequel. So yeah, I'm excited for that one too, but I can tell what kind of game that's going to be and I am hyped for it. Legends Arcade is the one that I'm just not sure about because we've never seen a game like that. Kirby In Forgotten Land is the same thing, except I think it's just going to be so much simpler because Kirby usually is. I don't think it's going to be difficult. I think it's going to be easy. I think Legends Arcade has a higher chance that it has some challenge in it. That being said, it's Splatoon 3. I have become such a massive fan of Splatoon since it came out. I don't play shooters anymore. Halo Infinite, I've been playing a little bit. Beyond that, I don't play Call of Duty anymore. I don't play Doom really anymore. I don't play Unreal Tournament. Unreal Tournament back in a while, even the Back for Blood stuff. I don't play a lot of shooters anymore, but Nintendo just did it different. And I love it. And you can argue, is it really even a shooter? It has guns. You do shoot, but it also has weapons that aren't guns. Unique. It's unique. I remember when I saw Splatoon for the first time at first, I didn't think it was a major thing from Nintendo. I thought it was just one of those weird little side games. And I think that's what it started out as, too. I don't think they thought it was going to be what it is either. But then I sort of look at the gameplay. I took a second look at the trailer. I'm talking about like... And I remember all the complaints of E3, like 2015 or 2014 or something when they showed off for the first time. They're trickling out content. Yeah. And now I look at what every multiplayer game does. Come on. Yeah. But I'm just thinking about it. Like when I first saw the game and I was like, wait a second, you shoot ink. But you can shoot that ink in different parts of the map, horizontally, vertically. And then you can swim in it, hide in it, jump out of it, and then shoot your opponent. Like, wait a second. That is something that's never been done before. That is a whole, like... There's a few several layers of gameplay there that we have never, ever seen before. Like, oh my god. Totally new. Nintendo just came up with something totally new. And at that point I was like, oh, Splatoon's awesome. I hate to cut off, because this is our final podcast of the year, guys. And I'm all game to go all night, but my fiance is going to be home soon, and she's probably going to scream at me for still doing the podcast. So we're going to call that a podcast. Episode 32, final one of the year. Again, I would love to keep going. I got plenty of energy to keep going. Well, you've got to work. Well done. Whatever. No, no, you in the morning. I never got to my breakout game either, so we're good. Well, what is your breakout game? Just quickly. Just because it's going to be so different. Sonic Frontier. Sonic Frontier. Just because it could be so much different than... You think it's going to specifically break out on Switch? Yeah. Because it is multi-plat. Yeah. Specifically, you think it's going to blow up on Switch? I mean, Sonic has been a bit more relevant on Nintendo platforms than others of late. I should say. I just think it's just because it's going to be so much... It looks like it's going to be so much different. Well, see, you know why I didn't go with a game like that besides being multi-plat is because Sonic Frontier's... Sonic games are always like the empty promise. Yeah, right. They always look amazing when they're revealed and then the final product doesn't live up to it. But there's always hope. And with the movies being halfway decent and another one coming, there's always like, oh, you know, Sonic Mania was good, but this isn't that. This is the main Sonic team, which is very much the one that's so turbulent and is it going to be a good game or not? Yeah. So we'll see. Hopefully it's not buggy. And I remember my reaction. They breasted the Wild Sonic. Oh my God. We'll see. There's a lot of potential for Sonic to completely explode into the pot to have to be a breakout. It could. It literally... If it is what it looks like, if it is what it looks like it is. But there's another issue of, while I think the Switch version has the most potential because Nintendo fans appreciate Sonic than other fans. Yeah. It's kind of ironic too. Used to be the mascot we hate. Now we love them. Yeah. Yeah, it was just you have more gamers that are a fan of older style games on the Nintendo. Well, plus we have the Genesis on the Switch on the Nintendo. It's very clearly Sega and Nintendo has really... Plus we had a crossover with that. I wish they would just merge entirely, but they haven't. Yeah. Plus we had the merger with the Olympics. The Nintendo was just bi-o-sega. I think Sonic could be a question mark. What I'm trying to get at though is that there's a history of multi-plats being delayed or taking longer on Switch and coming out. And it seems really ambitious to me based on what they're doing. Yeah. It's actually... There's a good chance that Sonic Frontier's may not come out at day and date. And if it doesn't come out day and date then that already bastardizes its opportunity to be a breakout on Switch. And then if it comes out... I don't think there's any chance and it has performance issues and doesn't look really good. Yeah. And it's just kind of like, oh, this is kind of like... As buggy as some of the other games. So it's going to... My personal opinion on at least day and date is that there's no way in hell this isn't going to be day and date on Switch. It's literally Switch as the number one platform in the world at the moment. Sonic has a history of actually selling decently on Nintendo platforms. They partner with Nintendo. There's no way in hell they will delay the game if it ain't ready to come out on Switch day and date. Because that's going to be the primary platform for the game. Even if it looks better on everything else, which it will. Runs better. Better frame rate. Of course it will. There are cases where the game looks and runs more than fine enough on Switch and it's not an issue. Oh, well, great example. Yeah. Like I think as an example, I think there's a good chance it's 30 FPS on Switch, 60 FPS and everything else. I think that's pretty standard for almost every multi-planet. Yeah. But as long as a frame rate is consistent. Yeah. That's what matters. Consistent frame rate and frame pacing. There are examples of multi-plat games that seem fairly ambitious, that look pretty good on Switch. I just mentioned that Starlink. Starlink is like one of the best examples. In my day and date, runs well on Switch, looks good on Switch. If you put them side by side, there is like, there's a difference, but there's not like an immediate like, oh my god, this looks terrible on Switch. No, it looks great on Switch. And it's the best selling version. Yeah. Grand, it's starting like overall, it's kind of bomb. All right guys, we got to cut it off. Sorry to cut you off. Yeah, I actually got to go. Thank you guys for tuning in. Go check out Andres Restart on YouTube. It's been linked multiple times in the chat by our lovely mods. So go check it out. Also, you can see his username on screen as well on YouTube. Go check him out. He is an amazing content creator. It's a lot into speculation. You guys, you know, come sometimes bitch about my clickbait, my this, my that, you know what? He's over there speculating away and I love his conversation pieces way more than my news pieces. I honestly wish I had the ability to converse the way that he does in his videos and learn to dream. I'm not much of a dreamer. I'm more of a, let's just talk about what we know and then maybe speculate on what we don't and then I'd be wrong and everyone get mad at me for it. So go check out his channel. He does really, really great work over there. I would love to see him blow up over the next year, guys. Seriously. Maybe it'll all get my breakout year. Yes. I want him to have his breakout year. Like this year, I know I really push hard to get you over 10K. We got it there. Let's go, folks. I would love to see him blow up past me. I think he deserves it more than I do. So let's do it. Make it happen. I want him to hit 100K before I do. I'm not even joking. That's a funny thing. I think your content is that good. I appreciate that. I think it deserves way more attention than I get. I get really sad when one of your videos doesn't perform well and I'm like, no, no. Why are you watching my content? His content is so much better. Watch it. It's rare that I say that when guests come on, but I legitimately think your content is way worthy of more views than it gets. So please, everyone, go check out his channel if you haven't. If you enjoyed the conversation here, our little bickering, our little back and forth stuff, it's all good. That's what him and I do, even when I'm on his show. I love this fun, man. Which, haven't you even done your show in a long time? I think it's been on hiatus for a bit. I need some Q&As here and there. Yeah, we were on a two-week break, although you know what? There have been less guests lately, so I've been just doing... There's some sort of livestream on a Sunday. Yes, yes, I've noticed that. That's why I said Q&As and other things. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, go check on all these emails. You should have a podcast on Sundays. You know, maybe I'll pop on one here in the new year, but I'm sure I will sometime next year. You guys are awesome. Thank you for tuning in. And we'll catch you in the next podcast in 2022. 2022, everybody. Happy New Year's to everybody. Yeah. Peace out. Later. See ya.