 Hey everyone, welcome to the Zelda Informer podcast. This week, we are trying something different. We've had multiple emails and comments and people wondering if there was a way we could spice up the video version of this podcast. And if you're listening to the audio version or if you started the video and listened to the audio version, this part's gonna be cut out so you're not gonna even know what happened. But so we're trying to record videos and line it all up and make it work. I'm new at this editing stuff and we had a long, hard time in the last two hours trying to get the videos to even work in the first place. So I apologize if the quality ends up not being perfect but the good news is that if this works and the video portion ends up being amazing and you guys like it and you think it's an improvement, we will continue to improve the quality of it. So it's up to a standard that you guys would like to see from us. But enough about that, right? You're here for the podcast, the Zelda Informer Podcast, episode number seven. That's pretty exciting. That's almost two months worth of episodes. This is the first 30 minute segment. Again, this is where we talk about news or select topics. We're gonna get right going into that after I introduced my co-host, Mr. Alfred. That is me. I put on a pen that you can't see right now but you'll see it when you edit. Of course, of course. And then we also have this week joining us, once again, Mr. Kristen. Hello, gotta be back. Glad to be here. All right, so the timer has started for this segment and our first topic is kind of a little bit of an advertisement. I know you guys love that but we have some really cool stuff going on at Zelda Informer right now. For starters, we're hiring and I should be air quoting that hiring part because we're a volunteer-based website. The two people here on the podcast with me are volunteers. I'm not a volunteer but I'm not quitting so you can't have my job. Damn it. But we are hiring news writers and editorial writers and we have a news writer and an editorial writer with us right here on the podcast. Technically, I'm both. Technically, you're both and you haven't written an editorial. Hey, we get, yeah, you're right. I'm not gonna go with an excuse. It's okay. Yeah, so the editorials and news are the bread and butter of what we do at Zelda Informer. Obviously, this podcast has been gaining popularity and we're happy with that but it's still kind of a side project to everything else we do at the site. So yeah, I'll put a link down in the description on YouTube or down in the news post on, or the news post, the podcast post on Zelda Informer or anywhere else that we post this podcast so you can go check out what you need, what we require for you to be here, et cetera, et cetera. I won't go into all of that here because it would take up the next hour of the podcast. In addition, there is also starting this weekend on July 16th, the Zelda Dungeon Informer Marathon. It starts at 3 a.m. central, as I said, on July 16th. And it runs through the 22nd and the final game for that day, I think is Phantom Hourglass and that final game starts at 2.30 central that day. Yeah, you want to also mention that I'm actually going to be a part of it. Yeah, you know what? You want to talk about it because I have not been part of any of the planning for this, so. As far as I know right now, everything seems right, we're going to start at 3 a.m. on, what is it, this Saturday, I believe early Saturday, we're at 3 a.m. central with, I have a schedule here on my phone, hold on a sec. Yeah, and we're going to start with Masi, Masi's pretty much, yeah, playing Phantom Hourglass. And then from there on, we're going on to a bunch of different things. We're going to have Phantom Hourglass battle where everybody's going to be involved and who wins, wins. And then we're also going to have, the biggest thing we're having this year is a 10-person Twilight Princess HD run. Speed up. 10 people, it's crazy. Yeah, that's one of our big things, going to be, of course, we're raising money for child's play. Now, of course, Rose, no, no, that's the paying arcade charity where they donate video games to children's sections of hospitals, pretty much. So that's what we're donating towards. And for me personally, this is going to be interesting because I am going to be the only, technically the only news writer from Zelda former day. Is everybody else there from Zelda, Dungeon? The only person, period, from Zelda former, that's it. It's called the Zelda Dungeon, Dungeon Informer Marathon, but it's mostly Zelda Dungeon with Kristen having to carry the whole way to Zelda Informer on his shoulders. Don't suck, look good. Okay, I mean, Dominate. Does Massey's technically represent us now? No, I mean, okay. So for those who don't know, Zelda Informer is owned by Massey's, I can't even pronounce his last name. And he also owns and founded Zelda Dungeon. Technically, he would be a Zelda Informer employee, but he doesn't actually do anything with Zelda Informer in that sense. Oh, and make that fire. That's not me. I'm not trying to call him out like, that's why he has me here. Like, this is why I have a job. So he doesn't have to do anything here. You know, he does do some backend management of like trying to get some ads up and stuff, but in terms of running the site, he's got almost nothing to do with it. Outside of the fact that we no longer make walkthroughs at Zelda Informer, which is a sad day, but Zelda Dungeon does walkthroughs and he owns both. So I guess that makes sense. Can I tell you what games I'm playing? I'm actually playing. Yeah, sure, go ahead. What are you playing? What are you gonna show people how pro Zelda Informer is at? Oh, God. Thanks for the pressure, Nate. Thanks. Day one, I'm playing four swords, not adventures, four swords, I believe Game Boy Advance version. Somebody's gonna break it. Yeah, I came with a link to the past. Yep. Then I believe, I'm not scheduled for only Macy's scheduled for it, but I believe I did sign up for Wanda Gamelon one of the Zelda CD-i games. And it has Macy's listed for it, right? Yeah, it has Macy's for it, but I've actually asked for it. I'm like, you know, why not? Yeah, I think it's just because he's actually played through those games multiple times. So I think he's like trying to be like, yeah, we're trying to make sure that we don't look like we're noobs. Yeah, on day two, I am, day two is my biggest run. I have Ocarina of Time 3D race, and I'm going out against three other people right now. I have played Ocarina of Time- Yes, Zelda Informer, one on three. This is how I like it. My main reason for lack of writing your past few weeks, because I've been training for this, and the best time I can get right now is under six hours for Ocarina of Time 3D, and that's a pain in the ass. Did I do glitches or anything like that? I was gonna say, I don't know glitches. I'm not, I don't know glitches at all. You should ask, ask Macy's if glitches are allowed for that run. Yeah. If they're allowed, there's a couple, there's like two or three really easy glitches you can do to skip like over half the game. Couldn't you skip from like the first Goma battle to the very end? You can skip to the very end. That's a really hard to pull off glitch. You need a lot of practice. Yeah, I don't really use glitches. I'm not saying you wanted these glitches. I'm just saying that if glitches are allowed, I don't want you to be like the only person not using them. From the sounds of it, it looks like I'm probably gonna be second best according to the chat, the marathon chat. I think it'll be like second or third best, pretty much. You're gonna be number one, it's gonna happen. I'm gonna be going on Zelda Informer's Twitter and I'm gonna be like TeamZI, Kristen, all the way, maybe. Oh, God, thanks for the pressure. You gotta put the Zelda Dungeon people in there. We'll make a T-shirt and if you fail. Because, you know, we're a news website. We totally should be better at playing the games than people who actually make walkthroughs. After playing Zockering at time, six times straight now, I think I'm gonna be at the best I can get at that game. That's okay. I can actually get to Water Temple without notes. I can actually get through Water Temple. What else do you plan? Oh, my last game that I'm currently scheduled for is at 5.30 a.m. on day three, I'm playing Link's Awakening and I have not played Link's Awakening in half my life. The original or DX? According to schedule, it looks like the original. I haven't. The original? Okay. And I haven't played that game since I was like 13. Note, people listening, I am 28. So, I have not played that game quite well. I have to play that at 5.30 in the morning on day three. There's a bunch of other great runs, too. Yes, sir. Like I said, I've got to note, as Ellen, the Dungeon guys over through Marathon Chat, they're all but really bunch of cool guys. They seemed rhymed already and smack-talking each other, too, on chat. Oh, of course they are. That's how you get the competitive juices going. Yeah, exactly. And the last thing, the last game, day seven, is a link to the past. And apparently from what I've been told is, it's like a special thing they do, like with Mario Kart, special Mario Kart rules, where it's not like a worry, like each challenge represents an item for Mario Kart, essentially. And they have to do a certain challenge. I've got Masih's told me about it, but I forgot exactly what. Sure, yeah. But it's like... I haven't watched, for those who don't know, the Zelda Dungeon Marathon, I think has been going on for two years. Maybe three. I think it's been three. Yeah, I think, okay, so it's been three. And obviously we've never been part of it because we were a totally separate entity. And even today, I mean, Zelda Dungeon and Zelda Informer are completely separate entities. They're owned by the same person, but they're ran by completely different teams. The money for both sites is completely separate. It's like they're not even related. But the Zelda Dungeon Informer, Marathon, is extra special because it takes a lot of money and a lot of effort to put together very good Marathon runs. And Masih's over the last three years has been gathering supplies, gathering stuff and making everything better each and every time. I mean, think about it. There's gonna be a 10-person Twilight Princess HD run. That means you need 10 copies of Twilight Princess HD, 10 Wii U systems. It's crazy. Plus the 10 TVs. What, you need like 10 video capture cards then too? That doesn't even include all the equipment. You need to run all those video things together and get them all up in a stream. It's crazy, crazy. So yeah, so that's happening. That starts this weekend. We're gonna be promoting it all over Zelda Informer. You can catch it on zeldinformer.com. We'll have a, the stream's gonna be live on our front page. Me and Masih are gonna be talking about it tomorrow. How exactly we're gonna put it on the site. You can find the stream over on zeldinformer's Twitch channel and Zelda Dungeons Twitch channel. So we'll have links to those two channels. If you wanna go and watch it, we will be streaming to both of them. Yeah, so it's a mostly Zelda Dungeon, partially Zelda Informer. Either way, it's gonna be a really fun marathon. And hopefully one of these years, I personally will be at it because Masih's, he hosted out his house. I actually don't live that far away from it. I just have kids. And it's hard for me to banish for those many days. But who knows? It's a lot cheaper than going to E3, so maybe that's what I'll do. Yeah, I'll go to E3 and you can go to the Zelda Dungeon thing. Right. I'll make that sacrifice for you, don't worry. My hope is that Breath of the Wild's already out, so there's nothing at E3 that I need to worry about. Breath of the Wild 2. Anyways, that's good about doing it. I'm surprised we actually got 11 minutes on that, but yeah, so check out our Zelda Dungeon for a marathon we're hiring. Check out below to get all the information about that. So, there's a few topics from this week that we could talk about. But one I'm gonna bring up isn't really news related. It's just a nice discussion topic. So IGN, they posted up a video of, or I should say updated video of their top 10 Zelda bosses of all time. Now Zelda Informer has done a one video on this and I think three articles on this over the year. So we've updated our, almost every year, our top 10 list. And I don't even remember what our latest top 10 was. I think it's from two years ago. So I'm bringing this up because Breath of the Wild's coming out and we have overworld bosses already confirmed. We do not actually have dungeon bosses confirmed yet, but it's a given. There's always been bosses in dungeons, so I don't know why we wouldn't get them now. And I wanted to kind of talk about what we think collectively makes a great boss fight in Zelda. Because there's been a lot of different approaches in Zelda boss fights over the years. So like, you know, if we reminisce on what our favorite fights are, like what about these fights makes them so great that could be applied maybe to future games. Okay, first we need a giant head and then two floating hands. Oh, and you know, a massive eyeball. Yeah, just something that glows that they can hit with an arrow and then you're good, best boss fight. Oh, there you go, best boss fight ever. No, so on a serious note, let's, Kristen, why don't you run this off? Like, you know, talk about what a couple of your favorite boss fights are and like what you think collectively makes a special fight in Zelda. Well, it makes a good fight in Zelda is that it's not only one of the things where you can easily pick it up, but also the fact that regardless if you can easily pick it up, it's still challenging. You know, you still like have to work your, you know, it's working out of like the Ganon fight, the final beast Ganon fight operating at a time. Since I played the game six times now, I can easily tell you that yeah, you gain to know how to fight Ganon is easy in that fight, but gain to hit him and dodge his attacks is what the real challenge is. Because you can't hit him in the face, you have to hit him in the tail to actually do any damage. And if you don't have the bigger sword, you're screwed because you're stuck using the megaton hammer, which is more of one of the short range weapons to use. So yeah, that's one of my favorites. Same goes for the Shadow Temple fight. That actually challenges you to actually use multiple, that's another thing is using multiple items in the Zelda boss fight, not just the one IM you've got in that boss, you know, in that temple or something, the Shadow Temple boss was, you know, you not only use your lens of truth, but you also have to use your arrows and, oh yeah, you have to use your arrows and you have to use the hover boots so you can just stay afloat on top of the bongo drums, the bongo drum, giant bongo drum. And I thought that was a really challenging fight because you have to keep on making sure your magic mirrors is good and you also gotta make sure not to die because getting knocked out, I got knocked out once outside and the guys I realized said, oh, you can jump back in. No, you can't jump back in. I tried, I tried, I died like twice. And so like I said, it has to be easy to figure out what the guy can do, but it also has to be challenging to still defeat him. Sure. You know, I agree a lot about what you say, you know, I like having multiple item, he says I like the fights being challenging. I think, you know, when I think about my favorite boss fights from the past, I have a really hard time right now getting over the step talus fight from Breath of the Wild. And it's not just because it's so fresh in my mind. It's because that mini boss fight in the overworld was organic. And I don't mean organic like I'm out in the wild. I mean, it made sense. There are multiple ways to beat this person, beat this big beast. And all of the ways that you can do it make logical sense. It's not something where when I'm trying to figure out the fight, I'm trying to be forced down a set path, like a one-way path you have to beat it. Like say in Skyward Sword when you're fighting, what is it, tantalus, the squid, and you know, okay, take out all the arms with your boomerang and then hit it in the eye and have it fall down and slash, slash, slash away. When so many Zelda boss fights have been that way, like it's scripted. It's extremely scripted. And I think the best fights to me are the ones that aren't that way. There are multiple ways to tackle the challenge and all of the ways actually make sense. As an example, with step talus, when the thing throws its rock at you and when it's trying to reach down and grab a new rock arm, well guess what? It's touching the ground. Why can't you climb that thing to go hit the weak spot? Well you can in this game. You could also use your various items to make him come down to climb. You could also defeat that boss without ever climbing him at all using nothing but ranged weapons. Like it's crazy and I try to think of a boss fight that's similar to it and I have a hard time coming up with a lot of things in Zelda because in the past, a lot of my favorite fights have still been heavily scripted. One of my all-time favorite ones is Colactus from Skyward Sword. Love that fight. Absolutely love it and I think that actually made IGN's top 10. I think it was in their top five. And everything I love about that fight, it's still heavily scripted. When you watch different boss fights of that boss, they're all the same. There's no, there's very little deviation from the normal way to beat that boss. And I think to me, the best boss fights in Zelda have one yet to come. I think Breath of the Wild is gonna be presenting a lot of interesting new boss fights. And two, of the ones that we have had, they're ones that have multiple solutions to them and aren't just panned. This is the one way you beat the boss and you just rinse and repeat that over and over and over again. Or it's like a set, you know, you have to do one thing after another, after another. But it's the same thing after another, after another. Because a lot of times in Zelda, it's just dodge, hit, dodge, hit, dodge, hit. You know, as Alfred was kinda jokingly saying before, you know, oh, two big hands and a giant eye, like, we've seen that so many times in Zelda, it's not really original anymore. And I don't know, that to me is just a very organic fight that actually makes sense and has multiple solutions. And it's something that I can logically come to a solution to outside of the usual convention of, this is the only way you can beat the boss. And everyone has to do it that way. And I can already tell in Breath of the Wild that won't be the same because you can go fight Calamity Ganon and beat him after you get out of the starting area of the game. And I'm guessing how you're gonna have to pull off that victory is gonna be different than how if you played through the whole story, have the master sword and whatever else. And how are you gonna beat him then will probably be a lot different than how you would have to beat him that early in the game. So, yeah, it's, I don't know. So to me, the best Zelda boss fights have yet to come, but of the ones we have had, they're the ones that have multiple solutions and make really good use of the items, not necessarily just a single item use, kind of like what Kristen said, you know, ones that use multiple items. Because variety to me is the spice of life and I love variety in my fights. Yeah, it's all I got to say on that. I mean, you got anything out for it? Yeah, I'll go on out for it. One of my, like I'm, I love music. So if it has great music, that's an instant, my favorite for me. Like I love the Muljera fight, mostly because of the music. Like when I went to the Zelda Symphony and they played that, I was like, oh my gosh, this is the best, best thing that they could have done. Of course. And I know I talked about this, I think I've seen the last podcast before that, that I was on when I said that I hated the goat fight. I'll probably mispronounce that name for Majora's Mask because I just awful at it. Yeah, God, I'm just awful at it. I'm so bad, but it really is pretty cool because it's something that we've never done before. Like you have to use ramps to hit it or you can speed up and hit it in the foot and knock it over. Like there's just so many different ways. At least I haven't played it in Majora's Mask 3D yet. I haven't actually played a lot of that game yet. But in the original, that's what I remember doing. I really liked, like you said, the Kolaktis fight and Skyward Sword. I'm kinda looking up some of these because I don't remember the names per se for all of them. I know Stal Lord for me ranked pretty high. Yeah, Stal Lord was really fun. One that I think that we don't think about because he was kind of like a sub par boss. Like you didn't really think about him a lot. I really liked the Geerahim boss fights. Mostly because it was like a sword fighting thing. Like it was something that you didn't really see in Zelda that often because, okay, well, you know, you just slash your sword and even if the motion control is a little walky, you still got to, you know... Pay now. Okay, you can't say that it was perfect. The motion control at Skyward Sword was not one to one perfect all the time. Well, that's a conversation. Yeah, that's the other one there. But I really liked the Geerahim boss fights. I just want to put one point in. If you actually follow how the game tells you how to play, it works perfect every time. And then there's... That's all I have to say. There's one more that nobody likes that I apparently, everybody I've talked to you about this game hates this boss fight. I don't know why. I love the horseback Ganondorf fight Twilight Princess. I absolutely love that fight. It's so cool. That was probably my favorite thing to do in that game was get to the variant and fight him on horseback. Cause you know, how often do you do that in any of the games? I mean, it's the only game that you do that in. That's true. And it's gonna be cool in Breath of the Wilds too. I think Princess Zelda had a lot to do with why people didn't like that fight. Yeah. Still really cool boss fight. I keep thinking of my least enjoyable moments from that particular fight and pretty much Princess Zelda doing anything. For me, a boss fight, a good boss fight is something that changes, and I know that this is what they're doing in Breath of the Wild, but it changes up the conventions of what you usually expect from a Zelda game. So, or from just what you're typically used to in the game anyways, like I really liked, and I know that this really wasn't anything special. What was his name? There's so many different iterations of Goma. Yeah, it's Goma in Wind Waker. Where you get to swing back and forth and then you pull down the roof. I like that. I like things that are just different and weird, and you're like, oh, well we've never done this in a Zelda game before, and that was the first boss you fight in that game. So that was pretty cool. I just like, again, for me, music and the things that change the convention of what you'd expect. Nice. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. So I think that's gonna wrap it up for that topic. Bosses are amazing. I think they're one of the best things in Zelda. So, obviously, all of us kind of, we can't wait for see what happens with bosses in Breath of the Wild. But yeah, and maybe in the future, we'll give another updated Top 10 list with our latest staff members and the opinions and see how things have changed over the years. Maybe we'll do an examination of how the shifting of the Zelda Informer staff has changed how we view the series. So we've got about seven minutes left here, and we're going to quickly go over a couple topics here. First one is about Nintendo and the Wii U. Apparently, I don't know if you guys heard this news, people at Nintendo had sales projections of 100 million units of Wii U. So here's what Tatsumi Kimishima, the current president and CEO of Nintendo Japan said. In an internal sales representative meeting, someone projected that we would sell close to 100 million Wii U systems worldwide. The thinking was that because the Wii sold well, the Wii U would follow suit. I said that since the Wii had already sold so well, we need to clearly explain the attraction of the Wii U if we are to get beyond that and sell the new system, and that this would be no easy task. So there's two things I take away from this. Nintendo had the completely wrong thinking with the Wii U, not just in hindsight, just the assumption that because it's got the Wii brand that it's going to suddenly be as successful as the original Wii. To me, that's really weird. Kind of a bad business. Bad idea, too. Why would you think that? I think, like, how would you think that? That's almost like saying, oh, because the PlayStation 2 sold 150 million units, of course the PlayStation 3 is going to. Well, and that's even weirder, because if you think about it towards the latter part of the Wii's life cycle, it started doing poorly. Like people got really tired at the beginning. It's not like sales for the last two or three years were booming. Exactly. Only reason the Wii took off even in the first place was because it appealed to more mainstream than other consoles that were out at that time. It appealed like you can most control it, you can play it for family, you can do all that. That's how come the sales were so great at the beginning was because mainstream people, non-gamers were actually buying this console. It was a good, we might do a whole episode someday on reminiscing on the Wii and what was good and what was bad about it. But to me, the Wii sold well. In part because it appealed to non-gamers, of course. And because it was kind of an easy way to introduce people back into gaming again, because I think what happened and what Nintendo saw was around the time the NES came out, there was the great game market crash where consoles were not selling and games were just not selling and there was thousands and thousands of shovelware titles coming out. They were overshadowing anything that was good. And video games were kind of getting a really bad reputation. And then the NES came out and the NES simplified everything. It made everything make sense with the D-pad and the two buttons on the controller. Like there's just two buttons and the start and select. And start and select don't actually do anything while you play the game. So it's A, B and a D-pad and here's some good games, here's Donkey Kong, here's Super Mario Brothers, et cetera, to go along with it. And what that did is it brought in an audience that probably wasn't playing video games at all. It introduced them into gaming. And then as consoles advanced in technology got better, controls got more complex or shoulder buttons added and one joystick and twin sticks and four face buttons and two shoulder buttons. And what happened is that a lot of people growing up that started back in the NES or Super Nintendo era, they got it, they understood the advances. It made sense to them. But for anyone that hadn't played video games before, suddenly trying to come into it was a lot more difficult. And it kind of led to where the video game market heading up through, even through say the PlayStation 2 era was just basically mostly people who had already played video games before. They weren't really reintroducing families and parents and little kids into gaming. It was all teenagers or 20 year old plus people who had already been playing video games for most of their lives, they weren't really getting the younger generation into it. Nintendo saw that and they said, look, why don't we simplify this again and reintroduce people to video games? And I think what Nintendo forgets when you do that. And this is why I'm so confused with their Wii U stance. I think what they forgot is that once you do that, you can't do it again. You can't like not back to back. You can't go back to back doing that. I mean, obviously Nintendo did do it again. They did it with the NES and they did it with the Wii. But look at the generation gaps that were between that. Like there hasn't been enough time since the Wii happened to re-simplify gaming. And yet what we have to remember is that gaming has already been re-simplified. That's where all the smartphone games are. Well, it's interesting that you bring that up then because Nintendo basically just re-did, like they re-introduced millions of people to gaming again with Pokemon Go. Like that, that's... Sure, maybe. I mean, I'm gonna say maybe because re-introduce would infer that everyone who's downloaded that app doesn't already play video games, especially on their phone. And I don't think that's true. That's true, but I think they've re-introduced them to like video games that are within like a core, like the core video game market. Like I really wouldn't necessarily say, oh well. I think what they did with Pokemon Go is prove that Pokemon is massively popular and the popularity of it is potentially held back by the fact that it releases on their proprietary hardware. Yeah, and on a handheld no less. Yeah. And that's not me saying I want Nintendo to get on a hardware. No, I don't. I think it just proves that Pokemon is like that franchise. There's been an ongoing anime series for it for over a decade. I think it's at 15 years now. So like it's crazy how long Pokemon is how popular it is. And Pokemon Go is kind of proving that it hits a heck of a lot more popular than maybe even those mainline games sales would indicate. And it's true. I don't think every Pokemon fan out there buys every generation of Pokemon game. I know I don't. I bought them, I think three or four of the generations out of like eight of them or whatever it is. I'm still playing Pokemon X. Oh, you got to get with the time. Sun and Moon's coming out. Oh my God. Well, I bet we'll see. I think that if we have Nintendo, because their problem is that when they, I guess with the Wii U what they did was that at first they didn't really make it clear what the Wii U was. And that was the biggest problem with that because they announced it at E3, announced it, air quotes, because all they showed was the pad. And we thought, oh, is that another controller for the Wii? Is the Wii U something else for the Wii? And then it turns out it was a separate console and then they didn't really market it at all. The biggest reason that the Wii was marketed so well is because they had those Wii would like to play commercials. Like I still remember those. But the- Those commercials were amazing. The Wii U had like nothing. There was no, there were very few commercials for it. The Wii U had a lot of problems. But that's- And to me, all the problems to me started with this internal sales representative meeting. Because this is obviously before the Wii U came out. Yeah. Because once the Wii U came out, there's no way in heck you can tell me I still projected a hundred million. So like, there, I think the Wii era just got them so big headed, so up in the clouds. That they're like, look, if we just attach Wii to this thing, it's gonna sell millions and millions and millions. And what they didn't realize is that the market was already moving on from the Wii brand. And it seems here, and this is where, I think there's a second point to take out of this, is Tatsumi Kimishimi himself said that because the Wii had already sold so well, we need to clearly explain the attraction of the Wii U. Which, you just admitted, they did not- No, not at all. They did not explain the attraction of it. In fact, you can argue even today with some games, like even like Super Mario Maker or Splatoon, that kind of prove the game pad has some functionality that makes some sense in certain cases, that it's, they still haven't really proven that today. Yeah. When Minecraft, sorry to interrupt, but when Minecraft came out, I was expecting like the whole Inversory Screen Touchscreen system, and they didn't even implement that at all. Oh yeah. Which was- Because that would require a lot more money and a lot more time compared to the sales that we're actually gonna get on the Wii U. Yeah. Because the Wii U- And consider how old Minecraft was by that time, and how many of those people already had Minecraft. There really wasn't and still really isn't that much of an incentive to buy it on the Wii U. And so- I mean, apparently it has sold decently well. Yeah. But again, Minecraft is just one of those games that like people like having it on every single platform they have. It's kind of weird how Minecraft were like, I have to have it on PC, I have to have it on my phone, I have to have it on my tablet, I have to have it on my PlayStation 4. You know, like they have to have it on every system they have for some reason. I don't really understand it. But then again, I've also never really been hugely into Minecraft in the first place. I've never actually played it, so. I mean, it's an interesting game. I understand the popularity, especially with kids. It makes a lot of sense. It's the new Lego. Like, I get it. I'm just not- I'm honestly just not that creative. And then they released Minecraft Legos. Yeah, they have Minecraft Legos too. Literal Legos, so yay. Yeah, so what I like about the second point here though is you know, if we're gonna get beyond selling the new system and this was not gonna be an easy task. Like the current president and CEO basically laid the smack down in this meeting and said, hold up, it's probably not gonna sell that because we have to clearly explain it. It's not gonna be easy. Yada, yada, yada. And this is the guy leading the charge for NX now. So to me, just from this meeting which came before the Wii U came out, it sounds like the guy in charge of Nintendo doesn't have his head up his ass. No, that's a good thing. Like he kind of, he gets it. Like he understood ahead of time that what they were doing with the Wii U, they needed to move beyond like what they were trying to do with it to get people to understand it. And they never did. In fact, their messaging for a pre-release was so weird. It was something like, when they revealed it in 2011, it was, this is a gaming console for you. That's the whole like point of the you was like, this is like for Nintendo's core base. This is a core video game console. Like this is gonna have all the third parties and all the stuff on it. We're gonna have all the Assassin's Creed. We're gonna have the Madden, the Call of Duty, yada, yada, yada. Like they were trying to say that this is a Wii but it's for the core gamers. So like basically what a Wii HD would have been if it had released like two or three years earlier. But that's what they marketed it as. And then when E3-2012 came around, they ended everything with Nintendo Land. Yeah, Nintendo. And started talking about how this is gonna be a great console for families. And then their commercials came out showing kids playing. Well, commercials. They're like two. Yeah, the few commercials there were. And it's kind of like, they didn't know what they were doing. They should have apparently listened to Kimishima more. And this kind of quote excites me for the NX because I know the NX itself and a lot of going into it is gonna be a lot of what the late Mr. Satoru Ayawada or Iwata set up. But the fact that the marketing and everything else is gonna be approved by Tetsumi Kimishima actually excites me now because to me it looked like before the Wii U came out, he got it and no one else in the room did. Yeah. Well, I think that's the important thing to think about. And now he's in a position where he can override everyone else in the room. When they're trying to be like, oh, it's okay. We're just gonna slap a Wii name on. He's like, no. No, the Wii name's done. Oh my God. We ran it through the mud. We're done. Like if there's anybody in that sales meeting, it's like, yeah, we gotta name this thing Wii something. I hope he just looks him in the face and says you're fired. I hope. Well, they've been trying to distance themselves from the Wii for a while and I think that's important. And they also, they just redid their colors too. Like they're going back to red, the old school colors. Yeah, so we're gonna move on. We're gonna get to it. We already ran a little over on that, no surprise. I wasn't gonna, we were having a good conversation going. They're also, they announced a patent for a new handheld device. That was a topic I was gonna cover, but maybe we'll bring that up next week. We're gonna move to our fan topics. So we didn't get a whole lot of great submissions this week for fan topics, but we did get an email submission, which by the way, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, fan topics, and you want to submit music for the podcast, whatever, you can do that at podcast.zeldinformer.com. I don't actually talk about that enough about you're in the podcast, how to get ahold of us. So this person, I'm just gonna use what he said in the email because I'm assuming he doesn't want his actual name out there. So from Mystical Bovine, he's got two topics for us. So we'll just get right into the email. It says, Dear Zelda Informer, like most of you, I was beyond pumped to see what had come of the newest iteration of the Zelda franchise, and I was not disappointed. I was blown away and I've spent more time than I would like to admit watching the live streams, reading theories on placements in the timeline, and listening to Zelda Informer's opinions on actual gameplay. I was left with two questions, one being potentially awesome, and one potentially disappointing. First, the bad one. They talked about having 100 plus shrines slash mini dungeons in the game, but everyone they showed looked exactly the same stylistically. While they looked very cool, 100 plus shrines worth of the Tron slash Sheikah look would get very stale after a while, where any of you given any indication that these just happened to be the ones they showed and other shrines throughout the vast world will have different themes and styles. So that's his first question. So let's start with that one. I'll speak first on this because I was the one at E3. Yes, all the shrines obviously they showed had that style in terms of visuals. I have a feeling that based on how Nintendo worded things and how my personal hands-on experience went and how the story is going with the shrines, that every single shrine is gonna have the same visual theme. Yeah, that's what I assumed. I'm gonna assume that. That's the impression I got from Nintendo and from my experience with the story of the game. Yeah. And the shrines themselves, the thing to remember is those shrines are Sheikah shrines. Yeah. They're gonna be styled like the people who made them. So that that's the story reason for it. So like these shrines, why these shrines exist and what's held within them, we don't know those details necessarily yet, but we do know that they were created by the Sheikah to preserve something. So in my mind, they have to all be visually the same. Otherwise, they wouldn't be made by the Sheikah in the first place. Now, I can understand, I mean, you get some deeper points here about how there could be some stuff upsetting about this, I guess, some staleness to that style. I think what's gonna get people past that is what they did say about the shrines is that as you get more out into the world and get to other shrines off the plateau, the shrines get longer, they get deeper, the puzzles get more difficult, the enemies inside get harder. They're gonna add a lot of variety and challenge into the other shrines, where you're not gonna necessarily get sick of the visual style, because to me, it's almost like saying, oh, I got sick of the visual look of the overall. Oh, like, that's what the overall is. But how can you get mad that that's what the overall is? A good point? As long as there's enough variety. And I think there's gonna be plenty of variety in here that I'm not gonna, I personally don't see myself getting bored with the style because I think there's gonna be enough variety in content. But I don't, that's just me. I mean, I totally understand where you're coming from. Good example of aesthetically being the same, but being variety, different gameplay-wise is the Portal games. The Portal games, design-wise, aesthetically, they're all the same. They're like white rooms, they're pretty much, you have to solve the puzzle, use your Portal gun, and then some next room, and the next room. But as you go along, they start getting harder and bigger and longer and stuff. So, that's a good example of aesthetically the same, but gameplay-wise is still challenging as you go along. Pearl's a good example. Yeah, and it should be noted, shrines aren't gonna be the only dungeons in the game. There's gonna be main dungeons too. Yeah. It sounds like a lot of what you're gonna be doing in this game is in the overall. So, I guess to me, the reason that it doesn't feel like I'm gonna get sick of the shrines is because it's not like we're doing a hundred of these things back to back to back to back. Oh, of course not. We're gonna have a lot of visual elements and a lot of story and a lot of world stuff in between that to me at least isn't gonna make them feel bad. Like if you're on YouTube and you're like, oh, let me watch the six, I think it was six total shrines that you can watch on YouTube. And someone has it in a compilation video, like yeah, that might get a little boring to watch. But that's not what's happening while you're organically playing the game. Yeah. But yeah, your Portal example is great. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly what Portal is. And last I checked, it's been pretty popular. Yes, so as long as they have that, those different challenges and stuff in each of the mini shrines and stuff, they should be fine. Yeah, I agree. Alfred, you got anything to add? Not too much. Like I agree with Kristen when he talked about Portal. Like I didn't think about that. But how like, if the aesthetic looks good and it's, you know, it looks smooth. Yeah, well, like with the Portal example, like the rooms, that wasn't the focus of the game. Like you weren't like, man, these rooms- It wasn't about the- Yeah, like these rooms have to look like, you know, the best design things ever. It's like, okay, this is a room that's white with water at the bottom or this is a room that's a white square figure out the puzzle. That's pretty much what I, you know, not white. Portal, yeah, definitely. That's when I see that these shrines are gonna be like, okay, here's a black and blue room, like black with like the blue electricity on it. And here, figure out the puzzle, get to the end of the shrine. Like that's all you're gonna be doing. Like I don't see that necessarily being the problem. And especially if that's, like I don't think the dungeons are gonna look like that. I think the dungeons are gonna be themed differently. No, yeah, I think the dungeons are gonna be part of the world itself to be honest, so. I'm just thinking that one of the biggest reasons that you would keep all of the shrines the same is so that like, you associate that color scheme, A, with the shrines and then B, with the Sheikah, like you pointed out, they're all made by them. So- Yeah, kind of a thematic thing like where, if this is all made by the same tribe, then they are probably gonna be visually similar. And obviously I think from our design standpoint, I mean, you could argue that it made things easier for Nintendo to make these because they didn't have to change up the visual style of each one. But I mean, we're talking about a hundred plus mini dungeons. It's crazy. Like, if they had to make a sacrifice by making a story element that makes them all theme the same, I'm okay with that. That's not, I'm not, when I go to mini dungeons, I'm not going there for the theme of the dungeon. I'm going there for the enjoyment of trying to figure out how to get to the end. It's not like when I go to say like the fire temple in games, like when I think fire temple, suddenly I have this big visual thing of like what I think a fire temple should be. And I wanna go see what they're doing with it. But like a mini dungeon that's just called a shrine, to me I'm not visiting that shrine for visual like beauty to my eyes. Like I'm not going to a shrine to be blown away by visuals. I'm going to that shrine because I want puzzles. Yeah, exactly. Cause so far all the shrines have been puzzle based. So that's, yeah, and the thing is they're optional too. So like you don't have to do all 100 plus of them. I mean, I'm sure if you do that, maybe you get the Hylian Shield or something, or maybe that's how you get the Master Sword you find your unbreakable weapon. But yeah, you don't have to do it. You don't have to do anything. You can just do the initial four shrines and go straight to the boss. The M boss, so. Sorry that I guess none of us here are that worried about it getting stylistically boring, but hopefully our insight into that kind of relieved some of your worries. Mystic, mystical, sorry. So let's move on to your second question. It says, question two deals more with the timing of the release. Since the Nintendo has put so much time and effort revamping everything we knew about the engines, mechanics, and look, it would be a shame to see this version be a one-off title, especially considering that it will be a launch title for the NX. What are the odds they pull the Majora's Mask and reuse the same engines, models, et cetera to create another game within the same generation, whether in the form of DLC or a whole other packaged game? And you know it's at the end. Also, I enjoy the new format of the podcast way more than the last podcast, so keep up the good work. So thank you, I mean, I will never slight what Adam and the crew did with the old podcast, but I'm glad that you love a current format. That makes me happy. Put a lot of thought into this. Okay, Alfred, why don't you answer this one? Okay, so the question is then, do we think that they'll reuse the same type of engine and style? Yeah, well, they do like a quick turnaround Majora's Mask style game in terms of reusing assets, just to make sure they get out another game within the same generation for NX. I wouldn't expect, and this is a difficult thing because I think the only time that we've seen something like that is Majora's Mask, so we can't be like, oh, well, based on Nintendo's track record with Zelda games, we're gonna see a quick turnaround. Well, you could argue Triforce here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what I was gonna go into that, is say, okay, well, we have, they just finished, like we talked about last podcast, he just talked about doing a multiplayer Zelda game with the things that they've learned from Breath of the Wild. So what I can see them doing is taking some of this, like the core engine from Breath of the Wild, some of the things that they learned from it, some of the mechanics, maybe the art style, and make a multiplayer Zelda game, like a quick turnaround type of thing like that because Triforce Heroes came out quickly after, maybe not quickly, but it came out pretty quick after A Link Between Worlds. So then they were used pretty much everything from that game and put it in a Triforce Heroes in a multiplayer way. And so I can see them doing something like that. I don't know if we can expect something because they're setting the bar really high with Breath of the Wild. They're setting like story high. They're setting graphics-wise gameplay, open world. And so the time that it's taking them to do that with the amount of crew that they've put together is probably the biggest game Nintendo's ever made. And to expect them to be able to do a quick, maybe like one to two to three year turnaround on that, I can't see that happening, but I can see them doing something like a multiplayer Zelda game based on the same engine. And yeah, and last week, we brought a quote by Eji Anama where he talked about trying to do things from Breath of the Wild in a multiplayer fashion. Yeah, so I was, and I can see them doing something like that more so than doing another or like a completely new Zelda game. And I hope that they're going to keep some of the engine from this and make the next game similar to it. Sadly, I don't think that that's gonna happen. I don't think Nintendo's going to wanna keep this exact engine and this exact art style for whatever the next Zelda game's gonna be. I can see them. Can you put a percentage on that? Um, in terms of the, like the chance. What do you think, you know, what's the percent chance that they're going to do this? That they're gonna keep the style and make another game? Yeah. Man, probably go with a 20 to 30% chance of them being honest. Like I don't see them doing, like I think that they learned a few lessons from this and I think that they learned that it may not be a good idea to completely create a brand new engine every single Zelda game. But I don't think we're gonna see a very quick turn around Zelda game. That's not a multiplayer game. That's not a core title within the series. I just, I just don't see that happening. Okay, so I have a two-way take on this because one depends on the other. So my first take just at face value a Majora's Mask type of quick turn around game. Personally, it's something that I would love to see them do. Just thinking right now, I would say there's probably a 20% chance of that actually happening because Nintendo has to show they're willing to do that again for a console game and they keep showing they want to keep redoing engines and trying new ideas. So until they stop doing that, I have a hard time believing they're going to stop doing it. One second. But I can see this becoming more like closer to a 50-50 proposition. If one thing happens, if Breath of the Wild becomes the best-selling Zelda game in the history of the series. If it sells the NX. If we look at what led to Majora's Mask happening. Yes, Agenoma wanted to do a sequel. Yes, Miyamoto put them on a time restraint and that led to everything that ended up becoming the game that a lot of people love. And what started all that was opening of time being the best-selling game in the series at the time. And this is to keep in mind that a lot of people talk about, you know, Nintendo's outside of the Wii, like every generation of home console hardware has sold less and less compared to the previous generation. And that was true for the N64 and the N64 is actually approaching the final years of its life at that time when Ocarina of Time came out and Ocarina of Time still became the best-selling Zelda game. So it kind of proved that when you make an awesomely fantastic game that it is going to still sell in high volumes. And I think even if, let's say, that Breath of the Wild doesn't necessarily make the NX successful on its own. Because I don't know that today in today's market that any single game can make hardware succeed. I think that Breath of the Wild can immediately do a successful launch. So say Breath of the Wild moves 5 million NXs in the first year, that's great. But if year two, year three, year four, it's only selling 2 million each year, that's a failure. So I don't think a single game can make a console be successful. But I think if this single particular game ends up becoming that Zelda game that finally hits that 10 million mark across Wii U and NX, it finally becomes what Nintendo has been trying to do as Zelda ever since Ocarina of Time. And bringing as much of the Zelda fan base together as they can, and introducing new gamers in. I think that's when they look at it as, okay, we just made a ton of money on the most heavily invested game we've ever created. Let's do a quick turnaround and let's get a sequel out there. And I think that is a thought process that's on their minds and has been on their minds for a long time. Because for the Wind Waker, they originally were gonna make the Wind Waker too before Twilight Princess had. So they have this in their minds where they want to make sequels, but nothing has really sold well enough for them to justify sort of making a quick turnaround sequel. Twilight Princess obviously is an exception and this will be what can closely resemble to the NX that I believe the combined sales are actually higher than the original release of Ocarina of Time for Twilight Princess between the GameCube and the Wii. But the Wii was in this unique situation where they couldn't necessarily do a Twilight Princess turnaround game because they had a new controller and like because of that, they were gonna try that one-to-one motion control stuff. So I kind of think they caught themselves in it where they couldn't really do a sequel just because of the unique hardware transition. But assuming that the NX in terms of controls isn't that far off from like a traditional controller like what the Wii U has around the actual game pad area. Like that's a traditional controller. If it's more of a traditional controller, then that means there's less they have to adjust to continue to use it in a new game. Then I could see them, if it sells that 10 million mark, you know, an eight, nine, 10 million mark, I could see them being like, look, we invested $100 million in this game originally and look, we made back a billion dollars. Let's invest $10 million with a small team, use the same engine, do maybe a smaller world, maybe a world up in the sky or whatever that's related in some way to the original game. Then I could see them. That's like a 50-50 shot to me because they would have a lot of financial reasons to say, look, this game's really, really popular. Let's build on top of that popularity like we tried to do without green of time. What I can see them doing a 50-50 shot, maybe not necessarily the same engine, but something I could see them doing, and I've talked about this before, is they put a lot of faith in Grezzo with, you know, Oak Green of Time 3D with Majora's Mask 3D. They did Triforce Heroes, which, you know, for better or worse, they did Triforce Heroes, but they proved that they can handle games on their own. And I think that depending on how ever Oasis does, I can see them being like, okay, well, we're gonna relegate you guys to doing multiplayer Zelda games, and then we're gonna come out with a new console release every, you know, one to three years, and then just like alternate back and forth. Like, I could see that happening. Yeah, that's the point here happening, yeah. Yeah, like, but that's gonna take a lot of faith on Nintendo's part in Grezzo as a company. Yeah, and you know, in all of this, this question, I mean, it's, I think this is something that a lot of Zelda fans want to happen, because we don't like having to wait five to six years for a console Zelda game. Like, it's excruciating, it sucks. It's awesome when the end product ends up being, hopefully everything in the Breath of the Wild is promising to be, but it's still a really long wait. And I think the problem with this question is it means getting Nintendo to do something they haven't really done before outside of the Majora's Mask situation. Because even like Triforce Heroes, yes, it uses the same engine, and yes, they ended up linking it to A Link Between Worlds, but if you go read all the interviews about it, that's not really why that game exists. It didn't exist starting as that idea. It was a multiplayer Zelda game, and they were actually exploring several different art styles before they settled on what they already had done in the Link Between Worlds. So Majora's Mask is the only one where they literally said we're making a direct sequel as fast as we can. Well, it did start out as a direct sequel. It started out as- Well, Triforce Heroes, I don't think started out as a direct sequel. Majora's Mask was the DD drive expansion, or the Nintendo 64 DD expansion to Ocarina of Time that never took off. Which, again, was an expansion, which is a sequel, basically, to Ocarina of Time. And Majora's Mask was the only game that really ever fit that mold. So to me, until Nintendo, whether it's Grezzo, whether it's an internal team at Nintendo EAD, whether it's, heck, Retro Studios, which I know a lot of people would love to see tackled as Zelda sometime, Nintendo would have to do something that have not been willing to do for a long time. And I think a lot of us wanna see it happen. I just, we have a hard time putting faith that Nintendo will actually do it. Because, you know, they like doing their new things. This is, and the NX will be out, and whatever the NX is, they'll probably wanna, the next console Zelda will be just like with the Wii. Whatever unique thing is going out with the NX, they're gonna wanna make it use that more than Breath of the Wild did. But who knows? We don't know what the NX is. So, you know, ask this question again after the NX is revealed. Cause that could change things, too. Cause again, we don't know what this NX is, so I guess it's hard for me to predict future games for the NX outside of like, yeah, the course is gonna be a Mario game. And Pikmin 4, hopefully. So thank you for that question. We also went a little over on that. I know Chris didn't get the same much, but Kristen's gonna get to say a lot. Now, because we're gonna move on to our final segment, and that is our favorite thing from the past week, whether it's a game you played, whether it's just a piece of news that's out there. So, we're gonna get the time to go on that right now. Mr. Kristen, what is your favorite thing in video games this last week? It's, oh, um, there's so much that, um. Your favorite thing? It's so hard, there's so much. Good things happen, and that's a good thing. Like, they announced a new Overwatch character today, and she looks pretty cool. And what's cool about that is all that DLC is free. I guess mainly my favorite news has just been all the Pokemon Go news. All the like memes, all the news about people. The actual news or the game? The game and the news, actually, both, has been like the big topic. For me, personally, I've been playing for a while now. It's fun, but it's even hilarious. Just to give you, um, just to give our listeners and viewers a little background for Pokemon Go, I have heard it on Good Authority from several different places that Pokemon Go news, just the news itself about Pokemon Go, has been like the highest traffic drivers for sites like Amnesia, sites like Kotaku, IGN, more so than the entirety of E3 was. Great take-offs. At a point, I didn't take- Like, obviously, I can't confirm, I could probably confirm the Amnesia stuff if I cared to ask the right people, but I know Darren still works there. I think he's gonna tip me off on the Amnesia traffic, but like it's Pokemon Go is crazy popular. Like it is, it might just be another flash in the pan, another fad, but holy crud. To put it in perspective. People thought me, people thought me Tomo did well. Pokemon Go is crushing anything me Tomo did well. Well, to put it in perspective, Nintendo's stock is the highest it's been since 1983, so. No, it's not. It's not. It had the highest single-day jump since 1983. So. It's not anywhere close to its peak year in 2008. It's not, well, like Nintendo's stock is still something like 80 bucks off. Okay, but still, it's done well for Nintendo. Yes, it's been a huge, and the crazy thing is is Nintendo only is like a partial, they only get a part of their revenue on this. You know, they did help fund a large part of the development of it too. Niantic, that company that made Ingress and spun off of Google. So just so people know, Niantic is not actually affiliated with Google. Just throwing it out, there's a lot of confusion, like people think Google's getting some money from this. Google's not getting any slice of this pie. This is Niantic, the Pokemon Company, Game Freak, and Nintendo. They're the ones that get all the slices out of this. And Nintendo's slice is probably decently big because Nintendo owns the Pokemon IP. Nintendo owns the trademarks for all the Pokemon stuff, and Nintendo helped fund, I think it was like 50% of the development. I think the Pokemon Company covered the other 50%. So yeah, Nintendo's getting a very good chunk of the money, but not all of it. But even with that chunk, let's say of the profit margins, Nintendo gets 50%, which would be pretty high. Still, 50% profit on a mobile game, and Nintendo's stock jumped like 33%. Crazy, absolutely crazy. I mean, this Pokemon, I think it said in the US, it's reached 7.5 million downloads. And in the US, it's reached like 3% to 5% of all Android users. And it's already more popular than Tinder, which people can make their jokes about Tinder, the dating app, yeah, yeah, yeah. But Tinder is a very popular app. More active than a... It might, as of now, I don't like quote me on this, folks. It was on pace to be more popular in terms of daily active users than Twitter was. You better say that, yeah. And we don't, new numbers haven't come in yet, so I don't know if it actually is more popular than Twitter yet. But the fact that it's even getting close to Twitter level, like Twitter's popularity is hugely based on mobile phones. There are people that use it on desktop, but it's largely built for mobile phones. It's not like Facebook, which was primarily built for desktop and imported to mobile. And now I'd argue it's primarily built for mobile, but anyways, that's crazy. That's why I chose Pokemon Go. That's why I chose Pokemon Go as the biggest news for me. Pokemon Go, that was a very good topic, man. Worldwide revenue for in-app purchases expected to hit $50.2 billion. Yes, yes I have. I played it the last couple of days. I only just started Coach Pokemon today because I had to run errands, I had to take the local bus. So I'm just like driving past Pokemon, flipping through Poke stops, spending them really hard before they drive past. I just love the stories. Mainly news wise, I love the stories, people will get. Just a story from it. Stories like the victim thing, the guy who found a dead body, the guy who got sunburned. Yeah, the dead body thing was crazy. I mean, okay, so, okay, so my favorite story, my favorite thing to have is Pokemon Go as well. I only started playing it yesterday, but so before that I was just following all the stories. And it kind of makes me a little sad that there are people that, you know the dead body thing I think is totally random. That's just people explore the world and they found a dead body. I mean, that sucks. Someone got killed or drowned or something and no one ever found the body till this person came upon it. Like that's not good. But what bummed me out was that parking lot story about how these kids, like teenagers, got robbed in a parking lot because someone used like a lure or like a thing where it attracts more Pokemon to a certain area. And everyone that's kind of sort of in the area can see on their phone that there's a lure over there so that Pokemon are over there. So like, it's a good place to go to catch Pokemon right now. And that was used as a way for these people to lure these kids in and rob them. Like, that's really crappy, man. Yeah. I know there's crappy people out there. They didn't catch the guys, though. That's the positive part, isn't it? Well, yeah, I mean, it is good they caught. But it's still, it's like... That's my stuff. What? Oh, by the way, don't use Pokemon going your driving. Whoops. Okay. I saw four different people today using it while they were driving. I don't get why people do that. Like, it's bad enough if you're texting and making phone calls while you're driving, which you're also not supposed to do. Well, phone calls, I guess, if you get hands-free, it's not a big deal. But, man. Guys, like, this is a game where, even if you're driving, like, I was driving the day out of curiosity, I turned the game on. I didn't play it. I just glanced at my phone once in a while. In order for me to play, I would have had to, as I'm driving, stare at my phone and wait for a Pokemon to pop up for like a half second so I could tap him quick. Because if you tap him, you can keep driving. Well, you say half a second, but the little Pokeball's gonna spin for about, like, 30 seconds before you even get to it. Because it's- Oh, that is my least favorite thing in the game. Well, while you're driving, it's trying to track you, and it's based on your pedometer and your GPS, so it's not expecting you to be running 60 miles an hour. So it's not made to be keeping track with the 60-mile-an-hour moving object or, you know, 40-mile-an-hour, whatever it is. It's made to be able to keep up with someone walking or running. Walking, yes. As you're driving, it's not gonna be able to render it fast enough to like, you know, lock down those locations or, you know, get those Pokemon or get the data that you need to get whatever it has to do. The thing that you'd have to do in order to get it to work is every time you saw a Pokemon, every time you got to a stop, in order to be for sure that you got it, you'd have to stop you to pull over. And yeah. Of course. And that's obviously got its own data associated with it. But I did notice when I drove by, it was a, oh, God, a coughing, I think. And out of curiosity, I was driving by, I was on a highway, I wasn't gonna stop or anything. I tapped it quick before it vanished and I was able to capture it. And I kept thinking, because I saw other Pokemon along the way, I tried tapping it, it didn't work. So I kept thinking, why are people playing this in their car? Okay, yeah. I was able to pull off a capture on a Pokemon, but it distracted me from driving. I had my children in my car, so I was being a bad dad. Don't do that, man. It's stupid. If you really want, this game is built as, Alfred just explained, for you to walk. It's basically an exercise game. Oh, yeah, it's the weird part too. You're on, I was on the bus and it's driving me at full speed. My guy looks like he's just jogging. I'm not hilarious, he's like. My favorite thing this week, obviously it's Pokemon Go, but my favorite thing for this past week has been figuring out why Pokemon Go is popular. Because I have the game. For starters, the game does a very poor job explaining it. That's an understatement. The least explained game I've ever played. Before this happened, we were trying to come up with these video recording things for Skype to try to record everyone's video and we were totally failing at it. Every time you load up one of those applications, they would be very poorly explained how to actually record a video and how to change the settings. It reminded you of Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go explains to you at the beginning that there are things in the world and it shows you how to capture your first Pokemon. And that's it. It doesn't explain that there's a store to buy stuff in, which is fine. I mean, that's something that is okay, I guess to discover on your own if you don't want to push monetization, which by the way, it's also the top grossing app right now. And it doesn't explain anything. What to do, what doesn't even tell you there are gyms. The gyms are a thing. Just like everyone knows in Pokemon, you go to gyms, you want to become the gym leader, yada, yada, yada. Or beat the gym leader, and I don't want to become the gym leader. That is the most complicated thing to do in that game. Yeah, and obviously I understand you got to be certain levels to do it. That makes sense. None of that's explained. This Pokemon Go app, you load it up and it immediately after you sign in, unless you're already signed in, it just loads you to a quote unquote map of the world you're in and you just walk around until something on your screen pops up, you could tap and do an interact with. It doesn't explain to you that there's lures and that you can use them. It doesn't explain bait, it doesn't explain anything about the game. It's crazy to me that this game came out with such a crappy tutorial. Now, what it does have when the servers allow you to use it, does work. I think personally, I think I've only caught six Pokemon so far. I think a level three. And so far the game's kind of shallow. Yeah, pretty much. It depends on where you are. But there's also been news coming out about future features they want to add that don't sound so shallow. So it almost sounds like they want to get the base game out now. And then update it over time with new features. That's fine, I'm cool with that. People are obviously cool with that. That sounds like Street Fighter 5. That sounds like Street Fighter 5. Well, Street Fighter 5 is going right now. We're going to give you the base in February. Then we're going to give you everything else by the end of the year. Yeah, but did Street Fighter 5 also charge you for everything else? Oh, God, don't remind me. I was going to say, I don't think they're going to charge you to get these additional games. It's going to be free updates. I don't think there's anything that they're going to make you pay for in the game. I think all their monetization is going to be exactly what it is now, because it's working and they have no reason to change it. And I think what's cool about their monetization and a lot of people think that spending money on microtransactions is a really crappy thing. And for the most part, for most mobile games, it kind of is, but not in Pokemon Go. People are actually happy to spend money. It's weird. I ran out of Pokeballs. I don't mind spending a dollar to get 10 more. And it doesn't bother them. They're okay that they're spending money. And apparently the report is that all the money being made is coming from a large base of people, rather than a few people spending thousands of dollars. And apparently the game makes it really hard to be a person that spends thousands of dollars. Because what are you going to do? Have 80,000 Pokeballs? Yeah, you just got to like rinse for people. There's really no reason to even spend it. Yeah, like there's no reason. The game encourages you to spend a little bit of money over a long period of time versus gaining any sort of advantage by just dropping hundreds of dollars into it right away. I think it's a really smart method of monetization. I think I'm training this game, like I treat using the street pass, my 3DS, where it's like, I use it for like travel, mainly just use it for traveling and then like when I get home, I don't really look at the app for like a few days. Yeah, I think it's one of those like, okay, so a lot of people I know have been saying it's been a good exercise one, like get them out and exercise. And I mostly agree, since you have to, it's built for walking and it's better for you to go out and find Pokemon. I think that, see, I live out by a lake. So obviously I haven't gone out on the lake yet. I'm sure once I go out on a boat out there, I'll be able to capture some more water. I think I got Polly Whirl already. But when I go out and use this, like really wanna use this, I think if I'm gonna go for a walk, I need to do things like go down to my local park or go to downtown because out where I live, there's some houses, but there's not a lot going on. I've walked like, I think according to the thing, I've walked a total of like two or three miles over the last couple of days and I've only caught five Pokemon. I don't know. That is not a lot of Pokemon, compared to what I'm hearing other people catch. Now I realized I could use bait and lures and increase. I get that, but like, man, it felt like I was walking a lot to get nothing. And that doesn't, to me, doesn't encourage me to keep walking because I'm not being rewarded enough. Now obviously I live in an area where it's not, I mean, there's people that live out here. We have an elementary school, yada, yada, yada, but like there's not like a high density population. So I'm thinking that this would encourage me more, I guess, if the Pokemon generates at a faster pace, not just in highly populated areas, because I noticed I went to the mall and I actually caught three of my Pokemon at the mall in a bigger city than I did walking around my whole neighborhood. And it felt weird to me. It felt like they were increasing the spawn rate where more people are versus just having the spawn rate be like it is in Pokemon. When you're out in the wild walking around, it's random. That's true. The second bus I took today to get to where I was going is it was hanging towards like one of those big shopping centers. As we're traveling along, we were into like, I think I ran to like six to 10 gyms just on one street alone. And you're right about that. It's like where more people- Well, the gyms, okay. The poker centers and gyms, I understand. The poker centers are based on like landmarks, whether it would be like a restaurant or- Statue. A statue, a piece of art. Like what's really cool, I didn't expect to have. I thought maybe the grocery store that's over in my area might be a poker center, but it actually turns out a restaurant, three blocks from my house is a poker center. And it's the only poker center out in the lake. So like, I thought that was kind of cool that like, apparently that restaurant, you know, is known enough to be considered like a landmark. Fun fact, there's a, okay. I think it's slightly nice to work with. There's a strip club. There's a local strip club like, I live like 10 minutes from. And it's apparently a poker stop. That's awesome. I saw that one of my friends posted up on Facebook and I laughed my ass off. I'm like, oh my God. Alfred, we never really got to you quick. What's your favorite thing in the past because it's also Pokemon Go? For the most part it is, like I'm gonna show a picture on my phone. It feels like since Pokemon Go came out that there hasn't been anything else. Well, I'm gonna talk about some of the things that I've done in gaming this week too. But there's a street called Pleasant Ridge by where I am. It's off of a Best Buy. And there's a- I always love places called Pleasant. There's a statue of a toad. And it's called the Seductive Toad Sculpture. And it's a pokey stop. And it says, this is a statue of a toad in a seductive pose. And that was probably the most interesting thing I saw while I was, I went to Best Buy yesterday. But for me, I live on a college campus. Right now I'm at my house back, not at college. But like all, you know, my roommates and I, I think two nights ago, a bunch of friends and I, we went out from like, I don't know, maybe eight to midnight and just caught Pokemon and went around the campus. There are enough people. We have three gyms. We have one at the entrance, one at the pond and one by where I live. And so all three factions, I mean, right now it's basically just valor and instinct because mystique, mystique or whatever. And then you're gonna pronounce it right because it doesn't matter. We're like warring factions back and forth. And then there's a guy that everybody does on campus, one of my friends who's like always trying to keep control of that. And I think that's the fun part is being in a place with lots of people and you can get like, I know every, almost everyone that's playing. There's so many groups on Facebook about DBU, Pokemon, Go, like, or DBU team valor. And just kind of that community thing. Like I met like five or six guys the other day. I think Sunday when I was playing, went out to the baseball field where the gym is and we took the gym together and then we went on our way. I was just kind of stuff like that that I really like. Yeah. Makes sense. Again, like you said, it's more fun in more populated areas but it's also more fun when you have people to play with. Of course. Like when it came out, my fiance and I went out and just went to the park by the house, went out and do a Pokestop, caught some Pokemon and then went back. It was like a hundred degrees. It was really hot, but you know, we got to walk in. And I think that's one of the things that I enjoy is how, like how you play the game and what you can do. Like you said, there's really not a lot of tutorial, like figuring out how to fight a gym was the most complicated thing because it's nothing like how you play regular Pokemon. And you have to tap Pokemon or hold it to release a special attack. And then in order to take over the gym, you have to whittle down the prestige, which can be up to 10,000 to 12,000. And you have to get it down each number. And then you have scary. And then you have to take over the gym and then you have to beat it yourself several times to level it up so you can put more Pokemon. It's a really complicated thing that takes forever to do. Well, you don't want your gym taken. Yeah. This is why I prefer just catching them. All right, right now it's my rule. If I see a Reiki Pokemon, I'm walking right past it, man. Well, what I like too is that like, to me, this kind of brings back the gotta catch up. Yeah. It's only the original 150. For now. Oh. For now. I mean, it's obviously well- I hope there's a Hoenn. Like, I just want Hoenn Pokemon. That's all I need. That was another huge Pokemon you say. Somebody looked into the coding of go and apparently if a later update, it will be possible to catch one of the three legendary birds. Yeah. Sure, sure. I think it was really smart for them to launch with just the 150. Because I don't want to say everyone, but anyone who's played Pokemon knows the 150. Even if you didn't play Pokemon red or yellow, you know, or whatever. I guess I shouldn't forget blue. I don't want Team Blue getting mad. But I think it was really smart because all those Pokemon have basically been in all future Pokemon games. And so they're like Pokemon that everyone, no matter what generation you played, should know. And I think if they had launched with like 700 plus, I think it would overwhelm people. Oh yeah, I don't see them going that high. Yeah, I see them like that the 150, they'll probably go 151 and get Mew in there. And then after that, I think it's gonna be, they're gonna kind of pay attention to where players are. Like, if they look at, you know, say 50% of the player base keeps catching in the same Pokemon all the time. Okay, well maybe it's time for us to increase it to like 300. Well, I could see them doing, I could see them doing like generation by generation and slow increments, like we get Gen 2 next year or something like that, or within the next six, seven months. I mean, I'm not looking forward for the day when there's 700 plus Pokemon to catch. I might not be playing Pokemon at that point. And I guess that's a big question for this game. Obviously, let's take it up our entire last segment is, you know, do you guys see this game as being having long legs? Because I think, I know people don't like this guy, but Michael Pachter recently stated that he thinks this is gonna be like a four month thing and that's gonna die out. And it appears that a lot of people think it's gonna die out even sooner than that. I think if they keep updating it with the generations and new Pokemon and new things to do, it won't. But if they kind of drop the ball and they're just like, okay, well we've added trading and that's it. But they're talking about doing multiplayer battles too. And I think that'll keep the game going for a while. Well, yeah, multiplayer battles will be here. Like if I, you know, because not only are you meeting people now and now you can actually battle them. Like my plan, I told my friends, like I plan on just standing in one spot on campus. And like whenever I lock eyes with someone walking up to them and battling them, I'm having like a whole team of Rattatas. Hey, you have a hat, you just twist it back, it's all in there. Just, just wear shorts and the shirts. Like I wear shorts, they're super comfy. My team of Weedles are gonna get your butt. My Rattatas are in the top percentage of Rattatas. The only thing is, like everyone has a Rattata, I don't. Okay, according to my map, it is like the most common thing in my area. And somehow I caught a Polyworld, which based on what I looked at and where I caught them. And you were like, oh, Polyworld, you must have been over by the lake. No, I wasn't anywhere by water. I'm confused. I caught a tentacle in a forest if it makes you feel anything. At least the coughing that I caught while I was driving was like kind of by a gas station. So like that kind of made sense to me, I guess. You know, toxic gas. Okay, I get it. But like, why was a Polyworld in the middle of a corn field? Like, what, what logic? Like, I don't get it. I don't know. Anyway. Aside from Pokemon Joe though. My complaints about the spawn rates aside. It'll be interesting. Pokemon Go, obviously we know that Mito Mo did not have long ago. It's pretty much already irrelevant. I don't want to say irrelevant. I'm sure there's still a million people. They're trying to keep it going, but it's not really. It's not, Mito Mo was more like, it felt like Nintendo's introduction to Mo. And Pokemon Go is not part of their, technically part of their mobile initiative. It's a separate thing. But it'll be interesting. That's all I could say. I don't know. Now it's fun. It's neat. How long is it gonna be before I decide going on walks is pointless because I just keep catching the same Pokemon. You know, I know what encourages you to explore the world. Well, I have three kids. Might really give you doing a whole lot of exploring. So it'll be interesting to see how it works. Like, I would have loved if this app was out when I went to LA. That would have been nice to me. Because I never make trips like that. So like, hey, I'm traveling. This is cool, but I don't know. It'll be interesting. I think it's gonna have a lot longer legs than Mito Mo ever did. It's literally gonna make more money than Mito Mo ever did. Probably already has. So we'll see. Pokemon's a big name. And for the first time, a lot of people's childhood dreams are coming together. We can kind of sort of catch Pokemon in real life. Other than Pokemon Go then? Something that's not Pokemon related. I recently, like, think two nights ago, or Sunday night, Saturday night, I spent till about 3 a.m. finishing Uncharted 4. And what was perhaps the most satisfying ending to a game series I've ever played? That's what I've heard. Those spoilers. Yeah, those spoilers. I'm not going to, but did you guys play Uncharted 3? Yes. Okay, well, the final boss battle was just disappointing. I don't care what anyone says. It was just a giant quick time event where it's so boring. What was Uncharted 3's final battle again? Joy's deception, you were fighting that the guy that was the, what's her name, Sidekick, on the floating rocks, he had to rescue Sully. But Uncharted 4, the best ending to a game series? The ending, the boss battle was probably I don't want to spoil it for you. It was just so fun. Like, I don't think I've had that much fun playing a final boss battle in a long time because it's what I wish Zelda was like. It's what I wish that certain battles in Zelda had been like. And you'll see what I mean when you play it, if you play it, but- I'm going to play it, trust me. That's what I felt when I played Shadow of the Colossus. Yeah, well, if you play Uncharted 4 and you get to the final boss, it's just imagine that being a Zelda game, like the very final boss, like the last thing you do in the game, aside from the epilogue, that was like what I want in a Zelda game. And it was just great. Like the story was great, the characters are great. I didn't know, it was very well written. Of course, it's the Naughty Dog game. It's got to be well written. Last of Us was a masterpiece. So was this. And I highly encourage you guys to play it. Like, I'm lucky because my roommates have a PS4 and he bought it for himself and I played it. Still going on one myself. My dad has, and once he's fully gone, finishing up, I'm going to probably take a stab at it. Highly, highly recommend that. Highly recommend the series. Can't say that enough that how great that series is. If you want to see something like a series of games that can show the progression of gaming from the beginning of the PS3 to like the last part of the PS4's lifespan, the Uncharted series is the perfect thing, perfect game series to play. Although the last part of the PS4's lifespan is if the PS4 is done. Well, because we're going to, technically the PS4 is done, but the PS4.5 is, you know, all that. Technically the PS4 is not done. Well, no, hell no. It's not done, but it's- I haven't got my Kingdom Hearts 3 yet. Like even the PlayStation 4 Neo, technically it's not replacing it. That's true. No, it's not. I mean, like they're reinventing the PS4. Scorpio feels like more of a replacement than Neo. Because Morpheus, I'd say, is a new way to play PS4. So they're kind of reinventing the PS4. I don't think it's a new way to play PS4. I think it is. We don't even know what it is yet. Morpheus? I think it's literally just- It's the VR. Like- PlayStation VR, yeah. Yeah, Project Morpheus is the VR. It's for VR. Yeah. But like I don't think VR is going to sell it. It depends on the, again, it depends on the games. That's a completely different topic. But again, that's also my lack of, I have a big lack of faith in VR right now. Based on my experiences at E3, I was not that impressed with VR. Doesn't feel like it's there. But then maybe know the time you talk about VR. Cause obviously we're a Zelda podcast. Totally straight from- There are some cool applications I'd like to see at VR and Zelda someday. Link's crossbow training too. All right, so that's going to do it for this new podcast. I'm going to end it, you know, obviously we'll give it on our Twitter handles or whatever else, whatever social media or YouTube stuff we'd like people to follow. I do want to mention one thing. I do, this is another thing I do not mention very often. The Patreon. We are, technically this podcast is available to support via Patreon. And a lot of the reasons we're on Patreon is that this podcast isn't technically part of what I am paid to do at Zelda Informer. It's kind of something I do in addition to I pull long nights. And in general, I want to improve the quality of this podcast. So, like as an example, you're seeing in this video that Alfred, I believe uses a headset. And headsets are wonderful. I would love to make him have a professional quality microphone as my co-host. I would love for him to have an awesome camera to use. I would love to do that for anyone who's going to be part of our podcast long haul. I would like to increase the production values that we have on this. Maybe even hire on a video editor specifically just to edit the video part of our podcast. That's better than me. I would like to do a lot of things with this podcast. And also, I want to expand. I want us to have more than just a Zelda podcast moving forward. And that's why the Patreon itself is patreon.com slash Nintendo Prime, because it's kind of an indication of once we hit a certain funding goal, we'll also launch like a brand new podcast for some, or I'll launch, I don't know if Alfred will be with me. I probably will. I'll see. But I for sure will launch a brand new podcast that's about Nintendo. And then there will be future stretch goals that say, oh, maybe we'll launch like a general gaming podcast that's separate, that focuses more on like PC, Sony, Microsoft, but we'll bring up Nintendo when it has to, but we'll kind of be like, hey, you wanna hear thoughts on Nintendo? We already have a Zelda podcast and a Nintendo podcast. But right now it's got no backers. So it's not something that I mentioned very often. It's kind of an aside. This podcast is going to keep coming to you every single week regardless of if you give. Backers get like early access to the podcast. That's pretty much it right now. You can get a picture of- But we don't have any backers. So we don't really have any other incentives, but yeah, I just wanna bring it up. Like it's something we're looking to do. I really wanna improve the quality of this podcast and I can't afford to really cut out of what I make already to do that. So yeah, that happens. Patreon.com slash Nintendo Prime. You can support this podcast and future podcasts. Otherwise, you can follow me at Nate Jantz on Twitter. Alfred, wanna tell us yours over here? I'm FullmetalAlphy on Twitter. It's how it's spelled. Yep. Kristen, what do you got for social media? Oh, like I said before, I don't have a Twitter, but you can catch me around. You can catch me around Zelo former. You can catch me at the Zelo does unit former Marathon next week and- Yes, check that out. This Saturday, baby. Yep, exactly. And of course, you can catch me on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash superreactionbrowns. Nice, nice. All right, everyone. Well, thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoy the new format. If you're watching this on video, if you're just checking this out on audio, hey, we're still awesome. You're awesome. We'll be back next week. See you guys later. Later, bye.