#176. 'Tetris'
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The trio reviews Tetris on Apple TV+ and all three love it. Sonny calls it “explicitly propaganda for the neoliberal economic order” and admits he almost distrusts how perfectly the movie was engineered to confirm every one of his ideological biases, while praising how legibly the script (which he compares favorably to The Insider) makes 20 minutes of licensing-rights exposition zip by. JVL, who didn't finish it due to a taping-schedule crunch, is equally effusive, calling it a top-shelf Matthew Vaughn-style production (director John Baird apes Vaughn's house style) and singling out the ELORG office “ping-pong between rooms” sequence as reminiscent of the interrogation scene in L.A. Confidential. Mike agrees, praising the retro 8-bit animation flourishes and how economically the Hank-Alexei friendship is built, and admits the closing home-video footage of the real Hank Rogers made the story's more outlandish beats click as true. The first third is the usual grab-bag: Sonny recaps his second COVID-plagued Disney World trip (Paxlovid “metal mouth,” the new Tron and Guardians of the Galaxy coasters, a disappointing Avatar ride, and his near-certainty he caught COVID in the crowded Haunted Mansion queue room), JVL shares DVD Easter-egg trivia (The Ring's remote-locking bonus feature, the Dark Knight Lamborghini/bat-name pun) and reminisces about commentary-track culture, and Mike gives a T-ball update on his son's Flying Squirrels team and its helmet-sticker reward system, prompting a JVL tangent on why organized youth baseball is too crowded to give young kids real reps. There's also a detour into Super Mario Bros. box-office numbers and a deep dive, courtesy of Sonny, into the “four-walling” economics behind why studios sometimes prefer a streaming release to a theatrical one. The episode closes with Sonny, having skipped the category on the prior bonus episode, finally naming his all-time top Nintendo games: Tetris, Contra, Resident Evil 4 (Wii), SNES Super Mario Kart, and Final Fantasy III — plus honorable mentions for Battletoads and the brutally hard NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game.
From the show notes
Sonny's back! More video game movies! The best of times!
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00I played for five minutes. I still see falling blocks in my dreams. It's poetry, art and math all working in magical synchronicity. It's the perfect game. Tetris? Tetris. Tetris. Tetris. Tetris. I don't get it.
Mike00:00:29Welcome to the Sub-Beacon Podcast. I'm your co-host, Mike Warren. Joining me, of course, are my two co-hosts, Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. You can find us at subbeacon.com where you can listen, subscribe, comment. And in this week's show, we'll be discussing Tetris, the Apple TV Plus movie. But first, before we get into Tetris, let's hear how everyone's doing. Sonny Bunch, what's been going on with you? We missed you last week. You're back with us now. What's what's going on? How you feeling,
Sonny00:01:04buddy? Thank you for holding down. Thank you for holding down the fort. I got the COVID. I don't know if you guys have had COVID before. You've had COVID. JBL, you've had COVID.
Mike00:01:15I have never had COVID as far as I know. You're the last one in America.
Sonny00:01:20You're the last man. COVID. So I've had COVID twice now. The first time I got it, it was like a it was it was like allergies. It wasn't bad, just a little sniffle. And I like, frankly, the only reason I took a test is because somebody else in the family had COVID. And I was like, oh, yeah, there it is. So like that wasn't it wasn't a big deal. This time was a little worse. This time was like it was it was like a bad chest cold or a very light flu. So like enough to be like I was tired. I was mostly just tired and my and and a little bit feverish. Did you do Paxlovid? And I went on the Paxlovid. I went on the Paxlovid. Did you get metal mouth from it? I did. I wasn't it's funny. The sensation wasn't like metal to me. It was more like I had the aftertaste of an IPA in the back of my throat for like five straight days to the extent that I think it was actually like I think I had like a mild psychosomatic buzz on like I was like, I was like, I was like, I've been drinking a 12 percent beer for the last five days. I'm like kind of drunk over here. So it was either I was sick or drunk. Hard to tell which I'm not not sure.
Mike00:02:34Maybe both. Why not? That's where you want to be that that space between drunk and sick. That's that's really the. That's the ideal liminal state.
JVL00:02:44Are you guys hearing me at all? Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. That's weird. My my little my little
Sonny00:02:50meter is not registering at all. I see your register. You're like mid yellow for me. I see it. I see it. Fine. Excellent. I'm not getting this out. You're getting a peek behind the curtain, folks. So the how did you get sick, Sonny? So I got sick because I went to I went to Disney World with family. This is the second year in a row we've done that. We're not going to do this for a couple more years. I don't think I think this two years in a row is enough for anyone. We stayed at the Art of Animation, which I highly recommend. It's one of the it's one of the slightly. Oh, is that the new woke hotel? No, there's a woke hotel.
JVL00:03:24Well, maybe. I mean, everything everything. Yeah. We're all we're every every room is
Sonny00:03:29groomer themed. Well, for now, Finding Nemo, though, that that's a groomer movie, I think. Anyway, though, the the shark fin, the come over here to my side of the aquarium. I don't I don't even remember that part of the movie. I've only I've only seen I don't know that I've ever actually seen Finding Nemo in full from start to finish. I'm not I'm not 100% sure I have. Anyway, we Art of Animation was very nice. It's one of the it's one of it's like a slightly cheaper hotel, but it's right on. It's on the the people mover, the Skyliner thing, the monorail. No, not the monorail, the like, you know, the the carriages in the air that they carry you on the sky gondolas. The gondolas. Thank you. I've done. I didn't even know these existed. Yes, they have gondolas at Disney World now. Wow. So it's amazing that take that got us like straight to Epcot and straight to Hollywood Studios, which was nice. It was it was a fun trip. I don't I'm not going to go like I'm not going to go park by park and day by day and everything. I will say that I think top three rides. Well, so I did the new Tron ride, which is number one. It's amazing. It's like. No, it's at it's at Magic Kingdom. It's just a magic kingdom. The big the big main park. But it's like I don't know how to describe it without describing other similar amusement amusement park rides, but like it's a lot like Volcano. The way it works is that it's a lot like Volcano, the blast coaster you if you ever went to Paramount's Kings Dominion. Yeah. Or then later.
JVL00:05:03This is an induction roller coaster. Linear acceleration. Yeah. Linear acceleration,
Sonny00:05:07except it doesn't do the like straight up thing. It like you go forward first and then up and around and it and it it's got the trot, the Daft Punk music playing through the whole thing. Indoors or outdoors? It's indoors and outdoors. It starts indoors and then you go outdoors. It's it's genuinely kind of amazing. I think it's going to be a massive failure for the park. I think this ride is amazing and is going to be a failure for the park because let me so the way that you ride it is you ride it like a motorcycle except like it's like a crotch rocket motorcycle. It's not a Harley. So you're like you have to get into the thing. You have to lay down on your stomach and like put your put your shit harder for some of the huskier denizens.
JVL00:05:50It's going to be people walk around double fisting the turkey legs. It's going to be a real problem for people. We got to go check out that Tron coaster. It's going to be a problem
Sonny00:06:02going to be a problem for as our bigoted friend JBL here mentions for some of our larger from some of our larger friends. But it's it's but it was awesome. It was a it was a that was amazing. I did the the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride as well. Are you single file or are you like you're
JVL00:06:19you're on a. I assume this is the light cycle is the idea behind it. Yeah, it's like it's like. Yeah, it's like a light. Is there something next to you on a light cycle? Are you three to a row?
Sonny00:06:30No, it was it's it's it's single file single file. Wow, that sounds pretty awesome. It's it's it's kind of amazing. I think it was single. I'm pretty sure it was single file, but it's an amazing it's an amazing ride. Again, I think it's going to I think they're going to run into some real problems with some. Some people not being able to ride this and like just loading it and unloading it because it's a it's a weird it's not. You're not just sitting in and buckling up. You've got to like
JVL00:06:56strap it when it's weird. Do you need is it you really an older kid? It's 48 inches,
Sonny00:07:01so what does that mean? That's that's like 10 years old and up. You have to be taller than four feet. I mean, I like it's just size. It's not age. It's no, but I mean, like basically this means like no little kid. Neither of my kids are big enough to write it, right? So neither. So I have a seven and a four year old. And 77, she's going to be eight in a couple months and a four year old who will be five and like six months, and neither of them was even close like they were. They're still they're still
JVL00:07:28too. How intense is it as a coaster? Is it lots of loops and upside down stuff?
Sonny00:07:33It's very fast and it definitely has some like steep banks and turns and stuff. It's it's amazing. It's it's it's very if you if you can get on it and it was like we went when we were there, it was literally like the second day it was open. So we were like one of the first that's awesome. We were one of like the first probably 500,000 people to write it or 100,000 people to write. I don't know how many people they get through it today. I think again, I think it's going to be a real problem for the park because I think they're going to have trouble. They're going to have trouble keeping it running and keeping it like running smoothly. There's also so like this is also something I've never seen for a Disney ride before. As you enter the like loading area. There's a there's like a there's like a locker room basically and you have to put like all of your you can't there's nowhere to fall out of your pockets. There's nowhere. There's nowhere. Well, I so I have my cargo pockets and they were all strapped down. They were fine. So if you if you can if you can like close your pockets, you're fine. But like if you have a bag or something, you got to put it in there. You can't. There's nowhere to there's nowhere to keep your bag. I assume you took your glasses off, right? No, I left. I left my glasses on. No, I put my glasses in my I put my I'm sorry. I put my glasses in my my cargo. It was one of your cargo pieces. One of my pieces of cargo.
Mike00:08:46So so it's it's probably labor intensive for, you know, because you've got to have like a lot more people to strap them work in there, strap them in. And you have this like just sort of this added barrier to entry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's going to be it's
Sonny00:09:00going to be hard for families. It's going to be really hard for families. So we had to we I mean, you know, we basically I went and then went through the whole thing and came back out. And then my wife went and we just took turns watching both of the kids. Now, like usually because we have family fun because we have because we have a because we have a very, a very small, a relatively small kid at five and like a slightly older one at seven or at four and at seven, we they have like a rider swap thing, which is pretty nice. Like one parent can ride with the kid and then you switch with the kid and the other parent stays with the other kid. And it's like really well done. It's like everything else at Disney. It's really well done and pretty seamless. That's what we did on Guardians of the Galaxy, which was awesome. Also a coaster, also a coaster, also a coaster. It like you kind of go, you go backwards and all around and it's mo it's indoors. It's entirely indoors. It's like Space Mountain, except it doesn't suck. Space Mountain sucks. Space Mountain is boring. You're just inside and it's like, it's fast. It's just like fast and dark. And like, I, I don't like Space Mountain. I don't, it's, it's just a boring ride to me, but, uh, Guardians of the Galaxy is like, you're like kind of spinning around and it's again, like it's integrated very well with the actual movie characters. They're like, it's kind of like the mummy.
JVL00:10:16Do you remember the mummy ride? I didn't. I never, I don't know. I don't either.
Sonny00:10:20Oh, the mummy was great. So that was number two. We also, we did that. We did the new avatar ride. And I, I, so the, uh, the avatar ride at animal kingdom at one point, the wait time was 240 minutes. And if I had waited, if I had waited 240 minutes for this ride that my, my wife very humorously described as colonialist star tours, I would have lost my mind because it is not, it is not a four hour wait ride. It's like, it is very much like star tours. Like you're, you're kind of like, there's a screen and you're kind of like going around. I don't know how to, I don't know how to describe it exactly. It's a little bit like the Tron ride. Actually, you like kind of lean on a thing and you're, it's like,
JVL00:11:01you're riding one of the big Banshee wings. I don't want to get too deep into this, but how much does it cost a family of four for a single day's entrance to the Disney park? Uh, it depends on the magic kingdom. It depends on it animal kingdom. Cause we're talking about, I honestly, I honestly, so I,
Sonny00:11:24I do not know. I do not know my, my wife handled all of the logistics.
JVL00:11:28I assume it's in the neighborhood of $400. Oh, more than that. It's probably like 600 bucks. So imagine saying to somebody like, let's amortize out your time here, right? You are, you are gonna commit half of your time or a third of your time to this one ride. Is that ride worth, is it, would you stroke a check for $150 to go on this ride once?
Sonny00:11:54Absolutely. No, no, absolutely not. Uh, so anyway, um, but we, but we did not, so we, we did, we did the lightning lanes because we like, we, so you can spend more money to go in a shorter line and even the shorter line was still, still long. Um, but the, uh, but we do that because like we go, we, we, we're doing this once. We're just, we, we, we're, we're spending time instead of money or we're spending money instead of time. Um, uh, so anyway, that ride kind of, it's not, it's not that good. It's not a four hour wait ride. I'm just telling you folks right now, if you go to animal kingdom, do not go,
JVL00:12:29do not wait for four hours. There's no such thing as a ride that is. No way. There hasn't been maybe the, you know, uh, fucking Tricia Helfer ride is worth four hours, right? To be, if you had to wait in line for four hours to bang it out with, with Tricia Helfer, which theme park is this? Would this be yet? Uh, the theme park of my imagination that might be worth four hours, but in all honesty, probably
Sonny00:12:56not. Right. I don't think those are, I don't, I don't know that. I feel like this is in the movie AI. You can just go and you find a robot who does that for you. Question question Sonny
Mike00:13:08about Disney world, which is a place I have not been in 20 years. Uh, yeah. Is Mr. Toad's
Sonny00:13:15wild ride still there? I honestly don't know. I don't think so. I think, I think it's gone. Yeah. I remember that. That was the trippiest thing in the world. I do not love that. I have not, I did not see it. So I'm pretty sure that's gone. Um, so when, uh, where I, anyway, what I wanted to say was I'm pretty sure I know exactly when I got COVID and that's at the haunted mansion ride, because if you've ever ridden the haunted mansion, there's like this, basically the way it works is they bring 50 people at a time into a room and it's an elevator that takes you down to the actual ride. But like, you're just in this windowless modestly ventilated room with like 50 people on top of you all breathing on each other, 100% chance. That's where I got the COVID. I just, I just know it. That's they, there probably have been more cases of COVID caught in that room than in any other individual site. They don't, they don't even have to contact trace. They just,
Mike00:14:11oh, you, you were, you were at Disney world. Oh, that's where it is.
Sonny00:14:15You went to, you went to the haunted mansion. That's it. Anyway, it was, it was, it was a fun trip. It was a good trip. We, uh, we had a good time. I will not, I'm not going back to Disney for like another two or three years because this one, the first we went, so we went last year, listeners may remember, went last year around the same time. And that was a lot of fun. And it wasn't that expensive. This was a very, very expensive trip to Disney world. And it's like, that's like two or three years worth of vacation budget, uh, out the, out the window. So I'm just
JVL00:14:42going to throw that out there. Did you and Beth ever do Disney pre kids? No, never went because Shannon and I used to do Disney every single year, pre kids. And it was so great. And I loved it so much that I can't imagine doing it with my children. Yeah, I think it would be that would be so horrible and such a miserable experience compared to the joy of being at Disney without the responsibilities with children. I just don't think I could do it.
Mike00:15:10Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, I, I, I haven't been to Disney since I was a kid. So like, again, I have sort of no frame of reference for it, but I imagine like the, the rides sound like more geared toward, or maybe not more geared toward adults, but it sounds like what you're describing Sonny. There are more options for like grownup, uh, theme park attendees than there were. Yeah. When I was, when I last went,
Sonny00:15:38I, I definitely think they're, they are like stepping it up a little bit with the intensity of some of the rides, uh, and the, the size of some of the rides. I think that is probably true. We also have the, the, the best pure roller coaster in all four of the parks is at animal kingdom. It's the Everest coaster. And that that's like, you, you go backwards for a while. You do loops. Uh, my seven-year-old hated it was terrified. She did not, she did not care for it. She went on it twice because of the ride swap thing. And she did not, she did not like it
Mike00:16:08either time. So, uh, the scariest ride I remember from like the late nineties again, which is when I was there, uh, was the alien encounter. Do you remember this? And it was, it was like so terrifying that they like, they like got rid of it early. You know, it was like, it was like, so, and, and I guess like now it would probably be like par for the course, but yeah, terrifying. We were like that. It was like, it was like, it was like one of these things where you would like tomorrow and you sat around and like, you could feel like the, the, the tail or the tongue of the aliens sort of like licking you and the xenomorphs like tail,
Sonny00:16:45like hitting you. It was, it was like horrifying. Wait, was it like an actual yes. Yes. It was
Mike00:16:51alien from the movie alien. Yeah. It has escaped. We're you're all in a laboratory looking at this
JVL00:16:57thing at the center and it, you know, it lights go dark and Oh, no, it was escaped.
Sonny00:17:02Yeah. Feels like it. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, well there we, we went on, so we went to one of the,
Mike00:17:08like one of the shows into a Lilo ride or a toy story ride or something. Go ahead, Sonny.
Sonny00:17:13Yeah. Excuse me. Um, we went to, uh, there, we went to one of like the shows at animal kingdom was called like a bug's life theme. Um, which was, which was very fun, except there's like, they have little things built into this, like little air jets built into the seats. And there's one moment where like bugs are supposed to be stinging you and it like shoots into your back. And my, my four-year-old jumped out of the seat and crawled into my lap was terrified, was absolutely terrified. Uh, and then like later in that, later on that ride, like giant puppets, black widow, spiders come down on your head. And again, just like terrified. He was, he was not, he was not
Mike00:17:55into that, that experience. Horrible scary for him. Yeah. He, he probably won't remember that for the rest of his life. Uh, yeah. Uh, he probably won't remember that for the rest of his life. Uh, yeah. And be haunted by it. Um, JVL what's going on with you?
JVL00:18:06Uh, got some good stuff. Good stuff. Got, uh, our friend, friend of the show, father Harrison staying with us this week. He took him a little vacation post holy week and came out to Nueva Jersey. And it's been fun hanging out with him. I, uh, I was thinking of you guys because I, I was deep down a Reddit thread the other day. I really, I know I'm 20 years too late to this, but Reddit really is the last good place on the internet. And there was a thread asking for the best Easter eggs in movies. And, uh, there was a lot of like super nerd stuff in there. Uh, but the, the best one is something that I never would have known or heard before, which was that the DVD of the ring. So if you, if you got the DVD for the ring, uh, there was a bonus bonus feature. Yeah. Where bonus feature where you could watch the video that they, that the, the actual ring video, but when you selected this bonus feature and it began to play, it disabled all of the controls on the remote so that you couldn't pause it or stop it or go back to main menu. And then at the end of it, at the end of it, it goes silent. Your TV goes black and the audio on it goes to a telephone ring. So mimicking that your phone is now ringing. That is a work of, of horrifying genius.
Sonny00:19:47Wait, so was it like just a bonus feature on it that you could access, or was it like a secret thing in the menu that you could, you could get?
JVL00:19:53Uh, I believe this was a bonus feature you could access. That's pretty good.
Sonny00:19:57Okay. I, I, I used to love, I, all of it, it's funny back in the, you know, back in the late nineties, early aughts, a lot of the DVD manufacturers built little Easter egg type things into these. So like in the, um, there was the, I, I, I still own, I think a copy of terminator two that, uh, has like, if you, if you enter a series of numbers, I think it's like the numbers for judgment day, it gives you like a secret, like a super secret, uh, a prologue or post epilogue or something that has like Sarah Connor in the old age makeup. Um, you know, we averted judgment day and now I'm a Senator. It's like, it's wild. It's, it's like a, it's like a thing that they actually filmed, but didn't well, there's like, you know,
JVL00:20:47I'm sorry. So the other, the other great Easter egg catch in this, uh, is a dark night Easter egg, um, in the, in the movie. And this is, this takes a little bit of a journey. It's gonna take us like 90 seconds to do it, but it's worth it. So, uh, in the film, you may recall that there is a scene in which Bruce Wayne drives a Lamborghini, right? This is when he is going to intercept the guy who is going to tell, you know, the secret identity of Bruce Wayne, you know, the little, little accountant dude. So, uh, you guys may have known this. I did not, but Lamborghini, which is an Italian car company, the name, the model names of Lamborghinis are all Spanish.
Sonny00:21:30Did you know that I know, I know where you're going with this, but I did not go on the, the,
JVL00:21:38the, uh, the, the Lambert. So they are named after famous Spanish fighting bulls. And so the, in the dark night, he Bruce Wayne is driving the Lamborghini Murcielago, which is named at very famous Spanish bull Murcielago Spanish for bat. So even as Bruce Wayne,
Mike00:22:00he was driving a bat mobile. Yes. Boom. Mind blown. That's pretty good. That's that is some deep, deep fan service. Can I go back though, real quick to this, this whole idea of like the DVD bonus feature. It's such a, like, it's such as like a snapshot of like, what is no, it just no longer exists. Right. I mean, yes, people have DVDs and blue rays. No, well, that's not, that's
Sonny00:22:26not, but it's just not like, that's not right. Exactly. I mean, like the, what, what, what has happened is that that has migrated to a, a real like collectors, not collectors market, but like a real, like higher end, the criteria collection, arrow videos, et cetera, like companies that spend companies that actually spend a lot of money. Cause I mean like, this is so like, you know, DVDs and blue rays essentially subsidize the industry for like 10 years was just an
JVL00:22:54enormous, enormous, it was like getting a second box office. That's how big the home video market.
Sonny00:23:00They were making tons and tons of money on catalog titles, which is the first time that it really happened. They, they could put something out that had come out in, you know, 1985 and you, you do, uh, you, you have the director sit down and do a commentary track or something on it. It's like, Hey, look at this, look at this cool thing. Here's give us $20 for, you know, I don't know, Fletch or whatever. Right. Um, and like they, they, people, people fork over the money. Um, but the, uh, but like it, it, there was so much money flowing through all this. Like, I remember reading once that, um, that Arnold Schwarzenegger, uh, recorded, you know, he recorded a commentary track for, I think it was total recall or something and was paid $50,000 for two hours of work just to come in and talk about total recall with like Paul Verhoeven and everybody else, like just to sit there for two hours, they cut him a $50,000 check because that's how much money was flowing through this, this revenue stream. It was just an enormous, enormous, great in Hollywood because it's
JVL00:24:00run by very, very smart people. Use that cushion to figure out how they were going to confront the internet. And so they did not wind up ambushed in the way that the music industry did.
Sonny00:24:12Well, look, but the movie industry got lucky because like the, the thing about movies is that they are still very, very large files. So at the, at the like beginning point of piracy, you could download a song and it would take 15 minutes or you could download an album and it would take two hours or whatever. But to download a movie in anything resembling watchable quality would take like two days. And like most people just weren't gonna do that.
Mike00:24:37Well, I, I just think the, like the whole, the amount of production that went into DVD features, uh, you know, bonus features and just it's, it, you know, all the, you know, added interviews or the commentary tracks and, and like, I used to watch like on movies and TV shows, I used to watch them or like, you know, listen to the, like, which is so weird now. Like I can't imagine doing that. Now it's film school in a box. It was great. It was great. It was great. So, uh, anyway, well,
JVL00:25:06good, good, good. Well, nothing. We had to do a ranking of our favorite commentary tracks.
Mike00:25:12My favorite are the South park, uh, DVD commentary tracks because they literally, they, they hated Trey Parker and Matt stone hated being pulled into them so much to do them because they had their, like their schedule, you know, and it was like, they were like ripped away from that schedule to like do them. So they, they were all like, like a minute and a half long. And then they would like say that they would actually pack it with very interesting commentary, but they would do it all in like 90 seconds and then be out of it. And so like, it wouldn't like go through the entire episode. They would just like the first 90 seconds of it. They're like, okay, we're done here. Move on to the next one. And I'm sure they banged all those out and like, you know, an afternoon.
Sonny00:25:53So yeah, the, uh, I, my favorite commentary tracks were always the, the ones on the Kevin Smith disc because it would be just like, like Kevin Smith has a lot of issues as a filmmaker, uh, talent being among them. But the, but one thing he is, is he's an absolutely fantastic raconteur. He can talk, um, for, for hours and like on, so like on the mall rats disc, it's like Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck, uh, you know, uh, Jason Lee, Jason Lee, Jason muse. Like it's like, it's just this like all-star cast of, of people just talking and having a good time. Um, and it's really, it's really wonderful to listen to. I wouldn't say you're gonna, that's not really film school in a box, but it is fun to listen to.
Mike00:26:40All right. Well, not, not much going on with me just, uh, baseball. And, uh, we watched any updates still undefeated, undefeated. The, uh, the, uh, double a miners, uh, is, and T-ball who can really say we've had one game. It was, I don't know, but I will say I'm proud to say that my boy, I didn't, I'm the assistant coach. So I do not award this, but my boy won the, the, this is not the game ball. We don't have the game ball and T-ball, but the game, uh, helmet sticker, which is a giant sticker that you get you guys do helmet stickers. Wow. That's our thing. So I was very proud. He basically he's like one of like two or three kids who have played T-ball before. So like he, he knows like how to throw it basically.
JVL00:27:29So what's it basically based on a defensive play, you get a sticker for great defense.
Mike00:27:34Okay. So we have, we have individual stickers. So the team is the flying squirrels. Um, and we have individual acorn stickers for listening to coach. If you follow directions, you get an acorn sticker. That's so great. Uh, so there, there, I mean, it, it looks like, you know, the Ohio state, uh, you know, Buckeye leaf, uh, uh, and then the bigger squirrel sticker. I don't know where, where my coach got these, but, um, the bigger squirrel sticker is, uh, you know, it's much larger and, um, uh, and, and that's for, I think just doing an okay job. I think he had a couple of good hits off the tee and threw the ball like competently and, and got that out of the way. I think there's, there's going to be a big learning curve for a lot of these kids, but they're, we're having fun. So that's all I, that's all I got
JVL00:28:29to say about that. Yes. Yes. As long as you're having fun. Actually real quick, before we jump
Mike00:28:34into Tetris, the one thing I'm curious what you think JBL on tee ball, because the coach and I were talking about this. The problem we have is that the tee ball teams are too big and it's probably because there aren't enough coach volunteers. So they have to kind of get as many kids on all, but like we have 10 kids on the tee ball team and you want to put them all in, in the field, but it's ridiculous because the ball doesn't leave the infield. Yeah. And so you have kids standing around because you have to put them somewhere. You have to put them in the outfield. And of course that doesn't get the kid, like the way you get the kids to stay interested in baseball and tee ball is that they're touching the ball, you know, and if they're not touching the ball on defense, it's, it's hard to get their interest. So I don't know. It's a problem. I don't know that we're not going to solve this, this problem tonight here on the sub beacon, but.
JVL00:29:23I didn't let flash do any organized baseball before age 10 for precisely this reason. Uh, you need, what you need are touches and organized baseball at a very young age actually denies you touches because there's so many kids and there's so little ability and all you really need to be doing is throwing and catching. You are better off spending 90 minutes in the yard with dad, having a catch then driving back and forth to games.
Mike00:29:48That's right. Luckily, all the games and practices are three minutes from my house, but yes.
JVL00:29:54So there you go. Yeah. So, I mean, you miss on like the socialization and the fun and the, like the group atmosphere, and those are all very good reasons. And like listening to grownups, but in terms of actual, like, if you just want to develop a baseball player in a lab, skip all that. Yeah. Just, just be in the backyard throwing with them and working on defense and grounders.
Mike00:30:15That's right. Well, uh, it's all just for the love of the game. Speaking of games, you see what I did there. It wasn't great. I know we're talking about Tetris, Tetris, the movie from Apple TV plus, uh, it's about the game Tetris. It is not, it is not a fictionalization of the game itself. Like the super Mario brothers movie. It is a movie about the development, not even really
Sonny00:30:45the development, the, the bio biopic. It's like the biopic of the game. It's about the right.
Mike00:30:52Well, it's air. It's it's the movie air. Why don't we just let Sonny give us a big boy review of Tetris and, uh, and then we'll discuss Sonny. Well, we don't, we don't want to talk box office,
Sonny00:31:04super Mario brothers racking up. Do you want to go to the box office? Huge hit beloved, beloved by the people. I saw, I, I took my kid to see it, uh, this week, uh, the youngest one and he, he enjoyed it fine. Um, I did not, I, I would say I, I, I hated it a little bit less than YouTube, but it is definitely one of these illumination movies, which is that lot, a lot of needle drops that you're going to recognize is the, whether or not they make any sense within the context of the, so like for instance, there's a, there, there's a moment in this movie where aha's take on me starts playing for no reason, zero reason for no reason, the eighties, no reason except, except like, I recognize it. I recognize that. Hey, I know that song.
Mike00:31:49Well, all the kids, all the kids in the theater in the Washington, DC area know it because it's what they play at the seventh inning stretch at nationals game. So it was like, there was like a, definitely a recognition. Oh, I know that one, but no, it's well look, but it is like, it is cleaning up as everybody on this podcast predicted it would at the box office. And, and like, can you are, I mean, under the Sonny Bunch rules, can you argue with that?
Sonny00:32:17It must be the best movie. Movie's gonna make $600 billion domestic. It's gonna make, uh, I, the number, the number that I'm seeing thrown around right now is like between 1.1 and 1.2 billion before Japan and South Korea, which they're carving out, which they're carving out because like, there's a decent chance that this movie, uh, you know, does 300 million.
Mike00:32:35Yeah. Do you think Japan and South Korea will like the Nintendo movie?
Sonny00:32:40I think it's entirely possible. It was very funny. So before I, we saw it at the draft house and before they, they just had a bunch of pre-roll that was like vintage Super Mario ads, like various things Super Mario brothers was in for. Uh, but they were like, they were mostly Japanese ads and it was hilarious. Just like the, the amount of nonsense. Are they going to get a different cut?
JVL00:33:02Will the Japan domestic cut of this movie have like a hundred percent more tentacles? More, more, uh, school school girls, sailor moon type stuff. I would, I would assume.
Mike00:33:16Let's effort that over the next week. And, uh, it's actually an R in Japan. This is an R rated
Sonny00:33:21movie. It's still bringing the kids to it. The Bowser, the Bowser scene goes on for a long time. I didn't, I, I didn't hate this movie, uh, again, as much as you guys did, but it is, it is not good. Oh, Mr. Harris. That's lost in translation. Yes. Yes. That's what I'm quoting a movie. I am not not super Mario brothers, not, not being propositioned in the room. This is not the crystal bell ride, which you had to wait for four
Mike00:33:58hours for, uh, any other box office thoughts before we go, as I was saying to Tetris, the other video game movie of the spring, any other thoughts?
Sonny00:34:09No, it's, I mean, it's just, it's just kind of interesting. Uh, it's interesting that Tetris is a movie that shows up on apple TV plus, which is probably the perfect place for it, frankly, compared to something like air, which, you know, everyone is very, very happy with the box office on that movie. And it's going to do like 45 million, 50 million domestic that's found money It is basically found money. So, well, so that's the, that's the real question here is like, what does, what does Amazon actually get out of a theatrical release of air? What they get out of a theatrical release of air is a promotion for the thing for when it eventually shows up on Amazon prime video. Um, and B it makes the, it makes talent happy. Everybody likes getting it. So like if, if this movie makes, if this movie makes $80 million worldwide, that basically probably pays for all of the PNA of putting it
Mike00:34:58in theaters, which, uh, you know, but is it a wide, is it a wide release? Is it, is it considered a wide release? Okay. Yeah, it's in. Yeah, it's a wide, I think it's in
JVL00:35:062000 theaters. You talked about this on your last Bulwark goes to Hollywood show, which, uh, excellent podcast, ding, ding, ding. Um, and I have to say, I, I think that Hollywood misunderstands this stuff in, in, and I think they have it exactly backwards. They seem to believe that making it a streaming exclusive enhances the value of the content. And I think it's exactly the opposite. I think that if you put it in theaters first, then it has more value when it comes because then it's a real movie. It's a real movie that people have seen. There has been some FOMO that like people have either seen it and liked it where they didn't get out to see it, but they thought about it and they wanted to see it. And it's a real thing. And it's not just like a TV movie of the week. You put it on streaming and it's no different than ABC's movie of the week that they did all through the eighties and
Sonny00:36:03nineties to two things on this one. Uh, the entertainment strategy guys put out a series of posts this week, uh, proving exactly this point that like the, the, uh, value, the things that are, uh, put in theaters do better on streaming than things that are not put in. That's just like, they're more watched. They're, they're more enjoyed by audiences. They are like event type things that people will actually go and sign up for. Uh, but before, even long before this, I could have, I could have told you about, so, uh, uh, my ancient history here, but you know, the folks, some folks remember the reason I moved out to Dallas, cuz I was coming to work for this independent movie studio. And before I even started that I had interviewed the guy who ran it for a Washington post column. I was like, explain to me the economics of what you're doing here, because I don't, I don't quite understand how the like VOD with some theatrical release business works. And he says, look, we, we make all of our money on VOD. We don't make, we don't make money in theaters that we're, we're not making any, we're not, we're making almost no money in theaters. But what happens is if you, if you four wall a movie, the four wall means if you pay for the theaters to show your movie. So if you go to arc light or landmark or Alamo, I don't know that Alamo does this, but like, whatever, if you go to, if you go to the theatrical companies and you say, we, uh, we'll give you we're going to buy out the screen. We're going to buy, we're going to pay you a thousand dollars for the screen. And you're going to show our movie three times a day for two weeks. Um, and we'll, we'll call it even because that the way that works is basically like the theater would be empty for most of the day. Anyway, a thousand dollars a screen is you're, you're making it, you're making more money, whatever. Um, so what, what happens is if you, uh, if you do that, if you four wall a movie, then when it goes, uh, when it's on VOD on dish, direct TV, or whatever, it goes into a different category. It goes into the now in theaters category and audiences are much more likely to click purchase on something that is in the now in theaters category, as opposed to the just straight VOD category. It's just, it's a quality difference. Um, so like that, that has always been true. It is a mental thing as much as anything else. Folks, folks will pay more money to watch a thing at home that is currently in theaters.
Mike00:38:23That's just a fact. Well, there it is. Um, yeah. All right. Well, let's sh should we now talk about Tetris? Cause it's, it, it's Tetris. We're 40 minutes into the
Sonny00:38:33show. 40 minutes into the show. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about Tetris. All right, Sonny, give us that big boy review. All right. So Tetris is a really interesting movie to me because it's one of the only times in my entire life I have felt absolutely patronized to by Hollywood. It's like Hollywood has like, you know, we're going to make a movie that is, uh, uh, ideologically perfectly in sync with everything you believe. And we're going to do this for you, Sonny, just for you. It's amazing. Uh, so th this, so the, the setup of the movie here is, uh, Taryn Edgerton plays a, uh, a Dutch born New York raised, um, tech entrepreneur who was living in Tokyo with his wife. Uh, when he goes to CES in Las Vegas and find somebody selling a Tetris and he finds out he can buy the rights for it in Tokyo, or he can buy the rights for it in Japan, but nowhere else, just so he can only get the Japanese rights. And it goes into a whole series of shenanigans and like kind of complicated legal maneuvering about what rights are actually entailed in the sale here. Can he get handheld rights? Can he get video game system rights? Can he get coin op rights? Can he get PC rights? Like they're, they're all of these are broken out into different things. Um, and who owns the rights and who owns the rights? The, the rights are supposedly held by, uh, this British billionaire, the Maxwells, uh, who are you know, corrupt and, and, uh, want to trade the Russians rights to a, um, uh, an encyclopedia. Uh, they want to like, it doesn't make like none of this really matters. What's what's interesting about the movie is that it is, it is X. It is like explicitly propaganda for the neoliberal economic order. It's amazing. It is amazing. It's all about like, there's at one point the, uh, the Russian creator of the game, his name is Alexei, uh, says to the, says to Taryn Edgerton's character, good ideas have no borders. And this is a movie about like people paying, paying money for ideas and benefiting their country and their people and their families through economic prosperity. And at one point they, at one point I JBL, I don't know if you actually got, so pulling back the curtain slightly JBL did not, uh, make it all the way through this movie for a variety of reasons, uh, that have to do with, with timing and everything. But like at one point in the movie, um, the Maxwell's go to Gorbachev who's getting fitted for a new suit for like a mayday parade or something. And he's, he's getting, he's getting measured up and the, the Maxwell's come to them and they say, Mikkel, you have to do this. If you don't give us the sweetheart deal, uh, you are no better than the capitalists who are going to ruin your country. And Gorbachev just looks at him and says, this will make everybody better. Something to that effect.
JVL00:41:27And it's like, it's like, yeah, yeah. Tell him, tell him Gorby. You, you did it. You
Sonny00:41:33did it. You brought down that you brought it down. I was, I was just watching that thinking like, boy, I really wonder what the average Russian thinks of that scene because I bet they do not. I bet they do not agree with my warm heartedness toward it. Uh, I love, I love this movie. Um, but I almost don't trust. I almost don't trust how much I loved it because again, it is very much. Built in a way to like confirm every single one of my ideological biases. It's got all of
JVL00:42:03the worship of intellectual property that you are so into intellectual property is like the Russians
Sonny00:42:09are bad anti-communism. Well, importantly, importantly, Russian communists are bad, but also corrupt American capitalists are bad because this is the point of the point of this movie. No, they're British capitalists. Thank you. They're the corrupt Brits even worse than. Deal with Moxie and he's honest American and he's international, you know, he's cosmopolitan. But like the whole point here, though, again, is that like honest competition makes everyone better. Everyone gets everyone is happier when you can just do things on the up and up and you're trading money for ideas and products. Oh, it's great. Right. Lifts all boats. Yeah. Seven hundred years for capitalism. It's the final countdown. Yeah.
Mike00:42:57So are you saying, Sonny, that your ideological biases might be stopping you from seeing any sort of artistic shortcomings in this movie? Or have you have you have you evaluated that at all?
Sonny00:43:13I would say I would say, oh, I mean, look, I think artistically, look, this movie, this movie for a movie that is as bogged down with. Like technical details and chatting about deals and business and like who has which rights where it zips along like like a runaway train. I was really I was actually really, really impressed by how well they did it and how legible it was. I mean, I like I think I could actually there's this 20 minute stretch at the beginning where Karen Edgerton's character is in a Tokyo bank and he's just explaining like who has all the rights to everything. And it's so well done that I could probably I mean, I couldn't recite the scene, but I could probably recite all of the major facts of it without without having to check my notes. I could probably do that. And that is that's an impressive feat of storytelling on just a very technical level. And it was entertaining at the time. Like, it's not like I was bored. I like I was kind of worried going into this that it was going to be like this looks looks a little dry, a little bit. It worked.
Mike00:44:19I don't know. Yeah, it's almost as if they they knew they had a potentially dry movie and they spiced it up with the you know, the the every once in a while there's things sort of bleed into animation, sort of eight bit style animation on the screen. So so the live action becomes this animated thing. So that sort of grabs your attention, of course. I don't know. I found myself watching this movie, loving it and also sort of watching myself loving it going, you know, this is like heightened and and cheesy and it can't have possibly been this wild. And then and sorry, JVL, this is a bit of a spoiler, but in it wasn't until the credits of the movie that showed like, I don't know, 30 seconds of home video where Taron Edgerton's character, the real the real guy, Hank, your real Hank Rogers, Hank, like H.E.N. scenes from the movie like he filmed himself in real time on whatever whatever camcorder type thing he had in 1988 and in and made the kind of ridiculousness of the story all of a sudden become more real to me. So I knew intellectually that it was that it was a true story or based on a true story, but like the wildness of riding in the car and and well, that all of that all of that sort of like, oh, wait, this actually did happen.
Sonny00:45:50So well, there's a there's an Argo effect here where like you have this kind of very dramatic escape. Right out of the city, which is nonsense like that's nonsense.
Mike00:46:00I did say I did say my wife and I were watching it together and I said to her as it was about to start, I said, if this if this becomes like if they take this chase and sort of like map onto it, the actual game of Tetris, like in eight bit animation, I'm turning this off and then like they actually do map on some animation. It's not like it doesn't look like Tetris, but I was afraid they were going to like take a grid view of the street and make like the cars into the little tetra tetrinos and like move them. And they almost did that, but but not quite. But yeah, that that was a little light and that was a little ridiculous.
JVL00:46:36I I loved it, you know, I did not. The reason I didn't finish it was just we had to move our taping and I was I was going to watch it tonight instead of we wound up taping tonight. And so I anyway, the kids were up and about and I didn't have the time to finish it. But I so this the first Matthew Vaughn directed movie. So Matthew Vaughn, who produced this is Marv Pictures is is producers of this production company. He comes from the Guy Ritchie family school. He was he was Guy Ritchie's producer, right? And then his directorial debut is Layer Cake, the greatest movie ever done in the English language, not starring Batman. And Matthew Vaughn is a very distinctive style, but originally he was thought of as Guy Ritchie light. This is directed by guy named John Baird, who I had never heard of before, and it feels like he is aping Matthew Vaughn in ways that are, I think, entirely pleasant to watch. Uh, and the screenplay is as good as any screenplay. I've ever seen because nothing happens in this moment, but all that happens is Uh, a bunch of people do legal maneuverings over intellectual property rights, right? That's not a movie. And yet, uh, it's, it reminds me of the insider, right? I mean, the insider, which is one of my favorite movies of the late nineties, early aughts is a movie about a 60 minute story that everybody knows in which nothing happens. A guy is going to go on 60 minutes. Then he doesn't. That's the story. Uh, and yet the, the script is written so very tightly and very beautifully. And the insider is a little more atmospheric. This is a little more propulsive, but, uh, it's so good. As you said, is a sunny, it's a masterfully written movie because it just keeps moving from, from point to point and everything is always clear. There is never a moment at which you think to yourself, wait a minute. Who is that character again? Or why are they like, you know, there's nothing's ever foggy. Everything's always perfectly clear. You know, what's going on, you know, who the players are and why they're doing this and that. And, uh, I dunno, I just love all the little character actors. You know, the, the Russian, uh, Elorg boss, the, the Toby Jones, Toby Jones is very nice, but even like just, you know, faces that you've never, never seen before. Never, never will again. Uh, or wonderful.
Sonny00:49:24There's the guy who there's the guy who looks exactly like Christopher Hitchens and speed racer. Who plays like the senior Maxwell. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.
JVL00:49:34Which, which Alan something or another, uh, uh, yeah.
Mike00:49:38Alan is his last, uh, Roger Allen, Roger Allen, Roger Allen, Roger Allen. The scene that I think typifies what you just talked about JVL is the, I think it's the first time they're at Elorg, uh, and all three of the, of the bidders are there. Uh, and they don't know that he, that, that the others are there. Uh, and, uh, the, the, the bureaucrat who is sort of meeting with them, of course knows. And, and the, the ping pong. Between the rooms that he has them all in where he's sort of pitting them against each other. They tell you at the beginning, essentially the right, the KGB guy says, basically pit them against each other. So you go into it knowing what they're going to do, but it's such a joy to watch just the, the, move between the rooms. There's almost a Looney tunes quality, right? Where you're going in one door and out another. And it, it, and that was where I, I was just like hooked into that.
JVL00:50:36Sequence to me felt like the interrogation scene in LA confidential when, you know, which is again, another masterfully written thing where guy Pierce is bouncing back and forth between three and three suspects in three different rooms. And it, it, and the whole movie is so tight and so. Great. And, and again, we all know the, the answer is Tetra shipped on game boy. Everybody played it, right? Like it's, I'm sorry. We're gonna, we're gonna have a whole movie about this, but it's great. And, uh, you know, again, I didn't finish it, but, uh, it didn't feel, it felt very lean. It didn't feel it was padded or anything the way most streaming stuff does.
Mike00:51:16Well, and there was, there was an economy as well with, um, with even the characterization and, and, and the, and the way that, so, uh, you know, the sort of central relationship in the movie is between, uh, Hank Tara, negative Edgar to this character and, uh, the, the Soviet, uh, bureau, you know, low-level bureaucrat who creates the game named, uh, what's his name again, like that relationship is what sort of drives everything to it, to it, to the end. And, you know, in a very short period of time, they, the movie very well establishes you know, both that they don't understand each other at the beginning that, oh, they do find something in common. Um, but, but also sort of builds it in a, I think an organic way that made it believable in a way that I was sort of all of a sudden, you know, they're partying at this, at this club. I'm like, oh, I actually now believe that they are friends. Uh, and I, I thought it was, I thought it was, uh, just sort of terrific economy of, of, uh, of moviemaking.
JVL00:52:25the, the, I think that relationship is established in the scene where he asks, uh, Taryn Edgerton's character, Hank asks Alexi to show him the original draft of Tetris. Oh yeah. Which is done on a green monitor, you know, this is before you even had black and white and gray scale monitors. It's just, you know, like, and he did it all with ASCII characters. Right. And when he brings it up and shows it to him and, and Hank says, can I play, you know, and the idea of being that you could just see that Hank is so jazzed to be able to sit down and play the very first version of Tetris on the machine in which it was coded. Uh, I don't know. That scene is just, it sings. It's it's so good. It's perfect.
Sonny00:53:12I, I it's interesting. The making of this movie, you know, uh, you mentioned JBL that it does not feel padded, like so much, um, streaming stuff does. And that, I think part of that is because not on Netflix, it's on Apple. Apple has a, has a better, uh, nose for that sort of thing. Um, but also like, I mean, this was made like Apple acquired the screenplay and the production rights and all that in 2020 or 2021. Um, and then started making it like this was always going to be on Apple TV plus, um, which is interesting because it's this, it definitely feels like it could have been a theatrical movie, except like you don't get a lot of 30 to $40 million, uh, theatrical movies of this sort, um, about, you know, kind of adult interesting topics, adult topics like handheld video games, uh, from the, from the 1980s.
JVL00:54:08Absolutely. Yeah. Anyway, I, I love the crap out of it. It's, it feels like a Matthew Vaughn movie. It feels like a very top shelf Matthew Vaughn movie. Uh, and I just, it's great. And man, Japanese are so awful. I, I'm just, I am fascinated by Japan. Every time we're in Japan in this middle of, I'm just like, oh, everything about them, their watches, their video games, their strange customs,
Sonny00:54:38my people do we need to pull the whole, the whole, the whole, the whole, uh, like segment in the Nintendo building is very interesting. Just like the bureaucracy of it, the, you know, attention to manners and details and all that. It's, it's,
Mike00:54:55but there was something so bizarre about seeing the elderly, you know, CEO of Nintendo holding the Nintendo remote control to, or the controller video game guy, though. Right. I know he is, but it was, it was like, you know, because, because it, it just, it just felt incongruous because he's like this old Japanese guy. And yet he's like, sort of
JVL00:55:19playing it in this very natural way. And within a minute, he's like, not bad. Yes. I love that. Love that. That's bad. Oh, good. Uh, people should watch this movie. Yes. And you know what? Everybody out there who's listening to this, you have a subscription to apple plus somehow. I don't know how, but there is nobody in America who is paying for apple TV plus premium, whatever it is. Like everybody has been gifted a free subscription because you bought an apple pencil or because you, uh, about AirPods or your Comcast is your carrier because you have a Roku. I don't know how they, but they just give this thing away. It's like the bed, bath and beyond coupon. Nobody ever bought anything for full price at bed, bath and beyond. Nobody's ever paid for
Sonny00:56:04apple TV plus. So I had a friend, a friend DM me. Uh, he was like, yeah, I haven't, I have just gotten three months free from best buy for like the last two years, every three months. I'm just like, I want another apple TV plus trial. And they're like, all right, yeah, there you go.
JVL00:56:21Go, go do it for free and watch Tetris. Excellent.
Mike00:56:24Uh, any other final thoughts on the movie or on Tetris? No, no. All right. Did you guys play
Sonny00:56:30Tetris growing up? Were you, or, I mean, when you're, when you're a little, I guess we, uh,
Mike00:56:34well, I'll save it for the, for the outtakes. Yeah, no. Um, all right. Well, that's all, uh, the time we're giving members sub beacon.com, uh, subscribe, become a patron or comment, uh, all of that. And we will see you next time.
JVL00:56:54What'd you got? So in, in college, my sophomore year, which is the year before the first iMac came out, do you remember the candy colored iMac, the weird plastic? Oh, sure. Yeah. Like day glow, orange and stuff. Uh, so the Mac before that was an also an all in one. And it was like a large rectangle with a gray scale monitor and not color. Uh, and there were only like three for it. You know, there was a, a version of battle zones, a tank game, like what the middle one was. And then there was Tetris and two of the guys in my sweet sophomore year figured out that you could run a phone cord. I think between the two, the two computers and play Tetris head to head. Oh, and the head to head, the key part of head to head Tetris is that if you make two or more lines disappear simultaneously, they appear underneath your opponent's stack and they bump his, his thing up. And I would say the level of ranker, which this created in our suite, purely among the people who are not science majors, the science majors never played this because we were busy doing homework. But, uh, but the, the international relations majors and history majors in my suite spent a lot of time doing head to head Tetris and would throw things at each other while doing it and scream and yell. And it was some pretty intense stuff.
Mike00:58:34Yeah. Real exciting stuff going on at Johns Hopkins, uh, in the dorms.
JVL00:58:38Yeah. Some wild Saturday nights.
Sonny00:58:41So we, I, in my family, we had a, we had a game boy and it was so popular. We had to get a second
JVL00:58:47game boy. And you could link them. Remember you could put a cable between them.
Sonny00:58:51You could, you could put a cable between them and that's exactly how it worked. If you got, if you got two lines, one line would appear, uh, on the, in the, you know, in your opponent's box. But if you got, if you got a Tetris, if you got four lines, four lines would appear. And it was a, it was a real dagger when that happened. That was a real, I was exceptionally good at, at Tetris.
JVL00:59:12This surprises me. Not at all.
Sonny00:59:14I was, I was exceptionally, exceptionally good at Tetris. Like I, in, in my lifetime, I have, I would say that I only really consider myself an expert on two video games, like two video games ever. One is Tetris. The other is Contra, which I was also amazing at. Could beat Contra without using the 30 life code. That's, that's me. I'm that guy.
Mike00:59:36Did you ever play Tetris in an arcade?
Sonny00:59:39No, I don't like playing. I don't like playing any of those games on anything other than their native systems because my, like my muscle memory is so keyed to the different is my thumbs doing the things that I cannot, I literally cannot play them
JVL00:59:54on non. So I always thought the Tetris arcade port was sort of beside the point because Tetris is a game you play for a long time. And you don't want to be standing in front of an arcade cabinet doing it. What you want to be doing is sitting on the sofa or sitting in an office chair at your, at your computer, right? Because again, you, a game of Tetris is not a 92nd or a three minute game. Unless you suck.
Sonny01:00:19You're if you're, if you're playing Tetris, right? You're there for like a solid 15 or 20.
Mike01:00:22See what I recall is the, is the member of the arcade, uh, cabinets that you could, that you sat down on, they were tabletop. Uh, yeah. And I played Tetris on the tabletop at the cheapo pizza place where, you know, you get pizza, uh, for like, you know, well, $4, all you can eat pizza. And then your parents would throw you like, throw you like, uh, you know, a bunch of quarters. So you get, you know, get out of their hair for, for half an hour. That's what I, uh, where I love playing.
Sonny01:00:54Tetris, but genius. The, uh, the, the, we at, at Disney world would, they had an arcade in our, in our hotel or like in the, and I, I, I took the kids over and of course, like my son wanted to do, like, he wanted to ride the truck rides and like drive cars and stuff. My daughter wanted to do, you know, she wanted to do like the snowboarding simulator or whatever, but there was a, there was a Pac-Man, there were like three Pac-Man cabinets in a row. And I was just like, mom, let's go play Pac-Man. She's like, okay. And we, and she, she played it for a little bit and I was trying to show her how to do it. And seven, she's never played Pac-Man before. She wasn't, it wasn't very good. It was just like, here, let me show you how to do it. And I like cleared the first level and I don't know, like 45 seconds or something. And she was like, how do you keep moving? So how do you do that? I was
JVL01:01:43like, Katie is years of years of hundreds of hours doing this over the course of his life.
Sonny01:01:50Years and years of practice, stack up the quarters. They'd be taller than you. Working, working joysticks. Uh, I don't know. I w I mean, I was actually not really an, uh, an arcade rat. Arcades were like slightly wouldn't say they were after my time exactly, but like I, I grew up with video games in the home. Yeah. So I don't want to put you on the spot,
JVL01:02:11but Mike and I, for the bonus show this week did our, our five, five best Nintendo games. Do you have, I mean, if you, I would ask you to give me your, your three best Nintendo games, any system
Sonny01:02:24right. You know, any running through any of the systems and they, we're not talking Nintendo
JVL01:02:28exclusive, right? Games I play on a Nintendo system. So, uh, uh, Tetris, uh, would be in the
Sonny01:02:37top five. Um, Contra again would be in the top five. Those two would be in the top five. Also in the top five would be resident evil four for the Wii, which was a, the, which was the game that actually got me back into gaming. I played, I played that on the Nintendo Wii and I was like, oh shit, this is a lot of fun. This is amazing. Um, and I like, I, I started playing video games more regularly again after that, after an absence of, from, from gaming, like 10 or 15 years, I just hadn't really played much of anything. Um, super Mario cart would be, uh, number, number in, in that top five. Uh, we're not doing this version here, which version super, super Mario cart, the one for the SNES. Okay. Yeah. Um, not Mario cart, not Mario cart 64. I didn't, I didn't like, I didn't really like any of the N 64 games. I didn't like the graphics system. I didn't like the, I didn't like, uh, golden. I, I never played golden. I did not care for it. Um, uh, and then I guess the, the, the last one, I got to get a final fantasy in there. Probably final fantasy three. I, I put a lot. I, so final fantasy three was for the SNES. Um, and it's a game that I did not play when it came out. I, I didn't play it until like the early 2000. My, my friend group from high school, like got really into like old RPGs for some reason. Cause we were enormous nerds, I guess would be the main reason who could say why enormous, enormous nerds. Uh, but, uh, I like, I didn't, I, so I didn't buy it at the time I had to go buy it used at a game stop. And the, uh, the, the old, uh, like the out of print SNES cartridges at that point were like, it was like a hundred dollar game. I think I paid like, I think I paid something like 95. Because they were there literally collectors items. Hey, uh, that D that cartridge is probably still at my parents' house. I wonder what it would be worth now. I should look that up on eBay. Like I've got a whole bunch.
Mike01:04:32There is a whole like other, uh, side, I'm going to do this right side industry of like refurbished old system. Which system are we talking about? S SNES final fantasy three
JVL01:04:44fantasy three. It's a boy. It auto populates pretty quick. That is a, let's see, uh, final fantasy three, good battery, clean tested works and saves 99 99 final fantasy three with box and manual two 50. No, yeah, no, I don't know. I don't have any of that. It's so it's probably about,
Sonny01:05:08it probably costs about the same as, as what I paid for 20 years ago held its value. Yeah. Look at that. I could retire. Oh, you know what? I forgot. This is the, uh, another, another game. I mean, obviously like Battletoads, I, I, God, there's so many great NES game. Battletoads would be in my, would be somewhere in the top and now, now we're stretching, uh, and also the T the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, not the one that was in the arcades, not the arcade one, but the NES native one was amazing. It was super hard. It's one of the hardest games that they ever put out. Incredibly, incredibly difficult. And beating that was definitely one of the highlights of my young life. Finally, finally defeating that game and defeating Battletoads were like two real, real triumphs.
JVL01:05:56They say on the internet, Nintendo hard.
Sonny01:05:59Nintendo hard. Those, those were hard games. Those were hard, hard games. I'm sure that's fine.
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