#309. Civ VI (Netflix)
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
This week's "movie" is a video game: Civilization VI via Netflix's mobile-gaming tie-in, and all three hosts land in the same miserable place. Sonny declares it flatly the worst game he's ever played, blaming both the sheer overwhelming complexity ("it felt like homework") and the impossibility of playing a spreadsheet-dense strategy game on an iPhone screen; Mike, a more experienced Civ hand, gets further by running the tutorial first but still finds the game turns unmanageably unwieldy once barbarians and rival civs start piling on mechanics; JVL, the group's true Civ veteran going back to Civ II, argues the unplayability is a structural "series" problem — legacy franchises layer on so much complexity to reward returning fans that new players get locked out entirely — and diagnoses a broader "simulation fidelity" fallacy in game design, citing hyper-realistic flight simulators and a brutally "realistic" sword-fighting game as cautionary tales where more realism kills the fun. All three agree Netflix's bet on Civ VI as a phone-based time-sink is a bust, and they lament that Vic isn't around this week to subject his iPhone SE to the experience. The episode opens with its usual long hang: JVL delivers an extensively researched report from the r/lightsabers subreddit while shopping for a "real" neopixel lightsaber (the "Younglings Slayer 3000") for his son G Money's birthday, complete with a tangent pitching Disney on a Medieval Times-style Star Wars dinner-and-duel show; Sonny shares that his son is obsessed with The Empire Strikes Back on repeat and refuses to watch Return of the Jedi because he can't bear to see Darth Vader die; and Mike recounts a Father's Day trip to a retro arcade and media shop in Winchester, Virginia, raving about pinball machines themed to Venom and Stranger Things and rediscovering the Budweiser-sponsored arcade classic Tapper. A quick round of box-office chatter — 28 Years Later, F1, Jurassic World Rebirth, and the surprise success of the live-action How to Train Your Dragon against the flop of Snow White — rounds out the front half before the Civ VI carnage begins.
From the show notes
I just want to temper your expectations before listening to this episode: Civ VI via Netflix/iPhone app is a fucking disaster. Just FYI.
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Welcome to the Sub-Beacon Podcast! I'm your co-host Mike Warren. Joining me, as always, are my two co-hosts who are waiting for the other players to complete their turns, Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at Sub-Beacon.com. Tell your friends and family if they want to listen to this show, they've got to do it at Sub-Beacon.com. Become a patron, join the conversation in the comments. It's really lively in the comments, these past few posts. You can only do that if you are a patron at Sub-Beacon.com. We are going to be talking about Civilization VI. Sid Meier's Civilization VI. Sid Meier's Civilization VI. Later on in the show. Not now. But first, JVL, you got some stuff to talk about.
JVL00:01:00Boys, I have embarked on a journey into a subculture that has shaken to my very core. Another one? How is it? This is like every week we have this conversation. Go ahead. I mean, maybe. Maybe.
Sonny00:01:19I feel like you're in search. JVL, before you go, I feel like you're in search of. You know that, remember that show, In Search Of? Oh, with Leonard Nimoy.
JVL00:01:26Yes.
Sonny00:01:27Oh, yeah. I feel like you're in search of. The right subculture for you.
JVL00:01:32No, this is this is I'm just a visitor in this one because G Money has a birthday coming up and there is a gift he wants more than anything in the world. He wants a lightsaber, not just any lightsaber. He does not want a cheapo Lucasfilm toy lightsaber made of plastic. He wants a real lightsaber. Sure. And specifically, he wants an Anakin Skywalker lightsaber from Episode three, Revenge of the Sith, which is his favorite movie. So I started looking into this and you would not believe how many lightsabers there are on offer. You go to Amazon and type this in its hundreds and they all look ultimately basically the same. And so I had to learn what was going on. And so I started going into research mode and I wound up in a little place called our lightsabers, which is a subreddit dedicated to people who are enthusiasts of the lightsaber. This subreddit has one hundred eighty six thousand members.
?00:02:59Sure.
JVL00:03:00Which I find all on its own. Amazing. And I have learned so much that there are really different tiers of lightsaber. There is one big technological gap between them, which is they're what are called RGB lightsabers, where the light is emitting from the hilt. So the hilt is essentially a flashlight with a very bright LED light that projects out into the blade of the light. The lightsaber, which is you know what that is. And those are the the entry level. And then you get into what are called pixel lightsabers, where the blades themselves are lined with LED lights. And this allows all sorts of stuff. So when you power your lightsaber on, it sort of, you know, emits from the bottom up. Right. And the lightsabers. The lightsabers are powered by a sound board in the hilt, which is really the brains, the electronic nerve center of the lightsaber instrument. There are, again, various kinds of boards. The most sought after is the Profi 2.2 sound board. Slightly below that is the SVR-N4. And there are people have very strong feelings about these things. I as I do. I was on one subreddit when I was curious as to what the difference between the Profi 2.2 and the SRVN4 was. As one of the very nice gentlemen said, the SRVN4 is like having a box of crayons. But the Profi 2.2 is like having every oil paint and brush in existence at your fingertips.
Mike00:04:53Man, I'm surprised that the our lightsaber folks are that particular.
Sonny00:05:00That's the least surprising thing we've ever discussed on this show. This is like the most predictable outcome possible.
JVL00:05:07That's a joke, son. Here's the thing. Many of these people post videos of themselves with their lightsabers. There's a lot of posting of picture content and video content on our lightsabers. And I would say these people, you know, look, we all have in our mind's eye, if you close your eyes and think, what kind of person would take a video of themselves swinging a lightsaber around and put it onto the Internet? I know exactly that kind of person. Star Wars kid. Let me tell you, you would not be surprised.
Sonny00:05:40So you're saying there's a lot of like Aaron Pierre's and, you know, Chris Hemsworth's in this in this crowd. It's basically Henry Cavill.
JVL00:05:50These guys are exactly what you'd expect. Now, the price, interestingly enough, most of these lightsabers come from China. Most of them come from China. Most of them come from the same two factories in China, although there is then. And so by nature, they are all knockoffs. But here's what's interesting, right, because they're not paying licensing to Disney. Disney seems to turn a blind eye to this because these things are all of higher quality than what Disney sells. Right. So like the the worst lightsabers are the things you would buy from Disney, the officially licensed products, the higher quality stuff.
Sonny00:06:25Yeah. I'm sorry. Question. So when I when I am imagining this in my mind. I all of these things the way you're describing them to me, it sounds like they are like constantly extended.
JVL00:06:37Yes. So they're all there.
Sonny00:06:39They're like, you know, telescope things. They don't telescope. So there's no there's no way to make the lightsaber come out.
JVL00:06:47Let me tell you something. This has been a long. That is the Holy Grail Holy Grail for the lightsabers. And this is a source of tremendous talent. This is a source of tremendous discussion. There are videos in which guys post. I think I've cracked the code. I think I've got many people say that's not real. You look, there's an edit there. He's put in. He's not really. They can't do that. It's not physically possible, man. And then other people are like five years from now, we're going to look at these fixed blade lightsabers and laugh because like, oh, it's going to look like something from the Stone Ages. The Holy Grail. This is for these people. An extendable pixel lightsaber is the equivalent of like the real doll that can talk and walk. It's right. It's the chat GPT real doll. Right. And anyway, the price points on these things vary wildly.
Sonny00:07:48Wildly.
JVL00:07:50And I just I've learned so much and I just put myself out here. If you guys have any questions about. Lightsaber world. I feel like I can answer them now. Well, so because here we have we have we have hold on. Hold on. We have a neopixel lightsaber coming for a certain person's birthday. It should be shipped soon. And would you care to know what it is called? The branded version of it? No, I had no idea. The Younglings Slayer 3000.
Sonny00:08:25That's a good name. Younglings Slayer. It's interesting that you bring this up because I actually do have a question because I I don't think we discussed this last week. Did we discuss medieval times at all last week?
JVL00:08:43No, we did not. But I do love medieval times.
Sonny00:08:46OK, so I the other the other day, the other day, my son and I were having a lightsaber fight in in the kitchen area while we were waiting for it. We were waiting for dinner to get as one does. Sure. And I I he has he has like a ten dollar, you know, target telescoping one. I guess he got in a set that that also had like a cheap plastic Darth Vader mask and like, you know, a little little noob. So he but he but he's we are you high and lowest because you're making me laugh. You've been doing lightsaber fights. And I, of course, have like a foam baseball badge. Because I don't even have like a telescoping lightsaber. But the but the. I bring this up, though, because we were we were having our little fight and my son, we were doing it in the dining room area. And my son was like, let's let's do it for let's do it for Katie. And I was like, yeah, this could be like it'll be like a dinner show, like, you know, medieval times. Hmm. But Jedi. And then I stopped like the lightning bolt. In the head. And I was like, wait a second. Business. Why don't they have medieval times but Star Wars?
JVL00:10:01What's that? It was called Galaxy's Edge and they shut it down.
Sonny00:10:04No, but that's a different that's a whole that's a whole that was like a whole that was that was a million times dumber. Frankly, like the idea of like going there and and doing all the Star Wars stuff all the time and like not going to the parks. And instead doing like that, that that was never going to work. That never made any sense. But here here is what I'm saying. Like, why? Why would why would Disney not at least attempt to do medieval times but Star Wars? And you could do a lot of you could do a lot of different things, right? You could do like Jabba's Palace escape from Jabba's Palace or you could do. What's the what's the like gladiator in Attack of the Clones? The like gladiator pit where you could do that or just like just like a just like a straight up. So just like a straight up stormtrooper versus, you know.
JVL00:10:53Yeah, I can answer this question for you.
Sonny00:10:55But well, so this is so one of the things one of the reasons that I settled on discussing this with some friends was the lightsaber technology simply is not there to do it convincingly in a way that would like comport with what we see on screen.
JVL00:11:13I think that's largely true. The most important thing here, though, is that the margins are too big. The margins are too small. So like Medieval Times works on very, very thin margins and they do it by serving like basically zoo grade food. Right. And if you are Disney, the the juice would not be worth the squeeze because you don't want to let you don't want people to be able to satisfy that itch for live Disney content outside of the theme parks. Well, so you want them to be driven to the parks where they can get every last dollar from you. Right.
Sonny00:11:49Well, my my my pitch, my pitch to Disney would be do it in the parks. Make it part of Hollywood Studios.
JVL00:11:56OK, have like have like it's not a franchise that you can get to an Annandale, Virginia or something.
Sonny00:12:01Right, right, right. Have like have like a 500 seat arena in, you know, the the the Star Wars part of the park. And you do like four services a day. You know, each one's 90 minutes or whatever. You could charge people an insane amount of money for this. You could charge them. You could charge them whatever you want.
JVL00:12:21$1,000 a day, $10,000 a day. People will pay it.
Sonny00:12:26People will pay it. I think but I do think, look, I think that I think the idea is sound, except that the actual making the thing actually not look like shit would be the hardest part. And I do think the lightsaber technology just isn't there yet.
JVL00:12:44Probably not. Probably not. But in five years. I'm going to say you owe it to your son to get him a young slayer. Yeah.
Sonny00:12:53I'll have to look into this. Not even ask how much it costs.
JVL00:12:56If you if you go to if you go online and look at the video of some of these, like it is really good. And the they are customizable at the. So this is what the sound boards are for. So you can you know, you get an app with your phone that links to the lightsaber. That lets you change whatever color you want, whatever sound font. They call them sound fonts because in the Lucasfilm universe, different lightsabers have different sounds associated with all the different things they do. And you can make it sound like Darth Vader's lightsaber or sound like Luke's or Darth Maul or whatever. And Darth Maul's lightsaber. And I will say the one thing that's nice about it is that the blades, which are made of like polycarbonate. Plastic, um, they are, they are going to break. These things are like, if you're out there banging them around as G money will and dueling with people as G money will, uh, you're going to break. But the blades are replaceable. Oh, the most expensive part of the lightsaber is the hilt, which is again like the computer. And, uh, the blades are meant to like snap on, snap off. And so when. Ultimately G money breaks it by dueling against like, I don't know, a post or something. Uh, we will be able to just like snap a new blade on for the low, low cost of like 70 bucks.
Mike00:14:28Quick question on this. Yeah. On the bigger picture of people posting these videos of themselves. Are you on our lightsaber right now?
JVL00:14:35Looking?
Mike00:14:36No, no, no, no. I, I, I don't need to be on our lightsaber to know what you're talking about. Um, was it a mistake for the nerds to win? Because 20 years ago, a, um, a nerdy boy pretending to play with a lightsaber in his garage and posting that video online, um, like he was Michael Bluth properly mocked in both internet culture and it, as you just alluded to JVL in the real culture, this was seen as like, this was seen as a frontier. Of the internet that we, that we should stay away from it. And instead what has happened is the nerds one. And now it's like people, people post this at their, you know, uh, freely. And I just think like we could, we could use a, we'd use a little more. We need more.
JVL00:15:33We need to bring it back.
Sonny00:15:34Is what you're saying?
JVL00:15:35I mean, did they win or, I mean, again, if you were to go to our lightsaber and look around, it's not clear to me how many of these men have ever touched a naked woman. Uh, like I, I think that what's happened is that they've found subcultures to, to cope in. Yes. And, uh, not that they've won. I mean, they're not like masters of the universe, you know, fair enough.
Mike00:15:56It just, it just the, it's the, there, there, there should have been a culture of shame about this and, and the fact that the fact that there isn't is, oh, there is, uh, anyway,
JVL00:16:11uh, this is my, I asked for help with pinball and most of you, except for Ryan. Thank you. Ryan, uh, really fell down and didn't help me out with pinball, but I, I am here to be a lightsaber concierge to anybody who, now that I have learned, cause I, I have a feeling I won't buy another lightsaber. Like I did all of this research to buy one lightsaber for G money. Now you could be a broker and now just a Sherpa.
Sonny00:16:34So I, I do, I do have one question. Do you buy these things fully assembled or do you have to assemble them yourself? Do you, do you like order different sound boards and light thing and install them yourself? Or do you have to, or does it just come?
JVL00:16:48There's a crafter community, which will do the whole thing. Soup to nuts, three, three D printing, designing their own hilt, et cetera, et cetera. For most people, you will simply just buy it full, full stock, ready to go. Uh, you will have to snap the blade on, but otherwise it's, it's ready to rock the minute you get it out of the box.
Sonny00:17:09Right. And these are, these are preferable to the lightsabers that you can buy at say galaxy's edge that you assemble yourself and you, you put together your infinitely, okay.
JVL00:17:19Infinitely. Okay. Preferable. And, uh, the other final interesting thing is there are knockoffs to the knockoffs. So there, you know, again, everything we buy, if you are on our lightsabers, you're getting from a Chinese factory and they are not licensed and not official product. Right. Right. But there are like two factories that are producing. I think it's like 89 sabers and TQ TXQ or TQ X sabers, one of those two. Um, and those are the ones that make up the middle and then the high end of, of the replica lightsabers. Um, but if you go to Amazon, you will see a whole bunch of things that look like those products also being dropped, shipped from China, but are like of do they're like knockoffs of the knockoff. Right. Like somebody else in China running a factory doing knockoff ticket TXQ or TQ X sabers, which is in itself very funny. Um, everything will be dropped shipped and, uh, it is fairly important to go through one of the reputable American middlemen dealers because you will pay a little bit extra because they've got to get a cut. But on the other hand, like they have long existing relationships with whoever the Chinese wholesaler is. And so you're not that. Um, there's a lot of, there's a lot of fraud in the lightsaber trade saying there's a lot
Sonny00:18:42of shady knockoff lightsabers.
JVL00:18:45There are a lot of, a lot of firms out there that'll take your money and then never actually deliver a lightsaber. No, no lightsaber guy.
Sonny00:18:51No JBL. This does not sound right to me. This does not sound right to me. I have been, I've been to New York city. I have purchased a real Rolex on the streets for $20 from the guy with the Rolex table. I, that's, that's, it's, that's the same thing, right?
JVL00:19:08Don't be careful. Uh, I would say I was not ready to step up to the high quality line, the replica 89 sabers line for G money. So that's why he's getting the younglings layer.
Sonny00:19:18All right.
Mike00:19:19Okay. All right. Um, Sonny, what's going on with you?
JVL00:19:23Any lightsaber? You're not gonna get one of these for your boys.
Mike00:19:26No, I'll tell you why.
JVL00:19:29Oh, because, because we have enough, you know, long tubular at Christmas, we had wrapping paper. Um, the, when we finished with the wrapping paper, there was that long cardboard tube and that's good enough for my boys. It is good enough for them.
Mike00:19:46That's all they want is to be able to whack each other in the face with these long tubular implements. Michael, Michael, Michael, if they don't know what they're missing, then they can't be upset. Anyway, Sonny, let's move on. What's going on with you?
Sonny00:20:04Um, well, this has gone on fairly long, so I won't, I won't take up too. I will just say, I do have one star Wars note, uh, because my, my, my son has been watching empire strikes back on a loop. He is not, he's not a prequel guy. He's not a sequel guy. He is an empire strikes back guy. We've been listening to the sound track in the car, uh, every time he's in the car, he's like, can we listen to battle in the snow or the Imperial March or finale or asteroid
JVL00:20:33field?
Sonny00:20:34I, uh, and good for him. He like, it's very funny. Cause he now knows the names of all the songs and I like, we don't, we don't, we don't, I don't, uh, I don't have like the track listing up on my, you know, on my apple play, whatever in the car. He's just like, I, I'll just say like, oh, which one is this? And he's like, it's, it's asteroid field idiot. Like, I mean, he doesn't call me idiot, but like he, there's a clear level of it's implied. There's a clear contempt in his voice that despite my advanced age, I have not memorized the soundtrack listing. And he like, he's been asking me, he's like, so John Williams, he's the guy who made the Imperial March. I'm like, yes, John Williams did make the Imperial March and he may, he did all the star Wars scores. And he has also worked with this guy named Steven Spielberg and they did the Jurassic park movies. And he's like, oh wow, that's really cool. Uh, anyway, the one thing that's interesting is he refuses to watch return of the Jedi. He refuses to watch return of the Jedi. We watched a new hope. A couple of days ago. And again, he's been watching empire strikes back constantly refuses to watch return of the Jedi. And I was like, I was like trying to push him on this. I was like, no, we've watched the first two several times. I haven't, I, I myself have not seen return of the Jedi in probably five years. I would kind of like to watch it. Uh, and he's like, no, no. And I'm like, what is the matter? He's like, that's the one where Darth Vader dies. He doesn't want to see Darth Vader die. He's very protective of Darth Vader when we're in the car, he pretends to be Darth Vader. And we're in an Imperial shuttle and we're going to the death star. We're going to the executor is father star destroyer. And I'm just like, you know, I appreciate that. I can't, I can't hold it against you. I also don't like to see Darth Vader die.
JVL00:22:21Even if it's a redemptive about, uh, how problematic Alderaan is.
Sonny00:22:26Oh, he is very much in favor of destroying Alderaan. He is. I asked her, I was like, Charlie, what's your favorite part of a new hope? Uh, it's when Obi-Wan dies.
JVL00:22:34And I was like, oh.
Sonny00:22:36It's when Obi-Wan dies and he's like, no, wait, actually, hold on. It's when they blow up the planet. Yeah. I was like, I was like, good job. Good job, Charlie.
Mike00:22:45He was, he was totally with Tarkin in our moment of triumph.
?00:22:48All right.
JVL00:22:49Uh, Michael, what are you up to buddy?
Mike00:22:53Uh, well, I just wanted to talk, cause I sent you guys on father's day, we're recording this a few days after father's day. I sent you guys what we did on my father's day, which was, uh, we drove out, it's probably a little less than an hour and a half away from our house in Virginia to this nice little small town in, in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in Virginia called Winchester. And there is a little shop on the old Winchester strip of walkable, uh, you know, pedestrian arcade or whatever, um, called back to the media. And it is an old, uh, physical media store. They've got records. They've got DVDs and VHS is an old video game, uh, you know, cartridges and things like that. You can buy and, but the real reason that we win the whole family went was there is in the back of this place, uh, is an arcade with about 15 old school arcade consoles and about eight pinball machines and the way it works is it's $5 per kid. $10 per adult, you get a little stamp on your hand, then you walk into the back into this dark room and you can play any of the games or pinball machines for free. They're all on free play and you just go to town and if there is a problem with the machines because the machines are old, um, then, uh, all you have to do is go back to the girl at the front with the pink hair. And she'll come and unlock it and restart it and it'll be back up and running again. And uh, it was a blast and bonus. It was father's day and father's got in free. So uh, so that's what I did and we played you just saving money. Exactly. Exactly. As, as my wife said, we probably spent more on the gas to get out there and back home than we did on, on the experience. Um, cause we packed a lunch.
JVL00:25:05And so I have, I have a question.
Mike00:25:08Yes.
JVL00:25:09So you sent me a little video of their pinball selection and now knowing that this is a place for old games, I was a little surprised because a bunch of their machines are very modern. So they have the stern pinball venom, the S I think it's stern stranger things. Uh, in addition to a couple of old ones, they have like the F 14 Tomcat, uh, and the Adams family. Which of the ones that you. Played, did you like best?
Mike00:25:39I really like, let me think. I really liked venom because there was like a, there was, there was a sort of a game within the game. Within the pinball game, there was sort of, you could play with like multiple players at once. Um, you know, where you would take rounds and there were lots of the multi-ball kind of bonus type things that were, that kind of made it exciting. Um, there was also, there was a Metallica one, which I thought, I thought was really good. Um, the stranger things one was, it was fine, but the, um, what do you call JVL draw on your pinball knowledge here? The like the, the, the figure it's in the middle of the toys, the toys, toys. So the toy on that was really cool. It was the Demogorgon from stranger things and like a little, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, like a little door would, would draw back down and reveal the Demogorgon. And then the goal was to get the ball into the Demogorgon's mouth, but I could never do that. Um, so I thought that was pretty cool. The F1 Tomcat was the most, um, the most difficult of, of the whole, of the whole bunch. That was really, that, that was the hardest one to really get anywhere, um, on there, not a lot of bonuses and that sort of thing. So, um, but my kids enjoyed them. My, my two big boys who played, enjoyed them and they enjoyed the games a lot more than the pinball.
JVL00:27:10Um, so these like super Nintendo systems or, so let's see.
Mike00:27:14So, uh, some of the games they had, they had, uh, you know, Ms. Pac-Man slash Gallagher.
JVL00:27:18Oh, so these are arcade cabinet games, not home systems.
Mike00:27:23Yes. Arcade cabinet games. So they had, um, Mario brothers, which is really difficult.
JVL00:27:28Um, the original Mario brothers were just running around in the sewers.
Mike00:27:33Yeah. With the, with the Koopas. Yeah. Yeah. That's a hard game. It's a hard game. Yeah. Um, they had a star Wars game, which is the, the original movie game where you're the original, the vector graphics one. Yes.
JVL00:27:46Yes. Yeah. Was this the sit down inside it or the stand up? Stand up. Yeah.
Mike00:27:51I lost that game. Um, they had the Simpsons game, which I don't really remember this one, but it's, it's very much player. It's the four player one. Yeah. That's a, that's a lot of fun, man. Yeah. So that was fun. And then there was a game I had never seen before, which was, uh, Budweiser's tapper. Are you guys familiar?
JVL00:28:11What tapper? You've never seen tapper. I've never seen tap.
Mike00:28:14Oh, I played a lot of tapper, uh, Sonny, are you familiar with tapper? Uh, so tapper is, you are a barman, you are a barkeep and they have four bars and you have people who are slowly moving up each bar and you have to pull a beer and send it down. Send it down to them and before they reach the end of the bar, but sometimes satisfy them, right? Sometimes they will send their empty glass back because they want another one. So you not always do that.
JVL00:28:46Yeah. Not always catch the glasses.
Mike00:28:48Yeah. You have to catch both, catch the glass, the empty glass and reef it and give them a new beer. Um, and much more difficult, but I had no idea it was like, I mean, I had maybe recognized the game in a, in a general sense, like maybe I'd seen a video of it. I didn't realize it was Budweiser. Sponsored. Uh, it was, it was like their game.
JVL00:29:07So that was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun. Oh, that's a great game, man.
Mike00:29:10So no, we had a good time and, uh, uh, and, uh, I highly recommend, and it's very nice. This, this store it's clearly run by these two, you know, uh, they're like about around my age, uh, millennial nerds who run this, uh, this place and you can buy records and old video games and so good laser by all, uh, yeah. So I forgot. I sent you a picture. They had a few laser discs. It's like $5 for the nutty professor on laser disc. It's like 1996 in a nutshell right there. Um, so anyway, uh, shall we move on? Because we have a kind of a weird, uh, show this week. Uh, do we need to talk about box offices or anything? Should we suddenly, do you want to get into the box office coming this weekend?
Sonny00:29:55No. Uh, Superman's not till the, it's like the second weekend of July. It's like July 11th or something like that.
JVL00:30:03Is there another temple movie coming?
Sonny00:30:04Like there's, well, there's the Jurassic, uh, Jurassic world, the rebirth, uh, which is coming out.
Mike00:30:11Reboot of Jurassic world, which is a reboot of dress park.
Sonny00:30:14Yeah. That's, that's July 4th weekend. Um, the, the next big movie out, uh, next coming up this weekend, you've got 28 years later. Um, uh, which is of course the long, just able to 28 days, 28 weeks later. Yeah.
Mike00:30:33The week after that's F1.
Sonny00:30:34And then the week after that you have F1 and also, uh, Megan 2.0. So it's like, there's kind of a lot of stuff actually on the calendar, um, coming up. Uh, I dunno, the, the box office, uh, you know, the, the new, the remake of, uh, the live action remake of how to train your dragon, which I have never seen the, I've never seen any of the, how to train your dragon. That's totally, it's like totally after my time as a kid, but also before the time I had kids. So like, it's a, it's just a complete lacuna for me. I like a total blind spot. I don't, I don't know anything about it. Um, uh, but it did, it did pretty well. Did 80. What?
Mike00:31:1984.
Sonny00:31:2084 and a half million. Yeah. You know, what's interesting is like it, you know, this did 84 and a half million dollars, which was about in line with expectations and Lilo and Stitch of course is huge hit. It's, it's going to gross around a billion dollars, like the, the, the complete failure of Snow White really does stand out as like the one real live action bomb, uh, in, in recent, uh, recent history, live action from, um, you know, cartoon remake, whatever.
JVL00:31:44Um, the first time that a non Disney animation studio has did a live action version of an animated movie.
Sonny00:31:52I was, I, you know, I was thinking about this the other day and I think it is at this
JVL00:31:59somebody has shown that you can do it even if you're not Disney. Yeah. Right. And this opens up whole new vistas for like illumination. Right. So if you're illumination, this means that someday in 10 years from now, you're going to be able to do a live action minions movie or a live action, despicable me, and it's going to kill.
Sonny00:32:17Yes, that is, we're not, we're not counting future.
Mike00:32:21We're not counting live action, uh, films based on animated TV shows because there's been quite a few of those. Oh yeah, that's right.
JVL00:32:30Like Woody Woodpeckers and. Yeah. Tom and Jerry's Garfield's. Rocky and Bullwinkle. Yeah. G.I.
Mike00:32:37Joe.
Sonny00:32:38Um. Yeah. All of those. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's true. Teenage. Inspector Gadget. Even like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Right. Was a. Yeah. Like the 1990 version, which is coming out to coming out on 4k soon. Guys. Are you excited for that? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 1990.
JVL00:32:54Special edition 4k. Is that the Michael Bay one?
Sonny00:32:56No, that's not the Michael Bay one. No. No, no, no. No.
Mike00:33:00That, that came out in the 2000s. The Secret of the Ooze is, is two. Two.
Sonny00:33:02Correct. Secret of Ooze is two.
Mike00:33:04Yes. The one where they go back in time to Japan. That's the third one. That's the third one. That has a special place in my heart. That's a, I had all the, I had all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles three toys, uh, which my kids still play with when they go to visit my parents.
Sonny00:33:17So. It's funny that that's the one you, you settled on, you know, getting all the, getting, I guess that's. Well, that speaks to my age. That's just when you were like seven.
Mike00:33:24Yes, exactly. That's, that speaks to my age. That's funny. Um, but, uh, Casey Jones as like a, as like a, a Shogun warrior. Sure. That's not to love, uh, any other thoughts on the box office or should we, should we
Sonny00:33:36move on? No real thoughts.
Mike00:33:38All right. Uh, well this week we settled on, I, I will just say this, this was a bizarre choice for us to do our, uh, to do our show on, but I kind of love it. Um, we're talking about civilization, civilization six, a game that's available on Netflix JVL. Do you want to give us a big boy review of civilization? Civilization six, four by provided sponsored by Netflix.
JVL00:34:06What's going on? Civilization is a 1991 game series created by the legendary designer Sid Meier. We have talked about civilization on this show on and off for close to a decade. Mostly it was me and Vic talking while Sonny slept, uh, we are now about on the cusp of the seventh version of civilization to be released shortly. And in anticipation of that, Netflix has offered access to civilization six. This is, I think kind of, well, maybe it's not new, right? Netflix has dabbled in games, but it has never really worked for Netflix. I don't think as a vertical, like it was, you know, they tried it in the same way that Apple TV has tried it games. It just didn't work. But this is slightly different in that you go to your Netflix account and you don't play the game through Netflix. It simply shunts you to your app store. You download the game from your app store and then you log into the game with your Netflix account. Civilization is one of the most classic and most influential video games probably ever. It's probably. Top 25 all time all platforms. I would say you could put it in the discussion with Space Invaders and Asteroids in The Sims. It combines the aspects of Sim City, which is a planning game with military conquest strategy games like Risk, and the idea is that you are in control of a civilization. You decide what your cities will build, what research they will pursue. You do improvements to your city area by building roads to connect your cities with one another and doing irrigation to land around you and acquiring strategic resources and luxury resources such as iron or incense or ivory. And over the course of thousands of years, you attempt to win the game. Either by dominating and conquering three-fifths of all the territory on the game map, or reaching Alpha Centauri these win conditions vary depending on the version of the game you're playing, or getting the people in the United Nations to declare you the winner. This is often a personality test. Watching how people play the game will tell you a great deal about them, famously in the game. We used to talk about Kate Mattis, who would sit around and Kate, when she played Civilization, wanted no contact with anybody outside. She was a tend-your-own-garden player, which is to say that she just wanted to sit there and improve her Civilization and not ever get into conflict with anybody else, or she just wanted to build her Civilization and make it as beautiful and pretty and advanced as possible. Then there are people like Vic, who always play as Germany, and who just want to get to the special Panzer units and then blitzkrieg through the... the world that Sid Meier made. Civilization VI is, as of right now, I believe is the most modern of the games. It is the most detailed of the games, and I think one of the least playable versions of the game. And I will leave that. I have a great number of thoughts on Civilization. I have played... over the course of my life, I came into this with Civilization II, and I have played at different periods of my life every single version of the game, minus the first one. And I have very long and very deep thoughts about where Civilization VI falls in this and the pitfalls of making series games like this, because I think there are economic problems with it that contributed to making Civilization VI so unplayable, but I am interested in hearing what the noobs who just lost their Civilization cherries thought of
Mike00:38:36it. Uh, quick, quick, uh, quick correction here, JVL, uh, Civilization VII was released earlier this year. Oh, it's already out. Okay. There we go. It was released in February. So, um, but it was just released for the Nintendo Switch, uh, earlier this month, um, but released for, for other platforms.
JVL00:38:53Um, but I cannot imagine playing that game on a Nintendo Switch.
Mike00:38:57I can't either. I also, a second correction, which is I'm not in the CivilizationNOOB. Um, I played Civilization before. I am not, uh, unfamiliar with the game. Um, but it has also not been something that I've played as consistently or as devotedly as you or our friend Vic. Uh, and so I'm somewhere in between you and Sonny, I would say on, on Civ. So, um, I dunno, well, I mean, let me, let me just share and then we can go to the true noob Sonny here. On this. Um, so I downloaded this when we, shortly after we discussed doing this for the show. Um, and I found myself like, I, I, I think I filed something for my day job on Monday afternoon and then, you know, got to playing while I was waiting for my edits and the, the game sucked me in, in the way that civilization can suck one in it just, it is the turn based play, um, makes you want to just keep going. Um, you've got multiple kind of things at work, right? You're sort of like developing, uh, your, your civic and your cultural, um, you know, education or, or, or developments. Um, you've, you're, you're building people, right? Your settlers or your builders and then your, your military assets, um, and the game sort of. Keeps you engaged in the, in that way. And I'm not saying just for Civ six, I'm saying this is like a feature of civilization where you're playing, uh, and you, and you kind of go through the turn and you're always kind of engaged in something, um, which is a neat little trick that they figured out how to, how to keep people, keep people playing. Um, I want to go deeper JVL into what you were saying about the playability of this because, um, after I got through maybe, uh, like. 50 turns, I became exhausted by the gameplay. It was, it became too unwieldy. I had no real clear idea if I was taking care of everything that I needed to be taken care of. I'm playing it on my phone. You know, that was my next question.
JVL00:41:18What, what device are you playing on? Yeah, it was on my phone. Yeah. I think I don't know where else to play it. Almost has to be on an iPad. I played it on my phone and it was, it was hell. So, so I, you know, but I imagine it can be more interesting on an iPad, but maybe deeply flawed. Um, anyway, Michael, you should mention the, the, one of the unique features of civilization as a game series is that it perfected the art of time dilation, where you would sit down to play 30 minutes of civilization, say at 7:00 PM and then you would look up and it would be 3:00 AM. Yes.
Mike00:41:53This is a persistent feature of six throughout the years. It's a good. No, it's in a way, it was like a good thing that I was like sitting at my desk and that like edits came in and I was like, oh, I have like a thing that I ha have to do. I have to put this down and do the thing that I'm, you know, paid to do. And because otherwise like I would have been sucked it, but yes, I, I, I absolutely agree. The time time moves quickly in civilization, both in game and out of the game. One more turn, one more turn is the ultimate one more turn. One more turn. One more turn. I just gotta get through this. Just want them to build the greenery.
JVL00:42:29I just wanna finish the hanging gardens of Babylon. Then I will hit save and go back to my life. Ah, but there's some skirmishers.
Mike00:42:37Hold on. I just gotta take care of the skirmishers, some barbarian skirmishers and then I, and then I'm done. And then I'm done. Um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, the other thing we can talk about and then let's, I mean, uh, we could talk about this after Sonny shares his thoughts on this is like the concept of net, like what, what is Netflix getting out of this? So we should, we should maybe talk about that after, but, but Sonny, you're, you really are new to sieve entirely. What did you think?
JVL00:43:07This is, this is like finding, uh, a tribe in the Amazon, which has never had any con con, uh, contact with the outside world. And then just handing them, uh, an iPad to see what, what they make of it.
Mike00:43:19Well, and it felt like Sonny was like wanting to just like take his bow and arrow and shoot at us, you know, as we're like flying over the, uh, the helicopter of his island, you know? Um, all right.
Sonny00:43:29Sonny, tell us what you think. Yeah, that's, it's the worst game I've ever played in my life. Uh, so it's, it's funny. So I, uh, let me just explain what happened. So I, I mentioned that this offhand, cause I was just like looking at, uh, Netflix cause I, there, there was like that submersible, uh, documentary that looks kind of interesting. I was like, do we want to do that? Or, you know, we could just do Sib six, which is what the featured game on Netflix game.
JVL00:43:55Yes, yes.
Sonny00:43:56That's what I want to do. I want to do Sib six. So I was like, okay, well we can play Sib six. I like, I like playing video games. I'm a gamer. I own a PlayStation five and a Nintendo switch. I know how to play those video games game with the rest of us. And I, so I downloaded, I downloaded Sib six, which like, as you said, comes on a separate app and it's on your phone. And my phone is, you know, I have an iPhone 14. It's not a small phone, but it's not a phablet, right? It's not a phone tablet. And it's not an iPhone. It's not an iPad. It's not, it's not a tablet. Um, I, maybe I should try this on my kid's Kindle. Maybe I could try it on that and it would be better. But, uh, I, I, I downloaded it and, uh, you know, it, it like loads and it, uh, you click new game and it's, uh, it asks, what is your experience level with Sib? And I was like, none. I have no, the first time. So I assumed the opening rounds would be like the tutorial. It is not. Not the tutorial. It just, you just start playing the game. And I like got to the point where I was literally just poking the screen. Like, you remember the scene in Zoolander where they start hitting the computer, trying to find the files?
Mike00:45:11The files are in the computer.
Sonny00:45:13That's what it, that's what it was like with me and Sib when, on this first, on this first attempt to play the game. I like just put my phone down in frustration. Phone was getting hot too. It was like, it was like really eating up a lot of bed. A lot of battery juice. I put, I put the phone down. I went and like tucked my kids in for bed or something, because that's, that's when I was trying to do this. I came back to it and I, I, I got out of that game and I, I looked at the menu again and there is a tutorial. So I went to the tutorial and I went, I went to do the tutorial and I realized I was doing some of the things wrong. I didn't realize you had to like drag guys across the little hexagonal things. I didn't realize, you know, there, there are trees of technology. And the such, and 45 minutes into this fucking tutorial, I was like, I'm done. I'm done. I'm done with this game. I cannot, I cannot handle this. This is there's, there's too much stuff going on. I'm having to wait turns in between being able to do things because guys and units take multiple turns to build the whole thing. The whole thing was, was anti fun for me. It was like it. And now I don't. I don't even, but here's the thing. I don't blame the game for this precisely. Uh, I blame two factors, both of which JBL has touched on here. One is just the phone of it, right? Trying to play this, trying to play this on a touch screen. That is the size of, you know, uh, half a postcard is not conducive to playing a video play. It's not really conducive to playing anything, but the most basic video games. Very basic video games. I'm sure it'd be fine. Tetris or sued exactly. Or like temple run or, you know, something, something like that. This game is way too, there's too much stuff going on at any one time. I can't see the whole screen. I don't understand what's happening over here. I can't, I like, I don't have bad eyesight, but I wear, I do wear glasses.
JVL00:47:19I'm so glad you said that I found it almost impossible to read and I could not totally
Sonny00:47:23could not read anything on the screen.
JVL00:47:25The icons are too small, so tiny.
Sonny00:47:28So and you can like zoom in, but again, if you zoom in it, you create the problem where you can't like, you can't see anything else on, on the board, like you make the board even smaller. So the game, the, the playability of the game is roughly zero for me. I just, I literally just could not play it. But on top of that, you know what it reminded me of, it reminded me of picking up a version of Madden four or five versions. After the last version of Madden I had played. So like I, you know, it's, it's the series. You're totally right JBL. It's a series problem. When you have a, when you have a video game series, the compulsion is to add more things to it, to get the people who have already played it, to play it again and be like, Ooh,
Mike00:48:11new things. It's new. I need to buy it.
Sonny00:48:14Yeah. Because, and you know, and interestingly, like to pull it back to Star Wars unlimited has a similar problem JBL, where they keep like adding new mechanics to it that conflict with old mechanic. Anyway, I don't want to, I don't want to get bogged down in that, but to go back to the Madden thing, you know, once upon a time Madden was like, all right, you got offense, you got defense, you got some play sets here and you, you run them. And now you throw Madden in and it's like, you have to run, you have to run through the tutorial program to learn how to do all the things. And then there are the playbooks that are the size of real NFL playbooks and it's like, what the fuck am I? And you, and you have to like, you have to swap players in individual players in swap them out. Like I, it was the last time I played Madden was the last time I will probably play Madden because it was just too, it was too complicated to be fun. And again, lots of series have this problem if you're not keeping up with them. Um, uh, it's one of the reasons I really like Resident Evil because Resident Evil maintains kind of every time you start a new Resident Evil, it's like, all right, you're a guy on the ground and you have a pistol and a magazine of bullets and that's it. And then you go from there and they're all basically. The same. Um, but th this game was just like, there were so many different things to do. I did not know what to do.
JVL00:49:34Um, I, that's not fun again, aspect of the government, which kind of culture, which why is that a better or worse choice than the other?
Sonny00:49:45And that's the other thing is I don't know what's better and worse. I don't know. Like I, I want to build a Vic Mattis war culture, but I don't know how to do that. I like, I just don't know what the, I don't know what the, what the tree. I have to follow to do this is. So it was, it was, it was anti, it was not just not fun. It wasn't just like, ah, this, this is, you know, kind of boring. It was like actively frustrating. And that, again, after, after probably 75 minutes of total gameplay, both through the first attempt and then the tutorial, I was just like, I'm, I'm never doing this again. I'm not subjecting myself to this.
Mike00:50:18So Sonny, it's interesting that you played it and then you discovered the tutorial and I wonder if your experience would have been better. Had you done what I did, which was despite having played sieve before, like I went through the tutorial just to kind of understand a little bit. So because I, I feel like we ultimately ended up in the same place on this game. I just, I had a little more runway of fun than you did. Uh, because I feel like I went through the tutorial and understood a little bit what I was doing. The problem is, is it became too unwieldy? Like I, I understood at a basic level what I needed to do in this game. And then all of the shit started to hit the fan with different cultures and barbarians coming in and things. And I was just like, I can't, I got to where you get that far.
Sonny00:51:04I didn't even get that far. I, I, I attacked one guy with my, with my warrior and I was like, okay, this, the other problem with the game is just, it's just a function of the game. And I don't really like turn based games like this.
Mike00:51:16If I'm, if I'm doing, if I'm playing a game simulation, I was just going to say, I was just going to say I was not a civic kid. I was an age of empires kid because that's a real time strategy game. Yeah. Not.
JVL00:51:29Yeah. I don't like real time. I prefer turn-based cause I like to be able to think. Yeah. Let me, if I could step in here for a month, um, part of me worries that this is a old man problem. These new fangled games with all of their contract, I can't understand what's going on with them. Uh, or, you know, all the civilizations were better in my day. But I don't think that's what's going on. Um, so all series games have a problem with lock-in, which is what you described Sonny. You have an existing player base. You need to get them to buy the new version because that's how you justify the expense of developing the new version. But by doing that, because you are building on top of what came before you, you are making the barrier to entry for new players higher. Right? You're making it harder for a new player to get into the series because there's just, it's just less accessible by definition. And this Civ six is almost totally inaccessible to new players. Uh, I think like I was able to jump in and just play because like, I know it, it's civilization, but Sonny was completely lost and it's not because he's not a gamer. It's because there's just, you cannot come to this new, but the other thing is that it, it develops what I've always thought, I'm sure there's a name for this in video game development. I've always called it a simulation problem, which is that there is, there's this fallacy among game designers that simulation fidelity is the mark of a good game and this is wrong. So in the early days of flight simulators for your PC, you could like, you know, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna play the F 15 Eagle, you know, iron Eagle, which was, uh, you take off from a carrier and you learn how to fly your plane and then you get into dogfight fights with people and it was an amazingly fun game and it wasn't an arcade game. It was much slower than an arcade game, uh, and it had a lot more detail in it, but it was super cool. And as the flight simulator genre matured, the game designers decided like, you know, no, that's not real enough. We need to, we need more reality. To the point where at the, you know, the, the end all be all was like, you are piloting 737 from LAX to New York and everything is exactly as it would be if you were a commercial pilot. And so that's going to take six hours and, uh, nothing's going to happen for five hours and 49 minutes of those. And, uh, and isn't that amazing? Look how real that is. And those games would be kept. It was like, what are you fucking kidding me? I'm going to sit here with a mouse and a keyboard for six hours to fly cross country. And the idea is that it's just like being a pilot. That's not a game. That's a job. That is why we pay pilots to do that because it's work. It's no longer a game. They, there was a briefly, I think it was for Genesis. There was a game which purported to be the most realistic sword combat game ever. And it fucking sucked because the way it worked was the first person to hit the other person killed them. Yeah. That was like, you know, cause you're, you know, it's like catastrophe. Katanas. And what do you have? And they're like, you, you hit them and they die. That's it. That's not fun. It is real.
Mike00:54:59It is how real sword fights work. Can I, can I, there's another aspect to the series problem, which is maybe contained in the fact that this title is Sid Meier's civilization six and like Sid Meier is a, is a, is a genius and I don't want to take away from, from his accomplishments, but I do think there is a, uh, a problem of fidelity to the format in a way that prevents a game like this from kind of jettisoning, jettisoning that format for something. So for instance, since we're talking about video games, um, last week, uh, and or two weekends ago, uh, when my wife was out of town and my boys and I just had the run of the house, um, I finally at long last completed the Zelda breath of the wild. Uh, game for the switch, uh, just in time for my kids to say, great. Now we can start tears of the kingdom. So these are two, one and a game and a, and a sequel, um, that like Zelda is a 35 year old, uh, 40 year old, maybe a series, uh, and this is a series that's remade itself a gazillion times because it, it keeps all of the, the elements that people want, but reinvents the idea of like what the PR like what the gameplay is like, or, you know, so, so, uh, you know, I was reflecting on the fact that I'm playing a pretty old, in fact, an older series on Nintendo with the, uh, the legend of Zelda, uh, that is much more fun and exciting than, than civilization six on my phone, because everything has been sort of rethought and, and re and recast. And yet there's a, still a fidelity to the, the spirit of the original games. And that's, I think a. That's, that's how you do a series, right? Yeah.
JVL00:56:54Well, so if I could step in again, uh, this is explicable by economics. Um, Nintendo is at every turn, Nintendo is a heavily series dependent company. Uh, they have like five or six tent pole series, Metroid, super Mario brothers, Zelda, Mario cart, smash brothers, and, uh, donkey Kong, donkey Kong. Right. Anyway. But so they have to constantly reinvent their series and they do, as you say, Michael, they, they are amazingly good at making those things in the series feel as though they are part of a continuum, but also be totally open to onboarding new players. Yep. But the reason they can do that is because they are supported by an undercurrent of hardware sales. And so this is like Costco having the membership income, allowing them to do really interesting things with retail pricing. Yes. If you are a pure game designer, you have to tend the audience for that game. You're you know, Grand Theft, Grand Theft Auto three, Grand Theft Auto four has to be first and foremost, uh, dealing with bringing every single person who purchased three into buy four, because that is, you have no margin for error. You know? And, uh, and that's why you wind up with things like this and I, I would say Civ six really does. It's not, it's not like it's realistic, but there's so much detail that it feels like, uh, it feels very close to the mundane nature of what government feels like, which is like, oh, you're running a civilization. That sounds cool. Well, actually you've got to think about tax policy and you're like, okay, well I just want my income to go up every term. No, no, no, no. You have to go through and set individual tiles within each city and then assign tax collectors when you're like, no, I don't want it. I don't want to do tax. I want to like, uh, build chariots and go conquer my name. No, sorry. Before you can do that, we need you to go into the city and figure out which tile your district for theaters is going to be on and we need you to optimize for that. You're like, no, no, take it. That's work. That's a job.
Sonny00:59:17That's not a game. It's homework. Everything felt like homework. It was, uh, again, I like, it's hard to, it's hard to disentangle what I didn't like about the actual process of playing the game on my phone, which is fucking impossible. Uh, and what, what is the process of the game itself, which could be much better on my laptop where I can like sit there and actually read things and think through like, okay, I want to do this. I can see the whole board and you know, I can, I can like toggle easily between the , you know, technology trees and, but like, I, I'm sorry. I, and then, and then the thing that broke me was I looked up at the turn counter and it was like turn, turn a three of 500 or something and I was like, nope, nope, I'm done. I'm done with this. This is, this is all, this is finished.
JVL01:00:11The fact that a absolute noob, a casual Civ player and a diehard Civ player all found this game to be utterly unplayable, I think is really bad. Yeah.
Sonny01:00:25It's certainly, well, I mean, look, it's, it's, it's, it is, uh, I think it's proof that Netflix cannot do kind of what it wants to do here. Um, which is, well, so I, I mean the whole, you know, Netflix, this whole thing is capturing eyeball share for the longest amount of time possible. That's that's all they want. And Civ theoretically is a good, uh, way to do that. Right. I mean, you talk about the time dilation effect. And like, you know, waking up six hours later and you played Civ that whole time. And like, I, I think that that that's the idea there is right. And maybe it works better on a tablet. I don't know. Maybe it would work better on my kid's Kindle or whatever. Um, but I, uh, I, I like just, it made me angry to play in a way, in a way that I have not experienced ever with a video game. I don't think I like just, just. Just very frustrating from start to finish. And like, again, there, there are, I had always kind of, uh, from your guys's description of Civ, I'd always kind of imagined it as command and conquer adjacent. And it's not like that at all. It's not, it's not, it's not like that at all. And that, you know, again, I like, I would happily give red alert a shot on the, the Netflix app if that ever came up, but like this, this just, uh, it was, it, it, it was not fun. It just, it just wasn't fun. All right.
Mike01:01:51All right. No fun here. Uh, any final thoughts?
Sonny01:01:54I think people are going to be very disappointed by this episode because they're all excited to hear us talk about Civ VI, but like, I'm sorry, I like, it is, it is, I, I, I encourage anybody who thinks we are exaggerating to go to your phone and go to the Netflix app and download this game for your phone and try to play it, uh, because I have a hard time believing anyone will have much more luck than we did. Maybe, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong.
Mike01:02:24Yeah. Um, all right. Well, that is all the time we're going to give and, uh, sorry to the fans who were hoping Vic would be here, uh, to discuss this, but, uh, I think even maybe Vic would have been disappointed in this.
Sonny01:02:36I think I, I actually kind of would like to watch Vic play this on his phone with his glasses. Like going back and forth.
JVL01:02:42On his iPhone SE? Yeah.
Sonny01:02:44On his iPhone SE, on his, my phone got hot. His phone would explode. If he tried to play.
?01:02:50All right.
Mike01:02:51Join us over at subbeacon.com and we'll talk to you next time. Um, by the way, the, uh, uh, we should, can we, can we talk about Mario brothers? How hard that game really is JVL. Like it's a hard game. I knew it. I played it before, but I had forgotten. You like knock those little Koopa guys over and then you gotta like jump up to kick them all off. And it's like, and, and like, oh man, that was difficult.
JVL01:03:27So you want to talk about series. So Mario brother, Sonny, do you even know what Mario brothers is the original Mario brothers? Did you ever see it?
Sonny01:03:35Uh, I mean, I played like super Mario brother or I played Mario brothers for the NES, the
JVL01:03:40original NES Mario brothers, not super Mario brothers. That's the one that the, what you play.
Sonny01:03:48So the one that was like before, yeah, no, no, I never played that one.
JVL01:03:51The original Mario brothers is essentially donkey Kong, but with different characters. And then you get super Mario brothers, which is an Epic side scrolling genre defining game. And that is a series like that. They went from Mario brothers to super Mario brothers with a total reconception of what the game could and should be.
Sonny01:04:16And it's amazing.
JVL01:04:18Like, you know, which is also to think that those things are separated in time by like three years.
Mike01:04:22Yeah. And of course, like it's, it's all derivative of donkey Kong, which, which of course is its own series now, which is derivative of, of that it's, uh, Hey, you know what Nintendo,
Sonny01:04:35I think that company's going places wasn't just saying was, was the original Mario brothers called jump man. Was that what it was?
JVL01:04:42No. The original donkey Kong was called jump man.
Sonny01:04:45Oh, the original donkey Kong was called jump man.
Mike01:04:47Mario brothers was like a, just a rip off as JVL said of donkey Kong. Yeah. Um, so I'm sure it's fine.
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