Episode 1 It Begins! E3 and This Week in Gaming History

Tox  0:06  
Okay, gonna start the intro then, here we go.

Hello and welcome to the Morning xp boost, we're your hosts talks and glitch, and we're here to talk games and stuff and make you feel good and then nice, fun, inclusive, positive sort of way glitch, how are you doing today,

Glitch  0:59  
I am great. I'm great, how are you doing,

Tox  1:03  
I am super excited, I'm just so excited to get started with our first show, hopefully, first of many, and to discuss what's going on.

Glitch  1:16  
Yeah, this is, this is super exciting. I cannot wait.

Tox  1:19  
Yeah, well let's jump right in, then.  So I think you have some historical context to start us off with today, is that right?

Glitch  1:29  
That's right. This week in gaming history. We had Pokemon sapphire and Ruby launched back, way back in the day 2003 for the Gameboy Advance. Then we had god of war three, which released back in 2010. Just, just a couple of years ago,

Tox  1:49  
just Yeah, it feels like it was yesterday. But it was 11 years ago.

Glitch  1:56  
That's right. And I think you have a few too, don't you,

Tox  1:58  
yeah, yeah well I wanted to ask you, do you have any experience with those games Pokemon Ruby Sapphire or God of War

Glitch  2:07  
God of War three definitely, I played I've played every god of war game thus far and I'm really excited about, hopefully, maybe later this year getting an announcement about the next kind of four in the series. Nice. Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire I kind of started slacking off a little bit after the first one that I played which was Pokemon Yellow. What about you, what's your experience with those two.

Tox  2:34  
Yeah, so I've actually never played a god of war game. Sorry, but, I'm a huge Pokemon fan, and I missed Ruby and Sapphire because like you. I played the first couple generations, you know, red and blue, red, by the way is the better one gold and silver, gold, obviously, and then I kind of, you know, went to school and stuff for a little while so I missed out on Ruby and Sapphire but I've since come back to Pokemon. And I'm sort of replaying some of those older games. And yeah, I mean, any Pokemon mainline game is a okay with me, that's for sure.

Glitch  3:18  
I'll tell you what yeah so Pokemon Sun and Moon got me really excited because I mean those are the ones that really changed how this series plays out like it's it's a completely different style from the originals. And that's really what brought me back to playing Pokemon. And now, I went back and played x and y. Then I played Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby.

Tox  3:46  
Sorry, I am laughing because I sometimes I feel like we're the same person, I have in my Nintendo 3ds Right now, Which, by the way, is this sweet like polka ball shit, or like, it's like a Polka Dex with a Polka ball button is like the shape the casing of it. I have ultra moon in there right now I've been playing that, and I have, I picked up USD from GameStop right route. Alpha Sapphire Omega Ruby Alpha Sapphire, and X and Y, all the things you just mentioned.

Glitch  4:23  
Yeah, I mean they're incredible games, and the new iterations, what is it armor Shield Armor, or, shield and sword,

Tox  4:31  
yeah sword and shield Yeah,

Glitch  4:31  
sword and shield. There you go. I mean, great titles, I'm really excited to see more of that in the future from from the pokemon franchise.

Tox  4:42  
We have so much more ahead of us. We could talk about that forever, but there were a couple other notable gaming history ite ms. This week,

so we had Minesweeper back in 1992 and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater in 2011 Yeah, might Minesweeper I think is a great one because like that game with every PC of a certain era. And I think it was included in every PC since until really recently, PC being like a Windows based PC, and you know how much more simple could it get you click, you get a little bit of feedback on if you hit a mine or not, obviously if you hit a mine, you're done. And then you just keep clicking it's something you could just switch your brain off, and click away while you're supposed to be working or studying or whatever.

Glitch  5:51  
I played it a lot on my Windows 95 Pentium two. Oh, yes, it was a monster.

Tox  6:02  
Yeah. And, of course, Tony Hawk Pro Skater. One of my favorite games growing up, I played that, just for hours and hours and I want to say at least 50% of the reason why I played was for the soundtrack that had some really awesome skater music. Of course it was a Nintendo 64 So the, the tracks were limited to have like one minute each and super compressed super low quality audio, relative to today's standards, but oh my gosh it was so much fun.

Glitch  6:35  
And that controller though.

Tox  6:38  
I just remember endlessly grinding. You know you jump from one spot to another and you land of course you got to grind on something and you just grind the whole stage through. It's so much fun. Yes.

Glitch  6:51  
Yet, for me, I mean, you know, Tony Hawk Pro Skater I did I played that every time I went over to a friend's house and like you said that, that soundtrack is iconic. It's an incredible soundtrack, it was an incredible game, but for me, something that really stands out with a Nintendo 64 was that controller, like my gosh. Nintendo really took a risk with that controller and I mean I feel like it really paid off playing double oh seven GoldenEye, with it, with that, that trigger.

Tox  7:23  
I don't think there is any other way to play that game, I have tried, you know, on various platforms with other controllers and it just, there's no other way. No, that's true. I

Glitch  7:36  
guess we'll move on to the news here. We do have a couple little news items. This week, days gone a PlayStation exclusive is coming to PC. This isn't the first time the Playstations done this, I think, I think we're gonna start seeing this kind of more broad spectrum I know Xbox recently acquired or Microsoft rather recently acquired Bethesda games, and I'm hoping to see that trend kind of translate over into Microsoft as well, releasing some of the exclusive titles to other systems console's, you know, play PC. So days gone that's coming out this week. Horizon Zero Dawn, which is an incredible game if you played Breath of the Wild on Nintendo. This is kind of like Playstations version on that. And then Resident Evil village was actually just just become the fastest selling and most successful Resident Evil game in the franchise's history, with over 3 million copies sold in four days. That's not so

Tox  8:46  
that's nuts yeah, because that's a popular franchise to begin with.

Glitch  8:51  
Have you played or had any experience with any of those titles.

Tox  8:54  
Oh my gosh. I haven't played village, I've watched a little bit of this streaming. You know, when the franchise started I was fairly young. One of my friends was really into it and so I pretty much just watched him play Resident Evil One on the PlayStation, as I was too afraid of the dogs, jumping out from nowhere and the liquors, just kind of dropping on you from the ceiling. Yeah and then I, I must have spent a lot of time watching my friend play because I have memories of Resident Evil two and three. In particular, Mr. X, I think it was busting busting through the walls wherever you happen to be just sort of randomly and like his little stars like oh my god that gives me chills,

Glitch  9:46  
that that is exactly the same experience that I had as well I think it was a Resident Evil three Nemesis was the, was the guy you could hear him you, you'd be inside. What was it called the like the stars headquarters, like the police state Raccoon City police station, maybe, I think is what it was. Yeah, and you, you know, I watched a friend play I also didn't play my parents actually wouldn't allow me to have that game. They're like no no no, we saw the cover of that that's, you're not allowed,

Tox  10:17  
not an unwise decision, but yeah,

Glitch  10:19  
so whenever do a friend's house and it was probably 10 o'clock at night, on a, on a weekend, I was at a school, and you know you're going through, you're going up the staircase and you can hear, Nemesis outside sounding around stores,

Tox  10:35  
yeah.

Glitch  10:37  
And then he crashes through a wall. And I think I had to actually I think I had to go home early from that sleep over and get another pair of pants. Yeah, seriously. The terrible nightmares for a month.

Tox  10:54  
Yeah. A great franchise an amazing record. Other. In other news, I brought a little bit of a more lighthearted item, and a little bit more of a substantial one. But, so I love Pokemon as we discussed already once in the show. And I happened to see and I could not ignore that, you know, this year is sort of the 25th anniversary celebration for Pokemon and so they're doing all these kind of little crossovers and stuff, and one of them is billed as a Katy Perry and Pikachu music video. And so of course, they had to watch it because I mean, those are two pretty awesome, pop culture icons, And I gotta say, I kind of loved the song, in like a super cheesy way.  It has very little to do with Pokemon, it's not like, like a Pokemon theme song it is like a Katy Perry single. It's called Electric, and so obviously the key to being an electric type Pokemon. And they kind of just worked Pikachu in there in like a few frames, as well as Pichu, and the whole thing, music videos, sort of like, like, you know, mature, Katy Perry who's made it in the music industry happens, and has Pikachu as a friend for some reason, happens upon a younger woman, maybe early version of Katy Perry, who's struggling to, you know, busking at the farmers market not really getting any attention for playing her guitar and singing and just not feeling good, but she's got her Pichu, you know younger Pikachu I guess friend sitting there, you know, egging her on being positive support for her. And, yeah, Katy Perry and Pikachu help young Katy Perry and Pichu to sort of find the courage to pursue their dream and it's actually a really cheesy but also kind of beautiful little positive message. So, that one really resonated with me. Have you have you seen that music video yet?

Glitch  13:05  
Yeah, actually. So, I'm actually looking at it right now, I did previously I had actually caught a couple clips of it. I think they did a really great job of, maybe this is an unpopular opinion. I think Pikachu is super cute. I think it's one of the cutest Pokemon

Tox  13:25  
It's controversial to say, of you.

Glitch  13:30  
but, yeah, I think they did a great job with the animation of Pikachu and Pichu. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's super fun, the whole concept of the video is really, it's fun.

Tox  13:44  
It's good, it's what, what what we need. After the last 15 months of whatever. It's a nice positive message.

Glitch  13:54  
It really is. Yeah, and I think I think you're right, I think it is like older Katy Perry looking back at younger Katy Perry and maybe like her message to her like, not to give up.

Tox  14:06  
Yeah, keep going. If you feel it Yeah, feel it. Okay, before this becomes a sing along, I'll touch on my other news item briefly which was, you know, not really new news but still really interesting PlayStations, investment into discord, I guess, Discord is still doing series round funding. And so, PlayStation, played a role in their latest round of funding, and it's not like, you know, takeover or a buyout or acquisition or anything like that. But they did sort of announced some plans, pretty short on details to, you know basically help integrate discord more into PlayStation, and I think that's, I think it's exciting I think it's great. I'm really glad that Microsoft did not buy discord outright, because I feel like nothing against Microsoft, but that would have potentially changed the character of discord and the direction. It remains to be seen, I guess how much Playstations investment will influence the current discord direction. I noticed that discord got a new logo. It's very similar to the old logo but it has a new shade of blue. So that might be part of that new Playstation money that they're rolling in. But yeah, I mean, I love discord. I've used it extensively, especially since the pandemic hit to connect with people like you glitch, what do you think?

Glitch  15:50  
I think it's absolutely incredible, tox. Xbox not acquiring it, you know, I love that the discord is something that's universal. You know you can use it on a MacBook, you can use it on a Windows PC, you can use it on Xbox. And now finally, we're going to get some use on it on PlayStation, which, you know, I love being able to connect all my accounts to to discord and, you know like Spotify and all those things, and Playstation has just been the one that's, that's absent. So, I think it's great that Playstation and discord will finally be integrated together and with the streaming capabilities of the PlayStation. I think it'd be really cool to be able to, you know, Hey, what's this person up to, oh they're streaming right now, you know I can jump in and I can, you know, watch what game they're playing, I think that's, that's all around. That's great. Yeah, everybody.

Tox  16:51  
Yeah, I agree. Well, there is another slightly big news item to cover. E3, that's what it's called I just checked my notes. So let's, let's talk about that after, after a little sting.

Where should we begin glitch Do you want to cover a couple topics first.

Glitch  17:22  
Sure, I wouldn't mind touching on a few. The E3 lineup this year is going to be a little different than in previous years some of the larger names such as Playstation and EA are actually going to kind of be doing their own thing. So, we will not see them Konami actually was supposed to be a part of E3 this year, but they have decided to actually back out. They stated that they had prior commitments, and will not be able to attend. So E3 this year is going to be June. What is it June 12 through the 15th. And, I mean the lineup is still pretty solid, even without, you know, Square Enix I think is another one that's not going to be there. But here is, who is going to be there, we've got Ubisoft Capcom Epic Games Bethesda, take two Xbox and Nintendo just to name a few. I mean those are, those are the heavy hitters right there in the gaming industry. So, yeah,

Tox  18:29  
yeah, I'm obviously very excited about Nintendo, but we'll get to that.

Glitch  18:35  
I mean I can't wait this, it's an awesome lineup, and actually I'm really excited for E3 this year, there, there are some big titles that are rumored to possibly be, you know, sneak peek at this particular E3. And, yeah, I'll just I'll just fill you in on what's going down. So for Ubisoft. Far Cry six, which we've already got, you know some information on I think we already have a trailer for it, but I think we're going to finally get a substantial release date, or a, maybe a corrected release date, release dates have kind of been all over the place here recently because of last year, but I think we'll finally get a concrete release date for Far Cry six, maybe some new trailers, some gameplay footage, times, and then Ubisoft is working on a super secret Star Wars project.

Tox  19:33  
Oh,

Glitch  19:34  
yeah. This is actually the first time that another company besides EA will have worked on a Star Wars game since 2013 Disney I think had an exclusive deal with EA to produce Star Wars games, and that has ended. There is a rumor, as well. There was a project that was cancelled by Lucas Arts called 1313. A lot of people in Star Wars community. I hope they're not getting their hopes up too high but there's a possibility, however small that Ubisoft might be picking up the mantle of 1313 and carrying on with it.

Tox  20:22  
So, EA used to do the Star Wars games, Ubisoft is supposedly doing this next Star Wars game, how do you think that will change the type of game that we'll see or the type of gameplay, the Ubisoft would bring to the table.

Glitch  20:42  
Ubisoft's big title is of course Assassin's Creed and Far Cry.  I think, I think we're gonna see more of an Assassin's Creed style game with with Star Wars, and I mean Assassin's Creed's a massive franchise Valhalla has been doing great. They've been putting out all these updates, it's been a really great refresh to the franchise. A lot of people have come back to Assassin's Creed after taking a break from maybe origins and I can't remember what the other one is, there's been so many. But I think if they do a Star Wars Assassin's Creed, I mean yeah, who wouldn't be down for that.

Tox  21:29  
That sounds awesome like a super tactical Star Wars game. Yeah,

Glitch  21:34  
yeah. I mean, assassins in the Star Wars universe. There's bounty hunters, there's so many people that they could just fill right into that assassin role and scan it with Star Wars and boom you're good to go, I'd buy it.

Tox  21:52  
Yeah. I mean, baby Yoda taking out bad guys. Of course. Yeah.

Glitch  21:58  
Then over at Capcom, of course we've got Resident Evil village, so we might see some DLC, some sneak peeks for that. A game that I think you're probably going to be really excited about talks, Monster Hunter stories, Wings of ruins.

Tox  22:16  
I love Monster Hunter.

Glitch  22:18  
That's gonna be releasing on July 9 So I think we're gonna be seeing a new trailer and gameplay footage. How is, how is Monster Hunter going for you right now.

Tox  22:29  
Oh it's going great so I'm, I'm very new to the franchise. Monster Hunter rise is my first entry into that series. And I've played, probably about 70 hours of it. And I've watched a lot of people play and been talking about it a lot with people who have played the whole franchise, sort of, you know pretty much start to finish. And supposedly, and I can see it in the maturity of Monster Hunter rise. You know what I'm told is each game sort of builds on the previous one. And just gets better and better quality of life improvements, new mechanics refinements to that core monster hunting combat system. So, you know, I'm looking forward to seeing another Monster Hunter game, having had the context of Monster Hunter rise and see what new tweaks there are, how it just how it gets better because I feel like it's, it's all gravy. And you know they keep iterating on a really good system so I'm excited to see it.., and dinosaurs.

Glitch  23:40  
dinosaurs. I mean that they're like I guess they're like dinosaur type creatures but, honestly, you know, for me the Monster Hunter franchise is a little complicated for me.

Unknown Speaker  23:54  
Yes,

Glitch  23:56  
I love loot grinders, but I, I've tried monster hunter in the past. And, yeah, I'll just leave it at that. It's a great series, I just, I just couldn't do it. But stories,

Tox  24:08  
you might want in your infinite free time you might give rise a shot because I hear that the quality of life is much better on rise versus previous titles

Glitch  24:19  
I will throw that one into my to my backlog of games. I won't discount it, but Monster Hunter stories for me that's the one that looks. That looks super interesting. I can't wait. It looks like it's a different type of like style of gameplay. Yeah, so I'm super excited for that. 

Tox  24:42  
That's an RPG, moreso than an action game.

Glitch  24:47  
Yeah, so I don't know if it's gonna have the elements of loot grinding in there, but I'm excited to see that and I do like loot grinding, it's just, I think it's maybe the style of rise, or of of Monster Hunter. I don't know, maybe I should just give it a shot. Add it to the backlog.

Tox  25:07  
Yeah.  Glitch, are we at the end of our first podcast, is that what I'm hearing? Oh my gosh I think this deserves a power up! We made it to the end of our very first podcast the morning xp boost, giving you a boost to get through your day, or to end your day, or you know just to get through the middle of your day, whatever.  We don't discriminate, whenever you want to listen.  We’re going to be coming back with weekly episodes.  Be sure to join us next week as we wrap up our E3 preview just in time for the big show.   So, thank you so much for joining us for our first episode, and we cannot wait to come back and see you again.  Glitch?

Glitch  25:57  
Thanks for listening everybody. We'll see you next time