Ep07 What Are You Playing!?

Tox  0:06  
This week on MXPB we talk auctions and Mario Paint. Plus, we have a roundup of all the games we're playing right now, don't go away, MXPB starts now.

Hello and welcome to the Morning xp boost. We are your hosts, tox and glitch, and we're here to give you the experience points you need to get through your week glitch, what do you think about that.

Glitch  0:46  
Oh, oh yeah, oh yeah. What about you,

Tox  0:50  
oh my.  Alright, so we're gonna start with our normal lineup, we're gonna go through some news, and we're gonna do some history and then today, this week we're gonna be talking about what games were playing, what's in our backlog, and what it all means to us, you want to get us started with the news glitch

Glitch  1:14  
Sure deal. All right. So, this month, or actually sorry this week. Super Mario 64 sealed copy. Super Mario 64 Sold at auction $1.56 million. If you've got any sealed, video games, sitting at home. I would highly recommend seeing what they're worth maybe go on eBay.

Tox  1:43  
Yeah, this one's really interesting, because there is this whole collectors, I mean, collecting has, has always been a thing but I feel like with many things, it's sort of been amplified by the internet, and just accessibility, and frankly nostalgia for those things where, you know people who have accumulated some money, are of a certain age, and are starting to, you know feel nostalgic for those things they had as a kid, and I've experienced this a little bit. Personally, with my rediscovery of my Pokemon card collection and seeing just how sort of official this collecting has become. There are agencies that you can send your, you know in this, in my case Pokemon cards, or, you know, I saw the picture for this one and I'm sure this, this person did the same thing is you send your artifact, the thing that you want to auction to an agency that will authenticate it. And it will grade it, and say it is of a certain quality and then that makes it a thing that is sort of verified and authentic that a lot of people trust and allows you to then put it up for auction and so

Glitch  2:57  
what you're saying is there's no returning a box of a PlayStation three box with rocks in it and getting money for it. Yeah, are you saying, pretty much,

Tox  3:08  
they are able to tell the difference between rocks and a ps3, they're, they're really good.

Glitch  3:13  
That's fantastic. What else do we have this week,

Tox  3:17  
so I was reading and one thing that that piques my interest is kind of related to what we're talking about last week, with respect to speed running Summer Games Done Quick has raised over $2.9 million for doctors without borders. And this is something we were talking about the charity streams, and the speed running kind of coming together, like our friend H lock was telling us how these speed runners will in this case, take a week of virtual speed runs, because 2020 is still not quite over. And, you know, through either Twitch subs or direct donations. These streamers are able to raise money for a good cause. In this case, Doctors Without Borders.

Glitch  4:01  
I think that's absolutely fantastic, they were able to raise that much money, video games. Video games raised that much money to assist a fantastic charity Doctors Without Borders, the work that they do overseas is phenomenal. I've had an opportunity actually a friend that worked with Doctors Without Borders for a while to actually he, he did the flights overseas for them to get them into port some places that you know are not all that great. So I think it's a fantastic charity. It's wonderful that Summer Games Done Quick was able to raise those funds that's fantastic.

Tox  4:37  
It's a really special organization for sure and then it, you know the streamers and the speed runners have a lot of fun with it too, because like ah Locke was saying, you know you can speed run anything and of course there's the classics the Mario games. But one of the ones that was kind of interesting was someone speed run speed ran Nintendogs, which is kind of like, you know, owning a dog simulator. That's something you would think about typically speed running but it's kind of a perfect fit for just sort of a fun week of streaming going towards a good cause. Fantastic. All right, so a nice quick and dirty news fix. Now we're going to talk a little bit about this week in gaming history.

Glitch  5:24  
All right, this week, July 13 2006 Gameboy Advance came out not only looked cool. It's a purple see through case, you can get it and see through or solid purple, I believe, right, right.

Tox  5:42  
Oh yeah, solid purple would be my choice.

Glitch  5:47  
Remember, uh, so I never own the system but my sister did and I have to say I was quite jealous. Every time I saw her with it now. I owned the GameCube, but every time I would go into I think back then it was Babbage's, I don't think Gamestop was really a thing yet. It was Babbage's or EB Games, I think, if you guys had Funko landed, yeah. We used to go in there. Usually it was next to a Camelot, or Sam goody. Music Store. across from the Suncoast. Let's see how many old retro places we can throw in there, conscious. Cellular one was just outside and the kiosk. So I would go inside the Babbage's and I would see these awesome games for Gameboy Advance and honestly like I was like, There's no way there's no way they got. I was it, James Bond games, I think it was double oh seven Nightfire. It actually ran it ran on the Gameboy Advance. I've gone back and I've watched videos of it, and you see it, it's third, or it's first person like it's a first person shooter on a handheld it's, I think it was, was that the first time that that had ever been done.

Tox  7:02  
Yeah, I'm not sure if it's a Gameboy Advance definitely was a leap forward like you're saying, it kind of took the normal perspective of a GameBoy game which is usually either a puzzle or like a top down RPG, thinking about Pokemon, something like that, and really expanded on that and, and brought new genres to the platform

Glitch  7:24  
color or color, more I know the. I know the the Gameboy Color had color but I think it was only what maybe 10 colors if that the yeah,

Tox  7:35  
oh yeah I had a I had a yellow Gameboy Color, and I love the fact that it was yellow because you know you're getting color on the screen for the first time, so pick some color on the Gameboy. Yeah, so we had some we had some color but definitely a step up and graphics in the Gameboy Advance. And of course, the Gameboy Advance being the same color as the flagship color of the GameCube purple. And purple. This no coincidence, Nintendo really designed those two things to sort of work together. And this is something that you and I were talking about earlier, you know you it's fun to sort of see the evolution of Nintendo products over the years, where you plug in a Gameboy Advance into a Gamecube starts to look a little bit like a Wii U. And of course, the tendo switch is, is a Gameboy. Sort of on steroids. So it was an interesting, interesting time, I don't know how successful that integration was, I mean you could get for Gameboy advances, plug them into your GameCube and play some games in a augmented way, but that's a really expensive way to play a game.

Glitch  8:43  
Yeah, yeah. Finally, what do you have for stocks.

Tox  8:48  
So this week on July 14 in 1992 29 years ago, Mario Paint debuted on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. And I don't know if anyone out there listening played this one but obviously it's an older game, but I think it's really interesting because it's, it's one of these early games that really showed the power of creating in video games and how popular that can be. If you look on YouTube, you will see videos recent videos of people recreating pop songs in Mario Paint in the music composer mode of Mario Paint, and, you know, that mode in particular was really special you had sort of a score, and you had notes, and you had the tempo and you have everything you need to create a little mini version of, of whatever song you want to do if you have the good ear. And the cool thing about it was that the notes were all different sound effects, so you have like the Yoshi sound effects, you can have the coin sound effects and other sort of classic sound effects from various Mario games, pitched to, you know, wherever you're putting it on the score. And you could create a full fledged like, you know, just one track but you can get that multitrack field with like a baseline and a melody and you can create some recognizable and fun songs with it.

Glitch  10:14  
This is one, this is another one I remember seeing this on a shelf in the video game store may have even been like an Ames or one of those stores that no longer exists.

Tox  10:25  
Yeah,

Glitch  10:26  
in their little electronics section. And I remember that it came with like a little troll or was it a mouse that it used to come with

Tox  10:33  
came with a mouse.

Glitch  10:36  
That's wild. Actually, to hear. I actually got one pulled up right here on eBay, I was just able to pull one up a

Tox  10:46  
point $2 million. Copy.

Glitch  10:49  
Cool. Well Mario Paint right now. This is an open box sells for about $230. And that's, that's what the game, the mouse pad came with it came with some kind of special mouse, mouse pad. the mouse, and the box $230

Tox  11:08  
Yeah, if I recall as a hard plastic mousepad. I don't know exactly what the technology was that, yeah because another obviously feature type title feature of the game is painting in in the art mode, and so they gave you another input device too much to do that is kind of funny, you know, anyone who's used Microsoft Paint or any other program like that on their computer knows that drawing with the mouse is not always the easiest thing. But I think it's a little bit easier or perhaps a little bit more accurate than drawing with a D pad. All right, so glitch box. I think it's time for our feature presentation. This week we're talking about what games we're playing, which is a mix of current, and not so current gains, and we're going to be talking about what we need to finish and what's in our backlog to, so I'll kick us off, I've been playing this game originally came out in 2014 for the PS Vita and ps4, released on the Nintendo Switch, in 2018, and on sale this week, which is why I've been playing it, velocity to x. And this is a game. Obviously it's a sequel, but you might be able to tell from the two in the name, but it's how much it's a really fun, top down shooter arcade style game in the vein of something like you know go Axeon or asteroids. But of course, modern, but the cool thing about it is that it makes is that style of gameplay with a mode where you know you're a character in a spaceship shooting all these aliens and rescuing all these little coins and tokens. But there's a mode where you can hop out of your ship, and it turns into a side scrolling platformer, which is a really cool mix and of course you know the game sort of eases you into the different gameplay modes. And so at, you know, a certain point you're switching back and forth between platforming and the spaceship and you've got to sort of mentally make the switch between the controls and the strategies, even though they do a really good job of keeping the controls, similar between the space shooting portion and the platforming portion. There's still a little bit of, you know, thinking that you have to do to get your brain around. Okay, now I'm running and now I have to do this set of moves at the dock and jump versus now I'm in a spaceship, and I have to shoot things, and the spaceship has like a short range teleport option which makes for a really really fun and fast paced action in this game and it's just such a cool game, because all the levels are super quick. There's elements of speed running in there so the game rewards you for completing a level quickly, but it also rewards you for completing the level by collecting all the collectibles and destroying all the baddies to. So, in any given level there's three or four different ways that you can play it, and of course it's sort of a short, you know, each level is sort of self contained so you can go back and get that repetitive sort of aspect and really hone in on an optimal time and optimal path through the game, it's just, it's a really fun little game.

Glitch  14:37  
The art style kind of reminds me a little bit, have you ever played dead cells.

Tox  14:42  
I never played that one but I was gonna say that art is definitely have a certain style. Style and it also reminds me of full metal theories, which is a game that I experienced well after it was released, because it's got this kind of everything is hand drawn in this game, says absolutely beautiful. I love that style of art, and you've got these kind of like different characters with lots of detail, but sort of a minimalist design, and they kind of talk back and forth to each other and it's got that same kind of style and wit that full metal furies has, so it's really enjoyable to, and the storyline aspect as well as the art.

Glitch  15:24  
It's really nice to see games like, I don't know if you remember Jazz Jackrabbit, it was an early epic game. I think it was. Jazz Jackrabbit, it was really fun. It was released to compete. I think with Mega Man, so refreshing to see titles that kind of feel like they're paying homage a little bit to like Mega Man and jazz Jack Rabbit, it looks like the gameplay is somewhat similar as well, especially when you're in that sidescrolling mode. Yeah,

Tox  15:56  
the side scrolling mode is is really fun this the side scrolling portion reminds me of a more recent game aerial nights never yield, which is a game that came out this summer, and had a demo. After one of the Nintendo Switch directs, which I played through and really enjoyed, and that game, you're sort of running, and you're dodging obstacles and collecting, collecting tokens, and so it has that very similar kind of feel where you basically want to try to sprint through the level, and then the top down shooting portion is kinda like if you took the end credits of Super Smash Brothers ultimate turn that into a game that I feel like that's what you would get in the top down shooting portion of this, you're in a little ship, you get a few different weapons lasers and bombs, and oh by the way you can teleport through,

Glitch  16:49  
it's like, Galaga 2.2 point oh.

Tox  16:52  
Exactly. Yeah, it's awesome and it came out in 2014 So you know, I'm comparing it to these modern games but it predates them so good on you velocity, really fun little game

Glitch  17:04  
game that I've been working on here tox is fortnight.

Tox  17:10  
Never heard of it.

Glitch  17:11  
No season's actually been a lot of fun fortnight, you know, to me it's, it's obviously it's my favorite game keeps changing. So every season. You know there's a refresh and it makes it feel like a fresh makes it feel like a fresh new game. Today they actually just added a cow bouncer.

Tox  17:36  
Yeah,

Glitch  17:38  
I like it I you know I like it when fortnight adds these fun consumables or these fun items, it makes fortnight fortnight.

Tox  17:47  
So you have to tell me what is the cow bouncer?

Glitch  17:50  
So essentially what it is is you. You're, you turn into a cow, you turn into a big fat round cow, and you don't take fall damage you bounce around. It's a cow bouncer.

Tox  18:03  
That's fine. It's one of those things it's just so you know, there's no other way to describe it is just fun, there's no reason for it. It's just fun.

Glitch  18:12  
I can't wait to play with it more I got a chance, just a little bit ago because it only came out. I want to say less than an hour and a half ago, so I only had a chance to play with a little bit but I cannot wait to see all the fun things I'm feeling do with it. We also have aliens are arriving at the fortnight map Holly hedges is turned into Holly hatchery. And there's all these little alien eggs that are that are over there now and get too close to them, these purple little aliens shoot up out of them and they suck onto your head, and they take a portion of your health, but you're able to jump around, something we actually found out last night on stream was that it also distorts your voice, so you just sound. It's It's creepy. It's pretty fun, but it's creepy.

Tox  19:05  
I love it. They did the voice changing thing during Halloween too right when you were those spirit thingies.

Glitch  19:14  
Yeah, they and what they did with this one it's a little bit different. It sounds more like You're like an alien where that one. You sounded. I mean that was also really creepy. This one's more alien that was more you've died.

Tox  19:28  
Yeah like sort of demonic almost.

Glitch  19:30  
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm actually really excited for Superman, he's going to be in the Battle Pass in 30 days. So that's going to be really exciting. Honestly, there are, of course, too. We can't talk about fortnight, without talking about two problems, currently within the community, has, has some lows, with the graphics right now on Nintendo Switch, and mobile. I don't know. Have you seen any of the memes going around right now regarding

Unknown Speaker  20:06  
mobile fortnight.

Tox  20:07  
No, I haven't seen anything about mobile fortnight I kind of lost track of it, but I know that I know a couple people who have basically stopped playing this game on Nintendo Switch, because of performance issues.

Glitch  20:20  
Yeah, it's definitely it's rough right now. The storm is a little bit difficult to see on Nintendo Switch, as well as, so Nintendo Switch has actually, it uses the mobile version of the game. I think they've upscaled the graphics maybe a smidge. But it's still the, it's the mobile version. So Tabora Hill, he's a very popular YouTuber, a fortnight content creator actually recently was doing an item shop review on his son's Nintendo Switch. And I think for the first time he got to see what those graphics look like because it's even in the item shop, I think quote tabber he said, What are you doing, man, these look like Nintendo 64 graphics, tendo 64 fortnight, you got to be kidding me. So I think that's what he said. He's not wrong, it looks exactly like, do you remember playing Goldeneye double oh seven and like barren somebodies head or Jaws his head there we're all blocky just blocky,

Tox  21:24  
your hands are just stumps. Yeah,

Glitch  21:26  
yeah so that's fortnight right now on switch.

Tox  21:31  
As to bad.

Glitch  21:33  
Are there any other games that you're playing right now.

Tox  21:36  
Yeah, so I've really been enjoying Paper Mario, the origami King, which was released a year ago this week, so I didn't pick it up when I first came out because you know the backlog is real, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But I got to it now, And it's really fun. I mean I expect nothing less from Paper Mario and from a Nintendo, from a Nintendo Mario game. I have never actually played any other paper mario games, but I was a big fan of Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo, which was sort of the genesis of the Mario RPG based games, and the Paper Mario games, and I was really pleased to see a lot of that character has translated across the Paper Mario games and into origami king as well. And, you know, you're basically Mario and Luigi going to peaches Castle, this time for an origami festival. But you get to tow town, and it's eerily empty. And what you find is that an evil origami King has sort of taken over and folded ever so everyone in this world is paper, because why not paper. So everyone is flat and but the origami King has folded all the enemies into folded soldiers and so you'll see folded versions of Shy Guys, or folded versions of the Goombas, and those are the enemies that you fight all these sort of gummy things and it's just really fun. It's really clever it's super charming. One of my favorite parts of the game are the toads. So one of the things you have to do is sort of rescue all these toads, the residents of Toad Town basically, and there's just hundreds of them and they're sort of hidden in all these places, and they're folded up into insects or fish or they're stuffed behind walls, and all these funny things and they are just hilarious they're sarcastic, they're self involved. They're sometimes charming sometimes totally oblivious. It's really, really genuinely human little snippets that come through in these toads and the situations they're in and the things they say to you,

Glitch  23:54  
but I also very much enjoy so I watched, I haven't played that game, but I did see the the trailer for of course and I have to say really enjoy the, the art style, the approach that they took. And, and that it is an origami style game I think that's nominal, and I love, I love all that and the story seems really fun to like you were saying. So I mean while it's not necessarily in my backlog, I feel, because I haven't purchased it yet, it's, it's technically in my backlog.

Tox  24:23  
Yeah. It, it's, it's a really fun little game and the art style too is, like you said, I think it's perfectly suited for the Nintendo Switch. Right. paper sort of sets the expectation of simple, not exactly realistic 3d graphics, and so the art style is very minimal, but then you add in the fact that it is on the Nintendo Switch, which has some graphics processing capability. And so you kind of mix that sort of simple art style, with, you know, sort of pseudo 3d effects like shadows and depth, and of course the origami itself is really fun to see how everything folds and unfolds.

Glitch  25:11  
A game that I'm working on right now is actually Borderlands three, because I was impatient. So I jumped in, I played around a little bit, there is, if you like claptrap. There is so much claptrap. And I loved every second for it. I'm here for it. I love it. I can't wait to play it, but I've got to put it back. It's gonna be going into the backlog, I'm sorry. Sorry Borderlands three, but I've got to go back to Borderlands two and actually beat it.

Unknown Speaker  25:41  
Yes,

Glitch  25:43  
I've only played up to the first little, you get to the first settlement, I think it might be sanctuary, I can't remember. I've only ever played to the first settlement. Borderlands two is one of those games it's definitely made to play with multiple people. It's not a game you should try to solo, it can be kind of infuriating, you'll die a lot, no difficulty setting. So interesting. Yeah, so and it doesn't really scale down for you if you're playing solo. So, to find some friends to play with. But another game that I have been playing this is kind of like a game I just go to to kind of relax and chill on is just cause for if you haven't tried that one. It's a lot of fun you can drive vehicles there's playing hooks and you can do all kinds of crazy stuff. A lot of fun. Definitely check that one out.

Tox  26:40  
Right. Well, That wraps up our show for this week. If you liked it, please leave us a review and or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, feel free to work the socials, we are at morning xp boost. Thank you so much for listening. We can't wait to see you again next week.

Glitch  27:00  
Thanks for listening everybody. See you again soon.

Save that thing.