WEBVTT 00:00.880 --> 00:11.432 I'm sp from Better Podcasting, a show dedicated to help make your podcast better and it is part of the Gettygeek Network. Just like the show you're checking out now, shows on the network are individually. 00:11.496 --> 00:14.376 Owned and opinions expressed may not reflect others. 00:14.528 --> 00:18.900 Find other insightful and wonderful geeky shows@gunnygeeknetwork.com. 00:57.766 --> 01:48.012 Welcome to play Comics, where once again we are here looking at a video game based on a comic property and how well it represents that source material. And today we're kind of jumping back off the path that this show originally started on with its mission because we're going back to computer games. There was just the perfect storm of everything coming together, starting with Andy from the Last Comic Shop podcast wanting to come on and talk about the Spider man and Captain America. One friend of the show, Chris Baker, coming on in the comments of things saying, hey, I know somebody who knows about this other X Men game. And then that other person decided, yeah, I think we're going to talk about it. So today I have Austin Auclair here to look at X Men Madness and Murder World. Austin, how are you doing today? 01:48.116 --> 01:49.780 Hey, not too bad. Thanks for having me. 01:49.860 --> 02:17.770 I am so excited for this one. Like the very short version of it is I didn't want to look at computer games because I know that there's a lot of thrown together like just pieces of crap or super educational things that don't have anything to do with anything. And it was just easier for me to blanket say no computer games, just not even going to worry about it. But we're breaking the rules here today. For one that you've told me and a lot of people have told me is pretty special. 02:18.230 --> 03:17.180 Special in multiple definitions, multiple versions of the word for sure. You know, this game set me on my path to loving the X Men in kind of a weird way where, you know, before I had started playing this game as a 10 year old, it was Spider man, of course, Spider man all the time. But I hadn't even heard of the X Men until I had encountered this game. And this game, to be clear, is not good. It is not a good video game, but it's doing a lot of really interesting things and you know, kind of old fogies like to reminisce about video games from this era where video games used to come with stuff. You know, you get a manual. This one especially, it came with its own comic book, came with a really thick manual. And that is really what kind of got me into the X Men was these two resources that that let me into the world of these strange superheroes and this team. 03:18.360 --> 03:25.260 So from here, were you jumping into X Men comics? Because when this came out, you didn't have the X Men cartoon yet. 03:25.640 --> 04:12.360 Well, so I. I played it late. So it really was this. Just like, this one series of. This one, like, Perfect Storm, where I played this in, like, 1992. So it was like fifth grade. I remember because it came with, like, a Clue book, and I was really struggling to solve the puzzle, so I brought it in the class, and my fifth grade teacher, who was a real stickler for some reason, caught interest and was, like, helping me try to solve the puzzles. So then I got into the action figures, which led me to the Fleer trading cards. And that was when the Animated Series came out in, what, 93, 94. And so it's just like this sequence of events all started from this very silly video game. 04:13.700 --> 04:18.280 And what is it about X Men that has kept your interest for so long? 04:19.220 --> 04:38.320 You know, it's the soap opera, it's the human story. It's just the strange powers, the strange people, they're not perfect. And, you know, it's something about that has always hooked me as. As being a strange guy myself. And, you know, it's just something I could really latch on to. 04:38.440 --> 04:55.660 I feel like that's a lot of people's story with X Men. Just, like, there's so many people there on that team that you. You just have to find somebody that you can connect with. And so who have been some of your favorite X Men throughout the years. 04:56.120 --> 05:27.436 I mean, it's got to be Storm. She. Her power set is just incredible. She's got a great backstory. She's one of those characters who's so complicated that you can always tell that writers really struggle to figure out what to do with her. You know, they're always taking her powers away or really upping her claustrophobia or things like that, because they just. They need to contain, you know, the mutants and the person in some way, because she can really just leap off the page. She's always been a favorite of mine. 05:27.548 --> 05:55.496 Luckily, Storm is a character in here. You end up with Storm in a lot of games because not only is she so powerful, she's such a fan favorite with everything. When you were looking at this, you've also got Colossus and Cyclops, Dazzler, Nightcrawler and Wolverine. So for the time, especially when this came out in 1989, this was a pretty heavy, heavy, good lineup of X Men, right? 05:55.568 --> 06:09.032 And this is not too, not too long. Oh, gosh, my brain is evaporating. What's the storyline with Hell on Earth and Ilyana? And the series is really getting into some heavy things now. 06:09.056 --> 06:11.240 You're making me forget Inferno. Yeah. 06:11.400 --> 06:58.112 Yes. Thank you, Inferno. So this is like a little bit after that era, but really kind of getting into the. Into really powerful backstories and characters clashing against each other. And I think that was like kind of a lesson that was hard for me to learn as a kid was that superhero lineups were not this. This like set in stone thing. Like, you would have characters come and go and, you know, I was. I would play this game and then read the comics and it's like, this isn't the same lineup. Like, how is this allowed? You know, and just not realizing that there could be different versions of a team and different ways to represent the X Men and that was okay. That was a real kind of lesson for me as a kid when it came to comic books, especially with X. 06:58.136 --> 07:09.040 Men and Avengers, you've got people going in and out of the team sometimes between both of those teams in there. So I feel like it's a really, really good place to learn about that kind of thing. 07:09.160 --> 07:51.594 That's what makes the game kind of interesting is it's kind of using these mutants to solve puzzles. You know, like so many, so many video games using with superheroes are all about combat or very combat centric. And so that's another thing that always kind of caught my. Caught my attention with this game was that, you know, part of why I like the X Men, like I mentioned, is the human element, the person element. So there, you know, you would read a comic for that and then sure they would go beat up some sentinels, but there was plenty in between. And this game just touches a little bit on some of that. That really drew me in from the comic books. 07:51.722 --> 08:32.896 Friends of the Show, Battle of the Atom could certainly back me up on this, that some of the best X Men stories are ones that are more about the characters than about fights and stuff. And like, that's just something that I really love about X Men. It's why I keep getting so many of the X Men comics up to this day. Because no matter what, like, I'll take a chance on just some random series that I see. If they're starting a new one, I'll grab the first couple issues because I know that there's going to be some kind of character development going in there that is just going to grab me and make me want to Keep reading more. 08:32.968 --> 08:36.480 Yeah, definitely. And have you. Have you had a chance to play this game? 08:36.600 --> 08:45.216 Not as much as I would like to. Although I have to make sure that my wife can't hear it. I play because it is DOS sound. 08:45.408 --> 10:24.958 Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think you're doing fine just playing, just diving in a little bit, and then you can move on to bigger and better things. But, you know, so this game, it brings in, it's got its own comic book. I'm not super versed in writers of the era, but it's written by Danny Fingeroth and penciled by Mark Bagley. The story of the comic book is very like, hey, let's meet everybody, and not actually resolve anything. So, you know, it starts with the X Men are finding Sentinels in a nondescript construction yard. And then Professor Xavier, back at the mansion, is attacked by Magneto the Blob. And I think Pyro, he's quickly disabled. And the X Men race back to the mansion to find a big hole punched in the wall, and Xavier's been kidnapped. And then all of a sudden, it cuts to the X Men fighting a bunch of evil mutants in a lair somewhere, and the X Men are dying. But it turns out they're Arcade's robot X Men, and he's training the evil mutants to face the real X Men. But, you know, so throughout all this, it's Wolverine. I have claws, I'm Cyclops, I shoot laser beams out of my eyes. You know, just the very, like, everyone saying the thing that they do, you know, the White Queen is like, I shoot psionic laser and I'm going to take down the Wolverine. You know, I re read it in prep for this, but it was magical as a kid. It seems trite now, but then it's. 10:24.974 --> 10:25.870 Just like, who are these people? 10:25.910 --> 10:48.726 And they've got all these cool powers. And getting to meet them for the first time, it must have been, as a creator, not very rewarding, maybe at the time, to create a comic like that. But it's kind of interesting, just as an introductory piece to these characters, to these people, for young readers like myself. 10:48.838 --> 10:59.110 And they got to make sure you know who you're playing as, because I have to imagine that they would know that you're not necessarily going to come into this knowing who any of these characters are. 10:59.230 --> 11:16.560 Yeah, I mean, definitely. You know, how come. How come Dazzler can light up the room? You know, it's important that we know that she's a rock star, you know, otherwise you're not Necessarily getting that in the game. So you got to flesh that out with your imagination and what's there already. 11:16.680 --> 11:39.100 And maybe most importantly, you're looking at Arcade like Arcade as a character, not as the place where you go spend way too much money playing games. Arcade is such a fascinating character to me because he pops up all over the Marvel universe going after pretty much everybody. And what has been your experience with him outside of this game? 11:40.480 --> 12:28.230 I think he's a fascinating character because he's so nihilistic. He just doesn't care if he actually wins. He just wants to have a good time. He's kind of the rich boy, has too much money and he's bored. And this is just his way of keeping himself entertained. It's a great way for a writer to just want to show off the breadth of a mutant's powers by having them go through a bunch of trap rooms while Arcade teases them from afar. And it fits wonderfully with a video game, right, because you can create all these different scenarios and scenes and really put the player through their puzzle solving paces as they go through Arcade's lair, his murder world. 12:29.010 --> 12:59.908 Arcade has specifically said he wants to leave these characters a way to get out. So, I mean, you're right, it's the perfect video game thing because he can do his best and you're fighting against the best that Arcade can throw at you. But you can still get out because he's going to make sure there's that way that the characters can get past what they're doing. I mean, it's kind of like if you took Saw but in a bunch of escape rooms and then still somehow turn the craziness level up from there. 13:00.044 --> 13:31.922 And he's always, he's always hired by, you know, even greater villains like Dr. Doom or Magneto. And it's just, you know, they have to suffer his weird little game because for some reason they just won't kill the X Men outright themselves. They're hiring this guy to do their dirty work. And you know, he's got that, he's got that weird code of he may bend the rules, but if you beat his game, you're good to go, you know, So I don't, you know, why would Doom ever suffer this guy? I don't know. 13:32.026 --> 13:51.586 Especially because at this point they all know that there's a way that everybody can escape. So I don't know why people are hiring Arcade if they definitely want the results of their enemy being killed. But you know, if you kill everybody that you don't have any More comics. So I guess you kind of have to work around that, too. 13:51.658 --> 14:07.982 Yeah. And I guess, you know, we're not making comics about, like, the guy down the block who had gambling debts and Arcade took out, you know, in his own way, you know, that's not. You know, maybe Arcade's got hits going on on the side that we just don't. We don't hear about. It's, you know, it's the superheroes who are the ones breaking out. 14:08.086 --> 14:22.046 The final big player in this one is Magneto. Because especially at this time. Actually, no, like, not especially this time, because all the time, you just can't have a X Men game without Magneto featuring in it somewhere. 14:22.158 --> 14:36.688 Well, he's the best. You know, he's. He's their greatest villain, you know, because he just. He's one of those villains that, you know, there's a reason that his catchphrase is that he was right. You know, he's like one of those guys that walks the line, and you just. You always want more of him. 14:36.824 --> 14:59.370 In a lot of ways, he's the worst kind of villain for them to be going against, because he's pretty much right 100% of the way. You know, he's so close to them that I feel like the reason why the X Men just can't ever fully beat Magneto is because deep down inside, they don't want him to be wrong. Right. 14:59.410 --> 15:30.500 And, you know, he's got the friendship with their mentor, and, you know, he's. He's always. Sometimes he's running the school, sometimes he's not. You know, we don't. We don't get those complexities necessarily in the video games where he's represented. But, you know, if you're following along, you get that kind of subtext that you can play off of in your head. At the very end of the game, you create this demagnetizer as if that's, you know, enough to stop Magneto, and that's it, you know? 15:31.520 --> 15:42.580 Well, since we beat Magneto, I guess that's all we need to do. So I'm gonna drop some promos for a few other things, and then there's probably gonna be something that will just pull us right back in. 15:47.200 --> 16:01.112 Hello, and welcome to Escape the Mojaverse, an X Men comics podcast where I, Matt Parent, drag my spouse, Allison, that's me, kicking and screaming into the wonderful world of Marvel's merry mutants. 16:01.176 --> 16:02.600 It's really not that intense. 16:02.680 --> 16:04.024 Yeah, that's all just kayfabe. 16:04.072 --> 16:13.038 No wrestling lingo in the promo. What we really are is two nerds, one an expert and one a newbie binging the X Men focusing on comedy and craft. 16:13.134 --> 16:17.646 Exactly. We hardly ever use those Clockwork Orange eye thingies anymore. 16:17.758 --> 16:26.542 Escape the Mojoers and X Men Comics podcasts. Check us out every Monday and Friday. Wherever you get your podcasts, do you. 16:26.566 --> 17:22.280 Find yourself playing older games and wishing that there were new discussions about those games? Enter Tales from the Backlog. Hi, I'm Dave Jackson, and on each episode I'm joined by a guest to break down those games that make be stuck in your ever expanding backlog. Each episode looks at one game in depth, focusing on mechanics, story, music, and other aspects with no spoilers until a clearly marked spoiler wall in the middle. If you've played the game, go ahead and climb that spoiler wall and enjoy in depth story discussions. And if not, jump out when we warn you and maybe go play that game for yourself. We have over 100 episodes in the Feedback, everything from Disco Elysium to Tunic to discussion episodes about how to get into horror games. And if games actually need to be fun or if they have more to offer, I guarantee that there's something in there for everybody. Once again, that's Tales from the Backlog, available wherever your podcasts are found. 17:27.140 --> 18:40.870 Those are some great things to check out, but first, let's finish up here. So, Austin, the past few days I've been thinking about this as, okay, this game came out in 1989, it's for computers. Like, it's a long time ago and I really should have known better. Yes, it's true. This game came out in 1989. When it was released, it was for computers. And computers as powerful as PC gaming is, you're still competing against consoles that are essentially computers in their own way at the time, but double, especially on that now that are specially designed to play games. So I'm telling my wife's like, okay, the context of everything, we should be fine. And then just for some perspective, I went to try to look up some other games that came out in 1989 just so I could get into the right mindset. And of course I'm seeing things like Super Mario Brothers 3 and Double Dragon and these just super iconic games that came out. So I mean, really, where does this one stand in the context of other things that came out around that time? 18:41.170 --> 22:17.250 You know, it is, it is not a good game. It's just not like the combat is clunky, you know, talking about how the evil mutants are represented. They're just practically stick figures who like, you know, casually throw out a punch sometimes and maybe a projectile toad will leap around a little bit. But generally in this game, you want to avoid combat as much as you can because there's no reward for beating any of the bad guys. Really. The biggest hurdle is sometimes you can't pick up an item in the room until all the enemies have been cleared. So you have to engage with the, with the bad guys. But yeah, the combat's horrible. It's, you know, I, I have softened on this game over the years. One, because making games is hard, right? Like, it's just not an easy thing to do. And who knows what kind of time crunch they were on. You know, my understanding of games of that era, especially branded games, they were often had, had to be made in, you know, three to six months. So who knows what the developers were, were wrestling with. You know, that's like my protection of like, who knows. They were probably working very hard over there. However, like, it's a point and click adventure game in like an inventory based game where you're picking up objects, picking up keys to unlock doors, you're solving little puzzles using those objects in your inventory. You're using the mutant powers to solve other puzzles. So like some rooms are too smoky to see in, so storm can summon wind to blow the smoke away, some rooms are dark and Dazzler can brighten them up. And you know, you're swapping from character to character to solve these puzzles. And as far as I know, and my video game knowledge isn't comprehensive, it's one of the first games, at least I've seen that use that puzzle solving idea of the squad of people. You would have like the lost Vikings that would come along later. You would have the Goblins series by Koktel all the way up to the present day of Unavowed by Wajidai Games. This idea of a squad of characters, each of whom have a special ability to solve a series of puzzles. So that core idea is really neat. You have this big murder world funhouse that you're traversing through. And it's colorful for the time you have to give it some kind of benefit of the doubt. But the core of the idea is there. But then you just have other horrible puzzle ideas where, you know, before the break I was talking about the demagnetizer that you have to. You're collecting all these pieces, you put them together. At the end of the game, you defeat Magneto. The problem is if you put it together too soon, it gets put on the ground and you can't pick it back up again. And if you do that magic not at the end of the game, you can go all the way to the end of the game and not realize that you have been soft locked from finishing the game. And there's just tons of instances where you know, you can just accidentally destroy an important item. If you, if any of the X Men die, you can get to the end of the game and it you realize that you can't finish, everyone on the team has to be alive. And so there's a lot of design decisions that you know, was it not tested enough? Like how who thought this was a good idea to create a game that allows this? So it's hard to excuse those things. But at its core, again, that just this idea of the X Men utilizing their powers to solve puzzles is really neat. 22:17.410 --> 22:50.140 And a lot of that stuff can kind of be solved with just like how saves work in today's games. You know, if you're smart and save to multiple files, then you can go back to when all your characters were alive or before you built the demagnetizer or before you went down that ladder over there on the right and go back and fix it. Games also weren't super long like they are now. So, you know, if you have to start over, it's not like you've lost three months worth of playing a Final Fantasy game either. 22:50.300 --> 23:24.340 Yeah, and like often there weren't that many games coming out all at once. So you had time to kind of bang on a game for a while. And so, you know, maybe this was your game. You know, again, the three pack that my dad brought home with Amazing Spider man, this game and Captain America and Spider man and Doctor Doom's Revenge. Another episode you recently did where I, you know, I just had those three games for six months to a year and that's all I had. So I had, you know, I took my time with the X Men game trying to figure it out as bad as it was. 23:24.880 --> 24:17.186 This one though, you can tell that people working on it just enjoy the X Men because you got the good characters in there. You got them using their powers for more than just combat. Like you had to actually think about how to use them. That's why this one is so frustrating to me because it's so close to being really good. And there's just these little things in there that maybe would be solved without even thinking about it if it was made today. Like in 1989, I was three years old, so I don't know what game development was like then it's hard for me to keep things in the right timeline context there because everything that young is just kind of all lumped together for me, which, you know, is true for anybody. 24:17.378 --> 25:00.614 Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, there are things like having. I recently finished the game again and my inventory was filled with items that I still have no idea what they do, like these red herring puzzle items. And that just wouldn't be acceptable in today's like, game design terms of just all these extra items that are just meant to confuse the player. By the time they were still figuring that stuff out, right. Like they. There wasn't this kind of manual for games. It was the kind of the Wild west of developers were trying all kinds of different things. So, you know, you have to give it some leeway that way. 25:00.782 --> 25:04.822 We've gone all this time without even saying the plot of the game, because a lot of the game. 25:04.926 --> 25:06.090 Is there a plot? 25:06.570 --> 25:22.738 There is, in the very most technical sense of the word. Professor X was kidnapped by Magneto in arcade and the X Men have to go rescue him. And yet that's the entire plot, which to be fair, that's the entire plot of a lot of the comics too. So I can't give them too much crap for that. 25:22.874 --> 25:26.590 Yeah, you know, Professor Xavier is always getting into those scrapes, isn't he? 25:27.290 --> 25:27.618 Yeah. 25:27.634 --> 26:07.896 I mean, that's where the comic book kind of helped fill that out. Right. Of giving the characters dialogue and things to say. Because there's no dialogue in this game whatsoever. The characters are never talking to each other. They're never, you know, there's like maybe two painted scenes through the entire game. Like the game over screen is one of them. You know, that's, that's kind of all the story and exposition that you get. They have to do it through their supplemental materials. Like the manual has three pages of small font explanation about the history of the X Men and where they were to that point. Like that's where you're getting your juice from. Not the. Not in the game itself. 26:08.008 --> 26:15.160 And in the game's defense there, that's just how things were done back then. So we can't really hold that against them at all. 26:15.280 --> 26:29.934 Yeah, you just gotta fill in the gaps yourself and go from there, you know, I think not the spoil things. Sorry, but the ending is just a total letdown as well today. It would be a 20 minute cutscene. 26:30.112 --> 26:41.710 So what I'm really wondering in all of this is just how did you get to be the go to person for telling people how to Beat this game. 26:42.650 --> 28:50.102 So I have a blog. It has petered out over the years, as blogs tend to do. But in its heyday, around 2013, I was doing this series of posts that I titled Revenge, where I was going back to games from my childhood and just seeing, was the game bad or did I suck as a kid? And for the most part, the game was bad. And so, for instance, one of the games in that revenge series was an episode that you did recently was Techno Cup Soccer, where also a game with a lot of really great ideas that maybe didn't execute as well as you would want. So I did a revenge series on that box set of those three superhero games, one of which was Madness and Murderworld. And to this day, that post is my number one post of all time. I still get dozens of hits from that silly post that I wrote over 10 years ago. And so at some point, I kept getting emails from people being like, hey, there's literally no walkthrough or FAQ about this game anywhere. How did you beat it? Can you help me figure this part out? Can you help me figure that part out? I got so many of those that I was just like, you know what? I'm just gonna write a walkthrough of my own. So I revisit the game. I think this was probably like six years after that, plus or minus, and I couldn't figure out how I beat the game. Like, I really got stuck. And so probably over a year's time, I was banging on this game. I kept getting stuck on its horrible puzzles. I eventually figured it out. I post the walkthrough on the blog, and again, just to this day, it's cited on the Wikipedia entry for this game. People are still emailing me with questions. One guy asked me for a save file because he just wanted to skip straight to the end and fight Magneto. And so I've become the world's leading expert on this horrible game about the X Men. 28:50.206 --> 28:56.240 And when you say to this day, as I'm looking at this three days ago, the post says it was updated. 28:56.400 --> 29:23.140 In preparation for this post. I was like, man, people still love this stupid thing. So, you know, I was updating it. I hadn't updated the formatting of that blog post in 10 years. And so it was all janky from, like, WordPress have just has evolved over time since I originally made that post. So, like, the bullets were all askew. So I was like, well, you know what? Let's make this thing look good in case somebody listens to the show. And goes and finds that thing. I don't want to be too embarrassed. 29:23.640 --> 29:31.780 Well, that makes me feel a lot better, but also dumb because I spent way too long trying to figure out where the new stuff was a week ago. And then I was looking at it yesterday. 29:33.880 --> 29:44.502 You know, it's like if. If I'm gonna get. I'm now at the point where I maybe writing a blog post a year just as life has gotten busy. So I was like, well, let's keep the. Keep the good stuff fresh while I still can. 29:44.656 --> 30:15.280 But the fact that people are keep jumping into this one and looking at that one post just shows how important X Men is to people and how important things from their childhood. All that nostalgia is when they go back and look like, yeah, this game might not be good, but this was their X Men game growing up. I know people who feel that way about the NES X Men game, and I don't understand that either, but that's their game. That game makes you want to throw up. 30:16.940 --> 30:25.140 Yeah. The Uncanny X Men on the NES is epically bad. At least this one has some smart ideas going for it. 30:25.260 --> 30:35.220 This one seems to be more held back by what the technology was able to pull off rather than people just making bad decisions. 30:35.380 --> 30:59.008 Yeah. And that's why I hedged my bet a little bit about the developers probably not having a lot of time because there's just some things in there that I would have imagined to be hammered down by QA testers and that sort of thing. And there just perhaps wasn't that level of support. Who knows? But I don't know. They also got a comic book. And how many games could say they got a full scale comic book out to go along as in the box? 30:59.184 --> 31:08.752 More than you'd think, but not enough for sure. As you're looking at this one. What things really jump out to you that this game got right about the X Men? 31:08.856 --> 31:53.840 It's one of the disappointing things, not terribly much. You know, it's the variety of powers, the fact that one of the things that makes a good superhero team is everyone's got their niche. And so sometimes the game actually highlights that maybe this superhero makeup wasn't always the most coordinated. So, like in the game, Wolverine and Colossus and Cyclops can all break things, and Nightcrawler and Storm are the agile ones. And so there's some overlap between the powers that. But for the most part, they all have their niches. And that's where it really shines with this particular makeup, is that everyone's got their job. 31:53.960 --> 32:01.952 Other than that all the characters in it exist and look as close as they can look with the graphical capabilities of the time. 32:02.056 --> 32:36.308 For sure. The Evil Mutants are the biggest bummer. The fact that some of the evil mutants are just the coolest. They're great villains. The Blob, Pyro, Avalanche, you know, just like the White Queen. And they're not represented beyond the, you know, the fidelity of the pixels. Their powers aren't really represented and there's certainly no dialogue or anything like that. So, you know, I wish. I definitely wish there was more of that. Just to show off the kind of the clash of hero versus villain and their powers. 32:36.434 --> 32:43.280 Is that what you would say is what this game mostly gets wrong about X Men? Or is there something else that you think is even worse? 32:43.440 --> 33:19.014 What it mostly gets wrong is probably what a lot of superhero video games get wrong is that it's more than combat, it's more than action. It's the human element. It's dialogue. You need dialogue, you need dialogue trees, you need conversation quests, you know, story. That's at least half of why we come come the comic books is the. The story, you know, the gorgeous art, all that stuff, of course. But, you know, you keep coming back and back as you're relating to these characters beyond them punching guys. 33:19.142 --> 33:36.976 And on top of that, X Men is a team. They work together. That just doesn't really happen in this game outside of, you know, you can switch characters, but they're still on the screen. There's the one character that you're playing as and everybody else is just gone. 33:37.168 --> 34:15.170 Yeah, that's a great point. It's kind of a funny point of that's often a storyline with the X Men, right. Of whenever they go off on their own or they're not working together, they fail. And so in a way that this game highlights, that they never interact with each other, their powers never interact in a. In a meaningful way. Where a lot of times in comic book, that's the lesson that's being learned, is when Wolverine goes and charges off on his own, it's not always a good thing when they're in combat, they're the best when they're hurling each other at the Sentinels or working together to defeat the villain. 34:15.330 --> 34:27.560 All of that being said, would you give somebody this game and the manual and the comic that came with it, so they do get the full experience, but would you give them this game as a bit of a primer core if they were interested in getting into X Men? 34:28.100 --> 35:05.104 No. No. It's I think, actually. So I'm a game designer by night, and I think I would give them this game as something to kind of study as a game designer, because I think it's interesting piece of heritage for where games kind of came from. And it's interesting to kind of pick apart why it's good and it's bad. I think there's some really meaty bits to the game. You can really kind of let your imagination run wild of what would Madness and Murder World look like today? And that would look pretty cool. 35:05.152 --> 35:26.480 I think I would give them the comic and maybe the game manual, tell them you should look at those. I would give them the game and say, if you really want to, you can play this, but I'm not suggesting it at all, but definitely have a look at the comic because just a real quick. Hey, here's who the characters are. Is pretty much what you want in an intro thing anyway. 35:26.560 --> 35:44.366 Well, in the manual has these great sections where they. They break down the bios of each of the X Men and the. And the villains. And as I mentioned earlier, that really captured me as a kid, just like these. These little sections on each of these characters who I'd never met before. And I want to learn more about them. 35:44.438 --> 35:55.822 And finally, if you could take the basic story of this game of here's a team that has to go save their leader, but the team is made up of, let's say, like three or four Muppets. What Muppets are you putting on that team? 35:55.926 --> 36:10.078 Oh, my God. I mean, it have to be Rizzo and Gonzo just because they're the best. And then maybe Fozzie, I don't know, you need kind of a straight man. So what's the eagle guy? What's his name? 36:10.214 --> 36:11.214 Sam the Eagle. 36:11.342 --> 36:18.382 Yeah. I mean, you need the straight guy to Rizzo and Gonzo's insanity. So I think that would be my trio. 36:18.526 --> 36:23.582 Sam the Eagle has been getting a lot of love lately, and I don't know where that's coming from, but I. 36:23.606 --> 36:35.054 Love it because you need the straight guy. You need somebody to take the hits and to be overly serious, like comically so. In Sam the Eagle, he just does it. 36:35.062 --> 37:03.710 Well, it's just weird, though, because when I first started asking people these questions, it was animal, animal, animal all the time. And for the past few months, it's been Sam the Eagle all the time. So it's just weird how everybody's thought process is going, especially because peek behind the curtain here, I'm like a month or two ahead on recording. So like, Austin doesn't know what people have said lately to me about what it is. He just knows about what's been released. 37:03.840 --> 37:08.738 Give that eagle a movie, he's got a comeback coming. We're all feeling it, we just don't know it. 37:08.794 --> 37:15.270 Well, Austin, it has been great talking to you about all of this. If people want to hear more from you, where else can they find you? Around the Internet? 37:15.770 --> 37:41.312 The best place is probably patientrock.com I'm working on a few games actually, just to give my own horrible pitch. Inspired by this game, I've been working on an old school text adventure based on X Men in Murder World. It's been a fun thing to kind of mess around with. It's probably about 80% done. But if you are interested in testing it, reach out to me on that website, patientrock.com and I'd love to hear your thoughts. 37:41.456 --> 39:56.690 And as always, we'll have links down in the show notes because clicking links is so much easier than trying to remember how to spell things for sure. As always, if you want to hear more from me, the best place to do that is over on playcomics.com where there's links to all the social media things, which mostly consists of Blue sky because that's mostly where I am. But there's links to other stuff too, which technically exists. But Blue sky, that's where you want to go. It's like a happy day. Or you know, if you want to say something about the happiest song in the world, then hey Mr. Blue sky and other things that I don't have the rights for. So I'm not going to sing any more of the song. Plus my singing voice is horrible. If you want to be on the show like Austin here, then check out the link that I have down in the show notes. It has a list of all the things I'm looking to get booked the soonest. It's still a bunch of really weird stuff right now, which is fun because then you get to come talk about something really weird and maybe probably be the first person to talk about it. Or at least the last person for a while. Either one of those is a good option if you ask me. That list is also on the website, so you know, you can check it out there too. If you want to help support the show, then you can be like Dan McMahon or oh no, look, class and give the show money. Because running a podcast does cost money unfortunately, but it is cheaper than going to the flea market every week. So I'm going to keep doing it no matter what. Or you can just share the show with other people that you know. Friends or enemies or that weird aunt that won't leave you alone. Then get her to listen to me and then she'll want to talk to me. And don't, okay, don't share with your weird aunt if she's going to be able to find me, but otherwise, yeah, that's fine. I don't care. Don't forget that Play Comics is a part of the guineagic.com network home such wonderful shows as Legends of Shield which I'm on and you can be listening to. And what if you were listening to it, you would hear us talking about what if right now. Except not right now because you're listening to this podcast, but right after you finish listening to this one, you could be listening to us talk about what if? Because that's how things work. If you cue it up correctly, if you like the music that I'm rudely talking on top of right now and not stumbling over my words for and everything, then you can head on over to BackingTrack GG to check out all the music they have over there and maybe use some of it for your project. Because your project is cool and needs code. Cool music and they make cool music, so it's a really good thing to do. But most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics and go find yourself a new favorite character.