Chris: I'm Stephen Johndrew from the official Gunnegeek.com show, a weekly geek news podcast that is a part of the Gunageek network. Just like the show you're checking out now, shows on the network are individually owned, and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other awesome, geeky shows@Gunageeknetwork.com. And welcome to Play comics, where once again, I'm Chris, and we're here talking about a video game based on a comic and how well it represents that source material. Today I am here with Phil, one of the wonderful hosts of Pixel lit, the first one I've been able to sucker into coming on the show. I'm still working on the rest of the cast here. Phil, how are you today?
Phil: I'm doing great, Chris. And how are you?
Chris: I'm so excited for this. I know we've had to push this back a time or two just because life is stupid and decides that it knows better than us about what to do, but we're finally making this happen. Before we jump into everything that we're really going into today, though, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you guys do over on Pixel lit?
Phil: Oh, absolutely. It's the kind of show that your viewers, listeners would be very familiar with, because what we do is cover adaptations and novelizations of video games. We have covered everything from wizards and warriors to Halo. We have looked at old 70s adaptations. We have actually read through the very first video game novelization. We've talked to the guy who helped produce it, and we've talked to the guy who wrote it. And we've also covered the most modern Halo books as they have come out. We talk a lot about adaptation. We talk about why changes have to be made sometimes and whether or not they were good changes. And we take the piss quite a bit and have a lot of fun doing it. So we have a lot of fun.
Chris: It's good and fun fact. You have had a friend of the show, Scott Icewonder on, which was the first episode I went to, because there's Scott. Why wouldn't I listen to that one first?
Phil: Absolutely. That stands out, actually, as one of my favorite episodes. We covered the worlds of power kids novelization of Mega man two, and Scott is an old friend of the pod. We've both known Scott for years, and we were thrilled to have him on. It was a great episode.
Chris: Anybody who has listened to Scott's episode here, you pretty much know exactly what you're going to get. Jumping over to pixel it and listening to Scott's episode there, which, now that I say that might sound kind of bland, but it's actually, I think, a perfect summarization because Scott is Scott no matter where he is, and that's part of why I really like his stuff. Yeah, but we're not here today to.
Phil: Talk about absolutely Scott. No, no, we're not. Damn it.
Chris: We'll manage to slip it in somewhere later because today we are here looking at the Sega Genesis game that I should have covered a long time ago, but I didn't realize it was a game because Wikipedia failed me. Wikipedia? How could you fail me on a nerd list of things, of all things? We are looking at Mystic Defender, which, much like how I always pronounce Scott's last name wrong, it is based on a japanese manga, peacock king in America or Kujaku o baby in Japan.
Phil: I'm sorry, Peacock King.
Chris: Yes. That's what I saw on the Internet in multiple places.
Phil: That's amazing.
Chris: Basically, make up your own reasoning, because I have no idea.
Phil: I got nothing.
Chris: Taking this largely from Wikipedia because this was a hard one to try to find any kind of research on, like, firsthand research. Anyway, getting those primary documents, it's very important because you don't have that super biased look going into things. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that here because I just could not find myself a clean enough website that I trusted to where I could get my hands on an english version of this, because I can't read Japanese at all. So that would have been completely useless. But what I was able to do was find some. I've watched a few episodes of the anime, watched a bunch of videos of basically summarizing everything, and then we had our big break of between. Now we're supposed to record. So this is going to be a very fun episode of trying to remember everything. What exposure had, you had.
Phil: We're sharp. We're on our game.
Chris: I know, right? This is how professional podcasters do it. Everybody, what was your exposure to the. I'm going to have to call it Peacock King because I know I can say that. What is your exposure to the Peacock King manga? Anime side of things growing up?
Phil: Oh, zero.
Chris: Yes.
Phil: We're on the same page. Yeah. I can't speak for your own generational situation, but I'm of the age that finding anime and manga in my childhood was actually really difficult. And you had to have a friend who had a cool older brother or something like that. And every now and then when I got to high school, thereabouts, they would have a little bit of anime here and there on Cartoon Network later at night, and eventually I got to watch slayers and Akira and that kind of thing. But by the time this magical kingdom we live in now that has barnes and nobles that have multiple shelves of obscure and exotic manga, it had slipped completely past do. And this is totally appropriate, because when I do go back and look at those mangas and kind of idly flip through them, I notice a lot of the same tropes and overwrought sensibilities that I learned from japanese video games in the 80s. So it all kind of came full circle eventually.
Chris: I'm 36. I'm not afraid to say that out here in public. And so I'm assuming I'm not that far off from you, but looking through all of this, the anime that I.
Phil: Had, I am a 40 year old man.
Chris: Yes, we're right there. So, I mean, much like you, there was Pokemon speed racer reruns and Toonami doing its thing, and that was about it. Whatever version of Dragon Ball it was, dragon Ball for some reason was special and didn't get made fun of for that, at least where I was growing up. But like anything else, it was, hey, why are you watching those weird cartoons? Now? If we had known about Peacock King growing up and anybody watching that, that would have been crazy, because this one is, let's just say, like, evil. My hero. Academia. Maybe the story of fikaking, which, again, I'm pulling this largely from Wikipedia. Everybody, I'm sorry, I don't like when people read stuff to you, but it's what we can do right now. Kujaku is a buddhist monk who specializes in exorcism and devil hunting. And if I saw that today, knowing it's a new thing, I'm sold right there. He is a member of the Urakoya, a secret organization in Japan that specializes in demon hunting. He confronts a guy whose name I'm not even going to try. A secret level organization led by the teachers of eight leaves. The goal of the teachers of eight leaves is to revive Peacock King and Snake queen and allow them to fight each other to give birth to the ultimate dark fire kana. During the story, the teachers of eight leaves tried various methods to achieve their goal, but were ultimately defeated by Kujaku and his friends. So, yeah, all the tropes altogether.
Phil: All of them. All of them. Yeah, every last one.
Chris: What kind of saves this, though, from being a super, like, oh, no, you're just relying on tropes. Is this started getting published in the weekly Young jump in 1985 and ran there from 2009. So back in 85. Yeah, back in 85. When you're looking at this, you haven't had all the time for the tropes to build up all of their. Oh, no, you can't do this anymore. I mean, it's kind of like watching Fist of the North Star now. You go in and this thing, it's super tropey, but it's the reason why everything else is doing it kind of thing.
Phil: Right. It's less about tropes and more about this is where it all began. This is actually a foundational text, basically.
Chris: Right. And watching through the bit of the anime that I did watch, I had to watch this through the lens of not only am I watching a really old animated version of this, I'm also watching a really bad YouTube recording of it. So who knows what kind of errors in animation and stuff are caused by just somebody essentially taping it themselves and having it copied over and over and over and how much of it was actually animation errors.
Phil: Oh, yeah, that does make a difference.
Chris: But this is definitely one that I want to go back and watch more of. I just have to do it. Not when my wife is around because she did not appreciate the violence level in there.
Phil: Okay. I got the impression we'll get to it with the game, but you can kind of tell that the source material probably has a bit of a vicious streak to it. Yeah.
Chris: This is the real reason why I compared it to my hero academia before evil version of it anyway, is because for anybody who's watched that, if you can jump straight to, like, season four ish, where it kind of starts to get darker real quick and more violent and everything, that's about where this one starts. So for people like my wife, she can sit there and watch my hero academia now, and I can't remember if it's five or six we're about to start, but she's already emotionally invested with the characters, so she's fine. She can deal with the violence there because she wants to see what happens with the characters. Watching this, though, starting there, she can't take it. But I also wake up earlier than her on the weekends especially, so I can just watch it then. So not a big deal.
Phil: That's the best part about marriage, is finding each other's personal time zone, so to speak. And it's like, okay, we've got this one little pocket here where I can go do my trippy thing and she's going to be asleep or whatever.
Chris: I really wish I could go get my hands on a copy of English translated manga here. Because even if it's bad fan translations, which say a bad translation, not that fan translations themselves are bad. I just want to see what's going on on that side of things. Because I know they got to change a bunch of stuff when they flip it over into animation, too.
Phil: Oh, yeah. I mean, it's everything about the difference between. One of my few examples that I can draw from in terms of the adaptation from manga to anime is Akira. And the difference between the two is monumental. And they're both magnificent in their own way. But, yeah, there's a big difference there.
Chris: I should go read that. I don't know how many times I've seen the movie now because it's multiple, but I should go read it. I don't know why I haven't done that yet.
Phil: Oh, it's outstanding. It's wonderful. Yeah. I've only got experience in both manga and anime for, like, the two big classics, Akira and Neon Genesis Evangelion. So that's it for me.
Chris: It's a really fun thing, though. When you go watch anime, are you a sub person or a dub person?
Phil: I'm a dub person more than any. No, sorry. A sub person. Because that's how I watch anything that's foreign, I have to read it. Foreign. To me.
Chris: We are officially a dub household because my wife gets so focused in on the words that she misses what's going on. But we also have the subs on at the same time. So seeing the choices that they make there between what they tell the voice actors to say versus what they have in the subtitles gets really interesting, too.
Phil: I think one of the more interesting moments for me in terms of watching anime and getting a bit of localization was I lived in Pittsburgh right outside of. After I graduated from college. And my neighbor was a japanese guy. And he found out that I didn't watch a lot of anime, that I didn't know much. And so he would invite me over in the afternoons to watch his favorite shows with him. And he would explain the context of why this is funny or why they made a certain decision. I remember there was one called. I think it's called Azumanga Dayo. It's like the little schoolgirls comedy thing. And one of the girls, we were watching it dubbed and they gave her this thick southern accent. And she was the only one who had that. And he explained to me, I think she was from Okinawa or something like that. So it was like this reputation that she would have had among the Japanese was similar to maybe what a person from the Deep south would have if they moved out to the midwest or something along those lines. And I missed that. I wish I still had access to this. Even. I can't even find him on Facebook just to sit down and go, all right, tell me more about this, because this stuff's fascinating.
Chris: It's great. Well, I can't imagine how that would be at.
Phil: No, no. As a person from Georgia, I wouldn't know, either.
Chris: I am buried deep into Charleston, South Carolina, so, yes, we have it all over the place.
Phil: Okay. Yeah, I'm in Greenville.
Chris: Well, tell my friend's mom hi, because from what he says, everybody knows everybody. Anyway.
Phil: It is a shockingly tight knit community. I'm originally from Savannah, so I'm a little more close to your side of the low country and everything like that. And, yeah, moving here, it was an eye opener. It's very different here.
Chris: Well, with that crazy cultural connection we didn't think about, we're going to figure out how we haven't talked to each other before while I drop some promos for a few other shows.
Phil: Hello, everybody. I'm steampunk link. And I'm Emmy Zero. And we are the hosts of the Sinescapades podcast, a chronological journey through the north american super Nintendo library, three games ish at a time. We play them briefly, judge them harshly, and rank them. As we do that, we go into the history of the games in question, who made them, when they were made, and any interesting stories that surround them. And we'll also probably sprinkle in. Hey, everyone.
Thanks for checking out this podcast. It's probably not aliens. This is a podcast where we talk about ancient astronaut theory and the show ancient aliens, and we talk about how exactly right they are about everything that they propose. Right, Tristan?
Chris: Yeah. Then I go insane and try to show why it's not aliens. But it is extremely interesting history and archaeology that you'll definitely find interesting.
Yeah. Okay, so, basically, Tristan's job is to ruin our fun by teaching us about history and interesting facts about ancient civilizations.
Chris: Sorry about that.
My name is Scott, and my job is to sit here and be a surrogate listener like yourself, taking in all this information and occasionally making jokes that people groan at.
Chris: You will definitely groan. Yes. But we do have a really fun time. We do learn a lot about this amazing world we live in, and we sometimes get really sad about the injustices of the world. So if that sounds like your bag.
No, don't lead with that, Tristan. It's a very fun podcast, for sure. Absolutely. No sadness here. Can't think of an episode that ended that way.
Chris: But if you want to check it out, we're going to be on iTunes and all the other places where podcasts happen.
Phil: Yeah.
Please subscribe, please follow. Do all the things. We have new episodes every single week, and we get to talk so much about the aliens that once visited us and left clues for us to solve their alien mysteries.
Chris: So come check us out. And remember, the truth is out there. Probably. Those are some great shows to check out. But first, let's finish up with this one. So, Phil, this is the important part. Let's do the game. What was it that really sucked you into loving this game? Because from what I remember, you saw the list and said, ooh, ooh, ooh, I want that one.
Phil: This one. For me, mystic defender was a game that I only ever played when I went to my neighbor's house. We lived in Germany because I'm an army brat. And so you got to know all the Americans in your apartment complex pretty well, and you would just kind of trade game cartridges and that sort of thing. Everyone had an NES. But the one friend who was like, when I look back, he felt wizard and ancient to me. But I was eight or nine at the time, so he was probably ten or eleven. I guarantee you he didn't have more than two years on me. But his family had a Sega genesis, and that was mind blowing for me. And it was kind of spooky and haunting. Those games were kind of creepy and weird. Like, we'd play altered beast and it would leave me kind of grossed out. It was such a strange game. And this was one of those games that he had, and I had honestly forgotten all about it until I saw it on the list. And it was one of those games that, looking back at it, I went and watched through some playthroughs after we talked about it and everything like that, and I went, oh, wow, this is heavily educational. I sucked at this game. I didn't know there were various fire types and weapons. I was just stuck on the one. I was just stuck on the one. And I don't think I ever got past, like, maybe the second level. And it really did creep me out. You watch this stuff, it's got a serious Contra vibe to it, don't you think?
Chris: It does. And knowing the history of what it's based on really makes that make a lot more sense. But this game in itself, it almost doesn't matter if you know what it's based on, because it's just weird and cool. Yeah.
Phil: I honestly think that you and I feel this way about a lot of adaptations and a lot of things, but it's honestly kind of better, I think, if you don't know, because it's so esoteric and alien and strange. I think to use that example again, you play Contra, and Contra is just an insane shooting game that happens to rip off HR Geeger at every opportunity. And if you found out that there was this deep source material, a manga and an anime and everything else that went with it, that explained it all away, I don't know if I would want to watch it because my own weird ass imagination was kind of keeping me more heavily entertained.
Chris: This was a game that came out for the Sega Genesis the end of November in 1989. Took until January of 1990 to get over to us and Europe at some point in 1990 because they didn't keep good records back then. So much for Europe. Everything was late. It almost didn't matter. No, but the entire point of this game is to go through and defeat the sorcerer Zareth after he kidnaps somebody. And your basic anime kind of platformy game like that.
Phil: Again, there was kind of that level of just because I didn't know what this was based on. I think also part of it is being that age where you're not necessarily looking for connections, you're not looking for plot points. I think if I was 14 and I played it for the first time, I'd probably have a zillion questions. But because I was some little kid, if it was 89, let's assume that this game had just come out. When I was playing it, I would have been like seven years old, eight years old at most, if it the american version for 1990. So, yeah, again, there's that spooky weirdness to it that I didn't get very far in this game, but you can tell it stuck with me. And it's based almost entirely on the aesthetic and that vibe. There's a strange vibe to almost the source material.
Chris: Like, ignore that for this part. But it's almost like looking at Chican, the forever man. Like anybody who has played that game, they remember that game.
Phil: Yes, absolutely. That game haunts me. Holy crap.
Chris: Yeah. And much like you with this one, when I played Chican, I had no idea what was going. Like, I knew that those stupid doors had to do something, but I never figured out what they could.
Phil: Was. I think I feel like that was just a theme with Sega Genesis. I feel like now Nintendo games are weird. Don't get me wrong. There's all kinds of weird stuff that comes out of Nintendo, but I feel like they saved the stuff that the Nintendo executives said, like, come on, guys, we're selling this to little kids. We can't go that far. And they just went, and Sega was off inside going, we'll take it. Give us your freaky, freaky game. We'll be happy to put it on.
Chris: That's why I'm so happy that I have a genesis. I had a genesis while I was growing up. I didn't have a ton of the weird games growing up, but I picked them up later and just so good.
Phil: Oh, yeah, I was a giant rpg fanatic. Was still am. And for that reason, I did, as a kid, have a lot of sadness that I did not own a super Nintendo. I didn't own a super Nintendo until I was an adult. I'd have to go over to my friend's houses to play it, but we got a genesis, and I don't know, man, between shining forests and the genesis version of Shadow Run and all those ookie spooky games, I feel like I got something special out of it.
Chris: Much like with everything else that has to get moved from one medium to another, this one did have some localization things. You go from Kujaku as your character to a guy named Joe Yamato, which. Okay, that's a choice.
Phil: Yeah, Joe, I remember. Yeah, yeah. The wizard Joe.
Chris: That's the kind of thing that I would name my d d character, except I would have a lot more fun spelling it.
Phil: Yeah. J-E-A-U or something like that.
Chris: This game was developed and published by Sega themselves back when they were doing stuff on their own. Mean, you gotta love what they did with this one. Sega, when they had a hit back then, they had a hit, and that was this one. Unfortunately, I was not able to figure out which team at Sega specifically was responsible for this one. So I don't know if it was like, the sonic people, or. I guess the Sonic people are the only ones I know the team name of, but I don't know if it was them or. I mean, when Sega makes a hit, they're.
Phil: I mean, you cannot claim that Sega didn't just give it their all. They absolutely were. I'm willing to bet that if you just go through the catalog of Nintendo games versus Sega games, there's just going to be a higher ratio of kind of cash grab crap in the Nintendo pile, whereas Sega had games that might have been a little tougher or a little harder to access, especially for tougher to access, especially for if you're a child in those days. But honestly, I feel like the quality was there. Sega had some high quality stuff and long before Sonic. Don't get me wrong, we all love Sonic, but they hit a quality bar that still gets. They're an unsung hero in my eyes.
Chris: So as far as games that we've looked at on the show already, Sega had their hand in making adventures of Batman and Robin, asterisks in the great rescue, chuck on the Forever man, dinosaurs for hire, ex mutants, Garfield caught in the act, Spider man versus kingpin and web of Fire, and the two x Men games, plus game masters legacy. And, I mean, that's a pretty good collection list right there. And if that's all you had, I think the only real complaint from anybody would be, why don't you have Sonic?
Phil: And even then, it's probably just because that's what they expect you to have. Everyone's played Sonic, but how many people have done the weird reset secret to continue forward in the first x men game? None of us. That's the answer to that. We all played up until Mojo's world and just dealt with it.
Chris: This is hard. How many hits does he have to take? I'd give up. Yeah, that was the story of all of my friends.
Phil: Oh, yeah. That game was impossible. It was ridiculous, and we didn't know why. And then all of us at some point, as adults went, wait, this is how you. What's wrong with these people?
Chris: What are you doing? And then you have that one friend that somehow had a model three genesis and they just physically could not beat the game.
Phil: We didn't have the Internet. We didn't have resources to find out exactly why everything wasn't working. If we did, we wouldn't have blown into the NES cartridges like chumps and ruined the pins.
Chris: Yeah, but then I wouldn't find them at the flea market and being able to clean them with basic chemicals and take their non working hundred dollar rpg and having it for me.
Phil: Look, I'm not saying that it's all downsides here, Chris. I'm just saying, okay, I can get behind that.
Chris: Looking at the game here, though, you're looking at this. I mean, you're a sorcerer. So you've got your little magic spells that you can get. You're starting with normal, and then you can start getting little more powerful shots and shooting in different directions and everything. And because this is a 90s game, even, okay, it's an 80s game either way, because they both work. You have your screen clearing spell that goes, and this thing just screams arcade game all over the place. Which I say lovingly, because I do love that. Yeah. Do you have this game right now in your house?
Phil: Oh, I wish. I do not. I actually looked it up just out of curiosity and finding this one. This costs a bright and shiny penny, if I'm recalling correctly. Let me see what we're looking at here. Mystic defender. Because this was not a big game. This was not a popular game, as good as it was. Okay, that's not so bad. If you just wanted the cartridge, you can get it for about $20. That's not so bad.
Chris: And Sega games, for the most part, you've got those clamshell plastic cases. So go find yourself a stupid sports game.
Phil: They lasted forever.
Chris: Or go buy Sonic two for the twelveth time just to get the case.
Phil: Yeah, absolutely. No, it's not bad. Honestly. I think what was interesting about this game from, it's so funny because like I mentioned before, I was clearly very bad at this game because I don't remember the fact that as the game progresses, you are slowly unlocking and acquiring new powers that you're cycling through, because like you said, you've got like a flamethrower and something that'll go in all directions. The screen changer and all that stuff. It's like I was looking at it going, wow, he's a pretty dumb kid. That's awesome. Great. Good to know.
Chris: Missed that.
Phil: But it looks pretty great. It looks pretty advanced, honestly, for its time.
Chris: I might need to go try to stream this one because looking at these crazy old games like this, it's amazing how much you can see now. And even without going and looking through the manual or anything, just knowing because of other games, knowing what kind of things should be there and going out and trying to look for them, versus when we were eight and nine and just playing through and never seeing anything.
Phil: There's so much that we totally missed. I think that's the most fun thing about being an older gamer in this day and age, where you can revisit those things and go, was that always there? I feel like I probably should have noticed that inevitably you didn't.
Chris: Or the other fun thing of, I haven't played this game since I was twelve, but I can still bust through the whole thing by memory.
Phil: Yes. Just pure sense memory. Just like my eyes aren't even open. I don't even remember. Oh, look, there it is. I beat the game just like that.
Chris: This one, though. There's just something about early 90s, late 80s Sega games that the look of them, the feel of how they played, just the entire sense of the seganess of them that keeps drawing me in. And on one hand, I'm really annoyed that I missed this one on the list when I was talking about Sega games, going roughly chronologically like I do. But I'm glad that I can take this one and jump back and kind of talk about it from the sense of how I would have to play it now and going back with a lot more gaming sensibilities and being able to really appreciate it for what it is.
Phil: Yeah, without question, there is so much to the idea of revisiting these games, years gone by, and having, like you said, that foundational text underneath you all of a sudden, and you play them again. And some of them age magnificently. Like Bionic Commando, I'm convinced is one of the just most perfect NES games ever made because it still feels so good to play. The physics are still so good. There's so much about it that absolutely still works. And then you get to games that are classics, quote unquote, like Half Life. And it's nearly unplayable because it requires you to have your fingers on 40 different keyboard buttons at the same time to do every different little thing. And I remember being good at doing that, but those days are long gone.
Chris: And that's one of the reasons why I really like looking at these with people who experience them before, whether it be the game or the comic or both, however kind of mix up you have in there, because I can go back and play early PS one games with no analog stick at all because that just didn't exist yet. And it doesn't bother me because that's how I grew up playing. But you get my little brother, who's like six years younger than me, and he can't do it because by the time he was able to do anything, there was an analog stick.
Phil: Yeah, it changes everything. I remember my freshman year of college, my girlfriend got me an Xbox, like the first Xbox, and I hadn't had a new game console. I had never had a PlayStation. I never had a gameCube. It probably went back to the 16 bit era. And so suddenly I'm moving my head with one joystick and moving my body with the other, which is second nature to me. But in that moment, playing a demo of time chasers two, I remember thinking, oh, dear God, my girlfriend spent so much money on this. I'm never going to be able to play this. Oh, no. Which I'm sure is a pretty common occurrence for anyone at that point in their lives, but now it's just second nature.
Chris: Since we both don't really have a ton of experience with the anime or the manga, we're going to have to switch things up a little bit. But looking back on your memories of the game, what about it makes you want to go figure out what's going on in that source material?
Phil: I think you said it really well with the saganess of it. My curiosity lingers on. The idea of you pointed out that the anime, at very least, is pretty brutal and the game was really spooky. And there is this strange Genesis mega drive ness of the game. Kind of a contra HR Geeger, mystic gory, strange body horror thing. The bosses all have all kinds of body horror issues going on. It's fascinating. And so how much of that is taken directly from the manga or the anime? And how much of that is them trying to adapt the feeling of it? Because there's a value to that too. Just because you can't recreate it moment for moment or spec for spec, you still try to recreate the feeling. I wonder, honestly how successful they were.
Chris: And honestly, that's what I was thinking with it, too. I specifically want to go back in there and see what characters did they have to squish together because they wanted gameplay aspects to work? That's the main thing for me. We see characters getting squished together all the time going from books to movies, because they just don't have time to introduce five characters who each do one tiny little thing. But that tiny little thing is really important, so it has to be in there. So I want to know what characters in here just kind of got lost in time and translation because they only had so much memory on the cart.
Phil: Yeah, I couldn't agree more, because you also see with these things sometimes that it's kind of like a one shot in a way, that they introduce a bunch of new characters to interact with your main protagonist or something like that. Stuff that is never going to be touched on ever again in the source material was never touched on before, won't be touched on after this. It's just kind of a blank slate for our protagonist to play in. Or is this actually some sort of dedicated adaptation of the source material with maybe some, like you said, some composite characters or something?
Chris: And if you had somebody who you wanted to try to get into a peacock king fandom with you, would you give them this game first, or would you just drag them straight to the anime and the manga?
Phil: I think I would have to give them the game first so that they're on the same. On a similar ground to me, at least, so that the context of what we're about to look at is similar, that we can kind of ooh and awe over the same weirdness and the same decisions that were made, I would absolutely have to do that. In fact, I'm getting to the point where the more we talk about this, the more I'm going to contact Kevin, the other host of Pixel it, and be like, we might have to do this as a Patreon goal or something. This looks weird.
Chris: I'm going to have to kind of do, though, with this. For me, I'm going to have to do what my wife did with wheel of time. And for anybody who doesn't know, Wheel of Time is like this 15 book Giant fantasy series, and that's all you need to know for what I'm about to say. But after book ten or so, there is a prequel to book one that came out, and my wife was reading them from before that. So she didn't get to read that prequel until after book ten. But when she had me start reading the series and she had me start with the prequel, just because she wanted to see what different things I thought. So I think I would purposefully not let them play the game first, just because I wanted to see what they thought of everything with absolutely no context, going into the anime and the manga, and then bring them over to the game and see how they react to that.
Phil: That's really interesting. That's an interesting choice. And I tell you, I'm actually in the middle of something similar with my wife, who had she watched the prequels, the Star wars prequels, like when she was a kid, when they came out, but she doesn't remember squad about them. She never watched the original trilogy, and I think she watched one of the new ones. She knows nothing. She knows nothing. She is about as blank of a slate as you can get in this world. And we are actually watching all nine movies of the original three trilogies, and we're doing them in universe chronological order. So we just finished the prequel trilogy last night, and I told her, I said, I'm going to be very interested to see if. Because she hated them and she has sense. But I'm very curious to see, though, if the whole thing is going to seem very silly to her, even the originals, if it's going to prove that this idea, that this is just rose colored lenses for me, who has been watching this stuff and loving it, since I was a little kid. How much of this is actual quality and how much is it? The nostalgia machine giving my brain Scooby snacks.
Chris: Listeners have no idea how much my eyes lit up when you said that, because I really wish I could get my hands on a small child legally. Because you can start the prequels when they're so much younger and have them not watch episode three, see the lava, and instantly know that Anakin's going to fall in. There is.
Phil: There is absolutely something to that. You'll see it on TikTok and stuff like that. Every now and then, someone will actually record the moment their kid sees. Like, for example, Darth Vader saying, no, I am your father. Watching the kid's first reaction to it, and some of them are everything you hope they're going to be like. There's this sense of gasp and horror and what it is magnificent that right there alone is worth having a kid for. And now that I've said that on tape, the Government is going to find me and make sure that I never reproduce. So goodbye to that dream.
Chris: Well, that's why we have videos of other people doing it, so that we do not have to have kids and we can just have our fur babies and be fine. Yeah.
Phil: Very smart.
Chris: But to ask you a question, as we close things out about possibly the most important franchise in the entire world, who's your favorite? Oh.
Phil: You really are coming with the.
Chris: Hard stuff, aren't you?
Phil: You're just going straight for the jugular. I respect. I don't know if you can hear that. Ripley heard you. She's going nuts with the possibilities. All of the possibilities. Oh, man. I think. Oh, gosh. Because I used to watch the 60s tv show as a kid and it messed me up. That was a weird freaking show. I think, though, if I had to go with any of them, it would probably be Gonzo. I just have to go with him. He always had some of the best lines. He was banging a chicken openly in modern society and not caring about it. Who else can claim that but the greatest of all muppets? Best friends with a rat. I think he was probably my favorite. I think animal makes a close call to it as well. I can recall days in my more barfly days, going out and tying one on several times and chasing whatever girl I had a crush on at the time around the bar screaming, Warman. Warman. So I have a certain connection with him. That's a good question, Chris. All right, what about you? I need to know. I need to know what your stance.
Chris: Of this is, lately, I have been feeling Oscar the grouch. Not because I'm being grouchy, but because I like what I like, and people need to just leave me alone and let me like. I mean, Oscar just doesn't care what anybody thinks. He's going to say what needs to be said. He's going to tell everybody that the tuning is the best part of the symphony, and it doesn't matter if it's the popular opinion. He's going to like what he likes and whatever. Plus, he's friends with an elephant, and I just think elephants are cool.
Phil: I mean, that is cool. That's a good enough reason. Yeah. Much respect to Oscar. He's living his truth. And how many of us can say the same?
Chris: Well, I mean, we can, because we have a podcast, so we get to do that.
Phil: We can, obviously, yes, but disarmingly few outside of this community.
Chris: Well, Phil, it has been great talking to you about all this. If people want to hear more from you, where else can they find you around the Internet?
Phil: Oh, well, you can find me personally on Twitter at he makes monsters. But you can also find my podcast, Pixel lit, which I host with my dear friend Kevin. We have a new episode every week. You can find us on Twitter, on YouTube, at pixelit Pod. Pixellitpod, and you can find Pixelit anywhere. Podcasts are raised and processed and slaughtered for their delicious meat. That is all there's to it. We have been at this for almost two years, probably. Actually, by the time this episode comes out, we will have celebrated our two year anniversary. We just reached 100 episodes, and we have not stopped. We have done an episode a week for almost two years now. And I keep telling people it was either this or start, like, a weezer cover band or something, because that's the age we're at. This is our midlife crisis, and it's cheaper than a Lamborghini or a 22 year old.
Chris: I mean, my thing was either this or keep going to the flea market and picking up video games. So this is a lot cheaper. And I get to sleep in.
Phil: Yeah, they see. Yeah, that's good thinking. That's really good thinking.
Chris: And as always, we will have links to all that down in the show notes. Because despite the fact that Phil just spelled it for us, clicking the link is still going to be easier than trying to figure out how to spell it yourself.
Phil: Way easier. Way easier.
Chris: And after you're done listening to this show, go listen to theirs. Just pick a book and go for it. Preferably the first episode they do on that book because jumping into the second one might be a little.
Phil: I mean, that would be a fun, I suppose, but yeah, yeah. Scroll through, see if there's any book or franchise in there that you personally connect with and join us. We're always happy to talk about it.
Chris: And one day in the future, we will have Kevin on this show because if we do not, me and Phil will both be giving him a lot of.
Phil: Because you're South Carolina, I'm Georgia, and he's a Floridian these days, so we've got to have the unholy triumvirant represented.
Chris: I don't know if I want him anymore.
Phil: Yeah.
Chris: Is he going to wear Jean shorts? Yeah.
Phil: That's a completely understandable reaction, to be honest. Well, he only films from chest height up, so I wouldn't even know, to be completely honest with you.
Chris: Well, despite that, I think we'll still have him on the show.
Phil: It's a good plan.
Chris: And as always, if you want to hear more from me, you can head on over to wherever I am on social media because I don't know what Twitter is existing now. Blue sky is a thing when I actually have time to be on there. Just check the show notes. It's so much easier. Or whatever social network that you're on, look for play comics because that's most likely the name that I have branding people. Sometimes I happen to be good at it. If you want to help support the show, you can be like ono lit class or Dan McMahon or Carl Antonovitz and give money because making these, unfortunately does cost a little bit of money. Or you can just share it with a friend because sharing a podcast with a friend or an enemy or a stranger or whoever, that's always really cool, too. And tell me that you like it, because that's maybe the best thing is when somebody makes the effort to tell a podcast person that you appreciate the work that we have done. Actually, let me tell you about the best bit of feedback I have gotten on the show within the group of people that I play d d with. One of them told me, listening to an episode, listening to the WWF no Mercy episode, actually, that he found himself trying to respond to us because it sounded just like when we were playing d d and he loved it. And so that is honestly the best bit of feedback I have gotten on the show. My favorite bit of feedback, you know who you are, but tell me when you hear this part, because that'll be cool, too. Don't forget to play comics as a proud member of the Guinegeek.com network home such wonderful shows as legends of S-H-I-E-L-D which as of the time of me finishing this episode up and recording this outro is going to start back up again. Looking at what if. I am so excited about that. So excited. You guys have no idea. Also capes on the couch, they're pretty cool too. If you like the music that I'm really talking on top of right now, head on over to soundcloud.com. Best day to check out best day's music. But most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics and go find yourself a new favorite character. And then we pretend to do that commercials just for. I know, I've been watching the kitty back.
Phil: She's, she's, she actually knocked the door open to be a part of this.
Chris: Hold on. She's ripple. Little girl, say hi.
Phil: She's a sweet baby. She's our little fur coat wearing kitten. She's adorable and she needs attention at all times. Or she fades away like a rose in a snowstorm.
Chris: I have a few of those.
Phil: There we go.
Chris: Don't forget to play comics. Is a sneeze caught in my nose? Put this back up. Now that we have a different thing that we're looking at, who is the best spider person?
Phil: It changes everything. Oh, I was just raised Peter Parker. I loved the Spiderverse movie. The first one, I haven't seen the second one yet, but Spider man for me was something I didn't reconnect with when everyone else was. So I'm a sucker for Peter Parker, I think. Unless you're talking about the movies, in which case I think the young man, the english boy who is currently playing him now does a really good job. I think he's wonderful.
Chris: The correct answer is Gwen.
Phil: That's probably the oldest thing I've ever. Ah, Spider. Gwen's pretty. Yeah, yeah. I like, like that one. Or pig. I liked Spider Pig.
Chris: Oh yeah, he's too. All right, so I'm going to pretend like we're starting all over now because you haven't cut off yet. This is a good sign.
Phil: Let's do it. Let's do it. That's way better.