Lite Switch: March 8, 2024

Jaymo: Welcome back to The Old Switch-a-roo, where we're talking gaming retro with Mike and Jaymo.
Mike: I'm Mike.
Jaymo: And I'm Jaymo.
Mike: We're on our break from full episodes before we start season two. So this is going to be our first episode of a special feature that we're calling the Old Switch-a-roo: Lite Switch. Instead of our normal focus on the over 250 retro games available on the Nintendo Switch Online that we do most episodes, this time, we're going to take a break. We're going to talk about what we're playing in the off season here. So as a reminder, subscribe or follow us on YouTube and Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen, to make sure that you're ready for when our second season starts.
Jaymo: I'm so stoked, Mike. It's going to be such a good season.
Mike: Yeah. So one of the games I'm playing recently is a game called the Return of the Obra Dinn. Have you heard this?
Jaymo: That's the boat one.
Mike: It is the boat one,
Jaymo: right?
Mike: Yeah. It's a really interesting game that when I went into this, I was kind of thinking, because you're an investigator on a ship and this is all about the mystery. So the graphics are, it's two colors you basically have off, and you can set it to look like an old Apple and it's green. Or you can set white or in a couple of other colors.
Jaymo: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of, like, old Game Boy screens, where it's like the one screen is just the color of the screen itself and then just shades of darkness. So black and white, essentially.
Mike: Yeah. And so the idea is that the ship has shown up, there is nobody alive on it. And you get put on board with a book that contains the crew listing and, like, a couple of artist drawings that were taken during the voyage. So you can see the crew. You have a list of the crew. You have no idea how those two match up.
Jaymo: And the game starts and you're just on the boat? or the ship, Excuse me.
Mike: You're being put on it. You're on a rowboat that has just taken you out to where the ship is.
Jaymo: Got you.
Mike: Um, and then the other thing you have is this compass, which when you find a body, it will let you hear maybe 10 seconds of audio of the last moments before that person died. And then you have a, um, frozen moment in time, of that moment that you can explore and see them and you can see what was going on around them.
Jaymo: And so you have to solve the mystery of each death.
Mike: Yeah. Do you remember having these problems. You'd get in school where it was like a grid and you'd have to try and solve who did- what the order people finished in a race was or something like that.
Jaymo: Kind of a math word problem.
Mike: Yeah. Where you're having to be like, x things out and go like, okay, this person had to be this one or that one.
Jaymo: Right.
Mike: And you kind of start process of eliminating it. And so I was kind of thinking something like that. So it's not like, here is a murder, solve this murder, or solve this death, I should say, move on. It is figure them all out eventually.
Jaymo: That's rad.
Mike: So the information you need is not necessarily in the one you get.
Jaymo: Oh, okay.
Mike: Yeah. So-
Jaymo: you're connecting pieces throughout the overall ship, and like, oh, this explains what happened back in the captain's quarters.
Mike: Exactly. And so I did not figure out who bodies number two and three that I found were until I'd solved, like, 40 deaths. It was becoming frustrating.
Jaymo: When you solve the death, do you actually see it? Is it like a still image or is it like with the game engine? You're watching it happen as if you were really standing there.
Mike: You don't actually- So what it'll actually does is every time you've got three entries correct in the book, it will confirm them. And so it'll go from, you know, this unfortunate soul suffered something. to y'know this person, you know, Professor Plum was killed in the captain's quarters with a revolver fired by Miss Scarlett, kind of thing. You have to get all the pieces in there.
Jaymo: Yeah.
Mike: And so once you have three and the book's broken up into, like, chapters of different parts of the voyage. So as you find a body, it'll fill in a page with the picture of the person and who else is around when they died and a couple of other sort of, like, reference point things.
Jaymo: Yeah, I've heard nothing but good things about it. Uh, I've been wanting to try it for a while,
Jaymo: Yeah, so-
Jaymo: Maybe if you like this, you should try heavy rain. Do, uh, you have a way to play that? I think it's on pc now.
Mike: I'm aware of it, but I'm not familiar. I will say the great part in this case for Return of the Obra Dinn, I think it started on PC, but it is now on PlayStation and Xbox and switch.
Jaymo: Actually, I was just looking. They did a limited run cartridge of it, Limited Run Games did a physical copy.
Mike: Oh, that is fascinating.
Jaymo: Yeah. Well, a lot of preservationists are worried because games like this are so iconic and amazing. But if they're download only their existence for future generations is very vulnerable. So that's why limited run. Part of their mission statement is let's make physical cartridges with games like this.
Mike: Yeah, that's-
Jaymo: it's pretty cool, huh?
Mike: Very interesting goal. Yeah.
Jaymo: It's kinda like vinyl records.
Mike: Yeah. And especially for something like this, since this is also, I believe this is basically one developer, because this is the same developer as "Papers, Please", I believe.
Jaymo: Yeah. Another iconic game.
Mike: I played a little bit of that, and it is just, there's a lot that can be criticized about what it is that I play and consider to be a game. But 'file this paperwork' is a bridge too far for me.
Jaymo: Yeah, I think it does eventually build to some kind of story, but...
Mike: it has story behind that gameplay loop. But the gameplay loop of file and check this paperwork is... It wasn't something I could get into enough to get to that. But yes, I hopefully will be finished with this in the next week or so. But it is something I've had sitting around for a while. It is a fascinating game to play.
Jaymo: Yeah, sounds cool.
Mike: So what have you been playing?
Jaymo: Well, Marvel Snap is about to start its Avengers versus X men season. Are you at all familiar with the Avengers versus X Men story, Mike?
Mike: No.
Jaymo: You didn't even know it was a thing. So,
Mike: No, I was kind of like, is that the thing with zombies? But, um, I'm like, I think that's just me throwing zombie, like, knowing that Zombies happened at a point in the comic book, and that is nothing.
Jaymo: Yeah. Marvel Zombies was its own spin off comic. So Avengers versus X Men was a series of comics that had the Avengers that we all know and love coming into conflict with the X Men because, are you aware about the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix and Jean Grey? This is a plot of a couple of the movies, and it was a big part of the cartoons.
Mike: I've seen the movie.
Jaymo: Yeah. Uh, we saw it together at Grauman's Chinese Theater with Bryan and Larry, that whole group. I remember because I kind of liked it, and you were the only other person who had, like, a sense of humor about it and were like, "yeah, it's mutants doing cool stuff. why is everyone all mad?" It was stupid. Of course it was stupid. But anyway, so, yeah,  dark Phoenix is this cosmic force that inhabits the body of, in this comic series, Cyclops' daughter. Her name is Hope Summers. And so all of a sudden, the X-Men are way OP and making the whole world and the Avengers nervous. It's a great plot, but, um, they are doing a season of it in Marvel Snap. So you got some characters people have been waiting for, like, War Machine. He's the Iron man pilot swap.
Mike: So with Marvel Snap, because that's all card game based, does this mean that, is this a thing where one character only has a single card, or are there multiple cards for a given character? So is this new cards for characters that don't exist in it at all, or new cards for existing characters?
Jaymo: So it's actually really interesting you asked that because you kind of stumbled upon the business model of the game. There are a bunch of characters that have not made any appearance yet of War Machine being one of them. We're going to get the first War Machine card, and people really like that character, so they're excited for it. But you watched Loki, right?
Mike: Season one, yes.
Jaymo: So you're aware of the concept of variants where, like, when time travel happens, the timeline splits, and now there's two versions of a person. There's the original and the variant. So the whole business model of Marvel Snap is that it's free to play, but you can collect variants of all the characters. So you can get, like, a steampunk Loki and like a, uh, 16 hundreds Loki, and, ah, they call them variants. And what's cool is that it's also by a different famous comic artist.
Mike: So are those cards that are just.
Jaymo: They play identically, though.
Mike: Okay, that's why I was going to ask, because I'm thinking in my mind, like, Magic: The Gathering has characters that show up more than once.
Jaymo: Right.
Mike: Because apparently that has characters, which is not a thing. I realized when I played it that there's, like, a plot behind that.
Jaymo: That's come more to the forefront recently because they added, like, hero cards. So it was like when you and I used to play it, you would damage each other and then kill off the monsters, that goes to the graveyard. But now cards earn experience points. It's gotten very convoluted,
Mike: the commander format.
Jaymo: yeah.
Mike: And so I'm thinking with that, where there are characters, where on one hand, you have, this is the same card, but we've done it with a different artistic style. But then you also had, this is the same character, but not only is the style different, but the abilities are different. Actually, Star Wars CCG was a better example because Star Wars really had to have certain characters in every set. Otherwise people would complain. Uh,
Jaymo: yeah.
Mike: So that there is, like, twelve Luke Skywalkers and variations,
Jaymo: as there should be, as you do. Now, Marvel Snap, it's more cosmetic differences. And that's why it's actually pretty kind to free to play players is that the majority of currency spent in the game is purely cosmetic. You saw me streaming it when- What was that fellow's name? Um, something, uh, dandy. Yankee something.
Mike: Something Yankee. Like my brain's going Yankee candle. And it's not that.
Jaymo: Anyway, we had a random friend from Boston drop into my Twitch stream. And you expressed interest in it because you didn't know it was a pc game. Have you tried it yet?
Mike: I have not yet. I still have far too many things to go through.
Jaymo: Yeah. The real draw for anyone who might be listening or watching and you've not tried Marvel Snap. Three word pitch. Ready? Three minute matches. That's it. Any given game takes three minutes or less, and that has made it so hard to put down because you always have time for a three minute game. I love Marvel Snap. I love Marvel Snap so much. And then the other game I've been playing a little bit was Pokemon Snap. I saw you streaming it.
Mike: Yes, I've streamed the N64 one, so I'm looking forward to our episode to talk about that.
Jaymo: Yeah, that'll be really fun without going too much into it, I think the games age pretty well. I think it's fun. I'm having a good time with it. I won't tell you if I Nintend-beat it yet, but we'll save that for the episode. And I'm looking forward to the release of Princess Peach: Showtime! I don't know if you're familiar with it, but Princess Peach is getting her own game for the first time in a while.
Mike: I have seen this because I think I keep getting ads because they're bringing out, like, a new controller that's all pink for it, I think, right?
Jaymo: Oh, I didn't know that.
Mike: Yeah its pink Joy Cons keep showing up on Instagram because of this.
Jaymo: Yeah. I first caught wind of the game because of the controversy. The cover art was changed to make Princess Peach look more like the movie version, and people got upset because they're like, I mean, Uh, there's a solid swath of people who didn't care for the Mario movie. I liked it.
Mike: I'm presuming the new Mario version of Peach.
Jaymo: Well, remember, she wasn't peach in that movie. That was daisy,
Mike: right.
Jaymo: Yeah, see?
Mike: I'm not that great on my Disney princesses.
Jaymo: Universal, I think, at this point.
Mike: No, but that first one was.
Jaymo: Oh, the daisy from the Bob Hoskins movie played a princess
Mike: Yes that was Disney- that was somehow a Disney studio distribution, I believe.
Jaymo: Right? Yes. Back then, Disney technically had control over it. Or something. Yeah. I mean, I'm a big fan of Luigi's mansion. I love Mario games that are smaller and kind of play with gameplay tropes, so it looks fun. I don't know if I'll get to it right when it releases, but, um, it comes out March 22.
Mike: All right. Yeah. So that will be something that we'll check back in and see whether or not you grab that as soon as it's out or not.
Jaymo: I probably won't. I'll tell you right now, I'm poor.
Mike: All right. Yeah. And then I think the only other thing that I'd really say has been a bunch of gaming recently, because I spent a whole day of it just a couple of weeks ago, was because I'm still playing Pokemon GO and they did a event in Pasadena that was like an all day event at the Rose Bowl.
Jaymo: Oh. How many people were there playing the game?
Mike: A whole lot. Like, I don't know how many, but it filled one of the lots to the south of the Rose Bowl pretty thoroughly. Without getting into details, I live such that when I left to try to get there for the start of it, I was half an hour away from it. And that remained a half hour the entire drive there. Because of how many people were getting there for the start of that event, that traffic was backed up for several blocks.
Jaymo: I had no idea that many people were still playing Pokemon GO. That makes me happy.
Mike: Yeah. Well, and because this was the location of the event, I talked with someone who had left their house at, I think, two in the morning and driven there from Arizona that day.
Jaymo: Whoa. And did it work? Because the first time they tried to do one of these, it bombed horribly, and none of the technology worked.
Mike: It actually did. And I was really worried because I've been at other things around the Rose Bowl where the reception is bad.
Jaymo: Yeah.
Mike: So I was really worried that I'd get there and be like, well, I can't actually access anything, but it worked well, they had powerpoints throughout there, so if you needed to charge up, uh, you could. And it's just a whole lot of between the stadium itself, which had stuff going on. Like, you could go meet Pikachu and stuff in there. I walked across the field in the Rose Bowl for that, and then headed out to go do a whole bunch of raids. So the raid system allows up to 20 people.
Jaymo: Yeah.
Mike: And the raids there were filling up almost immediately because there's a huge number of people there.
Jaymo: Well, I hope you got some pictures for our, uh, social media feeds.
Mike: I got none because my phone was very busy catching Pokemon. My great achievement out of that was, there's a couple of Pokemon, and I can't remember which one I ended up with that are the lake spirits or something. There's, like, four of them that are within Pokemon. And I don't know what regular Pokemon game they're out of, but for Pokemon GO, they are very rare.
Jaymo: Okay.
Mike: Um, and for the event, they were showing up at a much higher frequency. And the Pokemon that you get, very crudely, the level system that they use is for Pokemon, you get out of raids and research quests and all these kinds of things start off at, like, level 15 or level 20, depending on the method. So low level pokemon, you kind of have to get lucky in the wild for something that's rare ish, as those are tricky to get in the wild. And so I collect the level one Pokemon because I have weird priorities in my life. And I particularly like getting level one Pokemon that are the shiny versions of the Pokemon. And so one of these very rare Pokemon had shown up, and it was a level one, and I was having a very bad day getting any shiny pokemon. This was the first one after 4 hours.
Jaymo: Um, I mean, I don't think I've ever caught a single one.
Mike: Yeah, I think the game makes it a little, the Pokemon GO makes it a little bit easier than the mainstream games do. And so it showed up, and it was a shiny Pokemon, and it was like, I have to make sure I catch this. And I caught it, and it was a level one. I was there with a former coworker, and I was like, the thing's level one. And that I caught that spread sufficiently that about five minutes later, someone who clearly was on my Pokemon team because he was wearing an all blue suit to this with sequins or something, like someone who actually dressed up for this as an event, as a bunch of people did and not just showed up, came up and was just like, I will trade you. Are you the guy that got the level one shiny? And I was like, yes. And it's like, I will trade you just about anything I have for that. And I'm like,
Jaymo: Did you take him up on it?
Mike: No, because I'm like, I want that. I collect level one shinies. He's like, me too. This is my pride and joy out of this.
Jaymo: Wow. You broke that guy's heart. Well, that's really cool. Congrats on the catch.
Mike: Yeah, no, I was very pleased. And then after that, I had, like, in the next hour, I made up my deficit on that. But it was this very long stretch of, like, one of their selling points is like, oh, the chance of getting a shiny Pokemon will be much higher, and I'm getting nothing. And I'm there with someone who keeps getting them. And it's like this is beginning to feel cruel and targeted.
Jaymo: Well, it sounds like karma. What's the opposite of karma catching up with you? Karma paid you back I guess
Mike: still kind of karma catching up with me.
Jaymo: It's just the yang versus the yin or yang versus yang. I don't know. I don't do symbols.
Mike: But, yeah, in either case, it was one of the fun, more in person things from that that I've had lately, because there's still a bunch of people playing that, and then I've ran into people subsequently, and actually, it's fascinating with that, because they added a thing so you can add friends that you were in a raid, uh, battle with, just, like, as a click some buttons. And so I have a whole bunch of people on Pokemon GO now that I don't know that all came from that event. And because you can send gifts, like, I've got gifts coming from all over the world out of people that were at that event, which is either people that have traveled for that event or have people that have traveled since, which has been kind of cool,
Jaymo: Quit bragging. So many gifts and international gifts.
Mike: I mean It's not like there's any connect. Like, I didn't talk to these people, and I don't know how, but it was an interesting representation to see the people who were there, because for me, it was like, it's just up the road. I may as well go, um, for the people that were there, a lot were traveling for that
Jaymo: grand. It's really cool.
Mike: Yeah. I think that covers what we've been playing. Unless you had anything else you wanted to mention in here.
Jaymo: No, I'm good. Been fun talking about it.
Mike: All right. Yeah. I think that wraps up what we've been playing lately. So next time, we'll again do another one of these episodes of what we're currently doing with gaming. So we have two weeks to play some more new stuff. And then this is just a reminder that season two will be going live on Wednesday, April 24, which is when we'll be joined by Jaymo's brothers to talk Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for our season two opener.
Jaymo: It's a great episode. It's a great game. And little tease for that episode, we do a Sonic 2 zone tier list. We rank all the levels of Sonic 2. So if you're a hedgehead like myself, by the way coining that term here, I don't think there is a term for Sonic fan, but hedgehead or headhog. I don't know, something like that.
Mike: neither of those sound good, and one of those sounds vulgar.
Jaymo: Yeah, hedgehead. If you're a hedgehead, sticking with that one
Mike: that just seems like you're a fan of topiaries.
Jaymo: I mean, who isn't?
Mike: So we'll have that episode coming up next month. Until then please remember to like, follow, or subscribe to The Old Switch-a-roo and rate or review the show, wherever it is you're getting podcasts. You can also visit us at www.theoldswitcharoo.com to find all our social media links. We'd love to hear what you thought of this episode since we're trying some stuff we don't normally do or just what you're looking forward to hearing in the future.
Jaymo: As always, thank you for listening to The Old Switch-a-roo where we've been talking gaming retro with Mike and Jaymo.
Mike: I've been Mike
Jaymo: and I've been Jaymo. Game on, everyone.