Diecast #372: Caves, Death, and Japanese Spider-Man

Diecast – Twenty Sided

If I had a sign in my office that read, “WE HAVE GONE ___ WEEKS WITHOUT COMPLAINING ABOUT THE ENDING OF MESS EFFECT 3,” then that blank would have at least a 15 in it. Until today, when I’d have to erase that number and replace it with a 0.

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Direct download (MP3)
Direct download (ogg Vorbis)
Podcast RSS feed.

Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Diecast372

Link (YouTube)

Show notes:

00:00 Cave Story

To answer the question I asked on the show: The original Cave Story came out in 2004, several years before the indie revolution began.

02:06 Minecraft 1.18

I didn't build this house. The modpack I'm using generates structures like this, so I just moved in.

For the curious, I’m playing Better Minecraft [Forge] 1.18.1. Although I had to add a few mods to get what I wanted. I prefer to play with fancy shader packs that do real-time lighting, and I also insist on having tools for mining 3×3 blocks. I really miss Tinker’s Construct, but that mod hasn’t made it to 1.18 yet.

10:50 Minecraft Server Shenanigans

Again, I don’t want to link the video because I’m not looking to shame anyone. But apparently there’s an entire genre of YouTube channels where kids spend dozens of hours grinding away to build giant complicated lag machines in order to “punish” heavily monitized pay-to-win Minecraft servers.

17:18 NMS update 3.8

What do Paul and I think of the latest No Man’s Sky versions?

29:13 Mailbag: Death and Relationships within Games

Hey Shamus and Paul,

After recently suffering a couple of losses in the real world, it got me thinking about death within video games. I know a lot of people will probably pop in some Mass Effect and Final Fantasy answers, but what are some games that actually treat the death of a character with the respect it deserves, and have it serve as more than a mere plot device? What are some of the deaths of characters in games that actually affected you? One that hit me, even though it is from a game that doesn’t serve as a stellar example of writing is Dom’s death from Gears of War 3. The music, the dialogue, the cinematography all combine to hit me in the feels.
To go along with that, relationships as well very often serve only as a plot device for our protagonists. What games would you say have included good examples of relationships? Very rarely do we see marriage, children, parental, or even friendly relationships that feel complicated enough to be real. Garrus from Mass Effect would probably be an easy example of a well written friend, I would be bro’s with him irl. Anyway, thank you for fielding this two-parter,

Thanks,
Chris/Gautsu

Heads up: Spoilers for Telltale’s The Walking Dead. Also, we once again beat the dead horse that is Mass Effect 3. Because I have no self-control.

40:51 Mailbag: Japanese Spider-Man

Thoughts on Japanese Spider-Man? How does he compare to the original?

https://youtu.be/LFYIRZoyavw

Here you will learn why I am not a drummer.

46:19 Mailbag: Detention Video Game

Deeeeeear Dyecast!

Have either of you watched the movie Detention?
It is based on the Taiwanese survival horror game of the same name and I think it is one of the best and most faithful video game movie adaptions
while also being the best Silent Hil movie we’ve ever had!
It works on it’s own, but for fans, scenes and iconography are taken directly from the game without feeling forced or jarring,
and it has that wonderful blend of dread and melancholy that defines this type of horror!

Thanks for reading and have a pleasant day,
Jolt

48:47 Mailbag: Dream Anime-ified Game

Dear diecast,

I was going through the archives and found shamus’s top 64 games. He mentions that tetris was not for sale on steam in any way or form (well at the time of writing I assume). So i did a quick search and found you can buy tetris on steam now. Including anime tetris.

So wondered, what anime-ified game would you like to see? COD modern warfare, anime edition? anime lord of the rings?

With kind regards,
Chris

For the curious, here’s that Top 64 Games series.

Also: I looked it up after the show and discovered that Robotech and Macross Saga are two different things! Robotech re-used the Macross animation to tell a different story. Actually, three unrelated OVAs were mooshed into a single story, because you needed to have 65 episodes in your series to fit the syndication schedules in North America.

The party from the third Robotech saga. The guy on the right is Lancer, who we talked about on the show.

You know, I really loved Robotech. I kind of forgot just how much I was into it until I did the above research and it all came flooding back. I’m willing to bet this had a big impact on how I connected with JRPGs. When I think back on The Third Robotech War, main characters feel sort of like a proto JRPG party.

So anime fans: What’s the consensus on the Robotech Saga these days? It was mind-blowing 1984, and came off as a hundred times smarter and more sophisticated than western shows that ran in the same block, but I don’t know how it holds up today. Do people even remember it?