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After hearing it discussed on the last two or three episodes of Idle Thumbs, I'm still not on board with the staunch anti-objectivity stance with respects to game reviews. I wonder if it might be a difference on what "objective" means in my eyes vs yours. To me "objective" means that you're taking out any sort of personal connection or investment you might have in the work, and looking at it simply as-is. An example of this is that when I was in grad school, it wasn't out of the ordinary for my advisor to be skeptical or simply not believe in a publication put out by one of his collaborators, even if they were working with us on something else at the time. It was never a knock against the author, but at the same knowing and working with the author didn't stop him from looking at the argument of the paper with a critical eye, which is really important. I really think that an effective game review has to lack any sort of personal backdrop in order to get the message across to a wider audience. A reviewer can write "this story really pulled at my heartstrings because I know the writer was thinking of ______ when making it" but few other people are going to also know that going in, so that's not an effective argument for the game in such a case. I do think it's OK for a reviewer to say that some part resonated with them because of an experience in their own life, but again I don't think that's very effective because not everyone has that experience to call upon. On the other hand, towards the end of the most recent discussion I felt that you guys might be "objective" as "how much of this experience can we quantify?", which I'm totally fine with being against. I don't think you should put a discrete number to every part of a game for the reason I stated above, that not everyone is coming into a game with the same knowledge or goals. I think it's why stuff like Giant Bomb's Quick Looks or Let's Players on Youtube have gotten so popular as ways to show off and discuss games, because for the most part they just show the game and let the viewer interpret it as they wish, to an extent.
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Apr 8, 2014 05:07
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Chris Remo posted:I don't think the way I feel about this is heavily at odds with the way you do, depending on how one interprets the first sentence of your second paragraph. I'd agree with you on that one because this Chris Remo posted:What's more important is an ability to look at the game holistically, in whatever way seems appropriate for the particular game--contextualizing the game meaningfully, and evaluating the choices it makes relative to all the other choices it makes is something I can get behind. Maybe the difference is that I think a reviewer should approach playing a game for review from the same baseline with which the general gaming public approaches the game, while the impression I get from you is that it's OK for a reviewer to let their experience from playing or making other games (or talking to developers) influence their opinion on the finished product. I think it hinges on what you mean here by "contextualizing", because I think that a review should be more about the final game and less about the process that went into making it (if that gets discussed in the review at all). You and I might actually agree on this, but we're just speaking different languages about it. I could very well be putting words in your mouth though, I listened to this at 7 AM this morning and am only now posting about it, so as soon as I remember the airtight argument I came up with in the car you'll all be sorry! 
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Apr 8, 2014 06:31
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Anyone else having trouble downloading the most recent Idle Thumbs (#155)? This is using the Podkicker app on Android.
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Apr 25, 2014 02:46
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ja2ke posted:I love GameCube peripherals. I still think Crystal Chronicles was ahead of its time. I'm probably biased because I'm a huge fan of co-op hack-n-slash games like Gauntlet Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, but God that game would have been so awesome if you didn't have to jump through so many hoops to play it the "right" way (and if getting some of the best items didn't rely on you playing through the full game with four people in order to build up your hometown).
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May 4, 2014 20:03
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I gotta admit, hearing Patrick say "No way is there a Kinect-less SKU announcement at E3" on the newest Bombcast, then listening to Idle Thumbs immediately after and hearing "Kinect-less SKU announced today" was pretty funny. Not to bash Patrick though, because he's technically right
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May 16, 2014 19:56
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I hadn't heard the phrase "salty dog" used in years until the latest Thumbs episode, so thanks for that.
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May 23, 2014 19:09
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bobservo posted:Hey dudes, I just put together an episode of Retronauts about speedruns and I think it's a good'un: http://www.retronauts.com/?p=776 I'm listening to this now and wanted to ask, do you have any specific speedruns that you enjoy? I love speedruns both tool'd and tool-less, and was really excited when I saw the topic, but about 30 seconds into the episode I realized you really, really do need visual examples to talk about speedrunning (which you can't do with a podcast). There's a Mega Man 1 TAS that is absolutely insane to me, the guy  Here it is, and I was wrong because he makes the level just spontaneously end at one point 
C-Euro fucked around with this message at 12:46 on May 28, 2014 |
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May 28, 2014 04:10
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Thank you Idle Thumbs for re-affirming my choice to go Wii U + gaming PC this generation. Nevermind the fact that I currently own neither of those things 
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Jul 8, 2014 03:04
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Hell yes, someone else has seen Nic Cage Bad Lieutenant. A couple years ago I heard it was on Netflix, watched and loved it, and then a week later it was off. Also Chris, please enunciate more when reading e-mails, especially as you approach the end of them. Every e-mail that doesn't end with something funny comes out sounding like mmghgmgmhmgmhmm. It only happens on e-mails, to your credit. E: I am obligated by law to post this anytime Nic Cage is mentioned. Note Bad Lieutenant's position- 
C-Euro fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 05:24
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I'm way late on this, but I just burned through a few backlogged episodes of WOFF and I want to say thanks for randomly covering X-Men Legends 2. I got that game when it first came out but didn't have anyone to play it with until years later, and I loved it when I was able to do co-op (I'm also a big fan of those sorts of isometric beat-em-up RPGs, Gauntlet Legends being where I cut my teeth on those). We liked it so much that we ran out and bought Ultimate Alliance pretty much immediately after. This was in the late 00s when Marvel was releasing its pre-Avengers lineup, so that helped get us excited as well. I really want to play it again but don't have anyone to do so with now 
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Aug 27, 2014 03:28
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I don't think it can be overstated that you can disagree with or dislike something without getting mad about it or lashing out against it. I personally have never cared for "sjw" games (a really broad, vague term in my head, I'll admit) like Depression Quest, Papers Please and Cart Life, but their existence doesn't really affect or upset me, so I look at them and just say whatever. If anything, taking these uncommon themes and trying to turn them into games pushes the creative boundaries of the industry, which should be a good thing. And similar to what Chris(?) said, the people at the top of the AAA companies don't even register these little games, so I don't see how they'd be a threat to more traditional games on any reasonable timescale. If nothing else, they don't really make money so why throw AAA dollars at making Cart Life: Revengeance? Sorry if that came out weird, I'm on my phone so it's tough to think and type coherently. Also lost in this debate was the sweet fade-in for the intro on this week's Thumbs. I hope that becomes the norm moving forward.
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Aug 29, 2014 20:36
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I can't remember which gaming podcast went on a long tangent recently about Minecraft's far-reaching tendrils, but I didn't believe it until this evening where, while walking through Target, I stumble across hardcover guidebooks for Minecraft. Broken into different topics too (a book for combat, a book for machine-building, and a basic survival book) What the hell?
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Sep 23, 2014 02:43
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I've seen toy Minecraft swords and picks before and thought "huh, that's cool", but seeing hardcover player's guides broken up by topic hit me on a much deeper level than those.
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Sep 23, 2014 06:56
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I get that it was done mostly in the name of good radio, but the fact that they had to explain how the Worms games work in the most recent Thumbs makes me feel way old. I played the gently caress out of Armageddon 10ish years ago, and this copy I have on Steam keeps staring at me.
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Oct 13, 2014 14:33
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People care way too drat much about video games. Yes I get the irony of posting on a video game forum on my lunch break to say so, and yes I know this mess has moved way past video games at this point (and that there's evidence it was never about them in the first place). For that matter, people care too much about loving up someone else's day too.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:01
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I'm a week behind on Thumbs episodes, but holy poo poo there are 10000 holes in Desert Golf? I've got a lot of work to do.
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Oct 23, 2014 00:57
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Song For The Deaf posted:and then our winter WRPG, "The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind" Fuuuuuuuuuck yes I love Morrowind and have been looking for an excuse to fire it back up. I like Main Quest/Guild Quests/Misc Quests is a decent break-down, as long as you can work the lore in at the appropriate times. The unique world and world-building are a big part of what makes that game so memorable, and you'd be remiss not to discuss it.
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Oct 31, 2014 06:20
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coyo7e posted:Probably. The thing about Morrowind is that you don't need to worry about playstyle - just figure out which skills you wanna use and make sure they're not primary skills, otherwise you'll level up stupid fast and end up hosed. If you do have a goal, look up what the best weapons/etc work with that, and then early on just make a point to go grab whatever it is you want.. For instance there's a sick katana on a guard in a field in the middle of nowhere, which is really easy to get. And abuse alchemy. Make potions to increase your stats, drink those, and then make more of the same potions, rinse repeat until your numbers are ridiculously high - then make a grasshopper potion that allows you to literally leap the length o the world (make sure you've got featherfall potions to halt your momentum when you are over whatever your destination is - you'll never land except in the ocean You're thinking of Oblivion. After you gain a few levels in Morrowind you start to outpace the leveled gains of enemies bit by bit, until by the time you hit 20 (where the leveled lists stop) there's little in the base game that is a threat to you. Also hostile NPCs don't level up, so enjoying steamrolling bandit caves with level 5 enemies guarding level 20 loot 
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Nov 4, 2014 03:00
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). Morrwind isn't really a game I'd recommend taking seriously, just break it entirely and then do whatever the heck you want, it's way funner like that.
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Phone posted:8-4 Play is still really solid. I couldn't stand 8-4 Play after a few months of listening, but I also haven't listened to it in almost a year so maybe it's better now. I just felt like they tried too hard to be the Bombcast in its prime and just fell flat, in that they tried to be zany and crazy without knowing how to do it well and not be annoying about it. But again, it's been a while so maybe it's different.
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Nov 5, 2014 18:00
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Finally listened to the WOFF on REmake, thanks for making me want to play that game again when I'm supposed to be starting a wedding fund with my old GC library   I don't think I disagreed with anything you brought up, it's really underappreciated and definitely worth checking out.
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Nov 7, 2014 02:48
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I actually bought Sands of Time years ago when Gamestop was liquidating its Gamecube stock and never played it. I was getting ready to sell my GC library but maybe I will fire that up before I do...
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Nov 12, 2014 20:43
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cbirdsong posted:Content: In this week's Thumbs, I was afraid Danielle was going to casually drop playing Code Name: STEAM and then forget to actually bring it up in detail. I'm glad to be wrong. I laughed way harder at Jake's description of Codename STEAM as "this game would have blown up Kickstarter two years ago" than I should have.
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Nov 12, 2014 22:52
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Thanks to Thumbs I went and looked up the Knuckles re-design, and holy poo poo is it wack.
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Nov 14, 2014 13:52
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Has Sean talked about Taylor Swift on Thumbs before? I thought that was a weird cut this week but it also sounded familiar.
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Nov 21, 2014 18:30
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Retronauts crew- the Silicon Knights X-Men game you were trying to name is X-Men Destiny. X-Men Legends rules and was made by the people who would go on to make Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, which rules even more and I will not have it wrongly besmirched. Same with Two Worlds, which you mentioned in the same breath as Too Human. And to reunite the trains of thought in this thread, look up the Giant Bomb video about Too Human when you can. C-Euro fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 22:47
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HMS Boromir posted:Obviously you should make it up to everyone who likes that game by giving Metroid Prime 2 the WOFF treatment. Maybe the joke is going over my head but Prime 2 isn't nearly as good as Prime 1. Then again I've been sitting on a copy of Prime Trilogy for a few years and they allegedly smoothed some things out in the re-release, so maybe I should marathon those two back-to-back and see how that feels (I never played Prime 3)
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Dec 7, 2014 17:51
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Song For The Deaf posted:The long-awaited first part of the Watch Out for Fireballs! Morrowind trilogy is out. We cover the main quest this week. Next week is the main guilds (Fighter, Mage, Thief, Assassin). The week after that is the Great House quests along with the remaining organizations (Temple, Cult, Legion) and misc quests. Hell yes, Morrowind is the game I'm most looking forward to getting back into once I finally build the gaming PC I keep telling myself I'll build. Any chance you want to record the other two parts and pass them my way on the sly? I have 27 hours of travel to look forward to next week and need stuff to fill the void.
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Dec 12, 2014 03:14
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Hopefully you spend some time in the third episode covering why you knowingly made a Bosmer character, n'wah  (I know that you like archers and they're the best archers. I also wish you could poison arrows. Bosmer are just so drat annoying and lame compared to the other kinds of elves. Also gently caress I want to play Morrowind again)
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Dec 13, 2014 01:54
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Woffle posted:Yup, just archery. Archery sort of sucks in Morrowind but I wanted to try it so bad. If it makes you feel better, there's a Bosmer beggar in Tribunal who, if you deny giving him gold, will come back later decked out in endgame armor with 700+ luck and attack you on sight. So they're still annoying but they get some amount of revenge. Also, if you can try to work a little bit of background on the Telvanni into your last episode, they're definitely the most interesting Great House.
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Dec 13, 2014 04:14
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The Saint who chases the Cliff Racers out of Morrowind is none other than Jiub, the other prisoner in the boat at the start of the game. I think it gets brought up in Oblivion too. Also don't use a Cliff Racers removal mod, they have one of the few ingredients that lets you make levitation potions, and by far the easiest to come by. I always used a mod that made healthy wildlife passive, by the time diseased and blighted creatures start showing up in greater numbers most are trivial to kill. I should probably just set aside 3 hours each time one of these episodes drops and just take notes, I haven't played this game with much regularity since 2011 but so much of it is still on my mind, it was the only game I played for the first 6-12 months I owned it.
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Dec 13, 2014 17:16
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Song For The Deaf posted:We're nothing but humble about the things we'll get factually wrong or overlook, so thanks everyone for pointing this stuff out. I'm capturing it for the errata. Oh yeah, there's a ton of backstory and extraneous lore in this game that I don't begrudge you for missing, I just happen to have a really good memory for this sort of thing and love talking about it in the context of Morrowind. Looking at the series as a whole this is definitely where things started turning from "hardcore CRPG" to "contemporary western open-world RPG" and I'm glad the series still places a lot of stock in its lore, even if Oblivion and Skyrim don't have it so up-front. I'm not sure if you mentioned who the Tribunal actually are, which I think is important enough to briefly ramble about here- like Dagoth Ur, they were friends of Nerevar and fought with him at the Battle of Red Mountain; Vivec was his mentor/training partner, Almalexia was his wife, and Sotha Sil was some dude. After the battle they use the Heart of Lorkhan to make themselves gods, and the conflicting story is "Nerevar died in battle" vs. "Nerevar was betrayed by these three who wanted the power for themselves". Dagoth Ur's power comes from the Heart too, and once you destroy it Vivec also tells you "We Tribunal will eventually lose our power", to which he is ambivalent but in the Tribunal expansion you learn how the other two, mostly Almalexia, feel about it (She's not happy). There's a series of books in Morrowind called the 36 Sermons of Vivec that are basically biblical chapters for the Temple. There's supposedly a secret message in there that is a confession from Vivec about having killed Nerevar with the rest of the Tribunal. In summary,  E: In non-Morrowind news, I looked up the Jurassic World fan trailer mentioned in the latest Thumbs, it is pretty cool but I think the vast majority of people seeing the trailer in theaters wouldn't realize that the dialogue is from Jurassic Park. At least for me, if I hadn't heard Thumbs talking about it I wouldn't have immediately made the connection. C-Euro fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 13, 2014 19:51
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al-azad posted:A Link Between Worlds is the best modern Zelda game and that's largely because it apes the best Zelda game and doesn't hold your hand at all. The first thirty minutes are "You're Link, some rear end in a top hat kidnapped Zelda, go find some crystals and poo poo." *releases leash, cranks up awesome music* To be fair you don't get that Overworld theme until you get the Master Sword, and yes it does rule. The very first Overworld theme is still my favorite from that game, though.
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Dec 14, 2014 21:52
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Captain Internet posted:Donkey Kong Country, every single one of them, are all terrible and floaty games with possibly the worst art style this side of Clayfighter/Ballz 3D. The only good Donkey Kongs are the first one and DK Jr. Donkey Kong '94 for the Game Boy is pretty legit, although it's technically a Mario game. Maybe you've never heard of it but it's the first time we saw Mario with crazy acrobatics skills, I don't think the 3D Mario games exist in their current form if that game doesn't exist.
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Dec 15, 2014 02:43
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Listening to the Morrowind extrasode now (thanks for reading my post  ) and I remembered something I forgot to mention during part 1- Vivec isn't voiced in the main game, I think Dagoth Ur's taunts, the Daedra, and the chargen NPCs are the only ones with voiced dialogue in the base game. Also the Passive Healthy Wildlife mod isn't mine, but I'm sure every mod site has it as it's a popular one from what I can remember.
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Jan 6, 2015 15:10
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Woffle posted:My mistake. I think got confused because there is unused dialog for him in the games files that wasn't interesting enough to bring up during the show but I still listened to, so I had a male voice in mind. Thank you for the correction. I only remembered because I had the same (or a similar) mod in my last playthrough (a few years ago, how do I remember that?) Also in line with your Tim Allen mod shoutout, another total replacement mod video, though admittedly the funny part about this one is the music (at about 1:40)
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Jan 7, 2015 06:44
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Re: The latest Retronauts, I think my biggest game "purchase" regret was the Christmas where I used my one allotted wishlist spot for games to ask for Shadow the Hedgehog Most embarrassing moment related to spending money on games was the time I went apeshit in a Blockbuster because they didn't have a copy of Mega Man X3 for rent. Granted I was a dumb 7-year old but I didn't even go apeshit on my parents, my poor babysitter had to put that fire out and despite being a good friend of my mom's I don't think she ever babysat me again. Best gaming purchase was during Gamestop's GC/GBA/PS2 liquidation sale a few years ago, where I picked up a Gamestop Pikmin case, took it the counter, and the dude said "I don't have Pikmin, will you take this Pikmin 2 disc instead?". I haven't tried playing it yet 
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Jan 14, 2015 06:07
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Gonna need a animated segment on the Venn diagram discussion in the new Thumbs, that was awesome. That whole episode was great, in fact.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:58
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Also, I don't know when it dropped but I'm just now getting around to the WOFF Rock Band episode. I didn't own Rock Band but being in college in the late 200Xs meant I played a grip of it during that time. I also had Guitar Hero III (on Wii) and a love of this kind of music which certainly helped foster a love for these games while they were in the public eye. And I was in band & orchestra in high school and college so I had some rhythmic ability. I had actually been thinking about digging my GH3 controller out of my garage and noodling around with it this weekend, between your episode and Giant Bomb talking about new Rock Band DLC I went down there and found it. And you guys mentioned a few of my favorite songs from that game which I didn't know were also in Rock Band, like Paranoid, Reptilia, and Cities on Flame With Rock & Roll 
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Jan 17, 2015 02:59
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I remember reading a fake Toad interview in a game magazine, I don't know if it was in EGM but then that begs the question of "why did multiple magazines conduct fake interviews with Toad?" All I remember is that Toad professed to being a strict carnivore, since he is a vegetable and all. Also the entire Super Mario Bros movie is on Youtube, but I've not been
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Jan 29, 2015 04:04
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Also for years I couldn't get John Leguizamo and Jon Lovitz untangled in my head, so whenever people talked about the Mario Bros movie I would look at Lovitz and think "drat, Luigi really let himself go"
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Jan 29, 2015 04:51
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