Podcast: The Video Game
A video game "book club" analyzing and celebrating retro games.
Podcast: The Video Game
Episode 02 - Sonic the Hedgehog
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Released at the dawn of the 16-bit era in 1991, Sonic the Hedgehog was the culmination of a massive cultural and technical shift for console gaming. After Sega realized they needed a killer app to challenge Nintendo's dominance, they wanted to take a spin at the platforming formula by trading slow precision for raw speed. Enter Sonic, a blue hedgehog with a serious attitude, featuring many of the cornerstones of 90s mascot design, but with a distinctly kinetic flavor.
The game featured looping, multi-tiered levels, a revolutionary physics-based momentum engine, a stellar synthesizer soundtrack, and an aggressive marketing campaign that corporate warfare had never seen before. No longer tied down to the more methodical jumping of standard platformers, Sonic the Hedgehog gave players a sense of breakneck velocity that pushed the Sega Genesis's hardware to its limit, all with a cool, rebellious aesthetic meant to make the competition look archaic and nerdy.
But for all its technical wizardry and "blast processing" swagger, does the gameplay hold up under modern scrutiny? Or is it just an awkward stepping stone, playing in the shadow of its more refined sequels and the structural perfection of its plumbing rival?
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Find the hosts on Twitch:
Dave
Finny
Music:
"Green Hill Zone" from Sonic the Hedgehog. Composed by Masato Nakamura. © SEGA
"Marble Zone" from Sonic the Hedgehog. Composed by Masato Nakamura. © SEGA
Before Sega could truly challenge Nintendo's iron grip on the console market, they needed more than a piece of hardware. They needed an icon that redefined what a platformer could feel like. Today we're lacing up our power sneakers and taking a look at the genesis of the mascot wars on Podcast the video game.
SPEAKER_00Wait, wait, what are power sneakers?
SPEAKER_03That's that's what Sonic's that's what his shoes are called. You can get the power up that makes you run faster in a little box. Oh, okay. Those are the power sneakers.
SPEAKER_00Alright, admittedly, apparently we didn't read that part of the manual.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to the second episode of Podcast Video Game. I'm Perfect Finn, and I'm joined as always by my co-host Junkyard Dave. For a brief recap, we are retro gaming enthusiasts, speedrunners, and longtime students of game design who've essentially formed our own video game book club. Once a month, Dave and I agree on a game to play through and then reconvene to dissect the design and discuss our experiences. Today, Dave and I are taking a look at Sonic the Hedgehog, a game that attempted to ask a very different question from Mario. What if a platformer wasn't about carefully navigating obstacles, but more about things like building momentum and mastering speed? Viewed as Sega's challenge to Nintendo's dominance, Sonic helped push the Genesis hardware and created one of gaming's most recognizable characters. It was developed by Sega AM8, which would later go on to become Sonic Team, published by Sega, and released on the Genesis and Mega Drive in 1991. So, Dave, what was your experience with Sonic prior to this?
SPEAKER_00I've played exactly zero seconds of Sonic. I've seen a little bit of Sonic speedruns and stuff on Twitch, but I have no retention when it comes to replicating what I saw. I'm not a fan, and I'm sorry to anybody that's listening that you know it's like, yeah, Sonic, especially because I think I'm saying Sonic is terrible, especially because he just celebrated I think his like 35th anniversary or something. Like we're spitting on the grave of Sonic.
SPEAKER_03It was conveniently timed. I wasn't aware that the 35th was coming up at all. Same. So it worked out well. But from what I'm hearing, you want to spit on the grave of Sonic the Hedgehog rather than use this as a time to commemorate, memorialize, and celebrate.
SPEAKER_00I think we could even go a step below and say actually piss on the grave of Sonic. Like spits too, but meh, I did not like it. Yeah, we'll get into that obviously after. But I there there's not a lot that I liked about this one.
SPEAKER_03To give people some historical context on the development of Sonic the Hedgehog, really quickly before Dave and I take our deep dive. Sonic, fun fact, was created specifically to replace Alex Kidd as Sega's main mascot. Uh they wanted to give Sega a character that could rival Mario. I've never played an Alex Kid game. Have you ever played any Alex Kidd games?
SPEAKER_00No, I am aware of them as well, but um no, I've never played them either. Right.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Moving on.
SPEAKER_00Well, the the other thing that was a really cool pick about this one, I kind of said that last episode. Like I'm pretty sure that I grew up in like a Nintendo Psyop, but I didn't have experience with Genesis. Like I almost had no experience whatsoever. And the the only games that I remember playing, there was like a six in one cart or something.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the six pack.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it had uh columns and like a motorcycle game.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, super hang on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and maybe maybe I'm a liar. Maybe at some point, you know, I tried Sonic back then, but like I remember specifically one of my friends having that cart and playing, I guess, like whatever the sixth game, but we never played it, and we probably played it only a handful of times. So, like, I really like this choice on paper because you know, I was trying to broaden my horizons, but I think at the end of the day, stick with what you're familiar with, don't branch out everything new as shit. Resist change. Like, this is what we need to do.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Stay in your hole, don't try anything new.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, yes.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so another fun fact character designer Naoto Oshima originally drew a rabbit that could grab objects with his ears, which eventually involved into a rolling hedgehog named Mr. Needle Mouse before settling on Sonic. Also, this game was specifically engineered to showcase the Genesis faster Motorola 68,000 CPU or the blast processor compared to the slower clock speed of the SNS processor. Uh, so this is a scenario where kind of the opposite of Commander Keen, where Keen they invented new technology to support the design of the game. Sonic is kind of the opposite where the design was informed by the technology, right? So, Keen, we had that smooth scrolling conversation where they figured out how to break through on PC hardware and offer that smooth screen scrolling, and that allowed them to make Keen the game they wanted to make. Kind of the opposite scenario here where Sega had the blast processor, they're able to move at a much quicker clip as far as things like screen scrolling and sprite lag, things of that nature are concerned. And so that kind of informed this faster gameplay that they were shooting for with Sonic the Hedgehog. So, Dave, like you said, you hadn't played this prior, you grew up in a Nintendo Psyop. Have you played any of the later 3D iterations or any of the modern games like Sonic Mania? Anything like that?
SPEAKER_00No Sonic, uh, no other Sonic anything. Like this was literally my first experience with Sonic.
SPEAKER_03Okay, interesting. What were your expectations?
SPEAKER_00I actually had extremely low expectations. Okay, interesting.
SPEAKER_03Uh what makes you say that?
SPEAKER_00I think it's just the design. Like there was no way that I thought that I was going to enjoy this in my head because realistically the design is weird in the sense like the game wants you to go fast, but your field of view, and I think like the obstacles that you have to react to in a very short, you know, very restricted amount of time, it's not congruent with going fast and fluid. Like, you know, it's basically like the Roadrunner, right? From Roadrunner and Caudi. And the Roadrunner, he's like speeding. You ever notice in the cartoons? He's running down a fucking road that's straight. That's why the speed works in that thing. He's just running down a road. There's no barricades, there's no nothing. So I think in Sonic, you know, he's running down the same road, but there's like open sewers and there's like flaming piles of garden, and you just have to like weave in and out, and you're constantly like, dude, what the hell? Like, just allow me to like experience what you're supposed to do, but it doesn't work like that. Sure. Very, very few. Like, I'll go into that a little bit more. But I think the the first level was kind of deceptive. It actually did meet my expectations. I was thinking, like, oh, this is not as bad as I thought it was gonna be in terms of reacting to obstacles or like you know, reacting to the speed that Sonic moved, but it went massively downhill immediately after that.
SPEAKER_03So sure. So I did grow up playing Sonic. I was fortunate to have both a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis at the time. I definitely spent more time playing my Super Nintendo, but I still enjoyed some stuff on the Genesis. Uh, Sonic and Sonic 2, Sonic 3. I did play them some growing up. I don't know that I ever beat any of them. Uh, I was having a hard time when I was going through my playthrough for the purposes of this podcast. I was like, have I ever beat this game before? I would get to the next act or the next zone, and I'd be like, Yeah, this looks really familiar. And then I'd get to the next one and be like, I have no idea what's going on. This doesn't look familiar at all. I would say I enjoyed Sonic growing up, but I definitely preferred first party Nintendo titles. So I think my expectations were were tempered, kind of middling. I think I expected it to be pretty good, not great.
SPEAKER_00So how does it feel not growing up in Nintendo Psyop?
SPEAKER_03To be honest with you, I love Nintendo, man. NES, SNES, and N64 were so formative for me. All right, Dave. Uh, we talked about the historical context, we talked about our personal histories and our preconceptions of the playthrough. I'm ready to start on the deep dive. Uh first I'd like to discuss the presentation and get an idea of what you thought about things like the story, the graphics, the sound. How did you feel when you initially dropped into the game? You're pretty much immediately dropped into Green Hill Zone. It's got that cool, vibrant, almost like jungly aesthetic. And the Green Hills Zone song, I think, is inarguably the most iconic track in the entire game. I think the vibes are pretty immaculate, right? When you drop in, I think the game looks and sounds great. And I think it's probably the the strongest asset that the game has, but I'm interested to to hear your opinion.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's not that, that's for sure. So I can give you the music. I think Green Hills definitely had the best song out of all of the music in the game. So that one I agree with. I I think when it comes to like the sprite work and the pixel art and stuff like that, it's a it's a genuinely pretty game. I think they did a good job. So I kind of agree with that. But my first thought when you know, like Sonic dropped in there and I was moving around, it was like, dude, Sonic is slippery. He is more slippery than I thought he would be, especially if you're jumping and you're trying to control your movement. Commander Keen, you know, our boy Commander Keen, I think he even had more of a responsive like left and right jump than Sonic did.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00Uh so he was very kind of floaty. He was very kind of slippery when it came to his left and right movement. I did not like that. I did not like how Sonic controlled even immediately before controlling Sonic. I think it's even kind of weird there too. Um, because you know, the whole speedrunning thing. I've been asked that a couple of times because I've I've I've sped run some like pretty awful shit, right? And sometimes people ask, you know, like, where's the line? Like, when does the game become bad? And I don't want to say that Sonic is bad because I don't think it's bad. You know, there's definitely like worse games immediately that I can think of that I've both played and run. But controls are such a major thing. And already I was having the opinion like this is a game that I know I'm gonna fight with the controls. This is a game where I feel like I don't have control with the controls, not completely anyway. And that held true for pretty much the rest of the experience.
SPEAKER_03Sure. So immediately, any love for the presentation that you had was immediately overridden by how annoyed you were with how uh Sonic was feeling in that moment.
SPEAKER_00Pretty much, you know, like we kind of saw the Green Hill Zone, we heard the music, and then we kind of looked off to the side. There's a giant pile of shit right there. I was like, all right, I see how it's gonna be.
SPEAKER_03What did you think about because there's almost there's next to no storyline, right? I don't even think there's an opening cutscene. You pretty much press start and you are immediately dropped into Green Hill Zone. What did you think about saving the animals? You know, running around.
SPEAKER_00I was confused, honestly. I was like, okay, you know, I I don't know what it is with this era of like super villas. Like Dr. Wiley makes some incredibly poor choices, you have access to basically infinite amount of money and you invent like Toadman. It's like, okay, Dr. Wiley, why are we doing this? And I feel Dr. Robotnik is the same way. Like, you're this evil scientist. Why are we kidnapping squirrels and bunnies? Like, what are we doing here?
SPEAKER_03Sure. Yeah, I don't really know what he plans to do.
SPEAKER_00I don't know either. Not sure. And I was actually kind of hoping at the end that there is like maybe like uh an animal counter because my first thought knowing nothing was when you kill enemies, like they sometimes change into like little animals and they run away.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00And I was thinking, like, oh man, that would be kind of cool if they tracked, you know, like your your total saving of the animals or something, but of course they didn't.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00And I was thinking, well, what happens if I get to the end of the game that rescued like 17% of the animals?
SPEAKER_03It just gives you a bad person award.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Uh no, I have no idea what the purpose is and how it pertains to the story, but I will say it was pretty adorable. So, Dave, moving into the design and gameplay, I want to talk about the general mechanical loops of Sonic. The first one that I want to talk about with you is the ring system as a health mechanic. I want to see what you thought about that. So, for anyone who's unaware, in Sonic the Hedgehog, there are rings that you can collect similar to the coins in Mario. And just like in Mario, once you reach 100 rings, you get an extra life. However, if you get hit, unlike Mario, you lose all of your rings, they just explode out of you into this enormous cloud of rings, and it's your job. You're now tasked with tracking down as many of them as you can and recovering them. Because if you get hit, if you take a hit from an enemy while you have zero rings in your inventory, you die. So rings kind of act as your your points as well as your actual like hit points. So, Dave, I'm interested to get your thoughts on how you thought that affected your gameplay, what you thought about like the tension that it created, things like that.
SPEAKER_00This was my one redeeming quality that was good about this game. Okay. Everything else sucks. I'm sorry. And uh I actually did not mind it. Like, as a whole concept, I thought it was actually a pretty cool system. Uh, I agree heavily that it pulls you, I think, in like two different directions, which I really liked. The first is you know that you can take a hit as long as you have a ring.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00And I really like the idea of knowing that you can play a little bit more recklessly and like carelessly as long as you have rings in reserve. So I did notice myself like there were certain sections. There were, I can't remember, it was in like the labyrinth, I think, when you're underwater and there was like five or four or something like little pikes that were like coming down. And I was like, I could time this or I could just run through and get repeatedly stabbed and collect a ring and run through and get and I chose the ladder because at that point, you know, the ring system allowed for that.
SPEAKER_03Did did you find yourself like scumming for lack of a better term, often like where you just like I'll damage boost through and I'll collect the ring afterwards?
SPEAKER_00In some spots for sure. Uh it did it did actually allow for that. For the most part, though, I was trying obviously like not to get hit because I had a really hard time understanding like what was coming up with the environment and stuff. Right. But yeah, if I knew or if I died somewhere and I had the opportunity and I had the rings, obviously I could just like barrel through. The one thing that's insane about this game is you start every level without rings. And there was a couple times where I would start the level and I would just run down and all of a sudden I get hit and I immediately die. And I'm like, well, that's cool.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. You have to be very careful at the start of a level because you never know what what bullshit is going to be afoot is if you try to start zooming.
SPEAKER_00No, but the fact there's no carryover, like you get bonus rings and some of those like bonus levels before the previous level is done. Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_03You have to collect 50 rings in a stage, and then once you reach the end, you get access to the bonus level.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and nothing carries over. Like all your rings that you beat the level with, it just all they all get zeroed out. And I'm like, man, that's actually kind of punishing. So I don't know if like other Sonic games change that, or you know, you carry over the rings so you have a bigger, you know, pool of rings if you get hit.
SPEAKER_03I don't think so, but I'm not 100% certain. It's been a while since I've played Sonic 2 or 3. I don't think that's a change that happens, but I could be mistaken.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. I actually thought that was really punishing, but not in a good way.
SPEAKER_03Sure. Yeah, I like the ring system as kind of a spin on the Mario health mechanic, right? So in Mario, you have to get a mushroom and that gives you big mode or essentially two HP. I like the ring spin because once again, you're utilizing the coin mechanic from Mario and it's multi-purpose, right? And now it doubles as your HP, which I think is kind of neat. You're incentivized to track them down to try to get uh extra lives or try to get to the bonus stage. But like you said, you uh sometimes you also kind of want to use them to help get through some of the more difficult platforming sections. I think it creates a good sense of tension, like as soon as you get hit by an enemy and lose your rings, and you're trying to track them all down as quickly as you can, because like you said, you really want to keep at least one, right? If you have a one ring, you're safe. Uh, so I do think it does a good job of creating a sense of tension for the player in that moment. I will say getting hit and losing all your rings feels bad. It feels really bad. Well, especially once you get like up to 50 or up close to 100, and it's so difficult to you're not getting all of them back, right? You're gonna lose a huge portion of them.
SPEAKER_00See, one thing that I didn't like about the ring system, but it's not exactly the ring system itself, is like the insane recoil that Sonic had because he would like get shot pretty far left, like Castlevania style or right or whatever when he got hit. And the other thing that I didn't like about the ring system that is, I guess, slightly ironic, is we apparently had blast processing in this game. If you got hit in certain areas, especially underwater, and you lost all your rings, it lagged like crazy. Yeah, water, especially. And it was actually hard to retrieve your rings, especially underwater. So even if you had a chance, and I learned on like Sonic could drown as well. I was like, oh, so at that point, you know, you're trying to navigate both getting your air back, but at the same time recovering at least some rings, and it's so laggy, it's it's unbelievable how laggy that was, specifically getting hit. I think I had like 55 rings, and specifically getting hit with like over 50 underwater laggy. Yeah. So uh blast processing doesn't work there, apparently.
SPEAKER_03Something else I want to talk to you about really briefly before we kind of move into things that I'll call like the attitude contradiction is the physics-based platforming. So obviously, the game is engineered for you to go fast, right? And and that's really done by making Sonic behave like a marble. You know, he rolls up into a ball like a hedgehog would, and he rolls down a slope. I kind of struggled with it initially because I forgot that you actually need to press down or crouch to kind of initiate the the rolling motion. And I'll be honest, Dave, there were multiple times where I wanted to backtrack, especially early on in the game in like Green Hill zone. Did you re notice how terrible it was trying to walk back up a slope? Yes, or God forbid, jump off a slope.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it's horrible. Both of those things are absolutely horrible.
SPEAKER_03Okay, I I agree. I was I wanted a sanity check there to make sure I wasn't crazy.
SPEAKER_00Easily, like if you tried to get up a slope and it was bad. Like that, that was easily one of the worst, I think, parts of like the physics. One thing that I really didn't like was the general overall level design, because as I kind of said in Green Hill, it was mostly okay. Like, and when I say mostly okay, we're not talking about like 80%, we're not talking about like a 90% on your report card. It was like maybe like a 55 or a 60%, because I noticed immediately, you know, you had a bunch of like loop-de-loop things and sonics running. But the developer's answer to maintaining speed was after you do like a loop-de-loop thing, it shoots you vertically in the air and then you land. I think that's the developers literally saying, you know what, we don't know how to extend this process to run from you know A to B to C to D to E without interrupting you as the player, because at that point you need to catch up, like you need to understand, you know, like where your environment is now because you've been moving fast. I think for the most part in Green Hill, it was barely passable in the sense that the physics mostly worked where you weren't getting screwed on slopes or you didn't have like weird jumps and things that you needed to do. It didn't become a platforming game. It was still kind of like this run and you follow Sonic and you do the speed thing. But yeah, I think right after that, as I keep saying, like it descended very quickly into just like, what is this game, even?
SPEAKER_03I agree with you, and I think that's probably the most critical part of this discussion, right? The game markets itself as this speed platformer. Sonic's all about attitude, it's all about raw speed. Uh, but then you have issues like you described with uh your your uh POV or your FOV, rather. Uh so when you're moving at top speed, a lot of the time I feel like you don't actually have enough time to react to what's oncoming, you know, things like spikes or traps, which the designers seem to love for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_00They're uh pro spike like crazy. Right.
SPEAKER_03So it seems like the game forces you into more of like a trial and error approach, which I I guess makes the the ring system make a little more uh sense in that context. But it almost plays like a game that they want you to replay multiple times and try to like memorize these stages, especially because I notice a lot of the stages have multiple paths through them. There's typically like an upper route and a lower route. And I I found you usually want to be on the upper route because the the lower route, you're usually down there with the riffraff and getting your ass beat. But I agree with you. I think that there's a bit of an identity crisis in the design. Uh, and you see that within the levels themselves, like you described, but also just from act to act, right? You start off in Green Hill Zone, uh, which is, you know, like you described, you're doing you're doing some loops, you're doing some fast, you know, slope platforming, things like that, and then you move immediately into marble zone. And uh it's a lot slower, a lot more methodical. You're doing this like temple spelunking, there's fire and spikes everywhere. Uh, and you kind of see that progression throughout the rest of the playthrough. It's almost like every other act. And I wonder what caused Sega to go down that path when they were developing the game. It's like they were unsure that they could actually pull this off and they wanted to, you know, kind of stick to some more traditional platforming routes. Or I'm I'm not sure exactly what what happened there, but I agree with you. There's like this this weird identity crisis within the levels themselves, and then also like act to act.
SPEAKER_00I can kind of forgive them a little bit if it was the first game and design being a little bit flaky, because I could totally see them going into the fact that you know, but like Sonic, we we have this premise of speed, as you said, like raw speed. You know, we want the player to run through as fast as possible. And if the original concept was 18 levels plus like a bonus stage or like a final stage, reviewing that concept and being like, wow, do we really want 18 levels of Green Hill? Or do we need to kind of expand that, you know, as the player beats section one and section two and section three? But I think the way that they kind of expanded on the original premise, which I would assume is Green Hill, uh, not great. Like it became weirdly, I wouldn't say like a precision platform, but as you said, very methodical. Like you're moving really slow, counterintuitive to like what you just learned in the first level.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Marble Zone is like this ancient ruins that's filled with lava and crushers and moving moving platforms. Something that I want to talk about really quickly before we kind of move on. The the spikes, Dave. Oh my god. I think a majority of my deaths came from spikes, especially because it seemed like once you hit spikes, you Didn't have any iframes afterwards. So spikes were essentially like an instant death. You would get you would hit spikes, you would lose all of your rings, and then you'd like immediately hit them again and die.
SPEAKER_00They were pretty bad. I don't know what function you have in this game. Like that's the most confusing part to me. If your whole premise is speed, why are we putting like tire spikes everywhere for Sonic?
SPEAKER_03Right. Yeah. The game seems to lean really heavily on traps as its as its source of difficulty, which I didn't love. I also found the other most common way that I was dying, uh, which hasn't I haven't had the sensation in a long time, was getting squished. So like a block would lift you up towards the ceiling or towards another moving block and they would squish you, uh, which is an instant death, by the way, regardless of how many rings you have.
SPEAKER_00Correct. Yeah. And I was like, dude, why? I'll I'll read the note. Like I showed you kind of like my shit notes that I wrote. And for Green Hill, I wrote mostly okay. You know, it's pretty acceptable. So going into Marba Hill right afterwards, I said, How the fuck do you go fast with vertical ground that goes up and down? Lava pits, we have blind jumps, we have vertical fireballs that just like flow from the lava, they shoot up from the lava. Sonic crushers that crush Sonic, as you just said. We have block puzzles that we need to solve where Sonic pushes the block really slowly to get access to something that's beneath him or around him. We have vertical stairs that Sonic has to jump up one at a time or go down one at a time. We have timed wall spikes where like these like spears and spikes are coming out of the wall, and then blocks that float in lava that we have to wait on the block as the block is moving across the lava. All of these things are why do they exist?
SPEAKER_03Sure. I'm interested to hear if you preferred those stages. Absolutely. Absolutely not. Okay, I was gonna say, or the ones where you actually get have the opportunity to go fast sometimes.
SPEAKER_00No, uh, I think give me brainless go fast from Green Hill, that was much better. Everything that they added in Marba Hill onwards, I think was not great and conductive to obviously like what they were trying to pull off with Sonic. And then I think it was even worse because, as I kind of said, like Sonic was slippery to me. He was not great when it came to controls, and he's still good enough. But when you start having like one thing that the developers really love doing as well, is you kind of said there's like a multi-tier approach to like how level is vertically. And I agree, I was in uh Starlight, and I happened to be at the very top. I think it was in like act two or something like that. So it was like the second level of that act, and I stayed at the very top the entire time. It was like beginner's luck. I was like, wow, this is so much easier when you're on the top. But yeah, I noticed from previous levels if you fall, you fall. Like there is such a punishment for falling where you're not only falling and you fell, you're falling like multiple layers, and you have to crawl yourself back up through like the different sections that you fell through. Very similar to like, what is that game? Getting over it or whatever. Sure, like jump, jump, once again, like a jump, jump king or all of all the games are gonna play mirror jump king.
SPEAKER_03It turns out all platformers, jump king is all platformers, all platformers are jump king.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it it's insane the punishment that you receive, but at the same time, I'm still okay with that. Like, I don't want to bitch and say, like, oh man, it's too hard. Like, I'm okay with getting punished like that, but I'm not okay with jumping very slowly because you, as the developer, wanted me to jump very slowly between these blocks that I'm waiting to like pass, and then all of a sudden there's a fucking spear that comes out of the thing and it knocks Sonic like seven floors or whatever down. I'm like, why? Like, why does this exist? How is this like go fast? Like, this is horrible design, and I didn't like that.
SPEAKER_03I don't know if it's because I had played the game when I was younger, so I I had you know some idea of what to expect, or if I just you know happened to take a slower, more methodical approach because you know I was just focused on living since I knew it was uh a limited continues game, but I didn't find myself having too many problems until uh the the very end of the playthrough. I do agree with you. Marble zone is where you know they start to lean on the traps a little bit more as far as the spikes, the the moving blocks, the uh the pikes that that shoot from the walls. Uh, I do think it's kind of a return to form for a little bit once you get into spring yard zone. It's got the cool neon cityscape vibe, and there are a lot of bumpers, which I think is uh is a fun mechanic. I don't know that I would want to play an entire game that was filled with bumpers, Sonic Spinball. Uh but I do think in brief doses it's fun to ping pong around that way. Uh it's a lot it's a lot faster paced than than Marble Zone, and you you get a lot more vertical movement. I do, however, want to talk about Labyrinth Zone. Uh under the underwater ruins that requires air management.
SPEAKER_00It is worst worst act in the entire game. This was horrible. Uh, I actually have in my like my little shit notes that it took specifically act three in Labyrinth was the worst level in the entire game. I thought that was like atrociously bad from start to finish. Even the boss fight, I'm a little bit confused. I wanted to go back and watch the speedrun, so I'll do that after. But I managed to hit Robotnik like three times on the vertical climb.
SPEAKER_03That's where you're chasing him, right? It's not like a it's not like a traditional fight. You're kind of like chasing him through this vertical platform section as the water's filling up beneath you. Yeah, that part, I remember that from my childhood. That part's messed up, man. Like somehow I didn't die, but it's really intense. Like in comparison to the rest of the game, just like the water rising, you're chasing robotnik, there's traps everywhere, you know, spikes, blocks trying to squish you. That part is just it feels kind of out of place as far as the rest of the game is concerned.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. No, it does. And I don't know if you can like actually kill him before you get to the top, but I guess going back. I'd be curious because I did hit him like three times. So I was like, I wonder if I hit him, you know, an extra four or five, but it's really hard to do that. So I wasn't sure.
SPEAKER_03Maybe I wonder if you don't hit him if you just have to keep doing a loop. You know what I mean? Like it resets itself basically.
SPEAKER_00Maybe, but no, I hated Labyrinth. Like the puzzle aspects where you had to like flip certain switches to like open up floors and stuff is garbage. Uh Sonic drowning is like I would be horrified as a kid. Like that music is very anxiety inducing. Dude, it's horrible. I was like, wow, and the death animation of Sonic where he's like choked out. I was like, man, like who greenlit this mechanic, much less him dying this way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the music is anxiety inducing for sure. I'm not a fan of the bubble mechanic myself. Also, like you said, these water zones are laggy, man. Uh, the blast processing can cannot keep up. And I'll wait until we get to the zone, but it's critical a little bit later on. Starlight zone, I think, is mostly a return to form, you know, nighttime city vibe with seesaws that have some bombs on them.
SPEAKER_00I'm conflicted on this zone in particular because I think if I had to pick least defensive, I would actually pick Starlight.
SPEAKER_03I think actually Starlight is commonly referred to as like a fan favorite as far as this game is concerned.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I did like Starlight, and I think most of the mechanics, the seesaws were really bad, like the introduction. I immediately just walked off a seesaw and I died. And then the second time that I tried to hit the weight, and I was like, oh, okay, like maybe I need to disperse myself on the opposite platform. I still walked off and I died. And I was like, the fact that you introduced this mechanic to the player above an open pit that they can die, I didn't necessarily agree with. You could have maybe made the ground solid just for that one seesaw so the player could figure it out.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00So I felt there was a little bit of cheap death there, but other than that, I actually did not mind that act in general.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I would agree. Like I said, I think it is kind of a return to form. Uh, it's one of the faster playing zones, along with Green Hill Zone and Spring Yard Zone, and I think those zones play to the game's strengths, and they generally rely less on some of the more egregious design choices that we've discussed, things like spikes, traps, etc. However, I do want to talk about the final zone, scrap brain zone. I want to talk about the final stage of scrap brain zone. How'd you feel going back to uh labyrinth zone, buddy?
SPEAKER_00So I actually looked this up after because I was a little bit surprised. I think I took like an alternate path that was pretty easy.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so you felt you found the shortcut like right away?
SPEAKER_00I didn't try. I just rolled down like an idiot, and then I I wound up like beneath the the stairs or whatever that were closing on me.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's very fortunate because I basically played through the stage once or twice all the way to about where the shortcut takes you, and then you know, I died, and subsequently I was like, hey, I wonder if you could like beat this cycle or whatever and get underneath this this ramp before it closes off.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I got really lucky then because I just ran all the way down and I fell, and I was like, Well, okay, I guess you can do that. But I, you know, descended down through the water. I avoided basically like the little spikes, and then I just got shot up and I fought the boss. And I was thinking, that's yeah, I was thinking, dude, like this wasn't that bad.
SPEAKER_03That's so incredibly fortunate because it is far and away the most difficult stage. Interesting.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03I got you know, it's there is specifically one moment, it's it it's basically right where the shortcut drops you at. You have to do this vertical platforming to get from one air bubble to the next air bubble, and there are you know some spikes and some enemies that are swimming around you, and it's so Dave, it's so incredibly laggy. And I I probably died, you know, two or three times just on that specific platforming challenge to get from one bubble to the other. Like one time I got there, fought my way through the lag, you know, the the drowning music is popping off, and I'm standing at the bubble spawn waiting, and it's counting down. I'm like, small the fucking bubble, small the bubble. And of course I died. And then finally I was like, you know what? And I think I'd use you know my second continue at this point, and I'm worried that I'm gonna game over and have to replay the entire game. And I was like, you know what, let's let's see if this is a shortcut, because I don't I don't want to play through that section again. But yeah, I do think that stage of of scrap brain is far and away the most difficult stage, probably the most egregious one, and it's crazy that you just idiot savanted your way into this shortcut right away.
SPEAKER_00I'll take it. This is probably what it's like to be the one percent of the one percent of the one percent where you don't have to worry about anything.
SPEAKER_03Really quickly before we move into the age well audit, I want to talk about the end game. Did you get all the chaos emeralds?
SPEAKER_00No, I don't think I got a single one. I did enter two bonus levels, but I just fell and I went to the goal at some point. So, whatever the Chaos Emerald side quest, I failed that terrible.
SPEAKER_03Okay. I like the bonus stages, I think they're a fun little diversion. They've got the insane 90s kind of like synth wave backgrounds with random birds, neon birds, and stuff. I think they're a fun little little side quest. I think I got three chaos emeralds. So, what did they do? They get you an alternate ending, which I did not get because I only collected three, and I want to say they're seven or eight. I watched the alternate ending on YouTube, and the only difference is that Sonic kind of like you know, tosses all the emeralds into the air or they come out of him or something, and they all gather together, and then nothing happens, and he looks around kind of disappointedly confused. Yeah, so just literally not literally you get nothing.
SPEAKER_00Actually, on that note, too, in the final robotnik fight, I massively messed up because as he was like trying to escape in his like shitty machine or whatever, and it was exploding. I got stuck in the stupid ass wall and he actually escaped. Really? That's possible. Yeah, and uh, I don't know if it changes anything because I'm assuming you're supposed to like break him or something before he flies away. Yeah, I think you hit him once, like you just jumped in. Only one time. Okay, nice. Yeah, yeah. I somehow failed that. I was like, well, I guess he's getting away and he like.
SPEAKER_03Wow, so you didn't even really you didn't even really do it.
SPEAKER_00No, we avoided all the chaos emeralds. We let Rabagna get away. He's probably capturing more people or whatever animals out of the forest right now.
SPEAKER_03Like, nice. You really are pissing on Sonic Scrape today. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00It's so bad.
SPEAKER_03All right, Dave, I want to talk to you about the age well audit. I want to know if there are any core mechanics that you think still feel incredibly satisfying to pull off today. For example, hitting a perfect loop-to-loop, anything like that.
SPEAKER_00Honestly, no, I really struggle with this one. The music, I guess, holds up a little bit. Like, I felt the music did its part. Everything else I really struggled to like this one. I thought it sucked.
SPEAKER_03Fair enough. I think that I enjoyed hitting a loop-to-loop. I don't think it's as satisfying as it is in the later titles. Sonic gets access to, I believe, something called like the spin dash, and it's where you can like crouch and kind of like wind up or charge up, and you shoot forward with a huge burst of speed. It lets you initiate some of that like hill or slope-based platforming a little more quickly. So I don't think it's as rewarding as it is in some of the later entries, but I thought hitting a loop-to-loop was still cool. It's just unfortunate that you get to do it so rarely, and a lot of the time, like we've discussed, if you commit to it too hard, you just end up getting punished. You know, like you're gonna you're gonna run into some spikes, you're gonna get squished by two blocks, a pike's gonna come out of the wall and stab you. It's just you're gonna have a bad time. Speaking of having a bad time, I think you've really driven this home already, but I'm curious specifically what single element of the game caused you the most frustration?
SPEAKER_00Water physics, I think by far was the number one winner.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_00How Sonic actually controls in the water is horrible. Uh his movement just appeals to a stop. Like it's it's really bad. I think the hazards in which the developers put everywhere was also really bad. I'm again totally okay with crushing difficulty, but at least give me spatial awareness or don't make it like totally blind. And I feel large amounts of hazards were actually blind.
SPEAKER_03No, I I would agree. I think that the the FOV is a little too squished, or like you said, uh a majority of the hazards are a little too hidden. I also agree that the water physics are some of the worst parts of the game, specifically the section uh of scrap brain zone that you skipped, uh, because it's one of the only times where the game really lags, uh, and it lags uh particularly badly underwater. I'm gonna go ahead and uh choose something different. I'm gonna say spikes, just in general, the spikes, specifically what I cited earlier, where once you hit a spike, it is like you essentially don't get any iframes, and you are hitting that spike again and you are dying. So rings don't rings don't do anything to protect you from uh spikes the majority of the time this game. And a lot of the time you're not aware that they're there, like we've discussed, because you don't have the proper field of view, or because you're trying to, you know, do what the game encourages you to do and zoom along, and then you know, you have to take a kind of like a blind leap of faith, and of course there are spikes down there. Uh so I'm gonna go ahead and pick spikes. All right, Dave, I want to move into the legacy bridge. I want to talk about the DNA tests and the lost art. Uh, in regards to the DNA tests, which modern titles do you think are clear clearly the children of physics focus momentum? Are there any that stick out to you that you've played uh that you think Sonic helped lay the foundation for?
SPEAKER_00That's a good question, other than Jump King, apparently. Um but no, I don't know. I actually don't know the answer to that because I don't think I've personally played a game like Sonic until I've literally played Sonic this last week. Um I can't think of another game that mirrors, I guess, Sonic in the DNA kind of way, where clearly it was inspired by or from. So I actually don't think I have an answer there. I don't think I've actually played that game if it exists.
SPEAKER_03Uh, some of the examples that are listed in the show notes were games like Mirror's Edge, Ghost Runner, or Neon White. So Neon White is a cross between a first-person shooter and almost like a puzzle platformer, and it's completely time trial based. I feel like it takes the obsession with speed that Sonic helped popularize and kind of pushes it to its logical extreme, if that makes sense. So, like instead of simply running fast, every weapon that you have doubles as a movement ability, which turns each level into kind of a high-speed puzzle where you master your momentum, your routing, and your split second execution. So if Sonic asks how fast can a platformer be, Neon White asks more like how perfectly can you play one. Uh, I absolutely love Neon White, it's a favorite of mine. And while I understand it might not be for everyone, if it sounds appealing, I would definitely recommend giving it a shot. I do think that Sonic laid that kind of groundwork for what is a more speed or momentum focused platformer look like? I derive enjoyment from movement and getting into that flow state when you're controlling your character. And I think a title like Neon White is great at that. I don't think Sonic is good at that. But I do think I really, really appreciate when a game does that well. Celeste, I think, is actually a great example of a kind of like physics or momentum-based platformer that I think has really actually nailed this formula. Uh now, granted, it's not exactly the same. You're not like rolling down slopes and going through loop-to-loops, but my god, is the movement in that game so incredibly rewarding?
SPEAKER_00It's probably rewarding because they got rid of slopes. But no, I mean, yeah, you could probably reach there. I think in terms of like a specific physics or movement-based game, for sure, Celeste is amazing. I don't know how much they would draw from Sonic, though. I'd be curious, you know, if you were to ask all the individual developers and be like, yo, you know, like what is this supposed to be like? Sure. Because I feel Celeste is almost like in maybe a box of its own.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, or maybe like Meat Meat Boy.
SPEAKER_00Meatboy, yeah. I think that's a better comparison for sure. Like the difficulty of Meat Boy, the precision platforming of Meat Boy, like, I think that was probably a bigger draw.
SPEAKER_03You know what though? Both of those games have traps. Yeah, well, spikes came from Sonic, I guess. Exactly. Yeah, clearly. That's the that's the one thing Sonic did right.
SPEAKER_00Spikes, unavoidable spike deaths. Like, that's that's the legacy.
SPEAKER_03Fair enough, Dave. All right, I'm ready to move into our final verdict, aka the time capsule. I think we've hammered on this pretty hard throughout the episode. I want to hear your your final stance on your overall enjoyment, your raw personal enjoyment of Sonic the Hedgehog.
SPEAKER_00I think I would rather be involved with some kind of accident where I stapled my testicles by accident than to play Sonic 1 again.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, the only good things I can give this game, I think, are again, as I already said, sort of, I you know, I'll give it two things. And then the rest was unfortunately like a flaming polish it. So the music is borderline okay. I don't think the music is great, but I can't criticize it. I can't criticize it in such a way where I think the music is awful. You know, Green Hill is above average to me. Everything else is kind of average, but it doesn't sound bad. So I can give it that. Um the health ring system, I think is still a good one. I do specifically like both the design of it, but I also like the design of it in the sense that it forces you to again experience with risk versus reward. And I'm always a huge fan of when developers do that either intentionally or unintentionally through game design, because at that point you kind of think, like, oh, you know what? Maybe it's actually worth taking these hits now to get through this section and being a little bit more vulnerable, you know, towards the end of the level than it is to try to preserve that, right? So I like that a lot. One thing that I don't necessarily like, but I didn't dislike it, is I at least appreciated how each boss fight was trying to do something different. I also kind of appreciate, like, for example, in was the Seesaw level. So I guess it would have been Starlight. The Seesaws that introduced at the very beginning of the game were the mechanic of the boss fight at the end. Yeah. And I do like how they tried to try, I I could see the attempt where there was like a mechanic that was introduced in the level, and the boss fight was based around that mechanic, you know, in the previous level. And the boss fights were okay, but they weren't anything, you know, in-depth or crazy. But I I do at least appreciate they tried to make it different.
SPEAKER_03No, I I I think that's totally fair. I think I enjoyed this quite a bit more than you did. I I wouldn't say that I loved it, I thought it was fine. Like we discussed, it's really rough around the edges. You could tell that Sonic team is trying some stuff, figuring out you know how they want to exist in this new like mascot platformer market space. I think the moment-to-moment gameplay is a mixed bag. You know, when you the rare moments when you get to go fast, they're cool, they don't happen nearly as frequently as I would like. And a lot of the time when you engage with them, you just end up getting punished. The slower, more methodical stages, some of them are fine. Uh, Marble Zone, I actually like Marble Zone okay. Uh, I also think it's probably the second best track in the game. But you know, things like Labyrinth Zone or Scrap Brain Zone, I just don't think they play particularly well with, you know, the way Sonic handles and their overall reliance on on traps and and spikes and things of that nature. So I would say overall it was totally fine, very middling, uh, probably on par with Keen. I think that I think Keen is more surprising in that I had lower expectations, and I think that it probably has some more like ingenious design that Sonic I think Sonic is guilty of more design sins.
SPEAKER_00Uh no, absolutely, it's committing crimes like every second. Like stealing wallets from everybody on the street constantly. In this case, I would absolutely even though I didn't feel super strong about Commander Keen, and even though I ended the episode last time, say, Oh, you know what, leave Keen in the dust. Dig up Keen, man. Put put Sonic in that hole. Like, put and I would that that's that's where my tier list would be. Like I would say for sure, Commander Keen is better than Sonic the Hedgehog.
SPEAKER_03For Sonic's 35th birthday, you want to murder him and put him in the dirt.
SPEAKER_01Fair enough.
SPEAKER_03I I will also say that I enjoy the presentation of this game a lot. I think it looks and sounds great. Um, I think I don't think the the score is incredible, but I think it's pretty solid. I especially like uh Green Hill Zone and Marble Zone. I think they're pretty banging tracks. It's there's probably also a certain amount of that that's tied to my childhood nostalgia. Just loading up for the first time was such an incredible, you know, uh whiplash back to being like eight years old or whatever and playing it for the first time. Uh I like the vibe of Green Hill Zone. It's really vibrant, really colorful. You've got the good music, you know, you've got the water in the background, but the good faith that it instills early on gets kind of you know torn down really quickly as the game progresses and is pretty much entirely lost by the time you get to about labyrinth zone.
SPEAKER_00Marvel Hillman is like immediately gone after the second level.
SPEAKER_03But fair enough, Dave. Uh, so I think I know your answer to this, but essential versus a museum artifact. Is the original Sonic the Hedgehog a must-play for a modern gamer? Or do you think it's a museum piece that's better left respected from afar? While people might skip straight to something like Sonic 2 or Sonic Mania.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if if we ever play Sonic 2, I that was the feedback that I already said. Like I heard that a lot. Yeah, Sonic 2 is a better game. Sonic 2 is a better game. I'd be extremely curious in trying at least Sonic 2 just to see the improvements, just the general, maybe like level design, everything that they changed. If I feel it was like less unfair or aged badly. But yeah, Sonic 1, kind of interesting because I feel Keen as an origin, you know, I think it did a better job. I I would feel a little bit more comfortable walking away saying, like, okay, Keen, at least play it. Where I would probably revise my original answer from the first episode. This one, I don't, I would not recommend it. I if somebody walked up to the street is like, hey man, you ever play Sonic? I'd be like, no, no, like, don't do it. Like, there's so many other better games. Sure. Like, I really, really, really struggle with this one, and I didn't like it at all. So, like, I could not recommend it, even as a curiosity of origin. You know, like this is where it started, this is where it came from. Like, it was bad. I did not like it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's fair. I think I agree. Uh, I think that Keen is kind of like maybe has some validity to go back and check out just to see its historical significance. Uh, whereas I think that Sonic 1, like, just brother, just go play Sonic 2 or go play, you know, Sonic 3 and Knuckles. It's just I think it's just aged really poorly, and a lot of that is due to some of the design that we've discussed, things like just kind of the the whiplash and the level design and over reliance on traps. So, yeah, please just just leave this one alone. If you want to play a Sonic title in 2026, just skip straight to two, skip straight to three. Or I haven't played Mania yet, but I imagine you know, check that out.
SPEAKER_00Uh, let's also not forget Sonic in the Olympics. Like, that's probably of course, of course. Probably pretty good too.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, maybe we can play, you know, Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 in the future and see if that rehabilitates your your opinion.
SPEAKER_00No, this is where we gotta jerk people around because they expect that now. So we'll we'll dedicate this time and space right now. We'll say we're gonna do Sonic 2 in the future, and then we're gonna do the biggest like crypto rug pull of all time, and it's gonna be Sonic. No, no, Sonic goes the Olympics. That's what it's gonna be.
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay, or Sonic spinball.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, whatever other one, but not to you.
SPEAKER_03Sure. All right, Dave, my final question the remake pitch. If the game were handed to a modern studio for a structural remake tomorrow, what's the one mechanical element that must never be altered?
SPEAKER_00The extreme slowdown and water sections.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh again, it's the rings, right? It's gotta be the rings. Yeah, it's it's a hundred percent the rings, a hundred percent. That would have been my answer. Yeah, like there's there's no other mechanic I think that you could probably carry into a modern Sonic game that actually would do well, or was a good mechanic, I think, from the original, other than the rings.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I think those are the two the I think the two most uh iconic mechanics from the game are the rings and like you know, the speed or the momentum or you know, the the loop-to-loops. And I think that the rings is done so much better, so much more elegantly. Uh, like we discussed. I think that it creates a real sense of tension for the player. And I think it's a really clever spin, a kind of like a hit point mechanic. And I I really do appreciate the ring mechanic. I think it is uh handled a lot more gracefully than the uh the like the the speed or or lack thereof.
SPEAKER_00No, they they do, and it's actually kind of weird thinking about that because there's not a whole lot of modern games that kind of copied Sonic in that way, but I think as a general health system, that could be so beneficial in a lot of different ways. Like you could have so much fun in a lot of different games like that, but uh even even like using it as kind of like a blueprint, I can't think of many that did that, where if you get hit, you have a choice to recover, you know, like your health. So I'm surprised that more modern games didn't really take from that.
SPEAKER_03Right. I agree. All right, Dave. Uh, want to wrap things up here. Put Sonic to to rest, lay him down in his grave. Our next episode, we are going to be playing.
SPEAKER_00This was this was not my choice, by the way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, this was my choice. Uh I grew up with this game. I don't know how I grew up with this game, by the way. Bassin's Black Bass for Super Nintendo, uh, aka Super Black Bass 2. Uh, this is one that I somehow stumbled into during my childhood. I suspect that one of my friends' dads rented it and I played it at their house, but I'm I'm very excited for you to try it. I don't know why I have such a deep adoration for for this game. It's just the vibes, man. The vibes are immaculate, and I really like it's kind of a slightly cartoony, slightly arcadey spin on like a fishing simulator. So uh I'm interested to see how you feel about it. I just I have really fond memories playing this one growing up. So I I'm gonna have a prior experience with this one and also probably some nostalgia bias. So hopefully you don't hate it too much.
SPEAKER_00Uh we've set a very low bar with standard or true, that is true.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, maybe maybe Sonic, maybe your experience with Sonic will make you appreciate Bass and Black Bass so much more.
SPEAKER_00I'm sure both of those things are directly correlated. But you know, I'm gonna put you on the spot for a second because Sonic was linear in the sense like, okay, we can beat the game. Yeah. Commander Keen was linear in the sense like, okay, we can beat the game. Yeah. Uh I do like kind of like the feedback that we've received already where Asta was like, oh yeah, you know, like I kind of like playing along with the podcast. What do we do in a fishing game? Is there like a tournament mode that we're gonna do?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so there's a tournament mode. There's kind of like a main, it's not really a story or campaign, but yeah, it's a tournament mode. I think you go through, I want to say three rounds. I forget exactly how many off the top of my head. Uh, but you need to, you know, catch a certain amount of fish, like a certain pound poundage or weight of fish.
SPEAKER_00Poundage.
SPEAKER_03And you I think you have to place somewhere in the top three, maybe you might have to place first uh in a given tournament to advance to the next one. And you know, you go to you go to new lakes and you get access to new lures, and there's even like some secrets that I don't want to spoil, but and the fish the fish obviously get bigger as you progress, which is exciting. Uh poundage increases. Yeah, so we'll play through the whole whole tournament mode. And okay, you got you gotta win, you gotta win all the tournaments. If you don't win all the tournaments, don't bother coming to the next episode before you're fired.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. All right. Our jobs are scary.
SPEAKER_03All right, Dave. Last uh, last item that I want to address is our sign-off. I asked you to come to the episode with a random idea for an episode sign-off. So let's let's walk through our sign-off ideas. Uh, you wanna do you remember what yours was? Yeah, I was gonna I have it pulled up in case you don't.
SPEAKER_00Uh I was just gonna straight up steal like from the Adam West Batman. It's like same bat time, same bat channel, but we say same podcast time, same podcast channel. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Podcast. So hopefully we don't get sued for that. But you know what? Adam West the state probably is good people, maybe sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so for anyone, I guess, who's unaware at this point, the name podcast the video game is a play. Uh Dave and I both deeply adore Batman the video game for NES. So it's kind of a play on the name. My idea is not quite as creative, I guess, as yours.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's not, it's not plagiarism.
SPEAKER_03Sure, yeah. I guess, yeah, mine is more actually, mine is more original. Good point. Both of us being speed runners, typically, whenever you know somebody finishes a run or finishes a session, you'll just always be like GG. You know, that's what runners always say to each other whenever they they wrap up a run. So what if every time one of us, once we've identified that the podcast is over and we're ready to call it, and we, you know, we just give each other somebody asks like a kind of a like a they ask. It's like uh like I say GG and you say GG.
SPEAKER_00That's a pretty good idea. I like that. I would like to propose my alternate timeline of okay, probably 20 years of legal issues with the Adam West estate. Sure. No, no, I like that. I think I'm I'm okay with that. I like that. That's a good idea.
SPEAKER_03All right, GG.
SPEAKER_01GG, I'm not sure.
