Drunken Gamers Radio: 02.07.2009
This week we talk to Chris Przybyszewski from the studio that created Thumbstruck for the iPhone/iPod Touch, Resolute Games. It’s a great conversation on just what it’s like to create games for the new, burgeoning mobile game market.
In addition we review Time Crisis and WordJong for the iPhone while John and Hilden debate which one has become the bigger soccer mom. Moe simply watches and laughs before declaring them both losers. We also manage to talk about R-Type Dimensions for the XBLA and the latest news. All this after we make our way through what may be one of our most confusing and funny reader letters of all time.
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SHOWNOTES
Interview with Chris Przybyszewski-Resolute Games
iPhone Review: Time Crisis
iPhone Review: WordJong
XBLA Review: R-Type Dimensions
Retro Review: Psycho Fox (Master System)
News: Left 4 Dead DLC
Onslaught for WiiWare
Lego Battles
Red Dead Redemption
Release List
The Last Shot
DGR Mailbag
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And for the text message battle, continue on inside…
John: Any reviews other than R-Type?
Hilden: Time Crisis for iPhone. I could do WorldJong for iPhone as well.
John: And I’m the dork…
Hilden: None of these games reside in the Soccer Mom Land to which you belong.
John: WordJong? Are you kidding me? Nice try.
Hilden: It was recommended by Luke Smith and John Davison. So fuck you.
John: So was Peggle. If Peggle’s a station wagon, WordJong’s a minivan.
Hilden: WHAT?!? You’re out of your goddamn mind.
John: Yeah, it’s me.
Hilden: If I go to Macy’s and ask every chick to pick which of teh two games they know, Peggle wins hands down.
John: Ha! Nice. You’re right: no moms play Mahjong. Except for mine, and my wife, and my sister. It’s okay. You’re still cool.
Hilden: It’s not Mahjong. It’s WordJong. And your mom and sister don’t play that. They DO play Peggle. Loser.
John: Hilarious. Remember that episode of Seinfeld where all the old Jewish ladies are sitting around playing Mahjong? They’ve got a chair open for you. Don’t forget your arthreitis meds, granny.
Hilden: You try so hard to justify the Peggle playing vagina you’ve grown. Gayrod.
John: Hey, I know Peggle’s gay. Your’e the one trying to pass off WordJong as somehow not being a game tailor made for elderly women. I’m calling you Estelle until you fess up. Estelle.
Hilden: Elderly women can’t afford an iPhone.
John: Ok, you’ve got a point there, but the Parker Bros. version has got to be on the way. But now we’re acting like teenage girls with all this texting. See you in an hour. Estelle.
Hilden: You sound upset. Maybe you should go and play Peggle with some soothing aroma therapy candles before the show. Sorry. Last one.
John: You have menopause. That’s right: your uterus is useless. Last one! 
Hilden: Your husband doesn’t have sex with you in your loveless marriage. I lied.
John: Curse you and your osteoporosis!
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Tags: dgr, Drunken Gamers Radio, iphone, ipod touch, left 4 dead, podcast, r-type, resolute games, thumbstruck, time crisis, wordjong, xbla
February 9th, 2009 at 10:23 am
OK, let me see if I’ve got this straight… Thirty bucks for Castle Shikigami 3 on the Wii is a “killin’” price, but fifteen bucks for the definitive R-Type collection is “saddening”?
February 9th, 2009 at 10:33 am
And incidentally, Amazon’s selling the Flip Video Ultra today for sixty bucks– I seem to remember you guys recommended an earlier version of this gadget.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox/ref=nav_tdpop_gb
February 9th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Yes. That is correct.
…
But seriously, I agree with you. I think $15 is a fine price for this. And actually, if we want to get down to it, CS3 is slightly overpriced. I think it should be a $20 game. But hey, I do my best to support games like that so can’t complain.
It seems that there’s a psychological barrier that has to be broken when it comes to downloadable games versus their pricing structure. I have no problem – or at least very little problem – paying $15 for a game of this kind of quality. But I think what Moe was getting at is that it’s “saddening” that $15 seems to be taking over as the new norm for pricing on XBLA, when in the past $10 was sort of the high point. Granted, we got some insane steals ofr $10 and I can totally see why newer games like Castle Crashers and R-Type are bumping up the cost.
February 9th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I think of it like this: A friend and I went to IHOP last week and ordered scrambled eggs. With tax and tip, the final bill was $15. So for me, it comes down to a simple question: Would I rather have the definitive versions of the first two R-Type games, complete with leaderboards, achievements, and online play– or would I rather have two plates of scrambled eggs? Sometimes it can be a tough decision. After all, scrambled eggs are tasty and delicious, whereas the Bydo Empire is hardly appetizing. But in the end, I have to go with the option that’s less likely to cause heart failure.
John, you mentioned Persepolis. I should mention that it’s on Netflix Watch Instantly; and if you guys haven’t been making use of the 360′s support for NWI, you should definitely check it out. I used this service to watch several classic films over the weekend. The quality is excellent, and it always remembers where you left off, so you can turn off the 360 halfway through, come back to it days later, and pick right back up.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I believe the context of saddening had less to do with R-Type and more to do with the apparent price increase in cost of XBLA titles. But we’ve already had this conversation before regarding downloads vs. hard copies of games. You’re not wrong in your argument, but when put in the context of other games, I see discrepancies. I just think that games consistently releasing at $15 seems to be in some contradiction to the apparent purpose of the XBLA.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
First off, I want to emphasize that I’m not necessarily saying you’re wrong in this, sir. It’s not my place to say whether anyone is wrong or right in making any kind of value judgment, since that sort of thing is highly subjective.
I’m willing to accept that services like XBLA and PSN mean different things to different people. To some, they’re a dumping ground for games that aren’t good enough to justify a retail release. To others, they’re marketplaces for games that offer complete experiences, albeit more casual ones than what’s generally on offer at GameStop. To me, these are the places to go to get the games that, as a kid, I dreamed we would someday have: brawlers, shmups, platformers, puzzle games– most with graphics well beyond what I once dreamed possible and all at prices well below what I ever would have imagined. Years ago, when I was standing in line at Wal-Mart to pay seventy bucks for Final Fight on the SNES, if you had shown me Castle Crashers and told me that I would one day be able to own such a game for only $15, I think I probably would have exploded.
Even three years after the launch of XBLA, I can still play a game like R-Type Dimensions and be completely amazed. It’s a game I grew up with– two of them, actually– and it’s much better than arcade perfect. It looks incredible on my HDTV, and it allows me to score-chase with my friends from all over the world. It even supports custom soundtracks so that I can fight the Bydo Empire while listening to The Smiths, for that full-on burst of nostalgia.
In light of all that, when I read some message board threads and the prevailing opinion seems to be “It’s worth one-sixth the price of Shaun White Snowboarding, but not one-fourth, because that extra five dollars really breaks the bank”, I become extremely confused. This is one opinion I absolutely cannot understand. Believe me, I’m as frugal as any of you when it comes to my gaming purchases– I wasn’t even able to convince myself to buy Soul Calibur 4 when Amazon offered it for $30 over the holidays– but even if every game on PSN and XBLA were $15, they would still be significantly cheaper than anything you can get at retail. I do understand that you’re concerned whenever prices go up– I would be too, in most cases. But in this case, if the prices are going up, they’re going up from a point at which an HD remake of Ikaruga, complete with online play, is ten fucking dollars.
Anyway, sorry for this long diatribe. We disagree on this topic, but I respect and accept your position. Like I said, value judgments are very subjective, and I’m not trying to say that either of us is right, or wrong. I just wanted to put in a few words in RTD’s defense.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Right on, my friend. Besides, there is no need for anyone to feel bad about showing some love for a shmup, especially R-Type.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I’m not even through the show, but that reading of the first letter in the Comic Book Guy voice was fucking hilarious.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Overall, I’m in agreement with MC on prices. It’s very, very subjective and I think that’s were the problem has always been. Whenever you let the market decide anything, you’re always going to get a split on what “worth” is. If MS had stated standard pricing and then clearly defined what a certain dollar value was giving you, we would have less of a problem.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
MC, I don’t think that most people’s prejudices against XBLA and PSN games are wholly cognitive. For a long time, these downloadable services WERE a dumping ground of sorts. Most of the games on there were games like Zuma and Totem Ball. They were small, pick-up-and-play games that were cheap and easy to access, but not fully-fledged experiences worth investing a great deal of time into. We’re now in a transitional period where we are getting experiences that are bigger and better with a price point to match. They’re very much worth the money, but I think that a lot of people are still getting over that cognitive dissonance between a digital and boxed product. If the game were released for $15 in stores, people would be clamoring all over it, but since it’s on a medium that is still beginning to enter as a major player, we don’t see the two products as equals.
Again, I don’t think it’s something that can be fixed if somebody said to everyone “HEY! IT’S ONLY FIFTEEN BUCKS, DAMMIT!” The internet is an irrational hive of instant gratification, and most people don’t want to hear that sometimes good games are worth the asking price. It’s just something that people will eventually get used to. (And I’m not calling anyone here irrational, I’m speaking to the internet in general. Well, and Hilden. ;p )
February 9th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
I think one of those psychological barriers is the inability to re-sell the game, should you choose to do so.
In the end it might not make a difference fiscally, but the ability to turn around and sell a game that you don’t enjoy or are done playing is something that gamers have gotten used to.
Hell, I just sold Wartech Senko No Ronde and only “lost” 3 dollars based on the price I paid for it on clearance. I got to play the game, find out I didn’t enjoy it after a few hours of feature complete gaming, and then recoup my investment.
February 9th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
I blame Penny Arcade for the rise in prices. It was the first game that sold for $15, and prices started rising after it came out.
February 9th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Actually, it sold for $20 initially. The price was lowered to $15 when Episode 2 was released.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:26 am
Hmmm – are they both only $15 on PSN?
Maybe that’s why I was thinking of that.
Either way, fucking over priced and set a bad example for the industry as a whole.
Also, as a side note regarding The World Ends With You:
I lived in Japan for a year, I’ve been to Shibuya several times…..
There are no black people.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Like I said earlier… I can’t understand the mindset that thinks pricing something like Precipice at $15 is “setting a bad example”. I’m just not that much of a cheapskate.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:06 am
“I lived in Japan for a year, I’ve been to Shibuya several times…..
There are no black people.”
Take THAT DJ!
But I think DJ was getting at the point that maybe the game would have sold better in the US if it wasn’t based on Shibuya and instead was fit into a more localized setting. If that makes sense.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:20 am
So I just started this week’s episode, and I really have to give it to you guys. Over the course of the last year or so I’ve felt that the show had been loosing a bit of it’s touch. It was still a good show, but for some reason it was just missing something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But over the course of the past few weeks, the show has really returned to the show that I loved in the first place.
And you know, the more I think about it, I think it’s because Moe is playing games again. Not directly because of that, but I think that playing games has put Moe into a different state of mind on the show, restoring the dynamic between you three. For a while it was mostly John and Hilden talking about games with Moe making one of his lovably snarky remarks in between, but now it’s back to the three of you sharing in the discussion, with Moe being snarky throughout. It’s just so damn great. I’m finally really looking forward to listening to the show each week again.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:45 am
I have to echo at least a bit what Mitch is saying. I’ve been listening for a under a year, and while I haven’t thought the quality of the show was lacking, the past few weeks have been just outstanding. Keep up the good work, guys!
Now I never got into R-Type for some reason as a youth, so I bought it on your reccomendation. Playing on Classic, and it is kicking my ass so far. Having a good time, though.
I loved the letter. I hope that guy writes in more.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:47 am
I couldn’t agree more, Mitch. I had been feeling something has been “missing” from the show for a bit. I think, for me anyway, it was the whole name change/site change making me feel like we had to figure out who we are as a podcast again. Add to that we’re in a new location (which always takes getting used to for me) and it felt a little lost for awhile.
But lately, these have been the most fun shows I’ve done. This weeks goes down as the show where I’ve laughed the hardest (both during and after) that I can remember. I guess it’s just getting comfortable with a bunch of new things.
Add to that Moe kicking ass and it’s a lot of fun. So, bottom line, God Bless Moe.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
WordJong? It’s only a matter of time before Babiez will be reviewed.
And the Ace’s email was great. As was Hilden’s voice. At points I thought he was going to start doing Homestar’s voice.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
We’re selling out. We’re going all casual games now. We’ll call it “Sipping Champaign Coolies with the Casual Gamer Guys”.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
And the only F word you’ll say is “fantastic!” in the most girly way possible?
February 10th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
We call it “Metrosexual”.
February 10th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Loves WordJong, but will not try Peggle…
February 10th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
That’s what I’m sayin’! He does it just to spite me.
February 10th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Isn’t Peggle coming out for the iPhone soon? In a few months you’ll hear Hilden saying “Hey guys, have you checked out Peggle? It’s an awesome bathroom game….”
February 10th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
That first letter is one of the greatest things I’ve heard on any podcast. Holy shit.
And Hilden, just try Peggle. You’d probably like it. Actually, at MGC, I’m going to bring my laptop and force you to play it.
February 10th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Yes, that e-mail was hilarious. Hilden’s reading it like Comic Book Guy made it that much better imo. I thought at first it was a voicemail and that was his actual voice. Now that would have been classic although it was still funny after I realized it was an e-mail. Where do these people come from and why do they bother spending time and energy on something they say they don’t like? Weird although I enjoy the humor in their hypocracy.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
@Fivespot and everyone else who chimed in on that first email. Thank goodness I wasn’t driving when I heard that, I would have dreiven off the road. Funny, IF that guy actually heard that being read my bet is he would be smug enough to get all self-important about it and write back. Let’s hope he does, because a series of letters like THAT would go down in Podcast History!!!
Oh and thanks to all who joined in on the Chromehounds fun. That was awesome!!!
February 10th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Y’know what R-Type’s Infinite mode is awesome for? My 4 year old. He thinks he’s the greatest shmup player evar.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
@Lard ‘n John
Well yeah, of course there isn’t black people in Japan. I remember my instructor in an old anthropology class tellin’ me black people are feared and the racism over there is far more prevalent than what is typically goin’ on the Western end. But Lard would know more with the whole being there thing. I know the game is set in Japan and all about Japan.
Just because I get it doesn’t mean the market was going to. So yeah, John gets what I was sayin’.
And that’s why I wrote in about…you know…broadswords modded into chainsaws.
haha I totally thought my letter was deleted. Paul Mooney for the win ^_^
Still playin’ World Ends With You long after I beat it because there’s a ton of 2nd Quest shit to do in this and you can skip to anywhere thank fucking god. Lovin’ the harder difficulties and risk-reward style.
That one letter against the Ace dude was classic.
God I love this show.
That whole dialogue about the $15 R-Type DL vs. $20 Shikigami Disc (seen at many GStops for this price), I understand the whining against the $15 end because these R-type games have been released together several times already. I got R-Types for $20, and Hilden sounds right that this doesn’t quite sound worth another $15 since they didn’t do too much relevant besides the HD essentials and the leaderboards ‘n co-op. Now original games at this new price point, I don’t have a problem with. But I like to remind myself that once Microsoft shuts their DRM server down and finds a reason to outdate this existing Gamertag system in 10-30 years, your DL purchases will be gone for good anyway (except for those people great at preserving hardware). When I hit 40 years old, what is going to be more likely available for me to play? My Wii VC title, my super high failure rate hardware 360 Live Arcade version, or my PS1 with a [i]tangible[/i] disc? I’m gonna vote with the disc. Maybe M.C. will come down all on me for not totally knowing how Microsoft’s DRM system works in detail, and that’s cool, but I know enough that a DL game needs a running master console (‘cept for select authorized transfers) or a legit gamertag @purchase to run the title. I don’t think both systems will survive that test of time for what the market has suggested to be such a timeless game.
R-Type Delta and Final are better constructed anyway.
And why the hell has nobody tried to make R-Type Leo available yet? ‘Sick of waiting dude…
February 10th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
ugh…thinking about the longevity of a transaction 10 years later for a $15 purchase. God I’ve become frugal.
Curse you economy! *shakes fist in air*
February 11th, 2009 at 3:20 am
I’m with carrotpanic on the $15 price point. When I buy a PC game via Steam I at least know I’ll be able to play that as long as I keep a Windows machine around and when I buy a console game I know I can let my friend borrow and have fun with it if I’m not currently using the game. With downloadable games on consoles I can’t let others borrow it and I have absolutely zero guarantee that I’ll be able to continue to play that game on my next Xbox/PlayStation system.
As far as the IHOP eggs issue, that same $15 is 1/4 of a full console retail game that I can lend out to others and possibly sell later for a pretty good price, or 1/3 of a full retail PC game that I’ll be able to play when I’m bored ten years from now. So $10 to $15 leads to a lot more hemming and hawing over purchasing it.