Idle Thumbs 214: Ship It, Droopy

[Chris]

Idle Thumbs 214:

Ship It, Droopy

It's a raucous week on Idle Thumbs. D4 brings out Danielle's chowder-championing inner New Englander, Chris can't stop collecting cats, Spaff spoils Life is Strange, and Nick descends into a virtual reality waking dream. Here's Droopy McCool to play us out. Let's give him a round of applause.

Things Discussed: Life is Strange, D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, Neko Atsume, Game of War: Fire Age, virtual reality, Star Wars, Mario

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[namman siggins]

[Coods]

I am very excited for the nick and chris cast, AKA With Cheese Plate Part 2

[sclpls]

  On 6/10/2015 at 11:30 PM, Coods said:

I am very excited for the nick and chris cast, AKA With Cheese Plate Part 2

 

Yes!

[Zeusthecat]

Shenmue was so good. I got really good at blowing past my quota with that fucking forklift. And that dynamic weather was pretty sweet too. The fighting was never the best part of that game; for me it was all about just doing inane stuff and living life while occasionally pressing A to dodge a random punch.

[gritfish]

The photoshop professionals video, for anyone who wanted it

[CaptainFish]

After spending most of a day at a friend's place playing Perfect Dark Zero, we all realized that its aesthetics are totally like a video game in a tv show or movie. That game was in a spot where playing it for extended periods of time made the visuals just fall apart in your mind like saying a word over and over until it loses meaning.

[Twig]

the repeated applause shtick killed me and heck if i know why but goddamn

[juffowup]

he thing where new people watch an old TV show for the first time (possibly with a host who is a longtime fan) is called an introcast.  If you have a favorite tv show, you can listen along as new people watch it for the first time and sort of experience what it was like the first time all over again.

[jennegatron]

  On 6/11/2015 at 4:13 AM, juffowup said:

he thing where new people watch an old TV show for the first time (possibly with a host who is a longtime fan) is called an introcast.  If you have a favorite tv show, you can listen along as new people watch it for the first time and sort of experience what it was like the first time all over again.

 

My other favorite podcast is Gilmore Guys where they do precisely this with Gilmore Girls.

[Cleinhun]

This episode took me on a journey from "what is with all this applause?" to "oh, right, it's for editing, so the waveform sticks out" to "nope, they're just doing it whenever aren't they?"

 

Great episode, too bad Jake wasn't there for the Koopa Kid email.

[chummer]

 

At 35s, you can spot a wild Cage grinding against his video game's protagonist in her underwear.

 

That is all.

[SuperBiasedMan]

The David Cage thing was the actual tutorial in my copy of Indigo Prophecy. I got it on gog a few years ago and it opened with him walking around a movie set environment teaching me the controls and hinting about what the game will handle.

Also since you apparently get shit for them a lot I just wanna say thanks you for the spoiler warning, it was much appreciated!

[nel e nel]

[RubixsQube]

Assorted thoughts on what was a fun, wonderful episode of Idle Thumbs:

 

1) I've been living in New Hampshire for the last three years, and it's amazing how as you go south in New England, you just get closer and closer to Danielle's Rhode Island Voice. If any listener thinks this voice is perhaps "too broad to be realistic", you are wrong, and in fact there are people with thicker, more insane versions of the same accent. What's amazing, however, is as you move up towards northern New England and on up into Maine, you start to get an even weirder New England accent, with a lot of people dropping the strange nothing word "ayah" into sentences. When I was younger, I was in a professional production of Thorton Wilder's Our Town, which is set in the early 1900s in the fictional town of "Grover's Corners, New Hampshire," and for the play I had to work with a dialect coach to get this play's accent juuuuuust right. At the time, I thought, "nobody would ever talk like this," and then I moved to New Hampshire, and nope, people still do. One hundred and fifteen years later, and they still talk like that.

 

2) There was quite a long period between when Chris brought up creepwatching Whiplash on the plane before I realized he wasn't talking about that not-so-great roller derby film Whip It. AND LET ME TELL YOU, that was pretty strange.

 

3) I really want to be the person who watches Farscape alongside Danielle, as I've never seen it, but have a huge deep dumb working knowledge of Star Trek. I can even come at it from the astronomy angle, and use this PhD for good rather than evil. BUT oh yeah, I'm just a reader, and I don't live in San Francisco. 

 

4) I was walking across campus when I said (louder than I actually realized because some of the construction workers who are putting up the graduation seats for this weekend paused and gave me a weird look) "Max Reebo. Max Reebo! Max Reebo." And then luckily Nick chimed in and said, "Max Reebo." Thanks, Nick. I like Nick a lot.

 

5) This week and last week's episodes reminded me that I need to write in about the one game my dad played (and then stopped playing games), which was the SNES Jurassic Park if you can believe it. 

[elmuerte]

[Badfinger]

This episode was wonderful. The positive energy and enthusiasm was contagious.

 

 

I'm sure we all have the band members of the group playing in the cantina in Mos Eisley memorized, right? How could anyone forget Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes?

 

Band leader Figrin D'an on Kloo Horn,

Lirin Car'n on backup Kloo Horn,

Tedn Dahai and Ickabel G'ont both on Fanfar,

Nalan Cheel on Bandfill,

Doikk Na'ts playing Doremian Beshniquel (or as you might call it, the Fizz)

and of course Tech Mo'r holding it down on the Omni Box

 

 

Man, so iconic.

[Coods]

  On 6/11/2015 at 4:59 PM, Badfinger said:

This episode was wonderful. The positive energy and enthusiasm was contagious.

 

 

I'm sure we all have the band members of the group playing in the cantina in Mos Eisley memorized, right? How could anyone forget Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes?

 

Band leader Figrin D'an on Kloo Horn,

Lirin Car'n on backup Kloo Horn,

Tedn Dahai and Ickabel G'ont both on Fanfar,

Nalan Cheel on Bandfill,

Doikk Na'ts playing Doremian Beshniquel (or as you might call it, the Fizz)

and of course Tech Mo'r holding it down on the Omni Box

 

 

Man, so iconic.

 

In my humble opinion, Tech Mo'r's subtle contributions to the definitive sound of the group are tragically forgotten.

 

Also this hilarious excerpt from the wiki:

  Quote

Only six of the members were playing when Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi walked into the Cantina. Lirin Car'n sat out during the performance, because he was not needed.

 

Ouch.

[Argobot]

I just want to point out that my dumb signature on this forum comes from that dumb X-Files episode. Besides making Mulder a gamer (??), the episode also turns him into aggressive perv, where he and the other men in the episode are literally drooling over the sexy video game lady. It's a fascinating disaster. Anyway, look forward to X-Files 2015.

[Badfinger]

  On 6/11/2015 at 5:20 PM, Coods said:

In my humble opinion, Tech Mo'r's subtle contributions to the definitive sound of the group are tragically forgotten.

 

I joke and it's easy low-hanging fruit, but I will readily cop to the fact that I owned both the Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina and Tales from Jabba's Palace anthologies (Edited by Kevin J Anderson!), and read them multiple times. Critical fact: contains the story The Tale of Salacious Crumb.

[richardco]

What a fun episode.

I bought the Life is Strange season pass after hearing it and I'm really really enjoying it.  Just finished up episode 1.

The dialogue can definitely be off sometimes...a lot of times, but it feels like it fits in with the world they've built.  Kind of like a less extreme SWERY game. There's kind of a subtle Twin Peaksy vibe complete with a Laura Palmer stand-in. Chloe's license plate also says "Twin Peaks."

I love Max as a protagonist.

The art direction is really nice too.

I'm kind of blown away by how much I'm enjoying it and how little the cringe-dialogue is wearing on me. Easily one of my favorite releases this year. Top 3 even.

[kickinthehead]

Loving the Life is Strange game design and writing discussion. A lot of points I wouldn't have been able to articulate myself, but that I enjoyed hearing. It's definitely one of my top games of the year so far even if I find the dialogue goofy and just kind "Huh??"

 

I remember seeing part of that First Person Shooter X-Files episode when it aired. I was already on the outs with X-Files and I think that was the episode where I finally stopped watching.

[nel e nel]

The pay-per-play arcade on Xbox they talked about at the very end was called Game Room

 

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Game-Room/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024d530901

 

It was literally a virtual arcade room with cabinets and everything. You could purchase single games for a quarter, or 'unlock' unlimited play for a few dollars. It lasted less than a year before it was pulled from the marketplace. 

 

[Dewar]

I'll be that person who complains about the Life is Strange spoilers. I skipped ahead a couple of times and thought I'd gotten past the Life is Strange discussion, but heard a minor spoiler, and decided to just shut off the episode. Don't really care about the spoiler I heard, I'm more bummed I didn't get to hear the rest of the cast. Oh well, such is life.

 

I'm super happy to hear more Nick on the cast and am really looking forward to whatever disaster happens next week.

[ThatSoupGuy]

I had to see that Path of Neo sequence myself