Players

Squidge

Jay

Zunderscore

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Show Notes

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

From active time battling to zombie slaying, Waffling Taylors covers video games and beyond.

In this episode, we are joined by our friend Zunderscore to have a good old chat and get to know him better, which had about all manner of topics, including everything from self randomizers, streaming, and three squidges in a trench coat. You’ll just have to wait for it.

So without further ado, sit back, grab some snacks, and get ready for this episode entitled "Zunderscore - Red Fedoras And Bathrobes: The Flip top Expansion To Streaming"

Take it away guys.

Shortly after Squidge’s introduction, Jay decided that he wanted to cosplay as the RPD-uniform wearing wolf man himself. Which culminated in a conversation about Vincent Adultman, Muppetman, and three Squidges in a trenchcoat.

But after that, Jay asked Zunderscore to introduce himself:

Zunderscore's Avatar Zunderscore

Yeah, so I’ve been a streamer on Twitch for a little over three years now. I do a little bit of everything. So I do variety gaming. I do some coding, some design development kind of things. I am a developer on one of a pretty popular twitch chatbot called Firebot. So I spend a lot of my free time working on that. And yeah, that’s, that’s the big stuff.

As far as gaming goes, I have a love for a lot of different genres, but RPG’s, platformers, a little bit of strategy, a little bit of roguelike, that kind of thing really, really appeals to me. So I’ll do the retro thing every once in a while. I actually have a fun little setup for that, which I enjoy. So. Yeah.

And because Squidge spotted Zunderscore’s red fedora in the background of his video, it kicked off a discussion on RedHat Fedora Linux, what it is, a high level description of how it differs from other Linux-on-the-desktop or Linux-on-the-server distros and how Zunderscore came to have an officially licensed Redhat red fedora.

With Zunderscore being both a developer and a, self-proclaimed, Microsoft fanboy, Squidge brought up that Jay is a Microsoft MVP and has been for almost three years. And Zunderscore brought up that Jay had interviewed one of Zunderscore’s friends on an episode of The Modern .NET Show—which is Jay’s other podcast.

Recent Games

The Recent Games segment will not be new to listeners, but in case you’re new to the show here’s how it goes: we go round the table and discuss one or more game that we’ve been playing recently, and whether we think it’s worth the listeners checking it out. We continue to do this until we’ve run out of games to discuss.

And this episode was no different.

Zunderscore’s Recent Games
  • Never Grave: The Witch and The Curse
  • Turnip Boy Robs a Bank
Squidge’s Recent Games
Squidge's Avatar Squidge

So anyone who knows me knows that I like the weird games. I like the wacky games. I like the games that people just throw to one side, saying, oh, it’s. It’s catering to so and so audience, blah, blah, blah. So there’s a. There’s a series of games called Onechanbara

…

This is leading somewhere.

So one of the latest [Onechanbara titles] that they released was called, let me get the name right, "School Girl/Zombie Hunter". Now, the only description I’m going to give is, "lose the clothes and save your life." This is a survival of five high school girls happening in the world of Onechanbara. Right? This is not the game I’ve been playing.

I’ve been playing the budget game from Wish on the Nintendo network. That is called, and I quote, let me get the name right. "Anime Girls: Highschool of Dead".

I didn’t buy this. I got it on some gold points that I had left over and I thought I wanted a laugh. It’s meant to be a survival game with one music track with a load of unlockable characters… I pretty much figured out how to cheese it in about ten minutes.

  • Anime Girls: Highschool of Dead
  • Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Jay’s Recent Games

Jay had been playing lots of retro games on a freshly purchased Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, which you can see here running the PlayStation version of Final Fantasy VIII:

I’ll be waiting here…for you…so…If you come …(click to enlarge)
  • Samurai Warriors
  • Ratchet & Clank

The Thunder Plain Games

For those who are new to the pod, we have a section called “Thunder Plain Games” which might be vaguely reminiscent of a certain programme on BBC Radio 4

but for copyright reasons, it is completely different

Imagine that you are in Final Fantasy X, and the Thunder Plains is a place that you get banished to. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to open a portal to the Thunder Plains and, very nicely and politely, boot you through it. You will get help, maybe it will be tomorrow, maybe it will be in a week, maybe it will be in an hour, but you’ll have absolutely everything you need. You got food, shelter, water, everything you need.

To stop you from getting bored, we’ve said that we’ll keep the portal open and we’ll throw through up to three video games and everything you need to play them - including an Internet connection. The only rules are that you can’t ask for help, because help is on the way, and you can’t tell anyone that you’re in the Thunder Plains.

So our question is: were we to do throw, boot, or yeet you through the portal, which games are we throwing through with you?

The important thing to remember is that there is shelter and food and everything like that. You’ll be in a lovely house, you’re just there by yourself for a little while. What are you taking with you, games wise? Video games, board games, whatever to keep you from getting bored and all that kind of stuff.

Zunderscore’s Choices

Zunderscore’s core thing would be replayability:

  • Super Metroid
  • Sonic 3 & Knuckles

Get Control of Yourself

This is a segment that we like to do every so often, which is based on a tweet from SinceSpacies - who is an absolutely amazing person, by the way. Seriously, go follow him on Twitter

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

The idea here is that we want to know which is the best and which is the worst controller of all time.

Zunderscore’s Best Controller

Zunderscore's Avatar Zunderscore

The best controller I’ve ever used is in my hand right now.

So Xbox started doing a thing a few years ago called the Xbox Design lab, where you could go and customize the colors of basically every single component on an Xbox controller for like an extra $20 over what you would normally pay for an Xbox controller. So the controller, like, they’ve really, since the 360, it’s really just been like small iterations over the decade.

But I think it’s just, it’s so cool that you can get a custom controller. It fits like, even with my hands, like, my hands are huge. I have these big bear paws of hands, right? So I have to have a controller that’s designed that it fits well in my giant hands. And also say, like, my wife’s small hands, you know, using the exact same controller is. It shows that they’ve put a lot of thought and effort into the engineering of the controller itself. But this particular one, if you look at the color scheme, you notice there’s, like, some whites and, like, light grays with the navy blue. This actually matches the one bathrobe that’s back here on my back wall. It’s my centrepiece bathrobe.

Images of the controller and the bathrobe that Zunderscore mentions are included here:

Zunderscore’s custom controller (click to enlarge)
Zunderscore’s centrepiece bathrobe (click to enlarge)
Close up of the text on Zunderscore’s custom controller (click to enlarge)

Zunderscore’s Worst Controller

Zunderscore's Avatar Zunderscore

I know I’m going to get hate mail for this one and bring it on.

The worst controller that I have ever used is the original Nintendo 64 controller, because I don’t have three hands for a controller that’s designed for three hands.

And I know the argument that people always make is, "well, it’s got, you know, you never use all three at once." It’s like, there are games where you will use all three at once. There are games that require you to hit the Z trigger and use the d pad. There are absolutely games that require that, but that controller is just so poorly designed.

Now, I will say they really did make up for it when they made the GameCube. And the GameCube controller had basically the exact same functionality and then some, but in the original two handed form factor that we really, you know, we expect in a controller that works for us because we have two hands, typically. Right?

None of us have three hands to use a controller, so they made up for it. But the Nintendo 64 controller is just. Yeah, it’s not my. It’s not my favorite.

Squidge’s "budget" wireless N64 controller (click to enlarge)

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners. Please see the above list for copyright details pertaining to music used.

Games Covered

We mentioned 43 games in this podcast. In the following order, those games where: