Episode 174 features the return of one of my best friends’ Jason Collins, who’s back because a text conversation felt incomplete and instead of a phone call, let’s just podcast!
We talk about video games and emulation, modding, physical media, and just generally remembering how it used to be.
Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode
Keeping the beat with Jason Collins
Other Links
If there is a hell, Tucker Max’s book is there
Surprise! Amazon chooses profit over quality in wide Kindle crush
Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.
–End Show Notes Transmission–
–Begin Transcription–
00:00:00:04 – 00:00:21:27
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent Palmer. If there is a hell Tucker, Max’s book is probably their surprise. Amazon chooses profit over quality in wide Kindle Crush. And have you thought of any more spies we left out of last episode? Because I’ve thought of a few. This is The Palmer Files episode 174. With the return of one of my best friends, Jason Collins, who’s back because a text conversation felt incomplete.
00:00:21:27 – 00:00:34:05
Agent Palmer
And instead of a phone call, let’s just podcast about video games and emulation, modding, physical media and just generally remembering how it used to be. Are you ready? Let’s do the show.
00:00:34:09 – 00:00:43:33
Jason Collins
While we were discussing the whole thing. Yeah, when you were asking me questions about the digital and everything, I was like, this sounds like an episode of your podcast.
00:00:43:38 – 00:00:50:16
Jason Collins
Emulator have come a long way since we were in college.
00:00:50:20 – 00:00:58:10
Jason Collins
They’ll drag you through the court system and make you less than broke.
00:00:58:15 – 00:01:12:53
Jason Collins
It’s akin to looking at a painting in a museum. Yeah, I can I can appreciate the art of it. There’s too many extra wires. I just want to plug in the main bits. Turn it on and game I’m too old for this shit.
00:01:12:58 – 00:01:35:35
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to The Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic, also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 174th episode is the Return of my good friend Jason Collins. A while ago, I texted Collins about switch two games because I wanted to own a physical game, and it didn’t seem possible that text chain would have and was simpler to have as a phone call, but we recorded it as this podcast instead.
00:01:35:37 – 00:01:56:21
Agent Palmer
Things that arise from that initial thread, such as key cards and wanting to own games that you play, then dovetail into emulation and modding, physical media, land parties, and even how single player is now a feature we want more of. But before we get there, remember that if you want to discuss this episode as you listener, afterwards, you can find all related ways to contact Jason and myself in the show notes.
00:01:56:21 – 00:02:18:10
Agent Palmer
You can see Jason play video games online at Twitch.tv. Uriel that’s Uri l don’t forget, you can see all of my writings and rantings on Agent Palmer. Com and of course email can be sent to the Palmer files at gmail.com. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
00:02:18:15 – 00:02:27:05
Agent Palmer
Jason, I reached out to you via text because I did not understand. Switch to games.
00:02:27:19 – 00:02:30:14
Jason Collins
Yeah, I’m still trying to understand them.
00:02:30:17 – 00:02:59:49
Agent Palmer
Okay. And so I could tell you Steph really wanted a switch to actually, Steph really wanted to switch, but she bought a Switch Lite and I wouldn’t let her by a switch because I was like, but the two is going to come out. So wait. So we did. And that’s what she got. And then she got her games and I was like, I don’t really know if I could get back into gaming console gaming in that way.
00:02:59:49 – 00:03:19:04
Agent Palmer
And then we just happened to be at a store and I looked and I was like, oh, they they remade Dragon Quest one and two. They did. And then I went online and I was like, this looks amazing. And then I tried to look into what it would be to buy it for the switch. And they were like, you can download it or buy a key card.
00:03:19:04 – 00:03:28:45
Agent Palmer
And I got really confused because I wanted to own the game, but I don’t think that’s in the cards.
00:03:28:47 – 00:03:40:29
Jason Collins
That in this future. Yeah, the whole key card thing really, when they first announced the switch to and the games and then they just started talking about key cards, a lot of people got really pissed.
00:03:40:32 – 00:03:49:10
Agent Palmer
So it’s just a card approximately the same size as what a game cartridge for this, which would be.
00:03:49:17 – 00:03:57:07
Jason Collins
It’s yeah, it’s legitimately the same thing, but the software is not on the card, just the activation key.
00:03:57:16 – 00:04:04:21
Agent Palmer
And I and yeah, I still I but we can’t just put the game on the thing.
00:04:04:26 – 00:04:26:55
Jason Collins
Apparently not apparently so I guess when I did some more research into it, because there are some that do have the game software on the card, and then there’s others that are just keys. And I thought, well, that’s weird. Why aren’t they just going one way or the other? And so when I was looking into it, I guess a lot of the third party games that they’re bringing over to the system are too large to fit.
00:04:27:05 – 00:04:42:19
Jason Collins
It’s a storage thing. There’s just not enough space on the on the card for some of the higher end games, particularly games like cyberpunk 2077, which is several separate gigs. It goes over the capacity of the the cards themselves.
00:04:42:21 – 00:04:52:40
Agent Palmer
Okay, so it’s not like we’re not talking about, hey, I have a micro SD card with the game on it. I’ll just get a bigger one and charge you more money for the whole game.
00:04:52:49 – 00:05:08:53
Jason Collins
Right? Because the the switch cartridges themselves are a proprietary size format chip board. You know what I mean? Same as like back in the day, GBA is different from GB from 3DS. They’re all different form factors.
00:05:08:55 – 00:05:22:40
Agent Palmer
Okay, so I, I look, I’m not by any stretch one of those people that’s like I need to own everything physically. But when it comes to games, I really do like to own it.
00:05:22:43 – 00:05:44:00
Jason Collins
Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially like handheld, like the whole system is designed to be portable. So you want to be able to take it with you and play it offline off net disconnected from everything. But there’s a lot of games that exist that just they’re not even designed that way. They’re meant to be played online, on the internet, even portable.
00:05:44:05 – 00:05:47:41
Jason Collins
So it’s a little bit of a mixed bag.
00:05:47:46 – 00:06:09:47
Agent Palmer
Yeah. I don’t I don’t know how to feel about it because I didn’t look, I am I’ve admitted to many people who are shocked by this, but I don’t I don’t and I don’t know why. I mean, everybody has their own like gaming trajectory but mine. I was a PC gamer until I bought my first console when you knew me in college as the Gamecube like before.
00:06:09:49 – 00:06:33:10
Agent Palmer
Then I was a PC gamer because I never owned an NES or a super NES, or I had friends that had those, but they were never mine. And then after the Gamecube, I did kind of go back and get a PS2 in an X box. And then I upgraded to the Wii and the PS3, and that’s where it stopped for me.
00:06:33:10 – 00:06:42:40
Agent Palmer
Really. I think I may have gotten a PS4, but I, I wanted a Blu ray player. It wasn’t even really just a gaming thing.
00:06:42:43 – 00:06:45:25
Jason Collins
I thought the PS3 did Blu ray.
00:06:45:30 – 00:07:14:43
Agent Palmer
I don’t know why I upgraded for some reason I can’t, but that was it. That was it. So when I’m coming back to it because Steph’s got I have access to a switch to now. Yeah. All right maybe and I there are certain games like if they even if I couldn’t physically own it if they remade Dragon Quest eight, curse of the, The curse of the Cursed King or whatever, the journey for the Cursed King or whatever that one I would buy in a heartbeat.
00:07:14:48 – 00:07:24:59
Jason Collins
Well, if they started with one and two, it would not. And they’ve been remaking a lot of the Final Fantasy games, so Square Enix would not surprise me at all if they’d they’d do the whole line.
00:07:24:59 – 00:07:52:55
Agent Palmer
Although Square Enix bothered me because I went on their website after our initial text chain. And what bothered me is they have static text regardless of console, so I could own the physical game if I bought it for like PlayStation, where I would get a disc. But when you change it to switch to, it still says you can buy a physical disc even though it’s just a key card.
00:07:53:05 – 00:07:53:31
Jason Collins
Oh.
00:07:53:41 – 00:07:54:07
Agent Palmer
And but.
00:07:54:09 – 00:07:55:02
Jason Collins
The left that in.
00:07:55:02 – 00:08:04:30
Agent Palmer
There, they left it in there on purpose just to confuse me even further. So I’m like, oh, but I can, but it is available. But it’s not, it’s not, it’s, it’s not.
00:08:04:33 – 00:08:13:25
Jason Collins
I don’t know, know all that you find in the store that’s physical is just packaging and a license key.
00:08:13:30 – 00:08:15:51
Agent Palmer
I don’t I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.
00:08:15:56 – 00:08:17:10
Jason Collins
No, a lot of people don’t.
00:08:17:13 – 00:08:34:12
Agent Palmer
And there’s a I presume this is all just to track us. I mean, I, I, I know it’s Nintendo, so I’m not going to immediately go to like, oh they want to sell us stuff, but like they do want the tracking of in some capacity. Right.
00:08:34:14 – 00:08:56:54
Jason Collins
Like I think I don’t think it’s just that I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s a cost control. It’s always been that way. It’s always been the minds of the, the big media corporations that you don’t really own the media like when it comes even back as far as movies, when you wanted to watch a movie, you bought a ticket, you saw it in a movie theater, then comes along the VCR.
00:08:56:56 – 00:09:03:46
Jason Collins
Same with cassette tapes. People would buy cassette tapes. Well, I’ll start with VCR. Remember the FBI warnings?
00:09:03:48 – 00:09:06:53
Agent Palmer
Oh, yeah. Yeah, you would. You wouldn’t steal a car.
00:09:06:58 – 00:09:18:16
Jason Collins
Yeah, yeah. Well, you weren’t even allowed to technically buy that and, like, have a party in your house with like, 20 people to watch. You couldn’t have a watch party. Technically, that was illegal.
00:09:18:31 – 00:09:19:43
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Because you.
00:09:19:43 – 00:09:21:02
Jason Collins
Because you were broadcasting it.
00:09:21:02 – 00:09:21:38
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:09:21:45 – 00:09:43:29
Jason Collins
It was one. It was always meant to be 1 to 1 one 1 to 1. But, I mean, they weren’t kicking in people’s doors unless you were trying. Unless you were bootlegging, then maybe they were probably doing things like that. But yeah, it they didn’t have any way to really police their, their revenue stream. But now that everything’s going digital they can.
00:09:43:36 – 00:09:47:39
Jason Collins
So it’s, it’s the whole 1 to 1 thing all over again.
00:09:47:41 – 00:10:02:45
Agent Palmer
I feel like I would probably but there has to be a, a monetary value. Like I was thinking about it like I would probably play it, pay a pay a premium, like I might even pay double to physically own the thing.
00:10:02:59 – 00:10:04:40
Jason Collins
Yeah, but you wouldn’t because.
00:10:04:42 – 00:10:06:18
Agent Palmer
They wouldn’t offer it.
00:10:06:23 – 00:10:11:56
Jason Collins
Just by playing it, you you automatically agree to end user licensing.
00:10:12:01 – 00:10:23:05
Agent Palmer
Yeah, but I’m just saying I would, I would pay double from the beginning to physically own the game as opposed to like half price to just download it and not have it so you can make.
00:10:23:05 – 00:10:41:35
Jason Collins
More money too. Yeah, I would say same thing. Like and I’ve been doing that recently with some of the older stuff and even the My Switch one console. My kids always super eager to to download it because you can play it right now. And I’m like, well, can you wait till the weekend so we can go buy the physical copy?
00:10:41:50 – 00:10:53:20
Jason Collins
Because that way, you know, if the power goes out, at least it’s still got charged. It doesn’t need internet. You don’t have to go on the internet to play some of the games because they have story based things, and you could still play them.
00:10:53:25 – 00:11:08:39
Agent Palmer
I also like the idea that down the road, if something breaks your switch one well, you lose your save data. You could just take your game by another switch one an old used switch one and you’re good to go. You’re done.
00:11:08:41 – 00:11:25:30
Jason Collins
Yeah. Well yes. But it’s it’s it’s still that way. Except that they maintain all that information on their side under your account. So every game that you buy, they convert into a digital game card.
00:11:25:40 – 00:12:01:11
Agent Palmer
Oh regardless of if I have the physical or not. Yeah. See this is how far I’ve removed. So. So yeah, like my gaming. But really the high era of me was gaming was Gamecube. So they were still running on a disk and there was no other thing. So that’s where my brain comes from. I guess. I’ve been so out of the loop and I, I know when we were our initial thread, you brought up minecraft, but I don’t there’s a part of me and maybe it’s the PC gamer in me, like Minecraft is on my computer, and if I never update it again, I can play that version for forever.
00:12:01:11 – 00:12:03:07
Agent Palmer
As long as I have my hard drive.
00:12:03:09 – 00:12:09:33
Jason Collins
That still holds true with the games. The digital games that you download and you buy and download. It’s still on that system.
00:12:09:35 – 00:12:14:25
Agent Palmer
Even if I don’t, even if I get a new, like a new device.
00:12:14:30 – 00:12:14:55
Jason Collins
Yeah.
00:12:14:59 – 00:12:16:26
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:12:16:31 – 00:12:38:24
Jason Collins
Yeah. As long as as long as the data is retained on the drive inside the machine, then it’s there. But like you said, if it breaks, then you have to find a way to get that install again. And if you if it’s years and years and years down the road like it is now with the 3DS, 3DS has taken off in the mod community, and that’s probably something we could touch on to the whole mod community and preservation.
00:12:38:26 – 00:13:11:46
Agent Palmer
Well, that’s that’s the whole I mean, that’s one of the reasons that I’m so happy with the GOP Gog, which is they they have a lot of free stuff. They have some paid stuff. I think the last thing I got from there though was like a somebody re I I and I, I this is slightly different than the true modding community but somebody rebuilt Warcraft two Tides of Darkness for windows ten plus with multiplayer.
00:13:11:46 – 00:13:23:16
Agent Palmer
So you didn’t have to go reinstall an old direct X. Yeah, for for networking you just play the full version. And I was like, this is this is great.
00:13:23:19 – 00:13:50:07
Jason Collins
Yeah. And it’s awesome that that the, that kind of thing happens in, at the, at the younger generations are are in on that with wanting to preserve and resurrecting things that have been since shut down. So for instance, like the Nintendo 3DS is probably it’s really super hot right now as a console because it’s very mod friendly. And obviously when you buy the game card, the game’s on there.
00:13:50:07 – 00:14:19:49
Jason Collins
You don’t have to download it. And and Nintendo shut their services down a while ago for that. So if you had a system that had a digital only copy and you lost that information on the device, you can’t get it back. You have to go through back channels to that, that, that install. And when people start realizing that, and then that’s when the mod community steps in and start and the preservation communities and they start trying to find ways to to make it stick around.
00:14:20:01 – 00:14:20:39
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:14:20:41 – 00:14:22:22
Jason Collins
Without the need of the corporation.
00:14:22:22 – 00:14:57:32
Agent Palmer
And I, I was streaming a year ago at this point, I was streaming Skies of Arcadia Legends on Dolphin. It was on the emulator because it was just easier than trying to look. I own the I mean, it’s, it’s I didn’t realize this until much later, but Skies of Arcadia is one of those, like, investment games. You can’t buy the disc anymore for less than like 200 bucks on eBay even.
00:14:57:37 – 00:15:07:27
Jason Collins
It was probably one of those, like, cult following type games where there was only a small run, and because I hadn’t heard of it until you were playing it.
00:15:07:39 – 00:15:12:46
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I didn’t. I probably would have bought another copy like.
00:15:12:50 – 00:15:13:41
Jason Collins
I had we known.
00:15:13:50 – 00:15:36:18
Agent Palmer
Have we known? And so I do own it and I still own the Gamecube. I’d love to get my one of my save files off of my Gamecube disk, but save a memory card. That’s a whole different thing, but I felt comfortable playing it more. I should say. I felt more comfortable playing with it because if anybody broke down my door, I’d be like, well, there’s the game right there.
00:15:36:20 – 00:16:00:26
Agent Palmer
Like, you know, I, I own it, there’s my system. Like, this is just slightly easier and I can re-experience it. I did try a few other games through the dolphin emulator because I was like, well, I might as well try some stuff. And I found that I bought a USB Gamecube, like third party controller, I guess, it’s not that good.
00:16:00:31 – 00:16:23:56
Agent Palmer
And the only reason I say that like it is, but it’s not that good. And I discovered that because of one game back in 2004, was the last EA major League Baseball game that they ever did before they lost their license to the show, and that was one of my favorite games. And I enjoyed Gamecube as a console.
00:16:23:56 – 00:16:58:06
Agent Palmer
And when in most baseball games, there’s a like a pitching square where you can, yeah, do stuff. I found out through trying to pitch on that game that my console, my my, my, my USB controller is only good for certain games because even if you like, you just cannot aim within the framework. And maybe it’s the emulator, like maybe it’s dolphin, but it feels like more and more that it’s probably the controller.
00:16:58:06 – 00:17:29:23
Agent Palmer
And that’s fine if I want to play it. I still have, you know, I still have my Gamecube. I can still boot it up, but there are these small disconnects as far as like true user experience, that you just need the actual console and the actual game to really experience. So I’m, I, I’m all of that is to say, I don’t think that the modding community and the emulation community is going to replace the actual hardware.
00:17:29:23 – 00:17:34:06
Agent Palmer
It’s just sometimes it makes it a little bit more accessible and easier to get.
00:17:34:11 – 00:17:50:10
Jason Collins
Yes. Yeah. It gets as close as you possibly can to the to the physical as much as they’re capable of achieving. And emulators have come a long, long way since we were in college. Oh, a lot of those wouldn’t even run the ROMs half the time.
00:17:50:12 – 00:18:00:57
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And I think I remember I remember reading articles that were like, 1 in 4 ROMs is just spyware or spam or a virus, like.
00:18:00:59 – 00:18:02:57
Jason Collins
It’s something that’s still out there too. Yeah.
00:18:02:59 – 00:18:06:52
Agent Palmer
Okay. And that’s and that’s rough.
00:18:06:57 – 00:18:15:03
Jason Collins
If you if you’re going to go messing around in that route, put it on another PC that is not connected to the internet just in case.
00:18:15:08 – 00:18:18:46
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Or just have a junk computer for that very purpose.
00:18:18:49 – 00:18:27:03
Jason Collins
Yeah, exactly. That’s what I mean. Yeah, just like an old scrapped one that isn’t really doing much. Test it out there before you decide to put anything at your primary machine.
00:18:27:07 – 00:19:04:10
Agent Palmer
Now, I haven’t actually done it yet because I didn’t feel like taking apart my PS2, but I was interested in the fact that the the main suggested PS2 emulator actually asks you for your like, serial number of your actual PlayStation, the one that’s most suggested that you like the most stable one is like as long as you put in that you own one, or like the you have to unscrew something to get a serial number or something off your PlayStation.
00:19:04:10 – 00:19:16:07
Agent Palmer
I was just like, I don’t feel like doing this right now. That’s interesting. And I never got around to it and it makes it feel a little more, I don’t know, I don’t know what they’re doing with that data. I assume it was just checking it, but.
00:19:16:12 – 00:19:28:35
Jason Collins
Maybe it’s just to cover their own ass. I don’t know, it shouldn’t roll back to the the person that designed the tool, right? If you buy a car, if somebody buys a car and runs somebody over, it’s not the manufacturer’s fault.
00:19:28:37 – 00:19:29:28
Agent Palmer
No no no no.
00:19:29:28 – 00:19:34:49
Jason Collins
No no. So it’s the same thing for the emulators. I know they keep trying to attack the developers.
00:19:34:54 – 00:20:15:51
Agent Palmer
Well, that’s just because. They they don’t have any because they can’t come after all of us. Like if they came after everybody with an emulator, they they they’d probably lose more than they gain versus. And there’s been some and I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but like, I know there’s been some very like, hey, this was a very popular emulator or mod and Nintendo came down on them, or so-and-so came down on them and, and every it feels like every six months, whatever the most popular one is, there’s like an article saying like, well, Nintendo or Sony went after so-and-so, and it’s like, there’s more of them, there’s more modders
00:20:15:51 – 00:20:21:34
Agent Palmer
and those kind of people out there than there are the maybe Nintendo has many lawyers, but.
00:20:21:39 – 00:20:43:47
Jason Collins
Yeah, they got lawyers and money and, and and they’ll drag you through the court system and make you less than broke as a developer. I’ve read about that. And a lot of a lot of them are smart, you know what I mean? They they they they do the code, they do the thing, and then they, they release it into the wild and let the community pick up the pieces.
00:20:43:47 – 00:20:46:23
Jason Collins
So like you said, they can’t stop everybody.
00:20:46:26 – 00:21:08:17
Agent Palmer
Now, I want to ask you a question. And I would assume the statute of limitations is up on this. But technically, when you switched out your Gamecube to play the Japanese version of Wind Waker before it was released in the states that technically considered modding. Or would that.
00:21:08:31 – 00:21:09:29
Jason Collins
Yeah, that was modding.
00:21:09:31 – 00:21:19:00
Agent Palmer
Okay. Was that technically also again, I mean, is that against the terms of service like you didn’t you didn’t rewire? I mean, it was a switch basically, like, I don’t.
00:21:19:02 – 00:21:35:32
Jason Collins
I didn’t technically they I, I’m not sure what the laws were on it at the time. I think they’re harsher now than they were then. All I was really doing was like, I avoided my warranty.
00:21:35:35 – 00:21:36:46
Agent Palmer
Okay. Yeah.
00:21:36:54 – 00:21:42:13
Jason Collins
So you can’t take it with the hardware? Yeah. They weren’t going to support the hardware if I, if I fried the board.
00:21:42:15 – 00:21:42:51
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:21:42:53 – 00:21:51:46
Jason Collins
I don’t recall if, if there was anything saying you’re allowed to do this or you’re not allowed to do this. It’s just like if you do do this. You’re on your own.
00:21:51:48 – 00:21:57:14
Agent Palmer
How did you I mean, did you figure it out on your own, or was that like an internet thing? Like somebody had done it and you were like, I can do this.
00:21:57:16 – 00:22:19:37
Jason Collins
Yeah, I stumbled on it on the internet around the time that when Waker was due to launch in Japan, and I had seen other forum posts of people doing it for other Japanese titles, and I was like, oh, and then I watch. I looked at it like a small guy that they wrote up. There’s just a bunch of pictures and some text, and I was like, that doesn’t actually look that hard.
00:22:19:42 – 00:22:41:52
Jason Collins
So I printed it out and I think it was over, like Thanksgiving vacation or Christmas vacation when I was at home. And my parents commandeered their kitchen counter and I parked, laying all over wires. And I’m just sitting there solder. In a way, it was it was two leads on the board and that was it. But they were very, very tiny, very, very tiny wires.
00:22:41:52 – 00:22:43:21
Agent Palmer
Did you put a switch in?
00:22:43:21 – 00:22:51:30
Jason Collins
I did, I did that. I decided to take it a step over because they were just hard soldering the two points, but that would only stick it in Japanese mode permanently.
00:22:51:32 – 00:22:51:59
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:22:52:01 – 00:22:57:34
Jason Collins
So I just I just installed a small little switch so that I could switch back and forth between the two regions.
00:22:57:37 – 00:23:02:56
Agent Palmer
Am I am I? Did you also put LEDs in your Gamecube as well?
00:23:03:01 – 00:23:11:12
Jason Collins
Yeah I did, I was toying around with that idea too, so that when you plugged it in and they would light up the little dots on which controller port was plugged in.
00:23:11:26 – 00:23:17:07
Agent Palmer
Look how look how ahead of the game you were. Now you can’t get a tower without LEDs in it.
00:23:17:12 – 00:23:30:56
Jason Collins
Yeah, and now you kind of want to. It’s like I’m, I’m when I build a new PC, I’m like, I don’t want RGB. There’s too many extra wires. I just want to plug in the main bits, turn it on and game tool for this shit.
00:23:31:01 – 00:23:39:03
Agent Palmer
So do you still was that the last like hardware modding you’ve done? I’m not talking about computer stuff, but like for consoles?
00:23:39:10 – 00:23:42:25
Jason Collins
No. So.
00:23:42:29 – 00:23:51:31
Jason Collins
They switched Joy-Cons. This pink one still needs surgery. That’s why it’s sitting on my desk. They have a terrible drift problem.
00:23:51:46 – 00:23:52:26
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:23:52:29 – 00:24:18:58
Jason Collins
After a period of use, like your character, I’ll just like. Like, say, like the right stick. It’s in neutral position, but the camera’s slowly moving. It’s painting. And no matter how much you recalibrate it, software wise in the system or the firmware updates, the mod community discovered that it’s really a mechanical issue in these particular analog sticks that they they got from whichever manufacturing.
00:24:18:58 – 00:24:36:40
Jason Collins
So I found through them that there is an entirely different magnetic style switch, same housing, but the inner workings are magnetic versus whatever this other one is. I can’t remember what it’s called. And they were fairly cheap on Amazon and then it was like 40 bucks and you get like four new Joy-Con sticks.
00:24:36:43 – 00:24:40:14
Agent Palmer
Okay. You just have to actually, you know, take it.
00:24:40:14 – 00:25:08:53
Jason Collins
Apart, open and I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of tiny workings in there. There’s a lot of little ribbon cables that are the exact measurements. So like you need tweezers to get them back into their little Ziff sockets at just the right angle to close them back up. But yeah, once I once I have two in there that I replaced that because the kid was having a terrible time playing games with the drift, and I replaced those two and not a hint of drift ever since.
00:25:08:55 – 00:25:09:29
Agent Palmer
Oh, nice.
00:25:09:29 – 00:25:21:23
Jason Collins
So it was really it really was a hardware issue that Nintendo wasn’t really addressing, I guess, with them for whatever reason. But there are aftermarket parts out there that make the experience better.
00:25:21:26 – 00:25:42:15
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of like regardless of how you look at it, whether it’s the actual hardware modding or the software emulation, like most of this stuff is about accessibility. Like I, I genuinely and a lot of the time I will pay money for this stuff because it’s it’s the kind of thing like you’re looking for a quality of life update and it’s like, this just makes it easier.
00:25:42:17 – 00:25:57:21
Agent Palmer
Like, that’s fine. Like, let’s do it. And you have the technical know how. I’m sure if I had the I don’t have the patience for that kind of small stuff. I think that’s that’s where my thing would be. I’ve done enough with computers. I think I if it was on a bigger scale, I might be able to do it.
00:25:57:21 – 00:26:00:23
Agent Palmer
But there’s a lot of patience when things are small.
00:26:00:33 – 00:26:34:14
Jason Collins
Oh yeah. Yeah, I my back hurt after that from being bent over and stiff position for too long because I’m like, the screws are super tiny. One of them stripped. I had to drill that one out. Thankfully, the kit that I bought with the the new sticks hat came with a bag of replacement screws, which was nice. And some of them it’s just like you have to almost have it closed when you put the cable back together, because it’s just so perfect.
00:26:34:24 – 00:26:40:26
Jason Collins
Yeah, it’s just so perfectly engineered. So yeah, but now that I’ve done it a few times, it’s not so bad.
00:26:40:28 – 00:26:53:32
Agent Palmer
So let me ask you about where you started with movies. Music. I mean, do you still buy physical stuff, movie, DVD, Blu rays, you know, albums.
00:26:53:44 – 00:27:23:07
Jason Collins
Not not movies? No, not TV, TV shows like box sets of TV shows. Not really. I tend to watch those things like one time over and that’s good for me. Video games, obviously PC gaming, everything’s digital. It’s been digital for a long, long time, I think. I think one of the last physical copies of a PC game I bought was one of the World of Warcraft expansions.
00:27:23:09 – 00:27:23:52
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:27:24:06 – 00:27:33:25
Jason Collins
Even those went all digital at one point. They just they just stopped making physical box sets for things because it’s just not it’s not cost effective for them to distribute it.
00:27:33:27 – 00:27:35:54
Agent Palmer
Music.
00:27:35:59 – 00:27:48:36
Jason Collins
I don’t buy anything there either. It’s all it’s all plugged in. Live stream. I have my Spotify subscription and then I just download local like I don’t use my cell data. I’ll grab it here while I’m on the Wi-Fi.
00:27:48:39 – 00:27:49:17
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:27:49:22 – 00:27:52:24
Jason Collins
And it’s it’s just a glorified MP3 player.
00:27:52:26 – 00:27:53:17
Agent Palmer
Yeah, yeah.
00:27:53:17 – 00:27:56:38
Jason Collins
Without net with with a paid version of Napster when you think about it.
00:27:56:40 – 00:28:16:23
Agent Palmer
Yeah. That’s that’s exactly I, I’ve been thinking about so I for at least 3 or 4 years now, I’ve been listening to albums on the daily and I have a like a map basically of like, these are, this is what I’m going to listen to next. I know what I’m listening to for the next like 40 days, and then I gotta make a new a new list.
00:28:16:23 – 00:28:36:57
Agent Palmer
But I have found a lot of what I consider track by track perfect albums, like there’s a lot of them and if I was to, I’m starting to think about like, well, what’s next? Because obviously I am. Most of these I’ve listened to on Spotify, some of them.
00:28:37:02 – 00:28:59:32
Agent Palmer
I, I got lucky and I, I had a physical, I had a digital copy on what what is my my music solid state drive basically for like some maybe more rare things or a few unreleased things. But it is a thing where I’m like, all right. So like these are the albums I would want to return to. So what does that mean?
00:28:59:44 – 00:29:38:20
Agent Palmer
Because I, I remember one of the reasons that we jumped to Spotify was because even with paid Amazon albums would appear and disappear. And I as much as I use Spotify now because of my experience with Amazon, I don’t trust Spotify. Like I don’t trust that like this album is going to be available in three years, maybe when I want to revisit it, and even to that extent, I still have all my CDs or my original, my original CD music collection from the heyday of the 90s.
00:29:38:22 – 00:30:02:50
Agent Palmer
And I was the other day I was thinking about, I have a apparently very specific Iron Maiden best of. Oh, because and I only know this because there is a live version of fear of the dark that I love, and I went looking for it. So I went on Spotify and I just looked up like Iron Maiden.
00:30:02:55 – 00:30:30:36
Agent Palmer
I was like, all right, number of the beast live hit play on it. And I was like, that’s not it. Like, I know, I know what this live version is, and I, I did eventually find it after some searching, but apparently the best of that I have, and I don’t know what makes it special, is not available on Spotify as as it is, somebody made a playlist that contains the songs of that.
00:30:30:41 – 00:30:31:12
Jason Collins
Yeah yeah.
00:30:31:12 – 00:30:39:14
Agent Palmer
Yeah, but it doesn’t exist. And it’s that kind of stuff that makes me think like, all right, well, maybe I should kind of.
00:30:39:19 – 00:30:53:39
Agent Palmer
Maybe invest in some of these. I can, I can rip them and, you know, have them on a SSD forever. Or I could put in the CD whatever, but like, there’s a part of me that’s like, okay, so like, this isn’t for this still isn’t forever.
00:30:53:44 – 00:31:23:02
Jason Collins
No. Yeah. And so it’s nice because in that respect there are you can you can still buy vinyl. Vinyl made a huge comeback and a lot of newer albums are coming out on vinyl. So you could even start collecting new music. I think if you try to find old reproductions like that, you’re going to run into that situation even on a physical copy, because whoever produces it currently may not have that track anymore like you had when they got it.
00:31:23:02 – 00:31:33:16
Jason Collins
So. Okay. You know what I mean? Like, you could probably buy that same album on vinyl and it’s and it’s going to sound like what you heard on Spotify, which wasn’t the same song that you were looking for.
00:31:33:18 – 00:31:33:56
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
00:31:34:01 – 00:31:41:15
Jason Collins
So yeah, there’s, there’s a and the price tags on the, on that old media just just goes up, especially those specialty things like that.
00:31:41:17 – 00:32:09:13
Agent Palmer
Well, I think even the CDs like if I just wanted, if I just said, all right, there’s. I don’t know, let’s say I’ve listened to I know a thousand albums over the last five years and there’s 100 that I want to collect because I started them as what I consider perfect. That’s not that’s not $2,000. Like, that’s not 20 bucks for 100 that the math doesn’t add up because we’re not in the heyday of CDs anymore.
00:32:09:13 – 00:32:23:39
Agent Palmer
And even, you know, they’re not being reprinted. So everything’s going to be used unless it’s an album from the last ten years that happened to be released on CD, but I don’t I think you’re more likely to find something from the last ten years on vinyl than you are CD.
00:32:23:44 – 00:32:24:05
Jason Collins
Yeah.
00:32:24:08 – 00:32:25:58
Agent Palmer
I would guess.
00:32:26:03 – 00:32:34:57
Jason Collins
Yeah. Because. Yeah. And that’s and that’s just because it’s a niche market. Like they know they can make money with it. People want to buy CDs. Even cassettes are making a comeback.
00:32:35:00 – 00:33:03:48
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And I, I have I have a cassette player. I had to I actually bought or I didn’t rebuy, I bought a new cassette player because my old cassette player was just eating my tapes and I. And look, I have a podcast, I have a mixer. I have ways to digitize on tape. It’s in real time. So it’s but you still want something that will actually play the thing.
00:33:03:53 – 00:33:08:55
Agent Palmer
And so that’s it. Well, hey, as long as I get it once right, like it’s.
00:33:08:58 – 00:33:11:22
Jason Collins
True, once it’s digitized, then you got it.
00:33:11:24 – 00:33:37:44
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I mean, I, I am thankful because, as a very specific, very niche cassette, I still have the Ninja Turtles Pizza Hut coming out of their shells cassette. That’s awesome. But thankfully it is available on Spotify because Mike is set from, you know, 12 year old, ten year old me. 12 year old me is warped. You. Oh, yeah, it’s I, I killed that thing.
00:33:37:46 – 00:33:39:56
Jason Collins
Does it have Scotch tape on it anywhere?
00:33:40:01 – 00:33:53:10
Agent Palmer
No, I didn’t get that far, but I you can definitely hear, like the last time I played it, I was like, none of this sounds in any kind of a like. It’s almost like the drummer’s drunk.
00:33:53:14 – 00:33:56:14
Agent Palmer
There’s no solid beat to any of the tracks.
00:33:56:17 – 00:33:58:00
Jason Collins
That’s awesome.
00:33:58:04 – 00:34:22:58
Agent Palmer
So I’m I’m somewhat thankful, and I think there’s enough kind of preservationists out there that where we’re talking about games being saved. I think some of this music and some of these movies are being saved. I mean, look, I’ll say, the Internet Archive has, has movies and albums on it. Yeah. Like you can do some searches there that you’re.
00:34:22:58 – 00:34:23:36
Jason Collins
Just.
00:34:23:41 – 00:34:34:33
Agent Palmer
Engaged to. And I’m very occasionally I just I’ll just look there if something’s not on, just watch. And it’s like not available. I’ll go to internal and see like what’s available.
00:34:34:35 – 00:35:05:00
Jason Collins
Yeah. I just recently had an experience with that where I found a game on. Well, somebody pointed me to a game on there that I would want to play, and it was one of the the Transformers games from High Moon Studio that up and disappeared from all digital stores. Like you can’t buy it on steam. It was in the like 2009 ish in the three Xbox 360 era, and I had physical versions of them, but I traded all those in long ago and I was like, oh, I could just get on steam.
00:35:05:12 – 00:35:14:12
Jason Collins
It’s no longer for sale on steam. If you can find a steam key which run about 4 or $500 now, because there’s so few of them.
00:35:14:12 – 00:35:18:07
Agent Palmer
But you can. So if you have a key, you can still get it from steam.
00:35:18:16 – 00:35:23:59
Jason Collins
Yeah, it’s you can still download it like they still house the the install data. Okay. But they don’t sell it.
00:35:24:02 – 00:35:27:33
Agent Palmer
So you can’t get a key so you can’t access. Okay.
00:35:27:37 – 00:36:01:14
Jason Collins
Yeah I actually did that with, with two games when the, when the cost of the key was still low. I did it with Ghostbusters from 2009. Okay. And which was eventually remastered in 2014 and put out on like Epic Games and stuff. But the Transformers ones apparently I can’t remember which studio had it a claim. Starman a they at some point they think they came out with a press release and said they didn’t.
00:36:01:21 – 00:36:06:47
Jason Collins
They weren’t even sure where the files were for the game to like, give it an HD remastered and rereleased.
00:36:06:47 – 00:36:19:46
Agent Palmer
And we’ve I mean, we talk about reading up on the news and I’m not like the biggest gamer news person, but like, occasionally you read these stories about like, oh yeah, we were gonna we were going to do this, but we can’t find the files. Yeah.
00:36:19:49 – 00:36:20:15
Jason Collins
Just like.
00:36:20:17 – 00:36:20:49
Agent Palmer
So.
00:36:21:01 – 00:36:36:24
Jason Collins
I like that is super disappointing. So to get to get back to that, they do exist on Internet Archive. But I was a little skeptical about the install methods because you have to install a hacked binary.
00:36:36:26 – 00:36:37:02
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:36:37:07 – 00:36:42:19
Jason Collins
To load it where it doesn’t look for like a license key and stuff like that. Basically like the old cracking days.
00:36:42:21 – 00:36:57:27
Agent Palmer
Oh, I mean, look, and for anybody who’s not familiar, the old cracking days and I the last thing I cracked, which is now, thank God, more than a decade ago was a Adobe Creative Suite three.
00:36:57:32 – 00:36:59:18
Jason Collins
Yeah, I think I had the same one.
00:36:59:22 – 00:37:15:09
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I think we all passed it around, but it was basically you, you ran the install as normal, but you didn’t register it, and then you replaced the X file with a very specific exe file that.
00:37:15:09 – 00:37:23:11
Jason Collins
Didn’t when that was reverse engineers by by masked masked men on the internet that you weren’t sure their intentions.
00:37:23:14 – 00:37:24:23
Agent Palmer
Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
00:37:24:35 – 00:37:29:28
Jason Collins
In those days it was it was less malicious. They really were just trying to stick it to the man.
00:37:29:30 – 00:37:39:58
Agent Palmer
Well, it was all in those days for free. There was never a guarantee your computer was on the internet, so, like, yeah, you could just put it on a computer and it was just like, all right, here you go.
00:37:40:01 – 00:38:15:35
Jason Collins
Yeah. But now nowadays they like to bundle a lot of those malicious groups. Try to use that to steal passwords off your machine. And so they bundle malware that little sleeper rootkits and everything so that they can remote into your computer when you’re not even aware of it. And that one looked a little sketchy. I ran it through a sandbox that does malware scanning, and it it had a few hits on it, and I read through the comments section on the archive, and some people were saying like, hey, the game doesn’t load like it flashes and then it goes away.
00:38:15:35 – 00:38:39:31
Jason Collins
I’m like, well, there’s a sure sign that there’s malware, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I’m like, maybe I’m not going to mess with this. Maybe I’ll just I’ll just wait if I if I happen to find a physical copy somewhere out in the wild, I’ll grab it. Maybe find a console somewhere down the line. But I’m not going to risk my, my system to to play an old game even even though they were the best Transformers games that ever existed.
00:38:39:33 – 00:39:12:22
Agent Palmer
Now, here’s a question. And I only asked because when I was when I had my last full time job and I was just getting into podcasting and I was basically just not sleeping. You know, you come home from your day job and then your hobby kicks in for a few hours. Occasionally, as like on my second screen at work, I would put on like YouTube playthroughs of Skies of Arcadia as an example, just with no commentary.
00:39:12:22 – 00:39:35:23
Agent Palmer
There are people out there that play these games through and you can just watch, and it’s almost like you’re playing, but you’re not. It’s just kind of like if I was sitting, if I was watching you play, right? That kind of thing. And so does that exist for the Transformers games like have. So you can still you don’t get to play it, but you can still kind of not experience it, but you can still kind of be there.
00:39:35:30 – 00:39:42:37
Jason Collins
I could. It’s akin to looking at a painting in a museum. Yeah, I can I can appreciate the art of it.
00:39:42:37 – 00:40:04:59
Agent Palmer
I mean, as long as that stuff still exists to I mean, that’s the other thing. Not not every game has that has that ability. Like not everybody’s there’s not a YouTuber. I mean, there are plenty of YouTubers, but not every game has been played through in that kind of quiet way or clean way. So you some of them, you’re going to have to like put on mute.
00:40:05:02 – 00:40:09:37
Agent Palmer
The music is half of the half of the battle in some of these games.
00:40:09:40 – 00:40:27:41
Jason Collins
That’s true. Hey, maybe that maybe that’s a maybe that’s a good preservationist hobby for somebody out there. Find those games that aren’t on YouTube and make a whole channel dedicated to just full, full walkthrough. No. No commentary, no nothing. Just the game your YouTube channel could blow.
00:40:27:41 – 00:40:30:00
Agent Palmer
Up, I’m sure. I’m sure.
00:40:30:05 – 00:40:33:10
Jason Collins
They probably won’t be able to monetize that now that I think about it.
00:40:33:14 – 00:40:41:35
Agent Palmer
I don’t. Yeah, but you say that. But I’m sure I got ads on every kind of like walkthrough I’ve watched.
00:40:41:38 – 00:40:44:21
Jason Collins
Oh, they’ll still play the ads. YouTube’s still going to make their money.
00:40:44:23 – 00:40:45:18
Agent Palmer
Oh, it just doesn’t go.
00:40:45:18 – 00:40:48:37
Jason Collins
Back here. Yeah.
00:40:48:42 – 00:40:50:11
Agent Palmer
We’re always gonna find a way.
00:40:50:18 – 00:40:52:01
Jason Collins
Yeah. And they’ll still get theirs.
00:40:52:11 – 00:41:16:38
Agent Palmer
Yeah. So, I mean, we started in gaming, like. I mean, you’re still playing games, so. Every day and you’re not necessarily getting physical copies anymore. So I have to ask because I know it’s a holdup for me. Like, were you just like, I want to play games and I’ll just deal with the fact that I can’t, like, how would you get over it?
00:41:16:40 – 00:41:28:33
Jason Collins
I think, I think I just kind of lived through it because I never stopped playing games, ever. Like, I since the day I could hold an Atari 2600 joystick. I played games every day in my life.
00:41:28:35 – 00:41:30:18
Agent Palmer
Okay.
00:41:30:23 – 00:41:30:34
Jason Collins
So.
00:41:30:40 – 00:41:32:11
Agent Palmer
This is just a new way to play games.
00:41:32:13 – 00:42:02:21
Jason Collins
It’s just how. Yeah, it’s just like, all right, well, this game’s on this system, so you either need that console or if you’re doing PC, then it’s then it’s a download because that’s just the way they’re distributed. It just kind of adapted with the changes that the corporation set forth. Now, I won’t say that I don’t buy physical copies because I felt I found through those experiences of things disappearing from stores, that I want to start owning more physical media as well, for all the same reasons that we’re already discussing.
00:42:02:21 – 00:42:30:05
Jason Collins
So with my my switch, when you buy the switch bundles, they give you a game with the switch. But those aren’t those aren’t physical copies anymore either. They’re digital keys. So they you get the system, you bring it home. You still have to download the game. But what I’ve done is any newer games that I want to get, at least for the switch for Nintendo, because they’re the only company that’s really still putting out physical media, I guess Sony is to with the PS4 and Xbox two, but they’re also trying to get away from it.
00:42:30:07 – 00:42:31:58
Agent Palmer
I mean, I guess the question would be.
00:42:32:02 – 00:42:34:07
Jason Collins
So I’m buying them physically if I can.
00:42:34:09 – 00:42:48:25
Agent Palmer
What if I if I decided to buy a PS5 for the Dragon Quest one and two remake that I talked about that says it comes with a disc and I’m sure it does. Like, what is it? Is that this just a key to like. I mean.
00:42:48:37 – 00:42:52:47
Jason Collins
I don’t know, I think I should have to look into it on the Sony side of things.
00:42:52:49 – 00:43:16:05
Agent Palmer
I mean, I went through the Square Enix site because I was like, well, I’ll go to the source. But that’s a lot of marketing speak. And by the way, like as we’re recording this, I, I mean, when I was doing my research, I learned that Dragging Quest slash Dragon Warrior turns 40 this year. So there will be apparently announcements coming.
00:43:16:07 – 00:43:24:28
Jason Collins
To probably be some 40th edition physical media coming out, like with like a whole collector’s set. I might be better off waiting.
00:43:24:30 – 00:43:52:38
Agent Palmer
I mean, at this point I am waiting. I did, I did tell Steph I was like eights. The one like eights. The one that like like I, I played one and two. Same with Final Fantasy on the Game Boy. Like on the Game Boy. They were expansive worlds on tiny cartridges. Yeah. And then I skipped. I never went back to Final Fantasy after two, and I.
00:43:52:41 – 00:44:00:59
Agent Palmer
And then I skipped for Dragon. Well, I knew it as Dragon Warrior, so, like, when people were like, Dragon Quest is the same thing. I was like, really like it sounds.
00:44:01:11 – 00:44:01:57
Jason Collins
To look that up to.
00:44:01:59 – 00:44:22:32
Agent Palmer
Yeah. I was like, I was like, I’m a little skeptical because, you know, so it was whatever eight was on the PS2 was my like jump back in and I was like, oh, this is great. But again, and here’s the thing about physical media that’s very important. And I think this is also a storefront thing. Staff has been asking me since she, we got the switch to.
00:44:22:34 – 00:44:39:50
Agent Palmer
She’s like, do you want a game for you that you can play on? Like, we play Mario Kart, we play Mario Party like we play games together on it. But she’s like, is there a game for you? And I was like, I don’t know. Because like when you when you go online to buy stuff, they show you based on what you’re searching.
00:44:40:02 – 00:45:05:39
Agent Palmer
But as someone who’s been so far removed from gaming basically since college and the Gamecube, I don’t know what’s out. I don’t know what I’m looking for. So we were I discovered the the Dragon Quest one and two remake while we were walking through target, because I saw the yeah, well, while it’s not the physical disc, I did see the physical packaging and that was how I discovered it existed.
00:45:05:39 – 00:45:23:45
Agent Palmer
I’m in. Unless I see an article about it, there’s no way I’m like, oh, I’m sure they remade Dragon Quest by now. Let me look that up on the switch to that’s just not a thing I’m going to think about. I love quake, I’m never going to be like, I wonder if they remade quake for the switch to like, it’s just not a thing I’m going to think about.
00:45:23:45 – 00:45:41:27
Agent Palmer
So I need that kind of random discoverability that’s not search related. The way the internet set up, I needed that. It’s just a different way. By the way, if, if, if you want to come over for a land party.
00:45:41:32 – 00:45:43:48
Jason Collins
I mean, lugging so much stuff.
00:45:43:51 – 00:46:05:40
Agent Palmer
Oh my God. I mean, that’s the only good news about some of the connectedness and online of this game is like of games. Now is like, if I wanted to play quake one, there are mods out there where I can play quake one the same way. We’re recording via the distance, and it’s just we just connect to a server somewhere in North America or whatever, and we’re good to go.
00:46:05:42 – 00:46:11:54
Agent Palmer
And I don’t have to lug an entire tower to your house the way it used to be.
00:46:11:56 – 00:46:41:35
Jason Collins
There’s a lot to be said about still doing that, though. We used to do it before Covid. I did it with a couple of guys around here. The one guy owns his family, owns a hardware store, and they have like rental space up in at the top of their business where they rent out to other companies, and they had an occupied space and we would get together like once or twice a year for one night and just go there and they’d get shit faced and we’d just play video games and they throw.
00:46:41:38 – 00:46:55:30
Jason Collins
We throw empty beer cans around at each other and just it’s still fun. It’s still fun. But then like, we’re also older and then it’s like, oh, it’s time to pack up and drive home at like midnight, 1:00 in the morning. I’m like, I don’t want to lug all this shit now.
00:46:55:32 – 00:47:05:32
Agent Palmer
It the power of a laptop has changed, so we don’t necessarily need towers anymore.
00:47:05:36 – 00:47:06:05
Jason Collins
No.
00:47:06:08 – 00:47:15:31
Agent Palmer
I mean, when you and I were in our heyday of land parties, I don’t, I don’t. I think most laptops would have melted on any of the games we were probably playing.
00:47:15:36 – 00:47:17:24
Jason Collins
A lot of them couldn’t even run the games.
00:47:17:24 – 00:47:33:30
Agent Palmer
So now the fact that you could get a laptop that could do that does kind of make it a little bit easier on our backs, especially when you don’t have to all. But I mean, but we’re not carrying CRT around anyway. These monitors are so light, dude.
00:47:33:39 – 00:47:52:29
Jason Collins
That’s true. Yeah, the monitors are light. You can you can also hook the monitor up to the laptop. So yeah, you could reduce the amount of equipment you have to bring. But we get we get a little crazy. We’re bringing our own chairs. Like you want to be comfortable. You know what I mean? Like, we can’t sit on those metal fold out shits anymore.
00:47:52:41 – 00:48:03:02
Jason Collins
The tables are the same. You know, the long white foldout tables are all still the same, but everything else is like, oh, no, I got to bring my nice leather chair. I got to do this. I gotta do that.
00:48:03:04 – 00:48:14:54
Agent Palmer
Well, I mean, I guess that’s if anybody I know ever opens up a coffee shop, I should just be like, you should have a gaming LAN party set up that people can rent out. That’d be great.
00:48:14:56 – 00:48:26:03
Jason Collins
Just have a little stations and you can just leave all the all the peripherals there, like the monitors, and then they can just bring the tower and plug it in and. I mean chairs.
00:48:26:10 – 00:48:53:18
Agent Palmer
I remember the when I, when I worked at the Magic Slash comic store when I was in high school, we had, well, middle high school, whatever. We had three networked computers. People could buy, rent computer time on. We had I mean, the games of the day were, were. Duke Nukem 3D, quake one, Diablo one, and Warcraft Tides of Darkness.
00:48:53:20 – 00:48:56:39
Agent Palmer
That that was what people wanted to play against each other.
00:48:56:42 – 00:49:05:03
Jason Collins
And it was stuff that didn’t require any like personalized account creation. No. So you could literally sit down at any machine, jump in and play.
00:49:05:05 – 00:49:19:48
Agent Palmer
And if you wanted to, because of the way the computers were set up, like if I always played with you, your character was saved on this PC, mine was on this PC, and as long as we sat down at those PCs, we’re good to go. Doesn’t.
00:49:19:50 – 00:49:20:55
Jason Collins
Yeah.
00:49:20:59 – 00:49:47:29
Agent Palmer
Oh, I guess there’s I mean, if I mean it, we sound like old men, like thinking back on the day, but it was it was simpler. And I mean that genuinely like there was a part of it, there was a little bit simpler for as easy as it is to just install something from the cloud right now and connect to you and play sitting across from you in the same room with a game that we both bought and a shared network.
00:49:47:31 – 00:49:48:41
Agent Palmer
That was pretty easy.
00:49:48:55 – 00:49:55:02
Jason Collins
Yeah, yeah, there’s extra layers of complexity now for a lot of the games.
00:49:55:07 – 00:50:15:23
Agent Palmer
And that’s the other thing is I we’ve come full circle. We’re now the other way around, which is, is there a single player version of this? Like, we used to be very excited when we could play with someone else. And now the idea of a single player game is very appealing to me.
00:50:15:37 – 00:50:37:07
Jason Collins
Oh, 100%. Like I, I wait and watch for certain titles to, to come out that are strictly solo. Like, man, what was the last good one? Well, the last good ones I played was like tears of the Kingdom. Okay. And if you’re looking for it doesn’t it’s not even a switch to game. But they do have the switch to upgrade fidelity pack.
00:50:37:21 – 00:50:42:55
Jason Collins
That is a game you can buy a physical copy of on a switch two version, and I highly recommend you get it.
00:50:42:57 – 00:50:45:35
Agent Palmer
Why?
00:50:45:40 – 00:50:47:37
Agent Palmer
Why is that the one?
00:50:47:37 – 00:50:51:54
Jason Collins
It’s Legend of Zelda, all right, it’s open world.
00:50:51:59 – 00:51:00:49
Agent Palmer
No, I mean, but why is that the one I can get a physical of and not like something else? Like, why is that the one Nintendo’s like. Oh, but we’ll we’ll let you have a physical copy of this.
00:51:00:51 – 00:51:09:51
Jason Collins
Well, they, they, they it seems to be the majority of their titles are not. They are the traditional media is on.
00:51:09:53 – 00:51:10:19
Agent Palmer
The game.
00:51:10:22 – 00:51:17:52
Jason Collins
The card game. Okay. Because they’re building to they’re building the games to their specs. The third party companies, they’re, they’re they’re ports.
00:51:17:55 – 00:51:21:52
Agent Palmer
I gotcha. So they’re like, we okay, you don’t have enough space or you do or.
00:51:21:55 – 00:51:44:05
Jason Collins
Yeah, that’s how they’re bridging the gap for their partners so that they can still make money on third party games without the limitation on the developer. Because think about it, in that kind of a business relationship, you want them to bring their game over. But if you impose restrictions on them, they might say, no, we’re not going to do it.
00:51:44:08 – 00:52:08:42
Jason Collins
It’s a lot. It’s a lose lose for the both of them. So it does make sense. And I get it. But yeah, so I know, I know Legend of Zelda games, the Pokemon games. I think even the new Donkey Kong game, they are all physical, so you can buy them on them and they’re, they’re. And I just recommend Zelda because like, it’s a player own pace, you explore, there’s no rush.
00:52:08:45 – 00:52:20:58
Jason Collins
You get to experience a super rich story just to highly recommend game.
00:52:21:03 – 00:52:43:11
Agent Palmer
This was admit a little more one sided than usual, because while Collins is not the spokesman for the games industry or physical media or modding, he is my expert. And these conversations happen all the time with our own personal experts. We know people that know more than us about a thing, and we go to them and we really just pepper them with questions.
00:52:43:11 – 00:53:05:51
Agent Palmer
And when we don’t understand, we just keep talking to try and straighten ourselves out. With the help of our expert, I have been on both sides of this conversation in that in this case, Collins knows more than me, and at other times I’ve been the one to sit in his seat. We are all and have experts in our life that we go to, and they know who they are.
00:53:05:56 – 00:53:26:59
Agent Palmer
To the initial issue of physical video game discs, not counting key cards, I haven’t parsed an answer for myself yet. The same is true of how I’m going to treat physical media going forward, though I do prefer physical to digital, and when it comes to something I love, I prefer physical media to the unpredictability of streaming. Are you a gamer?
00:53:26:59 – 00:53:48:31
Agent Palmer
Are you comfortable with key cards? Do you hold out for physical media when possible or skip it if it’s not? When it comes to physical media, movies, music, books, how are you handling the ease of accessibility of online and streaming and digital versus its own impermanence? These are some of the questions of our time from a consumer side.
00:53:48:34 – 00:54:10:04
Agent Palmer
Our media overlords may have other ideas, but as the conversation you just listen to proves, we don’t have to follow. I did, and still kind of do want the Dragon Quest remasters, but without a physical game disc, I’m not likely to spend any money. We don’t have to buy stuff that isn’t in the format we want. We have that choice.
00:54:10:04 – 00:54:29:19
Agent Palmer
So where do you stand? Does it matter? Do you care what format you buy? Or do you just want what you want? Let me know. Thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 174. And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion.
00:54:29:19 – 00:55:37:11
Agent Palmer
You can find all related ways to contact Jason or myself in the show notes. You can see Jason play video games online at Twitch.tv. That’s you are I. The music for this episode was provided by Henno Heitur. Email and comments can be sent to this show at the Palmer Files at gmail.com. And remember your home for all things Agent Palmer is Agent Palmer.
00:55:37:16 – 00:55:39:39
Agent Palmer
All right, you got one final question for me.
00:55:39:42 – 00:56:00:02
Jason Collins
Yeah. So I’ve been going back to more physical media where I can where I can find it. You’re obviously in the same boat where, you know, you want to retain that as well. So in my travels, when I’m looking for older media, is there anything you are on the lookout for that I can keep my eyes open for as well.
00:56:00:04 – 00:56:35:26
Agent Palmer
So first of all, it’s it’s a smaller, maybe circle of physical media than it used to be. Because I’ve been slowly downsizing, the crap in my house, despite the fact that I want more physical media that will be in my house. But as part of that, you know, I, I have a Gamecube and a wee, which is basically my backup Gamecube at this point.
00:56:35:31 – 00:57:10:17
Agent Palmer
And a PlayStation two and a PlayStation three and four. I got rid of my X-Box. I got rid of, like, I got rid of a lot of other console stuff. In fact, I may have even gotten rid of the PlayStation two because the three plays is is backwards. And I just kind of downsized a little bit because I was like, I’m not like, I, I had the future Arma game on Xbox, but I’m not keeping an entire Xbox for one game.
00:57:10:22 – 00:57:38:30
Agent Palmer
Also, when I traded it in, I got like 50 bucks for that game. I was like, yay, nice. I don’t know, I can, I can definitely I can certainly think about like what it is right now. It it’s kind of all shifted to music. So I’m kind of starting to look for maybe CDs, although I don’t know what I’m looking for when I’m looking for a CD, because I know it’s like, I feel like that maybe more than games and movies.
00:57:38:32 – 00:58:07:37
Agent Palmer
CDs are like the biggest X factor when you’re going to get them used. Are they scratched? Are they legitimate? Are they? I mean, I back when we were in college, I remember you could print on a CD. Yeah. And I don’t know about you, but if I really wanted to, instead of the old white face, blue Memorex where you just write on Sharpie, this is, I don’t know, the corn album or whatever.
00:58:07:42 – 00:58:49:16
Agent Palmer
Like, you could get a blank CD that you could print on and make it look pretty convincing to the original. True. But I think it would be like CDs. I think it would be music based right now. And I don’t even know. I guess the other thing is, too, I say that because I do think I want to maybe limit my reliance on Spotify for the archive of things I like, but at the same time, I’m sitting in a house where I’m pretty sure I got rid of the jewel cases on almost on most of my movies and CDs.
00:58:49:18 – 00:58:58:25
Agent Palmer
Like I have them in binders now. So yeah, I’m basically saying, yeah, J. Here’s an album, go look for it for me. But I don’t really need the jewel case. I just need the CD.
00:58:58:30 – 00:58:59:54
Jason Collins
The CDs. Yeah, yeah.
00:58:59:56 – 00:59:22:52
Agent Palmer
And so that’s that’s a weird part about it, because I know that a lot of people, if they say like, oh, I want physical media, they want all of it, they want the jewel case, they want this, that, and the other thing. But then again, I say that and I think it came up on a podcast recently, but like I have a shoebox with all the CD booklets.
00:59:22:57 – 00:59:42:39
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Like I kept them when I got rid of the jewel cases. Yep. So there’s a I guess. Yeah, probably CDs if I was going to say anything. But that’s again, I guess it’s a little bit of a crapshoot, but I don’t know. I’m not I’m not there yet. I haven’t made the decision because well, I, I should say this.
00:59:42:39 – 00:59:52:34
Agent Palmer
I know it won’t be vinyl and I know it won’t be cassette because as cool as I think the cassette could be, I don’t know that I want to go down that road again.
00:59:52:36 – 00:59:56:17
Jason Collins
There’s those. Yeah, there’s those trappings of mechanical failure.
00:59:56:21 – 01:00:12:42
Agent Palmer
Well, that’s the other thing to VHS and cassette tapes, especially if you have an older one, weren’t all mechanical, so most of them probably won’t work now anyway because the the rubbers rotted.
01:00:12:47 – 01:00:13:59
Jason Collins
Yeah. Yeah.
01:00:14:03 – 01:00:19:20
Agent Palmer
Which was what that was the drive mechanic on most of those things.
01:00:19:25 – 01:00:22:15
Jason Collins
Well because that was plastic. The heads were plastic.
01:00:22:17 – 01:00:23:20
Agent Palmer
Well, the heads were plastic.
01:00:23:22 – 01:00:24:22
Jason Collins
The good ones were metal.
01:00:24:24 – 01:00:51:44
Agent Palmer
But some of the drives within that kept it turning were rubber. In fact, a few years ago, I. Well, I put it on the curb. Steph had an all in one wooden cabinet that she only used for vinyl, but the vinyl drive, rubber band dry rot it out basically.
01:00:51:49 – 01:00:52:25
Jason Collins
Yeah.
01:00:52:40 – 01:01:03:32
Agent Palmer
And to replace it, because it wasn’t all in one and not just a record player, you had to take the whole thing apart. And I was like, I’m just going to put this. Somebody will take it. It’s fine. I’m not.
01:01:03:44 – 01:01:04:10
Jason Collins
A problem.
01:01:04:10 – 01:01:23:02
Agent Palmer
Now I have another we have an actual record player in my office. It’s fine. So we still can play that stuff. I don’t know. I’m in this weird place. I do want to get rid of some stuff. I feel like I’ve collected way too much crap over the course of my life. But then we have this entire episode where I’m like.
01:01:23:07 – 01:01:35:59
Agent Palmer
But I’m afraid of my reliance on Spotify and digital things, so I don’t know. It’s weird coming to terms with both of those wanting to.
01:01:36:03 – 01:01:40:46
Jason Collins
You can though. You can. You just got to be very selective about what you want to keep.
01:01:40:51 – 01:01:46:32
Agent Palmer
Yeah. What are you looking for? I mean, is it mainly gaming stuff?
01:01:46:36 – 01:02:04:08
Jason Collins
I think, yeah, mainly gaming. I still have all my old CDs, too, and I think they’re in the jewel cases. They’re up in a box in the attic. Okay, so my music library is pretty, pretty stocked. Can’t say I have anything to play them on right now, but they’re they’re,
01:02:04:13 – 01:02:12:13
Agent Palmer
I have at least two disc man disc men in this house that both work. So if you want one.
01:02:12:18 – 01:02:22:32
Jason Collins
Maybe that’s. I think what I’m going to do is I’m going to keep my eyes open for yard sales come spring, and I’m just going to start looking for a lot of this kind of stuff that people are getting rid of.
01:02:22:34 – 01:02:24:15
Agent Palmer
Are you going to get an actual stereo?
01:02:24:17 – 01:02:25:44
Jason Collins
I’m going to go treasure hunting.
01:02:25:46 – 01:02:31:24
Agent Palmer
It’s going to get an actual stereo, like a stereo, like a stack stereo, like what our parents had grew up.
01:02:31:26 – 01:02:36:12
Jason Collins
Like the one I had in the college dorm that I that I brought that the glass.
01:02:36:17 – 01:02:37:02
Agent Palmer
Oh, yes.
01:02:37:04 – 01:02:42:04
Jason Collins
Floated on when Dan was practicing. It just blew up on him out of nowhere.
01:02:42:09 – 01:02:44:06
Agent Palmer
I mean, I mean, first.
01:02:44:14 – 01:02:46:52
Jason Collins
Actually, that’s actually still at my mom’s house, that that unit.
01:02:46:54 – 01:02:58:18
Agent Palmer
Okay. I mean, I was going to say first, in order to get the stereo, you need to start looking for people that are giving away the the glass case thing. It doesn’t have glass though. Or is it?
01:02:58:22 – 01:02:59:29
Jason Collins
I don’t care, I know, I.
01:02:59:30 – 01:03:00:25
Agent Palmer
Just.
01:03:00:29 – 01:03:08:19
Jason Collins
I don’t need a glass door to play a CD. I need the CD player, the five disc changer still there. I take it still works, I don’t know.
01:03:08:24 – 01:03:09:17
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I mean that would.
01:03:09:17 – 01:03:11:19
Jason Collins
Be even think she’s used it. Really.
01:03:11:19 – 01:03:33:49
Agent Palmer
So my dad started looking at these online auctions, these online yard sales. Yeah. And occasionally they’ll be one that’s like very, very electronic rich so to speak. And it’s like here’s five tuners for like stereos. And it’s just like wow. Like some of that stuff is it looks amazing.
01:03:34:01 – 01:03:35:27
Jason Collins
Yeah.
01:03:35:32 – 01:03:51:34
Agent Palmer
So on that note, I maybe I’d like to have I have a stereo. My stereo from college is behind me. And instead of it being hooked up to a TV and everything else, it’s hooked up to a a record player, an Alexa.
01:03:51:38 – 01:03:52:48
Jason Collins
Old meets new.
01:03:52:55 – 01:04:03:40
Agent Palmer
Yeah, it’s it’s like and and it’s got a line in from one of those disc men that works to a line out on the disc man in case I want to play CDs.
01:04:03:54 – 01:04:04:26
Jason Collins
Nice.
01:04:04:28 – 01:04:22:49
Agent Palmer
So it’s like, I mean, I guess. Yeah, you’re right. It’s finding whatever that balance is. It’s a it’s a weird it’s a weird thing. But let me know because I’ll say this as much as I’m really hard to pull the trigger on stuff, especially the yard sale stuff, it’s a it’s so much fun to.
01:04:22:57 – 01:04:25:03
Jason Collins
It is. It is. Yeah.
01:04:25:08 – 01:04:32:14
Agent Palmer
I don’t know why I’d want to look because I really don’t want stuff. But at the same time it’s like this. Some of this stuff is really cool.
01:04:32:17 – 01:04:34:36
Jason Collins
So just got to be selective, that’s all.
01:04:34:38 – 01:04:35:17
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
–End Transcription–
This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).