Mobile Suit Gundam Zeonic Front with Scott Wachter (Recap From Mercury)

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Speaker A:

I'm Jason from smoking and drinking in Space, a Sci-Fi podcast from a couple guys who think they know Sci-Fi. And I'm rob from smoking and drinking in capes, a superhero podcast from a couple guys who wish they had powers. And we're part of the Gonna Geek network, just like the show you're checking out now. Shows on the network are individually owned, and opinions expressed may not reflect others, and you can find other cool, awesome, geeky shows@Gunageeknetwork.com. And welcome to play comics, where once again we are here looking at a video game based on a comic and how well it represents that source material. Today I have reached into the deep, far reaches of the Internet known as Reddit and found Scott Walkter here to talk to us about mobile suit Gundam Xeonic front. Scott, first off, how are you today? Because we need to get that established before we make your day a lot worse.

Speaker B:

I've actually had a pretty good day. All my day job things went well, even though I thought some of them would go wrong.

Speaker A:

Well, I'm glad for that, because day job things suck enough anyway. And we get to end the night here on something a lot more positive, kind of. Because as I said, we're talking about Gundam, and it's not that Gundam is bad. It's that Gundam hits on some deep dark.

Speaker B:

It does. It does.

Speaker A:

So what was it that drew you into wanting to talk about Gundam's Xionic front?

Speaker B:

Xionic Front is as part of the bigger Gundam meta thing is really interesting on a couple of levels. First there's just the gameplay level, and then there's also the thematic level where you are playing the bad guys and how the game story runs alongside the original anime and how the way the story progresses there kind of actually plays into the difficulty changing in the game. That's the most interesting part, actually.

Speaker A:

There hasn't been another game, I think, that we've looked at here for the show where you really get to play as the bad guys. There's the fighters, and obviously you can fight as a villain, but other than that, I think you might touch on a villain for a mission or two here and there. But for the most part, for this show, you're pretty strictly going on the hero side. So this was something that excited me about this one too, especially because I still have not jumped into Gundam, because there is at least 3 billion different Gundam series.

Speaker B:

Yes. So bubble suit Gundam, the meta franchise, has been going for almost 45 years, coming up in April. That's the anniversary year, but yeah, no, it's 45 years of stuff. Depending on how you want to count it, 130 distinct Gundam things you can watch, not counting the things you could read or play or listen to or stage shows. There are stage shows. There's only previews of them on YouTube. But take a look at the Gundam stage show just to see what they do for. It's a thing to watch where they have the actors sitting in these gimbals on wheels and they've got like, stage hands spinning them around and running around the stage, and it's just the two actors hitting each other with toy lightsabers as they run around.

Speaker A:

Oh, that is cool.

Speaker B:

No, for as much as the deep rabbit hole of anime based stage shows can go, the Gundam ones are great just for. Oh no, these two guys are just being flung around the stage on big wheelie lifeguard chairs and hitting each other and shouting and the laser light shows going on. And oh man, to be able to watch that, that'd be a thing and a half.

Speaker A:

This game specifically is based on the universal century timeline, which is words that I understand now after putting out probably four or five Gundam episodes, your basic main Gundam timeline there. But what exactly was going on in the manga and the anime behind when this game takes?

Speaker B:

So universal century is the core timeline. It's the one that Bandai keeps coming back to and keeps making more content for. It originated the franchise in 1979. A lot of the material keeps revisiting that original show from different perspectives, showing different areas of that story or different tangents to it, or prequels or side stories or whatever. And this game comes out on the PS two in the mid ninety s in what is a really big era of a lot of Gundam games, actually. Journey to Jabaro, encounters in space Federation versus Xeon. Just, I think, ten or twelve real banger titles on PS two. But this one follows, takes the first 20 something od episodes of the original series and some of the supplemental material as well, and says, okay, we are going to show what one particular unit of the principality of Xeonside. Who are the bad guys? The bad guys of the French of the first series. We're going to show one special unit as they join the invasion of Earth. That happens in February of the year 79, UC 79 and follows them as they take part in invading North America, and then follows them across Earth as they conquer Xion conquers Mauraria. And then it gets to October of 79, which is when the main actual series of Gundam starts, which means the heroes are showing up on Earth and wrecking all of Xeon's stuff. And now things are starting to go bad for Xeon and you as the characters are fighting retreating actions more and more and the game never forces you to lose. But the way you win is often just by getting away like you do a lot of defending actions or retreating actions or escorts to, oh, you have to escort a bunch of tanks away from Ukraine to where they can evacuate or hide out, know, whatever political reason as they and as, as Xeon starts losing the war, the game gets harder. And there are like russian novels about this kind of content where it's like, oh, it is very clear that we have lost this war, but we have to keep fighting it because if we don't, we'll just die here. It's despair either way.

Speaker A:

That really is a lot. And so what makes young Scott get into something that's just so dark and depressing?

Speaker B:

I came to this a bit later. I've always been a fan of big stompy robot media, but I think unlike a lot of anime fans, I came to it from BattleTech mech warrior. Like mech Warrior two and three on PC. And that does make me a bit different, even though mech warrior obviously has various legal entanglements with the anime industry that we could go into on a totally different show. But I was a big fan of mech warrior. I was a big fan of Earth Siege and star Siege from Sierra games on pc. And one day up in Canada, I believe it was a Wednesday in 2000, the after school block of tv programming just stopped. It didn't run anything normal because of weird cable regulations or their licensing deal. This one channel did not have a full amount of advertising. They had MTV style vjs between segments. And so this programming stopped and it's like, okay, look, we understand that we told you that there would be normally dragon Ball Z here, but instead we're going to show you three episodes of Gundam. This show called Gundam Wing. It's new, it's different, and if you like it, asterisk. Also, if we don't get too many complaints to our regulatory body because Gundam Wing broke some BSNP at the time for them, we'll run the rest of the show later. So they ran three episodes of Gundam Wing and Gundam Wing was very ridiculous for a guy who was already familiar with mech Warrior because a proper combat robot is a chicken with lasers for hands and boxes of missiles stapled to it. Not this samurai shaped thing. No. But by the end of three episodes, Gundam Wing has an amazing soundtrack. It has a lot of cool animation, even if they recycle most of it later. It has its own vibe and it's really exciting when you're twelve. And what happened was that a few weeks later I was able to go to the video store and in the japanimation section, this is how old I am. That's what the video store section was called. They had not tapes of Gundam Wing, tapes of the original movie compilations of bubble suit Gundam from the 80s, from 1980. So I got to watch the movie recut of the first 20 something episodes of Gundam, and that was very weird and very different. And Gundam Wing did not prepare me for that. But the story of the original Gundam actually vibes a bit better with mech Warrior because it's a mix of stompy robots and real world politics and melodrama and personal nonsense. And from there I was hooked. From there I was genuinely hooked. But I was still relying on one small town video store and one cable tv subscription to show me Gundam. So I did not see a lot until I was in college, and even then this would have been in 2006. So there was less Gundam then than there was now. But I realized how much there was and I was intimidated by it. So I watched every non UC show I could, all of them, which is a weird way to order to do it in, everyone tells me, especially because I did it in alphabetical order based on the BitTorrent site, which means I watched a show called turn a Gundam first because it uses the mathematical symbol upside down. A turn A is a great show, but it hits a little harder if you know what Gundam is going in. But once I got from turn A to what would have guess, I guess Gundam seed Destiny would be the last one alphabetically. I did go back to the UC and watch that in more or less production mean I really fell in love with franchise with tournay. But going through the production know the original series, the movies war in the pocket, war in the pocket is amazing. I really fell in love with the whole franchise around there and I started to go back and try to track down these games. I was lucky enough to get a copy of xionic front for not a ridiculous amount of money. I know the speculator market has probably destroyed that possibility for a lot of people, but this is a PS two game that kind of plays like the original ghost recons where you have three fire teams that you can give directions for before a fight. You can set them up up their gear, tell them how they're going to move across the field, and then you can interrupt that as things go wrong, and the game is really about managing that as you move around this section of the story of the original Gundam series, oh, wow.

Speaker A:

I jumped all the way over to the new price, so that makes much more sense. Xionic front is not ridiculous. It's like a $20 loose game.

Speaker B:

Okay. All right. Yeah. I just assume that anything that fans might be interested in is probably going crazy on eBay. But if you're saying, like, if all you want is a disc for $20, you could do worse.

Speaker A:

You could be getting a copy of Smash Bros. Melee. Good luck with that one. So the thing that everybody I'm talking to about Gundam, whether they've been on the show or just friends that I've been talking to it about, otherwise, because I know that they're fans and they're trying to help me get ready for it, but the main thing that people seem to enjoy is the mix in of that real world politics of everything. And I just think that's amazing that they can be making something back in the still feels so relevant today.

Speaker B:

Yeah. So if we're talking about the original Gunnam 79, 1st Gunnam, whatever you want to call it, the arc of what Xeon, the principality of Xeon, the bad guys do, is really reminiscent of how Japan managed their war in the Pacific in the late 30s into World War II. It's a couple of very big show offy crazy, just absolutely crazy attacks on major sites, right? Like Japan, of course, hits Pearl harbor. That's the one everyone knows. But they also hit three different english controlled ports basically the same day. No one mentions that part in the history books a lot, but they were all over the South Pacific in UK territory, hitting ports within 12 hours of hitting Pearl harbor. And in the same way, and they push really hard, they take a lot of land, they secure as many resources as they can, and eventually the allies organize around them and push them back to the homeland. Similarly, when you talk about Xeon, they do one big crazy war crime, actually two big crazy war crimes, and then they eventually stabilize around taking a bunch of land on earth, try to extract a bunch of value from it, and the earth forces push them back, colony by colony, island by island, asteroid by asteroid, until they are fighting in the homeland at the end of the show. And geonic front lets you play the first half of that where you're pushing into California and taking over America, and then you're falling back into Europe, and then everyone else loses, but you, I guess, is the ending.

Speaker A:

We'Re going to try to figure out how you can even stomach playing as a villain here, seeing how the world is going today. While I drop some promos for a few other shows that are hopefully a little bit more optimistic.

Speaker C:

It'S time to feel the rage. Join us on filmrage, where we talk movies, current releases, coming attraction, streaming, and classic films as well. Directors and actors, beware as you cannot hide from the rage. My name is Bryson. I'm part of the film Rage crew, which also includes Jim, hey, hey. And Murray.

Speaker A:

Yo.

Speaker B:

Why is he always talk all the time?

Speaker A:

I can't understand why this is the merman, the voice of reason. These two can't agree on anything most of the time. Some movies are Mondo, some are just every week. Something is going to make us rage. Join us every Wednesday and feel the rage.

Speaker D:

Passengers, remain calm and please stay in your seats. We are experiencing pirate activity.

Speaker B:

Oh, there's just some something happening. What?

Speaker A:

Them?

Speaker B:

Oh, no.

Speaker D:

At the outer edges of space, where union is but a whisper, humanity scrapes together. A living amongst the stars. This is the story of four lancers, talented pilots of mechanized chassis from all corners of the known universe, thrown together by circumstance and destiny. And credits follow macha, Moxie, Roadkill, and Silver. Led by me, Reed, your game master, through the lancer system, a mud and laser style anime mecha rpg. I hope they brought some printers with them because this is bring your own mech, an actual play Lancer podcast. And batteries are not included. Follow my heading and I'll see you there.

Speaker A:

Those are some great shows to check out, but first, let's finish up with this one. So, Scott, like we said earlier, mobile suit Gundam Xionic Front is a PS two game. It was released in early 2002 here in North America, snuck out into 2001 over in Japan, put out by Bandai and Sunrise Interactive. Sunrise hasn't done anything else that we've looked at so far on the show. Bandai has done a ton, but for our purposes, Gundam games, Dragon Ball games, Digimon games, and muscle.

Speaker B:

So I think Sunrise Interactive is again, Bandai bought sunrise in 1993, and so sunrise Interactive might just be a bit of a legacy thing. It might just be a publisher label that's kind of been rendered defunct. Don't worry too much about them. They'll show up on older Gundam games as well. But it's just a legacy brand name.

Speaker A:

It's always cool how that happens. Kind of like ultra labels from Konami and stuff on the edds.

Speaker B:

Yeah, it's just big japanese corporate shenanigans.

Speaker A:

Corporate shenanigans. I'm sure, we'll come back to that at some point.

Speaker B:

Yeah, it'll come up somewhere.

Speaker A:

As you said, the entire point of this game is playing as the villains, and you get to do that in these missions, which are a lot more of how I like playing these kind of games. More strategy. Tell your people where to go and less run around and just wail on people.

Speaker B:

One thing I'll say is that it's not really interested in investigating. The game is not super investigated, interested in investigating the morality of the characters. There are options between missions to ask people for advice about what you should be upgrading on your back end or how you should be planning the next mission. But that's all sort of strategy guide stuff. There's no moment where these characters pause to really reflect on, like, hey, what are we doing out here? I thought we were fighting for freedom, for space noids. Why are we stomping all over California? Even the missions are not necessarily in any sort of complicated sort of spaces. It's just, no, you just got to fight some heavy artillery. There's no civilian population to worry about. There's no after effects you have to deal with. It's not that kind of morally complicated. Despite the fact that the game opens with like, oh, hey, we're going to show you some fancy new animation of your colleagues, your comrades dropping a mile wide tube of titanium alloy and heavy acrylics and houses and human beings. An entire space colony strapping rockets to it and dropping it. On earth, they were aiming at a military target. They missed. But it's like, hey, this is your side. The side that's about to do something very bad. They don't engage with that. They don't engage with that. But the gameplay is a lot about the planning, and I think, minute to minute, what I think I was bad at this. I watched a bunch of gameplay footage from this, and apparently what I learned is that everyone else is good at this game but me.

Speaker A:

Oh, no, I am also bad at this game, so don't worry.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I believe that it's a game that forces you to learn how it wants you to play it. And it's really about controlling your positioning, really working to get just the right angle on your opponent, close into the right amount, and get your one or two shot kill on any target. And a lot of that is about kitting out your guys. So that. All right, so if I'm a green team, is three mobile suits. All right, this guy is going to be my suppression fire. He's got the machine gun. I've got one guy on heavy, he's got the bazooka. And the one guy I'm going to control is going to have a bit more of an all rounder with some sort of like maybe a stun grenade that I can throw at a squad. And, okay, while they're paused, we'll just wreck them up.

Speaker A:

Probably largely as a result of you playing as the villains, there are basically no characters in this game that you have been able to play as at least as far as we've looked at on the show. And from my guess, I would say it's going to be very few that you get to play as in later games as well.

Speaker B:

The Midnight Fenrir Corps. Cool name. Deeply cool name. Midnight Fenrir. Cool name for a bunch of guys. They don't really show up anywhere else unless you're dealing with like a phone game that depends on a lot of gotcha loot box stuff. And it's like, oh yeah, you unlocked lieutenant what's his name from the midnight Fenrirs. I think the only character that really pops up in other games or other media is your radio operator lady. She shows up in more things, mostly as an in joke for other stuff. And the other thing I'll say is that if you're good at this game, which I was not, because every mission you get ranked at the end, if you play it really well, you will unlock characters you know from the anime in the simulator mode where you just get to go wild and be like, oh, play the Federation side of this mission. And now you get to be Amaro and Kai and Hayato. Or now you can be char in the iconic red Zaku or Rambaral or all these guys you actually know from the anime as opposed to a bunch of schmucks in plain old green Zakus.

Speaker A:

And for my purposes, the simulator mode characters, if that's the only place they're in, they don't count.

Speaker B:

So much of this game's playtime play value is in doing everything, because if you watch someone good play this game, they'll beat it in two and a half hours. And so even if you're bad like me, that's still 7 hours. And you're going to want to go to the simulator and try to unlock more guys just to see that. So you can get 14 hours of game out of this. If that's how you prioritize your time.

Speaker A:

Or money as you're playing this one, is it like you're playing episodes of Gundam except backwards because you're the bad guys?

Speaker B:

Some missions are entirely new, like a lot of the early section where you're just stomping around California, that's entirely new. That's made up for the game. But as you go on, it's like, oh, no, we're going to do Odessa Day. Odessa Day is a big part of the anime. It's where Amuro kind of stops being up putts and rejoins the team. And he and everyone else invade Ukraine where there was a big xeon stronghold where they were gathering minerals and shipping it back up to space and taking that is where the show starts to pivot to the federation winning. So you get to fight this rear guard action as everyone is trying to escape know. So you have to avoid Amaro because Amaro will just kill you because the Gundam has laser beam weapons and you don't. So if he sees you, he just shoots you and you explode. That's it. That's how this goes. So you kind of have to outwit him and outmaneuver him and just get away. And even I think towards the end, you get to do one of the more iconic parts of the show where Char asthmull, who is on the Xeon side but has his own agenda for space opera, Sci-Fi good story reasons. He's about to set up one of the major leaders of the Xeon faction, Garma Zabi, to die. He just lures Garma and all his forces into attacking Amuro and all the good guys, and he just dies. And shark just laughs at him on the radio. And you get to watch that happen while you're dealing with a different problem elsewhere in the battlefield. So there are some episodes that are entirely new. Some of them are seeing this anime from the other side. There's a lot of really good perspective shifts and seeing just certain iconic moments.

Speaker A:

From the other side and getting through. Like you said, roughly the first 20 episodes of the anime, it seems like there should be more to this. Not like they're missing something, but a sequel or something. Eventually I'm going to get like that with another game, though, right?

Speaker B:

There are certainly plenty of games that cover the back half, which is when the main cast goes back to space. They go back to space, they leave the earth side, and they start taking the fight to Xeon again, one asteroid at a time, one colony at a time. And so because this game, just production wise, couldn't have zero g sections and on Earth sections, they had to cut the story short at like, okay, the main story has left Earth and we're done. We're done. There are other games that cover this, obviously, but no, I think maybe there is a zionic front too, where you fight the losing side of Solomon as well.

Speaker A:

Overall, though, this game just really feels giant stompy robot, and I don't feel like, you know, Nazis or communist China or anything. I feel like I'm playing somebody who actually maybe has a point and could be the good guys if we were hearing the story from their side more often. Maybe that's just me being naive and not getting so much into Gundam yet, though.

Speaker B:

Well, okay, so Gundam has always done a very good job of portraying the further you are down the levels of power, the further you are down the totem pole, the more you're just a person. Right? Like all the characters here, as much as you don't get a lot of backstory from them, these are guys who have valid reasons to think what they're doing is right. And there are a lot of other characters on the Xeon side, either within first Gundam or other shows that were set around the same time. Like, war in the pocket follows a guy who is a conscript who is just 19 and dumb and hopped up on the idea of like, no, I'm going to be a hero. I'm going to win this war, and I'm going to be a great guy. And things don't go great for him, but things don't go great for a lot of characters in Gundam. No one in this game is a mustache twirler, and very few characters in this franchise are mustache twirlers. Yeah, I mean, I'll call Xeon Space Nazis because there's a great conversation towards the end of the original show where the head of Xeon Deguan Zabi talks to his son Giran Zabi, and it's like, hey, Giran, you're starting to sound like this guy from the 20th century. He was called Hitler. Oh, yeah, I know Hitler. I will be the man who surpasses Hitler. This series knows authors that use subtext and they think they're cowards.

Speaker A:

But I can really appreciate something like that where the main reason somebody is on who we're seeing as the villain side is the fact that they were born in the area of the map that they were born in.

Speaker B:

The main characters of Gundam joined the Federation because Xeon blew up their home, right. They got Shanghai into it, and twelve episodes later, they become involved politically and realize that, oh, this is going to be bad. Other people's homes will be blown up. We have to stay here. We have to help a lot of Gundam is that there are characters who learn because so many of the characters are young. They're not politically literate, they're not politically active. And then as it goes on, they learn, they adapt, they form their own moralities, and they pursue them. And sometimes they're still wrong, or sometimes they're still clueless, or sometimes it's not a complete absolute virtue situation. And I think xeonic front is still a fun game. It would be so easy for this game to do a spec ops. The line where it makes you do a war crime like it makes you do the war crime to make the game progress and then spends a bunch of cutscenes telling you you were bad for playing the game the way it told you. No, you're handed objectives that make sense. You are engaged in missions to further the cause of what you think is freedom and independence for space people. So you invade Earth and you don't necessarily know that. Oh yeah, your boss is raiding all the cultural treasures of earth and shipping them off to the moon for him to enjoy later. This is a real plot point. In Gundam, there is a guy stealing. There's just a guy engaged in mass looting.

Speaker A:

So he's just going and taking things from the british museum because that's where most of the world's cultural treasures end up anyway.

Speaker B:

Yeah, he just robs the british museum and ships it to the moon for himself.

Speaker A:

I mean, I'm not going to lie. I would love to be able to look at that stuff whenever I want.

Speaker B:

Yeah. I mean, if I could have the elk and marbles in my moon condo, why not?

Speaker A:

Normally I would ask what this gets right and what this gets wrong compared to Gundam, but it feels like a really weird one because you're looking at it from the Xeon side. And from what I've seen, you're mostly just looking at things from the Federation side. Are there other series or anything? Or even arcs where you're more focused and seeing things from the Xeon side?

Speaker B:

The big one is a series of games. The japanese title is Girin no yaibo. Sometimes that's translated as Girin's greed or Girin's ambition. They play exactly like the Nobunaga no yibo games. I think one or two of those came out in English in the PS two era. But these are strategy games. Big scale strategy games where you play the Xeon side. And unlike this game, the way you manage things lets you win. So, like in this game, you can get Dom, you can unlock the Dom mobile suit later on. And when you unlock the Dom, it starts to feel like you're cheating. It is faster, it has a proper jet boost. It has this embedded spray beam that distracts enemies. It feels like you can take on two or three guys at once in a way you couldn't before. And when you play the Girin's games, you can manage your resources such that, oh, you can put doms in places they weren't in the show and you can that. That's the big cornerstone. Otherwise we can talk about, say, federation versus CN or more. So Gundam versus Zeta Gundam, which are like arena fighters, but in the story modes of those, you can have alternate timelines unlock, where depending on how you win certain fights, different characters change sides or different characters lose certain fights and the plot just goes all crazy. And that both of those will take that not just through first Gundam, but into Zeta Gundam. And that's where you have four factions going on, not just two.

Speaker A:

In a world where this is the only Gundam game that exists. And that's already a weird thing to think about.

Speaker B:

Oh God, there's so many.

Speaker A:

I know. Would you give somebody this game as a primer course for getting into Gundam?

Speaker B:

Because Gundam originates in anime. I think getting into Gundam starts with watching an anime. And hell, even if we want to rewind it back to the year 2000 when the only things you could get were Gundam Wing on cable tv, the first Gundam compilation movies on vhs, and the first couple of PS one Gundam games that Bandai brought over just because oh Wing is successful, what do we have that we can localize that's on a current system? And those first couple of PS one games sank because they weren't based on wing. So I would say even in a scenario where there is very little Gundam, this is not a game I would give you. I would say, no, just watch the show. The movie compilations are on Netflix right now. Bandai has a YouTube channel. It changes what Gundam is available every quarter. So I don't know what you can watch right now, but witch for Mercury is on there. You can watch that. I liked that one a lot.

Speaker A:

Everybody keeps telling me I should watch that one. I haven't made my decision yet.

Speaker B:

One of the better moves you can make if you're trying to approach Gundam is to just grab the most recent non uc thing. So witch for Mercury, it's on Crunchyroll, it's on YouTube right now. It is a non UC thing. So there's no baggage. You don't have to deal with any lore. You don't have to process it. It's just like, no. Here's this girl. She wants to go to school. She is immediately embroiled in the military industrial complex because the military industrial complex runs this school. Her mom wants revenge. Proper shakespearean revenge. Because this show is based on the tempest and also Utana. So if you're familiar with the tempest or revolutionary girl Utana, you're halfway there already, even if you don't know Gundam. And it's also shorter. This is only 26 episodes, which is less of a time investment than even the 43 of the original Gundam. And it's pretty good. I liked it a lot. The dub is very good. The dub is very good. I'll also mention that we usually go.

Speaker A:

Dubs and subs at the same time, just because we like seeing how they differentiate things there.

Speaker B:

That would drive me crazy. But you do you.

Speaker A:

Well, my wife can't read it fast enough and pay attention to everything that's on the screen.

Speaker B:

All right.

Speaker A:

I like seeing things as authentically as possible, but I've learned to make it work because of her. If you were going to try to convince somebody to get into Gundam, what completely non Gundam comic or manga would you give them and tell them, hey, Gundam's kind of like this. You should check out Gundam.

Speaker B:

I'm going to cheat because this is new. This is new. But the. Okay, I'm going to forget the artist's name, but there is a new adaptation of a show called fist of the sun. Daugrum. It's a new manga adaptation. It is from a mangaka who has worked in Gundam before. But daugrum is another big snoppy robot show that is very invested in politics. It's a big part of what informed how Iron Blood doorphins got made, actually. But it's not available in English yet. Fingers crossed. Come on. I will buy all of it. But no, I would start with the new daugrum manga. How about that?

Speaker A:

I will wait till it's in English and then follow you over there with that one. What completely non Gundam game would you give somebody to try to get them into? Gundam?

Speaker B:

There's a new armored core out. That's a pretty good way to go from software. Actually did make a Gundam game. It never came out in North America, but I think the new armored core would be a good way to go. But given that I came to Gundam from mech warrior and Battletech. Hey, there's that battle tech game from hairbrain schemes you can try.

Speaker A:

Yeah, this one's almost too easy because you can just say, hey, look, there's a giant robot. Get that one.

Speaker B:

Yeah, there is that. I mean, zone of the enders, it'd also be a good one. It's a lot faster and a lot crazier. But I think Zoe two has a lot more gundamy type characters in it. There's, like, a masked man and a guy who wants to rule Mars. So that's very gun to me.

Speaker A:

Well, Scott, it has been great talking to you about all of these. If people want to hear more from you, where else can they find you? Around the Internet?

Speaker B:

So I am on Twitter and the blue ski. Okay, this is not so recent now, but me and my friend Jeff did do a recap show for Gundam, the Witch for Mercury. We did it week by week as it was coming out. So you can relive us guessing about things going on and just live reacting to all the crazy things that there. We did it live on YouTube, and then the audio version is a slightly cleaned up version of that. But you can find that where you get your podcast. The show is called the recap for Mercury. I am about to maybe launch a anime retro review show kind of in the coming months. Just maybe just keep an eye on my socials for that. I'm Fs Scott on Blue sky or Fs Walkter on Twitter, and we'll see if that happens.

Speaker A:

And as always, we'll have links to all that stuff down in the show notes because clicking links is so much easier than trying to remember how to spell things. And as always, the best way to find me is to head on over to playcomics.com, where there's links to all the social media things. Because Twitter is a dumpster fire, and I still keep getting sucked back into it because of the vicious cycle of people going where the audience is and the audience going where the people are. So, yes, I'm sorry. Still on Twitter. I don't know how to stop. Please, please help me escape this hellhole. Part of trying to help me escape this hellhole is supporting the, you know, if you want to share it with some friends or tell people about it or share it with some enemies, or all of that stuff is cool, too. You can run over to podchase or Apple Podcasts and leave a review, or you can even. Now, I know this might be a surprise, but you can even donate money to podcasts, too. You can do that through Patreon. You can do that through camaraderie. You can just know where I live and send me money. But there's links to all that down the show notes. So yeah, check out the show notes because then you can know how to help support the show because supporting the show is good. Or if you like it, just tell me that you like it and make my day. Because just hearing that from people would probably make me pee in my pants with happy. Or you could be like Onola class or Dan McMahon or Carl Antonovitz and give me money. That's cool too. Clay Comics is a part of the Gunnegeek.com network, home to such wonderful shows as Legends of SHiELD, which also features me, which as of today, as I'm finishing up editing this, has recorded their 500th episode. Less than 500 of them have involved me, but number 500 did where we finished looking at the Echo series. We're going to spend a couple of episodes looking at Moon Girl and then jumping right into the big granddaddy of everything for this year, X Men 97. And if you're not excited about that, then why are we friends? This makes absolutely no sense. Also, it has capes on the couch, so they're cool too. If you like the music that I'm really talking on top of, head on over to soundcloud.com. Best day to check out best day's music. But most of all, just grab a game, grab a sack of comics, and go find yourself a new favorite character.

Speaker B:

1 second one of my dogs is stuck outside and he's mad about it.

Speaker A:

Well, we're going to try to figure out I have no ad transition here and put out by Bandai, and I can't scroll fast enough. Put out by Bandai and Sunrise Interactive.