The following below is an interview with a fellow player of Chuhou Joutai and our gaming experiences.
Interviewee: Which questions should we start off with?
Driller: What was the first video game you ever played?
Interviewee: That’s a tough one because it goes way back when I was probably five or six. It may have been a Mario game, but I don’t remember which one. It’s hard to say, but I think it was on the GameCube. I think I know, but I don’t think it was Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and I think it was an adventure game that was Nintendo-based.
Driller: The first video game I ever played was Pac-Man, and it was on a Plug-and-Play device. The first console game I ever owned was Mario Kart: Double Dash on the GameCube.
Interviewee: Maybe it was Double Dash. I’ll look up information on that later.
Driller: What was your favorite video game franchise growing up?
Interviewee: Well, I was solely Nintendo during the time, so I’ll just say Nintendo, mostly Mario in this case.
Driller: I’m mostly a Nintendo guy too, but some of my favorite video game franchises I remember include the Mario series, Touhou Project is definitely one; I’ve played every installment.
Interviewee: They were on Nintendo or something else?
Driller: The PC I meant to say.
Interviewee: Okay, that makes more sense because I know a bit about it, but I don’t know everything. That’s bullet hell, right?
Driller: Yeah, that’s the reason why Chuhou Joutai exists.
Interviewee: Right. Should we get straight to our gaming experiences online and offline?
Driller: Yeah.
Interviewee: So, how was your gaming experience like? Let’s start offline; how was that? Like locally or by yourself?
Driller: My multiplayer experience was I remember one time during fourth grade during a field trip to Pittsburgh, we actually played Mario Kart DS on the way. I had the game.
Interviewee: I remember back when I was in middle school, I did that same thing but with Mario Kart 7. I also did that in upper elementary as well on the bus ride home from school.
Driller: I remember battling some of my friends playing Pokémon and such. My favorite installment is Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, and since then I have played every mainline Pokémon game.
Interviewee: My favorite Pokémon game isn’t clear. Pokémon Sword and Shield is okay, but I say Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon as it felt a little more satisfying compared to Sun and Moon, it’s kind of sad.
Driller: Yeah, they didn’t include every single Pokémon in the National Pokédex, as first of all, there’s too many.
Interviewee: Yeah, someone on Discord thought it was a crazy idea where all the regions are there but would take several months or a year or two. Or three.
Driller: What was your favorite retro game?
Interviewee: Like retros or handheld?
Driller: Any retro game in general.
Interviewee: For the GameCube, no doubt it would be Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. On the Wii, it was Mario Party 8, and after that Mario Party started to suck. And on the Game Boy, I wouldn’t say it was a favorite, but I think it was Pokémon Sapphire.
Driller: You mean Ruby and Sapphire?
Interviewee: I have Ruby and Sapphire, as well as Emerald, but I don’t know if it counts as retro. For Wii U, I don’t know if I actually have a favorite Wii U game, but I forgot about the 3DS too. Definitely Kid Icarus: Uprising. What about yours?
Driller: Well, speaking of retro gaming, I’ve played every mainline Mario game starting from Super Mario Bros. on the NES all the way up until Super Mario 3D World on the Wii U. I sort of lost track after that, but I definitely played Odyssey.
Interviewee: I don’t know about a favorite game on the Switch, and to be honest, I’m not very good with favorite questions as it’s not really my strong suit. No worries – there are some favorite questions I can answer, but many I can’t.
Driller: What about your experiences with Smash Bros.?
Interviewee: Well, I do remember back in middle school years, I was participating in Smash Bros. tournaments that was mainly Melee and 3DS, but this was before the Wii U version came out. And I even practiced for it, but as you guessed for Melee, that thing with Fox, do you know that what I mean?
Driller: Yep.
Interviewee: Yeah, I’ve ran into someone with that main, I think.
Driller: You mean Fox, Final Destination only, and no items
Interviewee: I don’t remember what stage, but I’m pretty sure it was that. Or maybe it was Battlefield? And I’m talking about Melee. So if you can guess, that didn’t go well for me.
Driller: I’ve played every Super Smash Bros. game to date.
Interviewee: I haven’t played Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo 64, as I didn’t have a Nintendo 64.
Driller: I’ve played almost all my NES, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, and Nintendo 64 games via the virtual console on the Nintendo Wii and 3DS. Wii U is included as well and I have a Super Nintendo Classic Edition.
Interviewee: For my other Smash experiences, Brawl would be my favorite out of all of them because the adventure mode is better than the one in Ultimate because of the cutscenes.
Driller: Yeah, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate largely despised them because after Brawl came out, players were reportedly posting the cutscenes to YouTube and such.
Interviewee: Every Saturday I participate in a Smash Ultimate stream on YouTube and there are some pretty good people, and we all do random characters; some get lucky and some get unlucky, some of them even get their main. I got somebody’s main last Saturday.
Driller: Who was it?
Interviewee: Little Mac.
Driller: My main used to be Simon Belmont; I now main Hero.
Interviewee: I can’t get the hang of Hero.
Driller: I have all the Smash DLC for Smash Ultimate.
Interviewee: Yeah, same. Do you have an Xbox or anything, or you just do Nintendo?
Driller: I had an Xbox 360, but I have an Xbox One controller which I mainly use for playtesting my games on my computer. The main thing that I like about it is that it’s Bluetooth, but it requires batteries which is annoying. Luckily, it does turns itself off when not in use for extended periods of time.
Interviewee: As you can tell from my camera I have an Xbox One right behind my TV if you can see it.
Driller: Yeah, I can.
Interviewee: Okay. I’m mostly an anime game person on the Xbox. It bothers me that some games are exclusive to PlayStation 4. I believe it was some Japanese company or something.
Driller: You mean Cave? The company itself?
Interviewee: I mean the PlayStation company. For my other human experiences, right now since I’m in college it’s very limited as I don’t want to be heard shouting when I’m talking to people as it’s too loud. There have been times at home where I’ve encountered angry gamers in Overwatch. I’ve played Overwatch and I suck at it.
Driller: I have Overwatch on Switch and when I first played it, playing a console first-person shooter was a whole different experience than PC where you use your mouse to aim and it’s so much easier to do. But on console, it takes time getting used to. What were some games your parents wouldn’t let you play growing up?
Interviewee: I don’t think there was any. They said I could get any game I want, but there were some titles I don’t want to play. There are some genres I can’t handle like horror games. I only play the games I find interesting. Just recently I bought this fanmade Pokémon game titled Nexelmon Extinction on the Switch. It is, in a way, terrible. The battles are so unclear and the battle mechanics are so frustrating, I just cannot figure the thing out. That’s $30 down the drain.
Driller: This is why the Angry Video Game Nerd exists. Have you heard of Day One: Garry’s Incident?
Interviewee: No.
Driller: It was a survival game on Steam that became infamous when TotalBiscuit reviewed the game; the developers slapped him with a DMCA takedown to silence him. This caused a fair bit of controversy. They call this the Streisand effect where you use a DMCA takedown to silence criticism. Do you know what the DMCA is in general?
Interviewee: DMCA?
Driller: Yeah.
Interviewee: I don’t know what that is.
Driller: That’s short for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the copyright system used by people on the internet.
Interviewee: Yeah, it can be terrible place, but my PC gaming, if we don’t mind discussing it. I haven’t played much. Again, I don’t know my favorite video game, but there have been some that were very slow on Steam, I mean. I’ve played Tem Tem, another fanmade Pokémon game that was popular. It was not an adult version, but rather a teen version of Pokémon, you know what I’m saying? And I’m excited for it to come out on the PlayStation 5, which I’m so going to get for my birthday. For other experiences, there are hardly any titles I play on Steam on my computer. I’m very sheltered with gaming as of right now.
Driller: Most of Steam I’ve seen on social media, especially in the game dev hashtags, a lot of people are creating visual novels which started gaining popularity in the west in 2010, and it got more popular thanks to Doki Doki Literature Club.
Interviewee: Oh God, don’t remind me of that! I’ve played one, and I’ve seen videos of it on YouTube. I don’t even know what I was thinking playing that. I’ve seen modded versions of it which are less disturbing.
Driller: I’ve made an approach to attempt to include visual novel style cutscenes in my games but I don’t actually play the genre itself because first of all, there’s very little activity and are a lot of games I simply don’t want to play. The only one I play is Ace Attorney and it’s fun because you get to yell “objection” and such.
Interviewee: I know that. And I forgot that there’s another game series. You know about The Henry Stickmin Collection, right?
Driller: Yeah, I’ve played some of those.
Interviewee: I haven’t played the collection but I’ve played some of them way before this. My favorite one, I’ll have to say, is Infiltrating the Airship.
Driller: First one I’ve played was Escaping the Prison.
Interviewee: A friend of mine introduced me to it, I don’t remember the first one I played. I think it was the fourth one, Infiltrating the Airship. Or maybe it was Escaping the Prison? We could just stick around doing nothing, but what else? How would we ask?
Driller: Can you repeat the question?
Interviewee: No, I was thinking what haven’t we asked.
Driller: What was the hardest video game boss you ever beat?
Interviewee: Oh my God, do you mean boss or stage?
Driller: Either one of them.
Interviewee: Oh, wait, I know one. Do you know Splatoon 2?
Driller: Yeah.
Interviewee: Do you know the DLC for it?
Driller: You mean the Octo Expansion?
Interviewee: Yeah. There was a secret boss, and oh my God, I was going to snap at it. I beat it after several dozen tries. That was one of the hardest bosses I ever fought.
Driller: Definitely the hardest spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate had to be the Pauline spirit. Even the aforementioned strategies that Sakurai taught on how to beat that spirit, but that was a year and a half before the Min Min demonstration video.
Interviewee: There’s also recently, the Kingdom Hearts bosses but in this case Hard mode. Until then I beat them on Easy mode which required me to make a new file and I managed to beat it. On the second one there were even harder bosses than the first one, to be honest. I only do more damage the harder I hit the boss. And another one there were four secret bosses in Birth by Sleep and I only beat two of them. I haven’t gone to the other two yet. And oh my God, the second one was annoying. But I beat them both. I’m proud.
Driller: The toughest boss I ever created had to be Marie Willow from Chuhou Joutai. Trying to test all of her attacks on Lunatic, which I generally do, was pure insanity. It was the toughest boss I ever made and good luck trying to beat her on the hardest difficulty.
Interviewee: If I can think of another secret boss, but wait, it was another hard boss battle on Kid Icarus: Uprising on Hard mode. I was able to beat it, and the reward for beating it is more of an achievement rather. It’s very, very disappointing. I had to do it in Hard mode just to get an idol. It was basically a model of something. It’s very disappointing. There were 26 bosses I had to beat in Hard mode. And if you can guess, it has similar functions to the lobby in Super Smash Bros. Brawl in Boss Battle mode, in terms of recovery items. Maybe as well in Kirby, I don’t know. I haven’t played much Kirby games. The only ones I’ve played are Squeak Squad on the Nintendo DS and Return to Dream Land. Those are like the only two that I have. Our gaming experiences can vary from person to person, I suppose.
Driller: Well, I think this concludes our interview since we reached the allotted time.
Interviewee: Yeah, I’ll think I’ll use this for our blog as well. Thank you for talking. I’ll see you.
Drillimation Systems 