Episode 538 - Frog Fractions, Psycho Mantis & the Most Unexpected Video Game Mechanics Ever Made

What happens when a video game stops playing by the rules? Doug and returning guest Noah (Gunchpot) go deep on the most creative, bizarre, and genuinely brilliant video game mechanics ever designed — from games that fake-crash your console to math games that secretly turn into space jail simulators.

Games covered include Shenmue (the 1999 Dreamcast game that made boredom part of the experience by giving you an actual forklift job), Seaman (raise a fish with a human face that insults you, narrated by Leonard Nimoy), Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (the GameCube horror game that fake-deleted your save file and muted your TV on purpose), Metal Gear Solid (Psycho Mantis reads your memory card and comments on your other games), Facade (a 2005 AI couples therapy simulator where typing the word "melon" gets you thrown out of the apartment), Frog Fractions (a browser math game that secretly turns into a completely different game — then hid its sequel inside an entirely separate game for years), Doki Doki Literature Club (the anime dating sim that deletes characters from your hard drive as part of its horror), Disco Elysium (where your skills literally argue with you and you can fail a check just trying to get out of bed), and WarioWare (five-second micro games with one-word instructions and zero hand-holding).

Plus: QWOP, Baby Steps, Superhot VR, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, I Am Bread, and more.

Before all that: Noah is working through 800 of 1,000 movies on his Letterboxd watchlist, watched Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park for the first time this year, and is deep in the David Lynch rabbit hole. Doug's dog Bruno had a very eventful Mother's Day morning involving a rabbit, a shovel, and a crow.

Then it's time for The Verdict — the Letterboxd review guessing game. This round covers The Mummy, Devil Wears Prada 2, Nosferatu, Longlegs, Conclave, Barbie, Glass Onion, and Andor.

This week's recommendations: Noah: Casino Royale. One of the best action films ever made, full stop. Doug: Potion Seller's debut album Buzzard is out now. Go listen. Brainsynthesizer.com for merch and physical copies.

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