Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 05/15/2014

Have fun travelling to New York, alex!

SURPRISE!

I get mentioned at 30:35 O_O But they seriously should get around to Body Harvest 2.

Has anyone giffed Scoops the moment he found out that there are no arena's in Battle Mode? Cause that looks like something that should be giffed.

That baby is in pure sleeping bliss.

It would have probably been better to announce this change a bit earlier.

My wife is running the same half marathon! Enjoy some Coney Island!

Boy, people have such different opinions about the Mario Kart series. I HATED the Wii and N64 games and have grown up playing them all and loving the series in general.

My list would be (top to bottom): 1. Mario Kart DS, 2. Mario Kart: Double Dash, 3. Super Mario Kart, 4. Mario Kart 7, 5. Mario Kart: Super Circuit, 6. Mario Kart 64, 7. Mario Kart Wii.

I'm hopeful Mario Kart 8 will fall high on my list. It sure looks really pretty. Also, screw Coconut Mall. That's the worst. Glad it's gone.

Probably should at least warn people about major plot spoilers in big games guys, they do it on the Bombcast proper just as a courtesy. Not everyone can play every major game they want to within a year of release!

@john_gannon: What game(s) was spoiled? Unless you're joking and it was Mario Kart. I don't like me some spoilers.

They could absolutely add DLC tracks. Not having a store front in-game means nothing. They could add that in a 2kb title update once they announce the existence of the DLC.

@development: Episode 3 of the first season of The Walking Dead.

@joemotycki: Alex is already in New York, it's Patrick that is going to New York.

Fantastic!

I love that Mario Kart 8 has no hints of including any DLC. It would water-down the online play, in my opinion, just like map packs water-down FPS multiplayer games. If someone, say your friend(s) doesn't own that track you cannot play with them online.

I dunno man. A year is a pretty long time. If folks haven't gotten to it yet, that's unfortunate, but there comes a point where everyone would be prefacing any talk about any game with *btw spoilers* because oh no, some folks can't keep up.

The world of video game enthusiast press moves very quickly, after all. I'd rather these guys didn't have stilted conversation, worrying about how the person that lives under a rock will react when they hear something that they may never be ready to hear.

I'm not saying that's you or anything. I'm just talking more generally.

Personally, I never finished TWD due to some weird PC bug that kept forgetting the choices I'd made, which really ruined the immersion from chapter to chapter, but I wouldn't begrudge anyone wanting to talk about it candidly, at this point.

I freaked out thinking it was Friday and almost went to take an exam... Thanks giantbama

@patrickklepek I'm having issues downloading BitAM in iTunes

I agree with this. Also, it's actually been almost two years (Season 1 came out in 2012 in case ya forgot) so ya know, even more time to have gotten to it by now.

Thanks for the classic Simpsons reference Alex! Haha

The topic of stock dilution came up in the Bombcast.

Dilution is when the % share of equity that an owner has is decreased by the issuance of new shares of stock or stock options, without the existing owners participating in that issuance.

For instance, if Oculus had 100 shares of stock, and gave 5 of them to Bethesda, Bethesda would have a 5% equity interest in Oculus. However, every time Oculus went to a VC firm, those new VC investors would also want equity shares.

To continue the example, a new VC invests in Oculus, in return they receive 100 shares. Without any additional compensating action, Bethesda's interest has now declined to only 2.5%, while the new VC has 50% of the equity in Oculus. Bethesda's share in the future sale of the company, their claims on assets if the company dissolves, and also their voting power has significantly declined in this situation.

What Bethesda wanted was to ensure that if other companies/firms invested in Oculus, Bethesda would still have 5% (or whatever percentage). In this example, the way that would happen would be that as the new VC received shares, Bethesda would also receive new shares that would ensure its participation remained at 5% instead of being diluted by the issuance of new shares. In this case that would mean Bethesda would automatically receive 5 1/4 new shares when the new VC investment happened (then they would have 10.25 shares out of 205.25 shares which is basically 5%).

Dilution is often a key component in what are referred to as "poison pill" plans, when a company is trying to avoid a hostile takeover attempt. As the hostile investor purchases more and more shares of the company on the open market, the company will begin issuing new shares to investors aligned with the existing management of the company (sometimes called "White Knights", although that can also mean that the "White Knight" is required to purchase the company if certain contractual terms indicative of a hostile takeover occur), to reduce the total % of the voting power that that equity stake acquired by the hostile investor is able to accumulate.

Double Dash was my favorite Mario Kart. I loved co-op karting with my bro.

@quaglartheiv: was double dash the first Mario kart you ever played?

Rockstar has been releasing something new yearly for a decent amount of time now (definitely since gta4 came out.

• 2008 - GTA4
• 2009 - Episodes From Liberty City
• 2010 - Red Dead Redemption
• 2011 - LA Noire (I know it wasn't developed by them, but they definitely put their name behind it, and I consider it a proper release from the company)
• 2012 - Max Payne 3
• 2013 - GTA5

My guess is we'll be getting substantial single player dlc for GTAV by the end of 2014, an HD port with all of the content in early 2015, and maybe even a whole new game in 2015. It'll only have been 4 years since R* San Diego made something when 2015 comes along. I bet they announce a brand new game at e3 for release sometime in 2015, maybe pushed back to early 2016 (which would break their streak, and be disappointing).

So, battle mode is just classic mode with lives essentially? But also laps don't matter I guess...

The one crappy thing about living in the middle of no where, away from big cities, is that i never get to participate in things like the Scoops' Giant Bomb meet up.

Hey Patrick. Ever considering moving your meet up to the middle of Pennsylvania? Im buying. Penn State has plenty of bars for you to choose from....

You guys are killing me! Double Dash is the only strategic Mario Kart in the series as it allows players to manipulate player positions and punishes players for blindly driving into first. Like a fighting game, a great Double Dash player will know when to be offensive (head to first) and when to play defensively (stay back and hold items.) Until a Mario Kart features double items like DD, no other Mario Kart will ever be as strategic.

I could go on and on, but yes, you guys are waaaaaay wrong. I love you guys, so you're forgiven.

Yes, I know, I'm so merciful, you're welcome. <3

@bigsmoke77: Nope, third. I guess it was the first Mario Kart I ever owned tho. I played a lot of the SNES and 64 ones at my friends' houses so never felt the need to get them... Maybe I'm just crazy since it was so long ago or I'm just biased toward co-op games, but I remember having so much fun having my brother steer while I concentrated on using items and getting the blue sparks when he would drift.

I haven't played as much of any Mario Kart since those days, but have played the DS, Wii and 3DS ones. However, none of them grabbed me as much as Double Dash

@morningstar: Oh, that's rough. Thanks. Guess I'll avoid this episode.

That baby is so goddamn smug about how cute it is.

Okay, Double Dash is by far the best Mario Kart game and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. It's got the best tracks and most strategic depth in the series to date.

@patrickklepek@alex Awesome GAME TALK. This has already taken the place of the Bombcast for video game discussions.

Another video summing up the conversion to AlexandPatrickbomb.com.

No hate on Alex and Patrick, they appear to be putting the work in. Good on them. The entire front page of GB is now full of videos, news and reviews uploaded by Alex or Patrick.

Are you new to the site or something? I never understand people who complain about the lack of video game talk on the Bombcast when these last few months of Bombcasts have had the biggest proportion of video game talk compared to other stuff in a long, long time (if you exclude the GOTY period). Selective amnesia.

Non-videogame discussions were arguably my favourite parts of the Ryan-hosted bombcasts, and although that hasn't changed, they're still talking about videogames!

Came here for Scoops and the Wolfenstein jokes; left disappointed...

Thank you for not saying "spoilers" and ruining the last Walking Dead Game Season One. It might have been a year but spoiling it was not needed. Hopefully you don't spoil other games in future episodes. I would have gone Premium but not after this remorseless filled spoiler, I will stick to the other Podcast from now on.

Thank you for not saying "spoilers" and ruining the last Walking Dead Game Season One. It might have been a year but spoiling it was not needed. Hopefully you don't spoil other games in future episodes. I would have gone Premium but not after this remorseless filled spoiler, I will stick to the other Podcast from now on. At least they added "Warning: some Walking Dead season one spoilers" two days after, it still should have been there from the beginning before you ruined the game.

@roboculus92: Perhaps, but they could have at least said "spoiler" the entire spoiler was not even needed, especially the part about pulling the trigger on Duck.

Nope. Been here since before GB, when On the Spot was the best weekly video on the internet.

Bombcasts have lost energy. They are not as good.

Patrick and Alex are doing the most content on the site recently (the whole front page is covered with Alex and Patrick uploads.

The video in Tesla Effect is capped at 2K not 4K.

@roboculus92: I look at a lot of episodic games the way I do TV shows - if there are multiple "seasons" I buy the games but wait until the seasons are all finished so I can play them all back to back. A spoiler tag is definitely apt.

@gormatop: Actually that episode of TWD came out in 2012. It's been almost two years. You should have played it by now if you care so much about what happens in it that it's caused you to cancel a Premium sub and swear off this podcast.

Or, if for whatever reason you couldn't or didn't want to yet, you should have realized the moment that they started discussing Season 2 of the Walking Dead, it's inevitable details of Season 1 will be spoiled (for example, even knowing who the protagonist is of Season 2 spoils Season 1). At that point, you should have turned off the podcast.

As hard as it is to hear, the world can't revolve around each of us individually. When you consume mediums like podcasts, you have to realize that if you're literally years behind the conversation like you are here, you might hear things like this.

@whitegreyblack: TV shows don't give spoiler warnings for things that happened in their previous seasons when they're discussed online though. If you enter into a podcast or review or forum thread on say, the latest episode of Game of Thrones, and expect spoiler tags from things that happened in the show two years prior, that's an absurd expectation.

@danm_999: They gave very specific spoilers without saying anything and what they mentioned about season 2 was not an indication that they would spoil things from one. If I remember they only said that season two episode three was long. Furthermore, they could have said "spoilers" and not just start saying them as they did in the Podcast. It is not about the world revolving around me as you say it is about common courtesy in regards to spoilers.

@danm_999: I am in no way saying anyone should refrain from talking about spoilers. I am asking them to have the courtesy to give a tiny bit of warning first. Is that really so much to ask?

I understand why people are upset, but I could not care less about Battle Mode in Mario Kart games since we left the age of 4-player split screen. That shit is just not fun if you're not in the room with everyone you're playing it with so you can curse at them.

Also, to everyone complaining about spoiler warnings: did you not see the one in the video description? I don't think it can get much more up front than being in the thing that you read before you watch the video.

@homelessbird: They just added the "Warning: some Walking Dead season one spoilers" today, it was not there when the original show went up or the day and a half after. Furthermore, the iTunes store still has the old description that is missing that, this all would have been fine if they said "spoilers" before they ruined the game.

@gormatop: Ah ok, that makes more sense.

Although, as someone who has played through Episode 1 of the Walking Dead, I don't personally think the things they mention in the video "ruin" the game.