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Episode 974: When I Was Getting Scraped for Horace Showpony, I Wasn't Getting Paid

by James Jones, Greg Leahy, Jon Lindemann, and Guillaume Veillette - May 9, 2026, 10:47 pm EDT
Total comments: 6

In retrospect, I wasn't getting paid for any of this... wait a minute.

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This week we recorded before Nintendo announced their quarterly numbers. This means we were two hours too early to hear about the price increase for Switch 2.

I want you all to applaud me for fitting in every possible homonym for "to" in a single sentence.

Business James, who for the purposes of ongoing litigation is a distinct person from James Jones RFN Host, was eating this week. The suddenly announced and released Star Fox Direct was an adoption of his FOMO on the News technique. It called for a Nintendo communication strategy requiring eternal vigilance from consumers. If a Direct could descend upon us at any time, then eyes must stay fixed to the skies. Nintendo lists YouTube and other video services as their competitors - attention is the currency of Nintendo's realm - and the price of this patrol is your Twitch Watch Streak.

There is a particularly perverse series of thoughts that RFN worked through when we first confronted the future of Star Fox, following his featured role in the most recent Mario cinematic content - I dare not say "movie." We explicitly identified a city upon the metaphorical map that we would regard as least interesting to visit, which Nintendo seems to have likewise identified as most affordable location for their mercenary business convention.

We will struggle to spend our entire per diem, given the recently instituted two drink limit. Technically, the policy does not proscribe the meal the drinks should accompany.

Ever the unpredictable, RFN starts this week with the big news of Wednesday - which as we noted was still the most recent news. And, of course, the news of the week (at least as of that moment) was Atari's acquisition of the Wizardry franchise. Except perhaps they didn't. I am utterly unable to tell you what Atari is at this moment, and I suspect they could not either. What separates us is I am aware of this weakness; evidence suggests they are not.

After this deliberate attempt to avoid the elephant in the room, we then pivot to the actual news of Wednesday - which again, was still the most recent news at this juncture: the new boot-up screen for Xbox Series consoles. Team Xbox is resurgent, what with their new @xbox email addresses and boot screens. The leaks have been patched, the bilge is pumped, and we are now upon the open seas of success. This is a lie.

Alright, assuredly the dilettantes hosting this show have run out of things to talk about that are not the big news. In a sense, no. This is where we talk about Star Fox 64 remake (#2) unhelpfully named Star Fox, which is the title of a different game entirely. At the time, as I painfully remind you, this was the big news story of the week. Obviously that is not the case anymore, assuming you are not in a very specific demographic. As can likewise be surmised from this article, the overwhelming response of our hosts is largely "why?" But hey, now I can bother people playing any piece of Switch or Switch 2 software, while wearing the face of a space pig. Sadly, vtubing as RFN favorite Panther Caroso is not an option.

After a break, we answer two emails. The first advises us on where someone - say a Nintendo podcast host - could find advice for playing Pokémon games. The second asks us to replace infinite remakes with infinite demakes. You can demake our inbox here.

  • (00:00:31) News - Atari be bussin'.
  • (00:15:25) Xbox be flailin'.
  • (00:27:27) Starfox be loopin'.
  • (01:24:22) Listener Mail - Pokemon strategies and where to find them.
  • (01:32:43) Enough with remakes, time for demakes. And more remakes.

This episode was edited by Guillaume Veillette. The "Men of Leisure" theme song was produced exclusively for Radio Free Nintendo by Perry Burkum. Hear more at Perry's SoundCloud. The Radio Free Nintendo logo was produced by Connor Strickland. See what he's up to at his website.

This episode's ending music is "Area 6 / Missile Slipstream" from Super Smash Bros. for 3DS / Wii U. Arrangement by Motoi Sakuraba. It was selected by Greg. All rights reserved by Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Talkback

SorenMay 11, 2026

Damn, what a shit email segment this week. Y'all might as well not read GX's email at all.

Evan_BMay 11, 2026

I think the point stands. Min-maxing Pokemon requires hurdles that most games pre-Gen 9 make difficult to achieve until late-to-post-game, so I don’t know why you’d attempt it. I also don’t know what sort of comprehensive strategy an LLM would give for any game in particular and I don’t care to give any of them the time of day to find out.

Then again, I’m posting on a dead forum in order to magnify my voice and sense of self-importance via the relative emptiness of the echo chamber, so maybe I don’t have any right to talk about the poisons of the internet.

OrsonQuillMay 12, 2026

Quote from: Evan_B

I think the point stands. Min-maxing Pokemon requires hurdles that most games pre-Gen 9 make difficult to achieve until late-to-post-game, so I don’t know why you’d attempt it. I also don’t know what sort of comprehensive strategy an LLM would give for any game in particular and I don’t care to give any of them the time of day to find out.

Then again, I’m posting on a dead forum in order to magnify my voice and sense of self-importance via the relative emptiness of the echo chamber, so maybe I don’t have any right to talk about the poisons of the internet.

I agree with you.

jarodeaMay 13, 2026

You guys seem down on recent Nintendo moves like the Mario movies and remaking Zelda OoT, but you have to remember that the share of people who got into gaming with the NES/SNES who give Nintendo money for themselves is a small fraction of their sales. 

With those examples in particular, to paraphrase what Syrenne was saying recently, the Venn diagram of people who have a Switch/2 and have played Zelda OoT to death slightly overlaps and the one for people who are over 35 and would join the Nintendo ecosystem due to a movie barely does.  Their focus is moving elsewhere.  At least this time it is for natural changes so it doesn’t sting as much personally as it did during the Wii era.

jarodeaMay 13, 2026

Quote from: jarodea

You guys seem down on recent Nintendo moves like the Mario movies and remaking Zelda OoT, but you have to remember that the share of people who got into gaming with the NES/SNES who give Nintendo money for themselves is a small fraction of their sales. 

With those examples in particular, to paraphrase what Syrenne was saying recently, the Venn diagram of people who have a Switch/2 and have played Zelda OoT to death slightly overlaps and the one for people who are over 35 and would join the Nintendo ecosystem due to a movie barely does.  Their focus is moving elsewhere.  At least this time it is for natural changes so it doesn’t sting as much personally as it did during the Wii era.

Ah, Greg, of course, does touch on this in the Star Fox discussion earlier in the episode.  I had originally listened to that part on Monday.

Whether or not it makes business sense, my point was that I find it to be the least interesting thing they could do with the franchise. Remaking a game for the second (arguably the third of Ocarina of Time) time is just not creatively interesting.

I think Star Fox Zero is a fine, if safe game - badly damaged by an asinine control scheme that attempted to invent justifications of the Wii U GamePad: but at least it tried something. The motivations were misaligned, and so the risks taken did not pay off.

Given the system was already on Death Row, I'm not sure what it would have mattered if they had found the raison de'tre for the GamePad, hence calling the motivation misaligned. But, at least they tried something.

This feels empty. It feels riskless.
If feels at odds with the idea that Nintendo themselves espoused a day later: creating new and interesting software to make the Switch 2 worth the price.

I don't buy the argument that "this is probably farmed out," some of Nintendo's best games are farmed out in some degree or another.

So yeah, it's just the least interesting option. There's very little "unknown" here.

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