Apr 7, 2026 · 26 min · 22 segments
This week Max and Brian are joined by the legendary Goichi Suda, AKA SUDA51, and James Mountain from Grasshopper Manufacture, who’ll be translating! SUDA 51 is the director, designer, writer, and…
Brian AltanoHostspeaker_5Host
Goichi SudaGuest
Also, like real talk, Max, it is just like surreal that, uh, we have- w- we've met Suda51 a bunch of times now, and worked with him and, uh, recorded a bunch of silly stuff together because, like legit, like when I, when I was growing up playing his games, I, I th- I just thought it was incredibly cool that somebody was making games like that.
Everything felt so, like it had to fit in s- specific boxes, and I feel like for me, like for a third person character action game specifically like, uh, and a lot of the other stuff that Suda makes, he just really kind of broke the mold, and he gets to do his own thing.
And yeah, this game, like I feel like at a glance jumping into it, the thing that sort of struck me is that it feels like, like it's got a lot of Lynchian stuff in there.
Like it's got a lot of David Lynch, but it also feels sort of weirdly filtered through Persona.
Like and it's, which is also very heavily Lynch inspired, but it's like, I don't know, there's a very, uh, kind of recombinant pop culture DNA there.
... tugging on those strings and it's like tied to Zoroastrianism, which explains sort of why the main dude's dressed like Freddie Mercury.
Like there's just so much stuff in here to pull apart, and I think that that's, I don't know, like that's transformative.
And I love that he's actually down to clown and like talk about it and explain, explain things a little bit.
And also just, I don't know, we got like a practical death scene in a video game.
Also, like real talk, Max, it is just like surreal that, uh, we have- w- we've met Suda51 a bunch of times now, and worked with him and, uh, recorded a bunch of silly stuff together because, like legit, like when I, when I was growing up playing his games, I, I th- I just thought it was incredibly cool that somebody was making games like that.
Everything felt so, like it had to fit in s- specific boxes, and I feel like for me, like for a third person character action game specifically like, uh, and a lot of the other stuff that Suda makes, he just really kind of broke the mold, and he gets to do his own thing.
And yeah, this game, like I feel like at a glance jumping into it, the thing that sort of struck me is that it feels like, like it's got a lot of Lynchian stuff in there.
Like it's got a lot of David Lynch, but it also feels sort of weirdly filtered through Persona.
Like and it's, which is also very heavily Lynch inspired, but it's like, I don't know, there's a very, uh, kind of recombinant pop culture DNA there.
... tugging on those strings and it's like tied to Zoroastrianism, which explains sort of why the main dude's dressed like Freddie Mercury.
Like there's just so much stuff in here to pull apart, and I think that that's, I don't know, like that's transformative.
And I love that he's actually down to clown and like talk about it and explain, explain things a little bit.
And also just, I don't know, we got like a practical death scene in a video game.
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