Neopets Black Market

Wed, Sep 30, 2026 Year 3, Winter 13

Kevin and Chelsea talk about Neopets.

Timings

00:00:00: Theme Tune
00:00:30: Intro
00:01:59: What Have We Been Up To
00:04:06: Game News
00:16:24: Neopets
01:11:22: Outro

Links

Loftia Early Access
Outbound “Wildlife” Update
Disney Dreamlight Valley “Oogie Boogies Halloween” Event
Petunia’s Purgatory “Automation” Update
Dave The Diver GGST Content Pack
Neopets

Contact

Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot
Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/

Transcript

Theme Tune

(0s) Theme Tune:

[music playing]

Intro

(30s) Kevin:

Hello farmers and welcome to another episode of the harvest season. My name is Kevin

(36s) Chelsea:

And my name is Chelsea.

(37s) Kevin:

and neither of us are named Cody, unfortunately.

(41s) Chelsea:

Neither of us are Cody.

(42s) Kevin:

And we are here today to talk about the curse of Neopets.

(48s) Chelsea:

WOOOOO!

(50s)

This is some deep lore we’re getting into.

(52s) Kevin:

Yeah, so yeah, so once again.

(54s) Chelsea:

This is attempt number five to record this.

(1m 1s) Kevin:

I guess it’s been two weeks now that I don’t remember.

(1m 6s)

Regardless, last time I was on, you and Cody were on and trying to do a Neopets episode

(1m 12s)

and then things went bad. So I hopped on. Well, actually, no back up.

(1m 17s)

Chelsea and I were going to finish it, but then things happened.

(1m 20s)

And so I had to finish it solo. And then this week,

(1m 23s)

Cody and Chelsea were going to record and do it proper, but things happened.

(1m 27s)

And so here we are again with…

(1m 30s)

Kevin instead of Cody again, hello everyone!

(1m 33s) Chelsea:

We are here! We made it!

(1m 34s) Kevin:

We made it. So yeah, we’re gonna talk about Neopets because we like Neopets I guess,

(1m 40s)

and there’s Cottagecore in there somewhere. It’s the early days of Cottagecore, one could argue.

(1m 48s)

But before that, as usual, we have lots of our usual Cottagecore game news. So we’ll cover

(1m 56s)

some updates and stuff like that. But before that, Chelsea, what’s

What Have We Been Up To

(2m 1s) Chelsea:

I have been riddled with a kidney stone, so that’s kind of taken over my whole life.

(2m 7s) Kevin:

That’s not great.

(2m 10s) Chelsea:

I went to the emergency room, totally fun, and I have the good meds right now, so that’s

(2m 15s) Kevin:

Yeah, I am very thankful for that.

(2m 19s) Chelsea:

why I’m able to record right now.

(2m 23s) Kevin:

Um, yeah, my condolences.

(2m 25s)

I’ve never had a kidney stone.

(2m 27s)

They terrify me to be very frank.

(2m 30s)

Um, I’ve only heard the horror stories and, Oh, just crossing my fingers,

(2m 35s)

knocking on the wood and everything.

(2m 38s) Chelsea:

I hope I don’t even have the kind that can be cured with lifestyle changes because my I have like a

(2m 43s)

Deformity in my kidney from when I was born. So my body just is super good at making stones

(2m 45s) Kevin:

Oh no.

(2m 46s)

Oh no, all that stuff.

(2m 50s) Chelsea:

And it’s like a one in hundred thousand

(2m 54s)

People have this condition. So I’m like, I’m just one of the lucky ones. I think I’ve met one person who’s ever had it

(3m 1s)

so

(3m 1s) Kevin:

um my condolences um hope you get through that soon um honestly not much better on my hand

(3m 3s) Chelsea:

Yeah, no

(3m 8s)

Thanks, how about you Kevin? Oh

(3m 16s)

My god

(3m 17s) Kevin:

because i’ve been working like a maniac um this is like the second week in a row i’ve had to work

(3m 23s) Chelsea:

Oh no!

(3m 23s) Kevin:

and because of that my body has been weakened and i’ve gotten sick again nothing major just

(3m 28s)

You know, cold sniffle stuff, but it’s…

(3m 31s)

Oh, I’m tired.

(3m 33s)

I’ve snuck in, you know, a minute of Pocopi here or there,

(3m 37s)

but nothing to write home about, so…

(3m 42s) Chelsea:

Well luckily we have like 20 some years of Neopets to go off of.

(3m 42s) Kevin:

That’s what…

(3m 46s)

Yeah, yeah, we’re good on that, for sure.

(3m 51s)

Yeah, but that’s what we’ve been up to, surviving!

(3m 54s) Chelsea:

Woo! Peak performance!

(3m 58s) Kevin:

8th purple. Oh, honestly.

(4m 1s)

This is the energy I like to bring to the podcast.

(4m 3s)

So that’s fine.

Game News

(4m 6s) Kevin:

So with that out of the way, let’s let’s start looking at

(4m 9s)

some so they’re looking at some news.

(4m 11s)

Shall we first up all lofty of the multiplayer focus the

Loftia

(4m 20s) Kevin:

standard cottage core sandboxing crafting type game.

(4m 26s)

It’s a lot of the usual buzzwords, but it’s multiplayer.

(4m 29s)

It’s you know, I

(4m 31s)

guess it’s MMO-y because there’s a point in the trail they show a lot of

(4m 35s)

characters at once. Anyways, the early access is dropping November 3rd which

(4m 42s)

hey good for them they’re announcing a date but it’s only early access. I’ve

(4m 47s)

well documented how much I’m not a fan of extended early access periods but I

(4m 53s)

get it but you know so be it. I overall like I don’t know I still have trouble

(4m 58s)

with the game standing out to me.

(5m 1s)

It looks competently made,

(5m 3s)

I just don’t see a lot that stands out.

(5m 6s)

Like, I don’t know what the multiplayer is going to add.

(5m 10s)

If anything, when you look at other, you know, MMOs,

(5m 16s)

they have raids or events that require lots of people.

(5m 19s)

I’m just not fully seeing how

(5m 21s)

that’s going to be translated here.

(5m 23s)

What are your thoughts, Chelsea?

(5m 24s) Chelsea:

Oh, I was gonna say, is there like a farmer’s market, maybe?

(5m 27s)

Like, where all the characters come together?

(5m 30s)

I don’t know how it’s gonna be a big multiplayer game, but I like the idea.

(5m 35s) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah, I don’t fully know either I see there’s looks like maybe

(5m 40s)

You do big builds together, which could be one way, but I don’t know

(5m 46s)

Again, if that’s gonna be fully sustainable, but I guess we’ll see on November 3rd because that’s when our early access drops

(5m 54s)

it’s gonna be 30 USD with a

(5m 58s)

17% discount so it goes down to 25 USD at launch

(6m 2s) Chelsea:

17%!

(6m 3s) Kevin:

And no

(6m 5s)

As far as I know, no limit on what

(6m 13s) Chelsea:

Yeah, it doesn’t show an end for the early access, so…

(6m 15s)

[clears throat]

(6m 16s) Kevin:

Uh, and that will be on PC and Mac. There you go, Cody. Uh, nothing on consoles yet. Yeah

(6m 16s) Chelsea:

Cool.

(6m 20s)

Yeah, Cody gets her shot now.

(6m 23s) Kevin:

I will say the animals are pretty cute the pets and stuff. Uh, I do like the art the art style is vibrant

(6m 34s)

Good luck to them, nonetheless.

Outbound

(6m 37s) Kevin:

Next up, to update to Outbound, the wildlife update.

(6m 44s)

There are adding 34 animals in total.

(6m 47s)

It is out now.

(6m 49s)

And you can go around, use new camera feature

(6m 53s)

that you can snap, you know, do your little Pokemon

(6m 55s)

snap with these animals and fill up a journal.

(6m 58s) Chelsea:

I was gonna say “Pokémon Snap!”

(7m) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah, basically.

(7m 1s)

I love the last half so much.

(7m 4s)

There’s a new journal that basically serves as your little deck slash collection hub.

(7m 10s)

There are binoculars located throughout the environment to zoom out to see other

(7m 16s)

animals like a dolphin out in the ocean that might not be near your RV.

(7m 22s)

And yeah, that is the bulk of this update.

(7m 25s)

I think it’s fine. I like animals. I like Pokemon Snap, so the overall idea is cool.

(7m 32s)

I just think and you know

(7m 34s)

Bound the game with the RV focus that they should really, you know, tie it all together, too

(7m 43s) Chelsea:

every update for the RB, it increased the stats of the RB.

(7m 49s) Kevin:

Or another level, give me my animal photography lab on top, I don’t know, something like that.

(7m 54s) Chelsea:

[laughs]

(7m 56s) Kevin:

You can decorate your RV with photos, which is nice, but I just want to see the RV good.

(8m 4s) Chelsea:

Grow some wings and rocket ship

(8m 8s) Kevin:

If they weren’t cowards, yes, we give it the rockets if they weren’t.

(8m 14s) Chelsea:

Give us the rockets you cowards

(8m 16s) Kevin:

Exactly. Regardless, I overall, I like it.

(8m 19s)

I feel like I said, I like animals and there’s a healthy mix of animals.

(8m 23s)

There’s insects, there’s obviously mammals, birds, sea creatures.

(8m 29s)

So there you go. And now that’s fun.

Disney Dreamlight Valley

(8m 34s) Kevin:

All right, next up, another update to Disney Dreamlight Valley.

(8m 38s)

And this time it’s not my usual, oh this character wasn’t already in this one’s sensible in my opinion.

(8m 44s)

We talked about I think before Oogie Boogie’s Halloween event.

(8m 48s)

We’ve gotten more details on it.

(8m 51s)

They call it the Season of Scares. It is a six-week series of quests with Oogie Boogie and his nonsense.

(9m)

What I like about this update, even though it is, you know, live service and timed and whatnot and unlocks over six weeks.

(9m 6s)

If you

(9m 8s)

start before November 4th, that’s the date they’ve laid it, you can do basically the

(9m 13s)

quests at your own pace, and you can unlock everything, which is really nice. You do not

(9m 16s)

have to figure it, fill it out in a limited area. But yeah, and it will, and if you do

(9m 24s)

miss the cutoff date of November 4th, you can in fact play it again next year. It will

(9m 28s)

return. So that’s really exciting that they’ve laid that all out. I think that’s a great

(9m 32s)

way of doing these holiday timed events.

(9m 38s)

You can unlock Zero, Jack Skellington’s little ghost dog, which is amazing. I love Zero so

(9m 46s)

much. He’s adorable. Yes. It gets played on both holidays, so yes. Zero with or without

(9m 48s) Chelsea:

Is Nightmare Before Christmas a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie to you?

(9m 52s)

Yeah, exactly.

(9m 56s)

Yep.

(10m) Kevin:

the antlers, basically. And Oogie Boogie himself will be unlockable at Deer Valley, I suppose,

(10m 1s) Chelsea:

Oh, exactly.

(10m 8s) Kevin:

which is very cool. I like Oogie Boogie. This is, okay, this is a very minor gripe,

(10m 11s)

or not even a gripe, just a quirk, but a lot of Oogie Boogie art, including this one, paints

(10m 17s)

him as green. I kind of like the more plain, just, you know, white burlap sec looking Oogie,

(10m 24s)

but that’s just me. Either way, I like Oogie a lot. He’s delightful, but it’s something.

(10m 30s)

He’s scary. Any other thoughts on that, Chelsea?

(10m 31s) Chelsea:

[laughs]

(10m 32s)

Yeah.

(10m 35s)

I’m just looking at the schedule, it looks pretty reasonable.

(10m 38s) Kevin:

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think they do for the holidays and such, since it’s kind of

(10m 38s) Chelsea:

I didn’t realize that it was like a live game.

(10m 42s)

But I haven’t played Dreamlight Value, but…

(10m 44s)

I didn’t realize that they had like actual timed events.

(10m 50s) Kevin:

Animal Crossing-esque, you know, but yeah. Either way, like I said, I think it’s a great

(10m 55s)

way of doing it. It’s not just a day, it’s over a period of time, and you can, again,

(11m 1s)

do it at your own pace if you start it before November 4th, or do it next year when it comes

(11m 6s)

Whoa, good for you

(11m 8s)

boogie-boogie in Greenlight Valley

(11m 10s)

Okay, next up going from the scary to possibly even scarier

Petunia’s Purgatory

(11m 15s) Kevin:

petunias purgatory

(11m 17s)

That is the rusty like the game

(11m 20s)

On the bottom of your screen with it woods farming, but with a horror twist. They are doing the

(11m 28s)

automation update

(11m 30s)

Starting at level 13. You’ll be able to automate both planting seeds and refilling your animal bait buildings. I

(11m 38s)

kind of

(11m 39s)

Shocked I guess because if it’s a game that’s gonna be overlaid my computer

(11m 44s)

I assume the vast majority of it would already be automated

(11m 49s)

as

(11m 50s) Chelsea:

Well yeah, isn’t that the whole point?

(11m 51s) Kevin:

That’s what I would think right this is my gripe with these games like I I’m not good at multitasking

(11m 57s)

And so I want to focus on one or the other but if it’s gonna be overlaid you

(12m 2s)

Think that would be an idle sort of game

(12m 4s)

I don’t remember the details on all of Tunia’s…

(12m 8s)

Purgatory, so there I might not be giving enough credit, but it shocks me like planting seeds was not already automated

(12m 18s) Chelsea:

I am laughing at the bug fixes and improvements. At the bottom, it says “Keep farming and don’t go insane.”

(12m 24s) Kevin:

This is already out now and I love their dev team named Dead Possum Games, check it out

(12m 24s) Chelsea:

So that’s setting the vibe for this game.

(12m 44s) Kevin:

if you’re interested.

(12m 52s) Chelsea:

The Burr months are the best months.

(12m 55s) Kevin:

Okay lastly, my favorite update of this bunch because David Diver never stops delivering

Dave The Diver

(13m 2s) Chelsea:

Woo!

(13m 3s) Kevin:

and in ways you would never expect.

(13m 7s) Chelsea:

He’s just on every side quest.

(13m 10s) Kevin:

So David Diver has crossed over with Godzilla, crossed over with the Like a Dragon series

(13m 19s)

specifically Ichiban, and they have crossed over with Nikkei Goddess.

(13m 25s)

So, the natural follow-up, in my opinion, the through-line is very clear here, Guilty Gear

(13m 31s)

Strive! The Arksys fighting game series. Are you familiar with Guilty Gear at all, Chelsea?

(13m 32s) Chelsea:

laughs The obvious next level, come on!

(13m 44s)

Not overly, um, but I wanna ask when Dave the Diver is gonna be in Super Smash.

(13m 45s) Kevin:

No, okay. So, oh, if only. I mean, that’s one of my comments because

(13m 54s)

the content here, they’re adding some Guilty Gear stuff into Dave the Diver.

(14m 1s)

There’s a rhythm in a game that’s popped up in Dave the Diver, and so they’re adding a couple

(14m 5s)

of one level to that using the game, the song, excuse me, The Disaster of Passion,

(14m 12s)

which is a great little J-pop. Guilty Gear has fantastic music. If you haven’t heard it,

(14m 16s)

I recommend listening to it. It’s just a fun little J-pop sort of tune.

(14m 22s)

The character “May” is going to be the focus.

(14m 24s)

She’s going to at least up some degree and provide a new weapon based on her anchor because

(14m 33s)

in Guilty Gear she fights with a giant anchor.

(14m 37s)

And so you can use her like an anchor gun underwater with Dave.

(14m 42s)

There will be a few decorations including May’s speaker for the restaurant and some

(14m 47s)

Guilty Gear inspired NPCs showing up for dinner which is fun.

(14m 51s)

A shame it’s not the full characters, but, uh, fun nonetheless.

(14m 54s)

Yeah, I’m, I actually have not played that much guilty gear.

(14m 57s)

Maybe once it is a off the wall, goofy fighting game with insane, both

(15m 6s)

in personality and flavor and the story and lore may is Japanese.

(15m 12s)

And that’s a big deal in the guilty gear universe.

(15m 14s)

That means she has powers.

(15m 16s) Chelsea:

laughs Oh my gosh.

(15m 20s) Kevin:

So, yeah, yeah, that’s a, yeah.

(15m 23s)

their nationality depends on the country.

(15m 24s)

It does determine your school kid in the Guilty Gear world.

(15m 29s)

Regardless, like I said earlier, I’m a little disappointed it’s not going both ways, that

(15m 35s)

Day of the Diver isn’t being added into Guilty Gear Strive.

(15m 38s)

Maybe, I don’t know, Arxis can pull off some crazy nonsense, so if anyone could it’d be

(15m 42s) Chelsea:

You never know. Yeah.

(15m 44s) Kevin:

them.

(15m 45s)

Regardless, that’s a wild and fun one, very happy.

(15m 49s)

There is so much David Diver content!

(15m 53s) Chelsea:

I know, he’s just everywhere. He’s just doing anything.

(15m 55s) Kevin:

And we had the Bancho game. There’s definitely room for David Diver month, too.

(16m 2s) Chelsea:

Dave the Diver Month? Oh my god. Yes! Incredible.

(16m 4s) Kevin:

We did that a couple years ago! We did David Diver month!

(16m 8s)

Yeah, and it was fun. I loved David Diver. Great game.

(16m 11s)

They just can’t stop, won’t stop. Good for you, Dave.

(16m 17s)

Okay, that is the news.

(16m 20s)

Short and very sweet. Some delightful gems in there.

Neopets

(16m 25s) Kevin:

With that, let us just dive on into our main topic.

(16m 29s)

Chelsea, let’s talk about Neopets.

(16m 31s) Chelsea:

Yes, we have been talking about this for so long.

(16m 34s) Kevin:

So long. I thought we were just going to greenhouse, but screw it.

(16m 37s)

It’s now a main episode.

(16m 40s)

And, you know, I think that’s fine.

(16m 42s)

It’s not farming, per se, but there’s a lot of cottagecore.

(16m 45s)

There’s a lot of roots.

(16m 46s)

I think a lot of people who play cottagecore

(16m 48s)

probably touched Neopets at one point in their life.

(16m 51s) Chelsea:

Oh, they probably started with Neopets.

(16m 54s) Kevin:

Yup, yup, yup.

(16m 55s)

OK, so you want to go ahead and tell them what Neopets is?

(16m 59s)

Describe it for the viewers who…

(17m 1s) Chelsea:

Oh my gosh, I don’t even know where to start with Neopets.

(17m 3s)

So, there’s no direct plot in Neopets.

(17m 7s)

So, you can do whatever you want in this game, and no one is going to play the same way.

(17m 11s)

So, the main objective, I’d say, is have your pets, but you can paint them with paintbrushes,

(17m 20s)

you can feed them, groom them, read to them, put them in the Battle Dome, zap them with

(17m 26s)

Elabrae.

(17m 29s)

There’s so much you can do with a

(17m 31s)

Neopet. There’s a map, the land is called Neopia, and there’s different lands like

(17m 39s)

Fairyland, and there’s an underwater one, and there’s one in space, and there was

(17m 43s)

one that was destroyed, and there’s hidden ones that you have to go through

(17m 46s)

certain lengths to find, and you can honestly, whatever you think you can do

(17m 51s)

with them, you can. Because you can collect books, stamps, food, you can gamble, you

(17m 56s)

can play the stock market, you can do jobs, like there’s just so much you can

(17m 59s) Kevin:

So much gambling.

(18m 1s) Chelsea:

gamble. If you ever got hooked on the slot machine, you can probably blame

(18m 8s)

Neopets for that.

(18m 9s) Kevin:

You legit okay, so for reference right? This is an totally in Bowser or browser in browser game

(18m 16s) Chelsea:

Yes, this is an in-browser game. They do have an app now.

(18m 21s) Kevin:

Yeah

(18m 22s) Chelsea:

It’s- I don’t know if you’ve looked up the app.

(18m 24s) Kevin:

It is I’ve never touched the app I’m

(18m 24s) Chelsea:

It’s…

(18m 26s)

It’s quite bare-bones. So you have access to your pets.

(18m 27s) Kevin:

Yeah, I’m not surprised

(18m 30s)

So for reference it came out in what tooth mid 2000s 2003 2004

(18m 30s) Chelsea:

Yeah, so you-

(18m 36s)

97 I think, 98?

(18m 37s) Kevin:

He’s that early good never mind

(18m 39s)

Okay, well, that’s when I picked it up. I think that’s when it gained a lot of popularity after

(18m 44s)

2000 mark I would say um

(18m 45s) Chelsea:

Yeah, but

(18m 46s)

company wouldn’t– yeah, sorry, first launched in 1999,

(18m 50s)

but they didn’t want to invest a lot into it until after the millennium to make sure that the internet didn’t crash.

(18m 56s) Kevin:

They wanted to make sure we could survive the Y2K virus.

(19m 1s) Chelsea:

Yes, um, and it can lull you to sleep, the fact that your personal data has probably been breached through Neopets if you ever had a childhood account.

(19m 11s) Kevin:

[laughs]

(19m 11s) Chelsea:

Or your childhood pet has been sold on the block market because there is a whole block market for Neopets.

(19m 15s) Kevin:

Oh.

(19m 18s)

Oh, we’ll get to that.

(19m 19s)

Let’s put that to the side,

(19m 20s) Chelsea:

Yes, okay.

(19m 21s) Kevin:

‘cause there have been issues here and there.

(19m 25s) Chelsea:

Yeah, we’ll say that.

(19m 26s) Kevin:

So yeah, it’s very open-ended, right?

(19m 29s)

It’s in-browser game,

(19m 32s)

and it still feels probably the biggest turnoff

(19m 36s)

for a lot of people, or issue it has,

(19m 38s)

because it’s so old,

(19m 40s)

much like our favorite webs.

(19m 41s)

site of Pokemon Seraphy. It still has a lot of roots dug deep into those early internet days.

(19m 49s)

There’s a lot and they’re working on it. They’re making a genuine effort to try to update a lot.

(19m 53s)

But you can definitely feel the pains, especially with Flash shutting down a while back. A lot of

(19m 59s)

their games were dependent on that. So they’re still trying to work out the kinks on a lot of

(20m 3s)

games. They’re not all fully functioning. Right. That’s interesting.

(20m 4s) Chelsea:

Now you just get a tombstone when you click on a flash game.

(20m 10s)

Yep, they call it the game graveyard.

(20m 12s) Kevin:

Yeah, that’s rough. I can’t play my favorite game, Dueling Deck, sadly.

(20m 18s)

Hopefully one day. Yeah, but they’ve salvaged a lot of other iconic ones, Fairy Bubbles and such.

(20m 25s)

But yeah, so the core concept, right? You have a pet and kind of Tamagotchi style,

(20m 31s)

you’re taking care of it. You feed it, you can dress it up. All these things Chelsea mentioned.

(20m 36s)

and you there’s an economy you got to earn neo points and you can do that through playing games

(20m 41s)

through the jobs the stock market like she said I think the games are a really

(20m 47s)

big part of the experience because you know that’s the most active parts and a

(20m 51s)

lot of iconic games for people who played neopets what are some of your

(20m 58s) Chelsea:

Oh, my favorite was Myrka Chase, that’s the one that’s like Snake, basically.

(21m 3s) Kevin:

Yeah, just snake. Yeah.

(21m 4s) Chelsea:

Yeah, um, and there was all these cheats you could type in at the start, so you could get zero gravity mode.

(21m 10s)

There was a whole bunch of different things you could type in, um, to customize the game, it was super fun.

(21m 16s)

I loved Myrka Chase, I loved Volcano Run, which is basically Floppy Bird.

(21m 21s) Kevin:

Yeah, it is. It really is. It outdated it. It is.

(21m 21s) Chelsea:

[laughs]

(21m 22s)

The OG Floppy Bird.

(21m 25s)

Uh, that game’s broken, though.

(21m 28s)

I feel like it just doesn’t work for me.

(21m 31s)

Um, I’m trying to think of what other games.

(21m 32s) Kevin:

I haven’t tried it recently, but, um, oh man.

(21m 33s) Chelsea:

No.

(21m 34s)

I loved Tug of War.

(21m 36s)

I remember my parents getting mad at me because I’m just slamming the keyboard.

(21m 40s)

And they’re like, “Can you stop?”

(21m 41s)

I’m like, “No, I have to win!”

(21m 43s)

Just decimating the keyboard.

(21m 46s) Kevin:

Well, that’s incredible.

(21m 47s) Chelsea:

Yeah, what were your favorite games?

(21m 49s) Kevin:

Um, I just want to comment on Mirka Chase.

(21m 51s)

I like, so there’s obviously a lot of snake clones out in the world.

(21m 55s)

Cause it’s a very simple game, right?

(21m 56s)

But I like the flavor because you’re this neopet called the Mirka and Mirka is

(22m)

like the neg–

(22m 2s)

as they’re called, the Neopet eggs.

(22m 3s)

So the thing is, you’re grabbing negs,

(22m 6s)

and it just forms this huge chain of eggs behind you.

(22m 8s)

And that’s how the snake is growing.

(22m 10s)

I just love the visual of that.

(22m 13s)

But my favorite games–

(22m 16s)

Fairy Bubbles is a classic one, where you’re just

(22m 18s)

shooting bubbles to match the colors,

(22m 20s)

and you break them as the screen’s

(22m 24s)

kind of scrolling downwards.

(22m 27s)

I– yeah, it’s great music, too.

(22m 30s)

I’m glad they saved that one.

(22m 32s)

One of my favorite games that I’m awful at is Grundo Ball.

(22m 38s)

It’s basically keepy-uppy for the Bluey fans.

(22m 42s)

There’s a ball or balloon and you kind of keep it up in the air.

(22m 46s)

There’s different balls and you just click on it.

(22m 48s)

And so how they bounce around and interact depends on the ball.

(22m 51s)

But the reason it’s probably one of my favorite games.

(22m 54s)

There’s, like I said, lots of cheats in these games.

(22m 57s)

Grundo Ball has a cheat where on the starting menu there’s a

(23m 2s)

spinning Grundo, and if you click on his badge you can actually use the Grundo as a ball

(23m 6s)

itself.

(23m 7s)

You didn’t know that?

(23m 7s) Chelsea:

Oh my gosh.

(23m 8s) Kevin:

Oh, you didn’t know the Grundo is flamable?

(23m 10s) Chelsea:

No!

(23m 13s)

No, I didn’t!

(23m 14s) Kevin:

Fire up Grundo Ball and go experience the Grundo.

(23m 16s) Chelsea:

Okay, I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna do that after.

(23m 17s) Kevin:

He’s probably the best ball because he’s the biggest radius, there’s a bubble around

(23m 22s)

him basically, it’s invisible but you can click anywhere in the bubble.

(23m 25s) Chelsea:

oh my god we’re still learning stuff we’re still uncovering things to this day

(23m 29s) Kevin:

The secrets run deep in the neopets.

(23m 32s)

The secrets run deep in the neopets.

(23m 45s) Chelsea:

[sobbing]

(23m 50s)

Very appropriate game for children!

(23m 52s)

[sobbing]

(24m 2s) Kevin:

security bar to prevent a thief from breaking in or entering the bank.

(24m 7s)

Basically it’s just a quick reflex game but just so much fun.

(24m 8s) Chelsea:

oh

(24m 11s)

that’s that reminds me of another game there’s one called imperial exam

(24m 15s)

where you have people line up and you have to see if they spelt the word correctly

(24m 20s) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that one

(24m 20s) Chelsea:

you’re basically yeah yeah I was so good at that game I love that game it is i’m like wait

(24m 24s) Kevin:

Oh, it’s so intense go so fast

(24m 28s) Chelsea:

am I illiterate like or is it just going too fast but I was so good at that game

(24m 31s) Kevin:

No, I love Neopets because it has this wide range most the games have you know, easy medium hard the hard ones get really

(24m 40s)

And then one of the other games I love

(24m 43s)

Cannot remember. It was like the toy factory game. Do you remember that game there were these?

(24m 48s) Chelsea:

Is that the… where you match the cards?

(24m 50s) Kevin:

No, it was

(24m 52s)

so there’s this conveyor on top of the screen and there’s these plain paint orbs and

(24m 57s)

You have to click on the paint orb and it has to fall into the correct bucket

(25m 2s)

There’s like these giant vats

(25m 4s)

There’s like red yellow blue orbs

(25m 6s)

and so you have to keep just filling up your orbs because you need the right amounts of paint to

(25m 12s)

Paint the toys that are moving on the bottom assembly line. I can’t remember the full name

(25m 17s)

It’s like it’s some some Toy Factory game

(25m 20s)

It’s I love that one again. Just kind of reflexes type game a lot of fun

(25m 26s) Chelsea:

I would love when you would play the games for a while, and then your eyes would go wonky once the game is done.

(25m 31s) Kevin:

All right

(25m 32s) Chelsea:

Everything’s slipping back and forth.

(25m 35s)

One that I cannot play anymore

(25m 35s) Kevin:

Oh my gosh

(25m 37s) Chelsea:

is Termack Roll,

(25m 39s)

where you play as the pet pet, and then you roll across the screen and collect the berries and avoid the obstacles.

(25m 44s)

That one makes me so sick now. I tried and I just could not do it.

(25m 49s) Kevin:

I have to try the one, I don’t remember that.

(25m 51s)

I remember seeing it, but I don’t remember playing it.

(25m 53s) Chelsea:

Yeah, it was fun.

(25m 54s) Kevin:

That’s interesting, yeah.

(25m 56s)

Oh my God, okay, special mention.

(25m 58s)

There’s Whack-A-Cass, you remember Whack-A-Cass?

(26m) Chelsea:

Oh, Cat Smasher!

(26m 2s) Kevin:

Yeah, Caspastor, that’s what it is, yeah, that one.

(26m 3s) Chelsea:

Yes, I love that game!

(26m 5s)

Yeah, I was so bad at it, and then I realized that you need to wait for the wind to get negative.

(26m 11s)

So, for people that don’t know, you have to watch the, the, um, the speed-

(26m 16s)

Sorry, my cat’s yelling at me.

(26m 18s)

Uh, laughs

(26m 19s)

Um, you have to watch the speed of the wind and angle-

(26m 22s)

You can use a baguette to whack this, like, bird thing, and then basically it’s get it as far as you can.

(26m 30s) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s it. It’s.

(26m 30s) Chelsea:

And that’s it! laughs

(26m 31s)

But it was so- It sounds so simple, but it’s so hard to time, and like, I just don’t even know. I loved that game.

(26m 36s) Kevin:

It’s so intense.

(26m 40s)

Yeah, yeah, that’s a great one.

(26m 42s)

My favorite thing about Caspash or sometimes

(26m 46s)

because in the game, you might not remember,

(26m 48s)

there’s like a tree in the background.

(26m 49s)

Sometimes you could just use the tree as a bat.

(26m 52s)

It was just a random thing that would happen.

(26m 54s) Chelsea:

Oh yeah, wasn’t that like a super random event, you can use the whole stalk of the tree? Yeah.

(26m 56s) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah.

(26m 58s)

Oh my gosh, that’s-

(26m 59s) Chelsea:

That was fun.

(27m) Kevin:

Yeah, that was a great one. I love Cas Basher.

(27m 3s)

So that was the games on Neopets, uh, like we talked about there are so much more though.

(27m 8s)

What- let’s- I guess let’s share some of our personal experiences or personal favorite memories,

(27m 13s)

um, because we’ve played both as, you know, middle schoolers, high schoolers or whatever,

(27m 19s)

later on in life, just recently picked it up again, uh, so there’s a lot of memories here.

(27m 25s)

Tell me some of your favorite experiences.

(27m 27s) Chelsea:

Yeah, so when I was a kid, that’s kind of how I first learned how to customize anything.

(27m 32s)

There was a girl at my summer camp who was like, “Oh, do you know how to, like, use HTML to customize your Neopets page?”

(27m 37s)

No, I don’t. So she spent, like, the whole summer teaching me how to do it, and it was so fun adding backgrounds to your profile and stuff.

(27m 45s)

Um, what else? I loved getting my SciBunny, which was…

(27m 50s)

Yeah, so, okay, so for people who don’t know, there’s a whole bunch of different species of Neopets, but there are some that are very restricted

(27m 57s)

and can only be made, um, once a year, and there’s some that even then cannot be made on their, um, on their, they call it their pet day.

(28m 5s)

There’s, you have to do, like, secret things to get some of these pets that are really high in demand.

(28m 9s)

Um, so one of them, one of the original ones, was called SciBunny, which is this really super cute SciBunny, uh, with a really cute, uh,

(28m 18s)

I don’t know what you want to call that, fur on their chest, but I remember getting that and, like, flexing around the school yard, like, “Yeah, I got my SciBunny!”

(28m 24s) Kevin:

[laughter]

(28m 27s) Chelsea:

And then there’s Chomby, the dinosaur, yeah, yeah, and then I just remember getting ripped off, basically, all the time. All the time.

(28m 28s) Kevin:

Combee’s a good one. Yeah, a little sauropod, rock-e-o-saur sort of guy, yeah. Cute guy.

(28m 37s)

How? What do you mean?

(28m 38s) Chelsea:

Just people being like, you know, I’m, I’m a little kid, right? And then you go on the Neoboards or you go on Neobale,

(28m 45s)

“Oh, I’ll change you this super rare item for this much, this item,” and then you totally get ripped off because you’re a little kid.

(28m 51s) Kevin:

Oh, man.

(28m 51s) Chelsea:

Um, yeah, but I, coming back, I don’t know why I came back.

(28m 57s)

To be honest, ‘cause it was, it’s basically held together by spaghetti code now.

(29m 2s)

Um, but I just wanted to give it another chance, and they have a premium membership now, so have you tried premium?

(29m 9s) Kevin:

I have not, but I need to with all the perks you’ve described.

(29m 12s)

[laughs]

(29m 12s) Chelsea:

It’s, I’ll let you do your, your favorite things, and then I’ll tell you about premium.

(29m 16s) Kevin:

Yeah, okay, sure.

(29m 18s)

So I didn’t interact too much with the community.

(29m 21s)

Like I know the whole Neo boards,

(29m 23s)

Neo forums were a big deal.

(29m 24s)

I didn’t interact too many.

(29m 26s)

I mostly kept to myself and my own pets,

(29m 29s)

you know, trying to paint them.

(29m 30s)

Like that was probably my biggest thing.

(29m 32s)

I just wanted to get them into cool colors.

(29m 33s)

I never did.

(29m 34s)

I got like one fairy brush and I didn’t even want,

(29m 36s)

I never found the secret lab or all that other stuff.

(29m 40s)

I know I’m such a I played so much and I’m still just a plaid newbie

(29m 47s) Chelsea:

I keep sending you map pieces, and you keep rejecting them!

(29m 48s) Kevin:

I know I know I bet I’d

(29m 52s)

I’m a bad neoparent right now. I’m starving all my neo children

(29m 56s)

I am amazed that I was able to log into my account not my original original account

(29m 56s) Chelsea:

No.

(30m 1s) Kevin:

But I made a new one back when I was in college and I was able to dust that off. So all my

(30m 6s)

That’s still they’re not dead

(30m 7s) Chelsea:

I am so jealous.

(30m 10s) Kevin:

I have a

(30m 11s) Chelsea:

I tried to get mine back.

(30m 13s) Kevin:

Yeah, it’s it’s it’s tough ones that old

(30m 15s) Chelsea:

It’s funny because they tried

(30m 17s)

They tried to do it for you, but I was what nine and I’m like, okay, they said oh, what was your user name?

(30m 18s) Kevin:

Yeah

(30m 24s) Chelsea:

I was like a moon

(30m 26s)

underscore beams with a Zed

(30m 28s)

underscore

(30m 30s)

76 and they’re like, oh, well, we tried that we can’t find it. So I said, you know what it’s gone

(30m 34s)

But thank you for trying. I appreciate the hustle. I

(30m 38s)

Appreciate the initiative to try to get it back

(30m 41s) Kevin:

Yeah

(30m 41s) Chelsea:

So was yours hard to get into you had to recover it or?

(30m 44s) Kevin:

No, I just had to I look through my emails and I was able to find the info I needed I you know

(30m 47s) Chelsea:

You

(30m 50s) Kevin:

Basically, I reset a new password, but I was able to get him fairly easily all things considered. Yeah

(30m 55s) Chelsea:

That’s awesome. Yeah, mine was to an old email so I don’t even remember what the email was.

(31m) Kevin:

Yeah, that’s the hard part if you don’t have the old the same email it’s tough

(31m 6s)

So I have a growl a that’s a t-rex it’s just a t-rex

(31m 11s)

Guy that’s all he’s got a nice smile

(31m 14s)

He I have a grundo, which is a little alien that I described in grundo ball

(31m 15s) Chelsea:

He’s a cool little guy.

(31m 19s) Kevin:

He’s just a little purple green alien with little antenna

(31m 23s)

He’s treated like garbage junk in the neopets lore, but I love my grundo

(31m 29s) Chelsea:

He really is and because they’re like the most populated thing at the pound all you see is grandos in the pound

(31m 33s) Kevin:

Yeah

(31m 36s)

Yeah, yeah, there’s

(31m 38s)

There is one event out in the neo world or local

(31m 41s)

Location. It’s the abandoned grundo plushie of good fortune or something

(31m 46s)

Just this random grundo plushie hanging on a tree that will sometimes give you money and stuff

(31m 52s) Chelsea:

excuse you he is called the discarded magical blue grundo plushie of prosperity

(31m 52s) Kevin:

but

(31m 56s)

That’s the one

(31m 57s) Chelsea:

thank you very much

(31m 59s) Kevin:

Thank you

(32m 1s)

So I love my grundo my little weird alien, dude. I have and the one I’m really proud of I have a Jetson

(32m 8s)

uh… which is one of the limited pets that you described

(32m 11s)

uh…

(32m 12s)

but I woke up like at six a_m_ on jetson day to make sure I could adopt the jetson

(32m 19s)

and that’s how I got my jetson very happy

(32m 21s) Chelsea:

oh that’s right because even yeah for the restricted species they only let

(32m 24s)

x amount be made per year per day so you’re like first in line to get your jet your jetsam

(32m 27s) Kevin:

yeah

(32m 31s)

yeah basically I made sure uh… and so i’m very happy and jetson is just a shark

(32m 36s)

I like it because there’s another new pet called flotsam and it’s uh… just a

(32m 39s)

dolphin guy

(32m 41s)

little tough shark guy uh… very very fond of my jetson

(32m 46s)

there’s still some other pets I probably want to get there’s a hissy uh… wingsnake

(32m 51s)

little new pets I always liked that guy too

(32m 55s)

but uh… but yeah those are my three

(32m 57s)

uh…

(32m 58s)

and so like I said I mostly kept to myself i

(33m 3s)

did a lot of the games uh… I did get into the neopets stock market which is

(33m 7s)

very funny uh how it works it’s basically just all

(33m 11s)

rng which one could argue the real stuff market is like too uh they have a wealth of uh fake

(33m 15s) Chelsea:

Well, yeah.

(33m 18s) Kevin:

companies and you invest neopoints you know buy shares and you just wait for it to be

(33m 24s)

exceed to be valuable and you sell the shares and you make money that’s all there is to

(33m 28s)

it uh for me personally I mean it’s just literally a waiting game and checking every day there’s

(33m 29s) Chelsea:

I am terrible at it

(33m 34s) Kevin:

There’s no secret to it, it’s all RNG.

(33m 38s) Chelsea:

did you know that the when the neopets was sold to a new company the head of the company

(33m 43s)

tanked the stock market in the game yeah yeah he crashed the whole stock market

(33m 45s) Kevin:

Did he? I didn’t know that! That’s insane!

(33m 49s) Chelsea:

before it switched ownership yeah it was super funny

(33m 51s) Kevin:

That’s… that’s hilarious!

(33m 55s)

The lore bit I know, when the stock market first released - this was before my time, but I read about it somewhere -

(34m 2s)

some of the companies were actually linked to some of the shops in-game.

(34m 8s)

Like Hubert’s Hot Dogs. I don’t know if you remember, there was a stand called Hubert’s Hot Dogs.

(34m 12s)

Uh, it has a stock and people would basically rig

(34m 15s)

the system where they’d, you know, uh, buy a bunch of stock when it was cheap and then

(34m 19s)

buy a whole bunch of hot dogs to, you know, make the price go through the roof.

(34m 22s) Chelsea:

Oh my god!

(34m 24s)

Incredible.

(34m 24s) Kevin:

Yeah.

(34m 25s)

When you look at insider trading, it was real.

(34m 28s) Chelsea:

This is a child game, by the way.

(34m 29s) Kevin:

Yeah.

(34m 30s)

Oh yeah.

(34m 31s)

And, uh, yeah, there, there are a lot of real worlds because I learned a handful of card

(34m 32s) Chelsea:

Manipulate the stock market

(34m 34s)

and become a billionaire.

(34m 36s)

Preparing us for the real world.

(34m 42s) Kevin:

games from this game. Real life card games, Solitaire.

(34m 45s) Chelsea:

Yeah. Did you do cheat? Cheat?

(34m 45s) Kevin:

and BS. Yeah, cheat, exactly. I do too. There’s a Jetson and cheat too. Yeah, it’s very cool.

(34m 50s) Chelsea:

I have the trophy for it. I love that game.

(34m 53s)

Yeah, that’s probably the easiest one to get.

(34m 55s)

Yeah, and he has like a leather jacket on!

(34m 58s) Kevin:

So it’s cool in my Jetson. I don’t go check on my Jetsons that I feel bad. No, I do. Yeah.

(34m 59s) Chelsea:

[laughs]

(35m 4s)

We should- Just put them in the Neo Lodge!

(35m 7s) Kevin:

The neologism, this hotel that they take care of your, you know, pets for free. Yeah, that’s

(35m 11s) Chelsea:

Yeah, so if you don’t like the daily characters…

(35m 12s) Kevin:

That’s good.

(35m 16s) Chelsea:

You can just put them in the hotel. There’s different hotels.

(35m 20s)

Different quality of them in different locations, but ultimately they do the same thing.

(35m 24s)

So if you don’t feel like chucking in every day to feed them…

(35m 28s)

They always keep them at full…

(35m 32s)

I guess, yeah, full stomach? I don’t know what to call that. Full satiation?

(35m 34s) Kevin:

• Yeah.

(35m 36s) Chelsea:

So you don’t have to do that every day because…

(35m 36s) Kevin:

Yeah, satiated.

(35m 40s) Chelsea:

Yeah, there’s different places you can go in the world for free.

(35m 45s)

There’s an omelette that sometimes goes out of…

(35m 49s)

Yeah, Jelly World, which is a huge conspiracy theory.

(35m 53s)

And it’s like, “Oh, it doesn’t exist.” But there’s this website called Jelly Neo, which is basically…

(35m 57s)

Your Neopets Bible. So they have a link to every single daily task you can do.

(36m 1s)

And they have a link for Jelly World. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

(36m 5s)

And you can get colouring pages on Jelly World. It’s super cute.

(36m 9s) Kevin:

It’s yeah jelly world is great the the secret world. They don’t acknowledge and you I don’t know

(36m 14s)

There’s no way to actually access it. You just need the link. There’s no way to access it in game. Otherwise, it’s great

(36m 15s) Chelsea:

There’s no way to actually feed them.

(36m 19s)

Yeah, no. But yeah, so some people just don’t want to feed their pet or whatever.

(36m 23s)

So you can put them in the Neo Lodge and it takes care of their basic needs.

(36m 25s) Kevin:

Yeah

(36m 27s)

It is amazing the like economy based aspect of the whole neopets experience because there’s so many shops and things you can buy

(36m 34s)

um there’s the food there’s clothing uh eventually they added like where you could actually

(36m 39s)

dress up your neopets um and uh accessories battle items uh my personal favorite and kind

(36m 47s)

of the business I got into because you can run a shop um is the pet pet business because

(36m 53s)

your neopets can have pets called art pets there is that is correct I have not delved

(36m 56s) Chelsea:

And your pet pet can have a pet pet pet.

(37m 1s)

[laughs]

(37m 2s) Kevin:

that far in because that’s the pet pet pet that’s real that’s some real nonsense that’s

(37m 7s)

for the serious people.

(37m 7s) Chelsea:

It’s so funny because a pet pet is pretty cheap, but the pet pet pets are millions of Neopoints.

(37m 9s) Kevin:

they’re so rare, they’re so incre- and all the pet pet pets are just like little bugs,

(37m 16s) Chelsea:

Yeah.

(37m 18s) Kevin:

they’re just like little blips. Yeah. What? Oh my- oh my goodness, you- wow, no wonder

(37m 19s) Chelsea:

It’s just a little guy.

(37m 20s)

Yeah, I got- I got one. I don’t know how I managed to get one, but it was called a slice.

(37m 25s)

And it looks like a little

(37m 26s)

Slice and I sold it for like 8 million on the trading post

(37m 31s) Kevin:

you’re rich. I, um, but yeah, so I didn’t get into the pet pet pets, but the pet pets,

(37m 37s)

I got into that, because you–

(37m 39s)

There are shops that will sell them, and I can resell them, because there will be some rare spawns or whatever.

(37m 44s)

And so I became kind of a pet-pet wheeler and dealer.

(37m 47s)

I kept a lot for myself, because the pet-pets have fun designs, too.

(37m 52s)

There is this one trio of pet-pets– I don’t remember their names, but they’re basically all robots.

(37m 59s)

And if you get them, you can combine them all into the Ultra Pet-Pet 3000– I forget the name.

(38m 5s)

You haven’t seen it? Let me show you.

(38m 5s) Chelsea:

What? No!

(38m 9s) Kevin:

Okay, let me show you that. Oh, it’s one of my proudest achievements.

(38m 14s)

You know, just get the pet pets. One or two of them are a little rare.

(38m 18s) Chelsea:

It’s so funny because I went on your profile and you still had two pet pets in stock in your store and I bought them.

(38m 25s) Kevin:

Thank you. Well, I look regardless. So yeah, that’s kind of something I do

(38m 29s)

There’s a big wide variety because the different worlds and environments kind of influence the different shops and stuff

(38m 35s)

That’s one thing. I always liked right you had a desert land the fairy world. You had a spooky haunted woods

(38m 42s)

There was some water worlds and that could influence the type of pet pet you got

(38m 47s)

Or pet pets and foods and items you could buy some there’s like a more China Asia inspired land

(38m 53s)

And so you’d have some–

(38m 55s)

Pet Pets inspired by that mythology.

(38m 56s)

So that’s why, you know, the whole Pokemon Creature Collector

(39m)

thing was a big part of it.

(39m 1s)

But I was a big fan of Pet Pets.

(39m 6s) Chelsea:

Yeah, those were cute.

(39m 7s)

And you can paint them too. You can get their own paintbrushes.

(39m 9s) Kevin:

Yeah. I

(39m 11s) Chelsea:

Do you remember, were you around when, um, Morocco was destroyed?

(39m 17s) Kevin:

think I was, but I didn’t pay attention.

(39m 19s) Chelsea:

It says 2001, so…

(39m 20s) Kevin:

Oh, no, that was before me then.

(39m 22s)

I think it’s very cool.

(39m 25s)

They have a plot and there isn’t an overall plot, but there are individual small plots.

(39m 33s)

They’ll come out every now and then, there’ll be a story you can follow, they’ll do events

(39m 36s)

where you can get free items and special items.

(39m 39s)

But a lot of them will actually impact the world and the map, which I think was a very

(39m 43s)

brave thing to do, like the destruction of Morocco.

(39m 46s)

Go ahead, tell me because I wasn’t there for that.

(39m 49s) Chelsea:

that’s all I really have to say um there was part there was times where you couldn’t access

(39m 54s)

that part of the map because it was destroyed uh i’m trying to remember it because this is so long

(39m 59s)

ago I thought at one point the space center had crashed too but apparently i’m that wasn’t what

(39m 59s) Kevin:

Yeah.

(40m 5s) Chelsea:

happened yes yes yes yes yes

(40m 5s) Kevin:

Well, you might be thinking of the other big one, which was Fairy World,

(40m 9s)

because Fairy World used to be in the clouds.

(40m 13s)

It was what you’d expect from a place called Fairy World.

(40m 16s)

And, you know, there’s rainbows, my little pony looking clouds and rainbow bridges.

(40m 20s)

But then they did a plot line where Fairy World just flat out crashed,

(40m 25s)

fell to the world.

(40m 25s) Chelsea:

Oh yeah, it says “Fairyland crashed in 2010 when the villain Xandra turned the fairies to stone.”

(40m 33s)

Yeah, so they actually do take some risks with these kind of things and it’s

(40m 34s) Kevin:

I yeah, yeah, I was I actually participated in the fall of favor world plot.

(40m 37s) Chelsea:

really cool plots you can follow.

(40m 44s) Kevin:

Um, I have a couple items from that, including a pet bet.

(40m 49s) Chelsea:

Oh I see your little robot guy! That’s so cool!

(40m 49s) Kevin:

Um, yeah, he’s called the old Trump mega bot 2000.

(40m 54s)

That was his name.

(40m 55s)

And he’s formed from three different pet bets.

(40m 58s)

And it just literally like stacking them on top of each other.

(41m 1s)

There’s pincer on.

(41m 2s) Chelsea:

Oh, we got to put that in the show notes

(41m 4s) Kevin:

I think it’s for actually, because you need ultra pincer on which is a pincer on and a wheelie.

(41m 10s)

And then you need combo bot, which is formed from two other robo.

(41m 16s)

They’re all robo.

(41m 17s)

Puppets Ava bot Neo trick.

(41m 19s)

Those are the names like they’re all names.

(41m 20s)

So it’s for it’s like this megazord Voltron assembly of robot pets.

(41m 28s)

And it’s not like is anything special because you don’t fight with them or do anything.

(41m 31s)

He’s just, you know, for like a lot of other things.

(41m 34s)

Oh, enough.

(41m 36s) Chelsea:

Just a flex that you have it.

(41m 37s) Kevin:

Exactly.

(41m 38s) Chelsea:

Exactly.

(41m 38s) Kevin:

So that’s my big flex.

(41m 39s)

I’m a, I have an ultra mega bot 2000.

(41m 40s) Chelsea:

It’s the only big flex I have.

(41m 42s)

Is he in your gallery?

(41m 44s) Kevin:

Maybe I don’t fully know.

(41m 46s) Chelsea:

Because there was a point in time

(41m 48s)

before galleries were a thing that people

(41m 50s)

would just put their

(41m 52s)

I can’t remember exactly how to do it

(41m 54s)

but you would just put it in your shop with like an

(41m 56s)

unpurchasable price.

(41m 57s) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. That’s how you showed off.

(41m 58s) Chelsea:

Yes, just a flex

(42m)

on people. But now you

(42m 2s)

have a specific gallery. So for my

(42m 4s)

Hi Gallery, I’m using um…

(42m 6s)

I’m collecting potions

(42m 9s)

But like no one has the same gallery and people do rare books or cards and like no one is playing neopets the same way

(42m 16s)

Because it is so open-ended some people are super focused on just getting their

(42m 21s)

pets

(42m 22s)

Just feeding them gourmet foods because there’s some accomplishment if you it’s called a gourmet club or something

(42m 27s)

I can’t remember what it’s called, but or you can make them read the most books or

(42m 32s)

Yeah, the bottle dome is a whole other thing. I don’t know if you’re ever big enough

(42m 36s) Kevin:

I tried, but it’s that’s probably one of the weakest parts of the neopets experience in my opinion

(42m 43s) Chelsea:

I don’t want to watch my little guy get knocked out.

(42m 45s) Kevin:

Yeah, and it’s just not a very

(42m 48s)

Intuitive system because training them is not that easy you need to go to certain locations get certain items

(42m 54s)

It’s a very slow build up to get any success, and you can get cool items out of it. I think

(43m)

but

(43m 2s)

Especially being, you know, the browser-based game, like, every action is…

(43m 6s)

New page, basically.

(43m 9s)

Oh, there’s a Fairy Festival going on right now.

(43m 13s)

It’s…

(43m 14s)

Yeah, the Battle Dome, I always wanted it to be a little more, you know, compared to…

(43m 18s)

Obviously, Pokemon is a direct comparison where that’s battle-heavy and it’s very well done.

(43m 24s)

The battle area, I never could get it to click, really.

(43m 28s)

I tried here and there, I leveled up my guy, but…

(43m 31s)

It was just so much investment to try to get them to where they could succeed.

(43m 36s) Chelsea:

Yeah, because you could do the Codestones through the training school or there was doubloons for the squash-buckling or swashbuckling academy

(43m 37s) Kevin:

Yeah.

(43m 40s)

Yep.

(43m 44s)

Yeah.

(43m 45s) Chelsea:

And there’s a ninja school that I’ve never used. I don’t know, I don’t do the ninja school

(43m 46s) Kevin:

Yeah, exactly.

(43m 47s)

And there were, like, different tiers, and some could train some stats or something, I don’t fully remember.

(43m 52s)

There was a lot, it’s a deep system.

(43m 55s) Chelsea:

yeah so I just basically do it just to increase their level but for no reason I like I have one

(43m 57s) Kevin:

Yeah.

(44m) Chelsea:

pad that I kind of do the the battle dome for but i’m not really interested exactly number go up

(44m 3s) Kevin:

Number go up.

(44m 4s)

go up. Yeah, a few.

(44m 7s)

Yeah, won a few matches, but not one of the hardcore battle domers, but I still think about it here and there. I have a Jetson I want him to fight.

(44m 17s)

Yeah, so my ultra mega bot is the pet for my grundo that that feels like a very mean move. I felt bad for grundo. So I gave him the ultra mega bot. So there is one other aspect I want to talk about. And this one’s much more.

(44m 32s)

Well, I guess we can talk about the history of neopets a little bit because you know we’re talking about the whole

(44m 36s)

site and experience but there’s a lot of external to the website of the nonsense that the whole thing has gone through.

(44m 47s)

Sorry, something just popped up on my screen.

(44m 49s) Chelsea:

• I can’t say that.

(44m 52s) Kevin:

So I will say, so again, I think it got popular right after the turn of the millennium, 2001-2003-ish, a lot of people started hopping on.

(45m 6s)

And it really saw a lot of success in those years, I think.

(45m 12s)

Because we saw it escape containment, as the term is used.

(45m 17s)

We saw have collaborations with McDonald’s and

(45m 21s)

the whole line of toys and plushies and games and stuff like that.

(45m 25s)

It was a fairly sizable franchise back in the day.

(45m 29s)

I don’t know if you got it up, I don’t know.

(45m 33s)

But down here, we had probably the largest.

(45m 36s)

Set of McDonald’s toys, because they just did little plushies and they could come in all sorts of colors, right?

(45m 44s)

So you could have a techo, the little lizard guy, but he come like in 10 different colors.

(45m 49s)

Uh, so it was just an insane amount in total of all these plushies you could collect.

(45m 56s)

Uh, I, I had a few myself.

(45m 59s)

I still have a few hanging around, but you could even get some of the cool colors like the story, uh, plushies or the, the shadow plushies.

(46m 6s)

Um, very fearful.

(46m 7s) Chelsea:

Yes, I remember wanting those ones, the starry ones, really bad.

(46m 10s) Kevin:

Yeah, this dry one’s such a great color aesthetic.

(46m 13s)

Uh, it’s blue with yellow stars and there’s a lot of pet pet or neopets that get it.

(46m 17s)

Very, very cool.

(46m 18s)

Definitely very aesthetically pleasing.

(46m 21s) Chelsea:

They also released actual games on the PSP

(46m 24s) Kevin:

Mm-hmm.

(46m 24s) Chelsea:

Um, that were horrible

(46m 27s)

Oh, what was it called? Um…

(46m 30s)

The Darkest Fairy, I think? Yeah

(46m 30s) Kevin:

The darkest fairy, that was the big one.

(46m 33s) Chelsea:

And then there was…

(46m 33s) Kevin:

I never played it.

(46m 35s) Chelsea:

There was another one, um…

(46m 38s)

Pet Pet Adventure’s The Wand of Wishing

(46m 41s)

I had that one on PSP

(46m 43s)

And now, to this day, like even last year they released

(46m 47s)

Oh my gosh, what did they call it?

(46m 49s)

It’s like the Arcade Classics collection.

(46m 51s) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah, they just a bunch of them. Yeah, the minigames from the website, which was very fun

(46m 51s) Chelsea:

So it’s a bunch of the minigames that are still broken even on console.

(46m 57s) Kevin:

Wait, really?

(46m 58s) Chelsea:

Yeah, it says Mega Minigames Collection on Nintendo Switch, PS5, Steam, Xbox.

(47m) Kevin:

That’s incredible

(47m 6s) Chelsea:

Includes 26 minigames from the Neopets Games Arcade.

(47m 9s)

And it’s unplayable apparently.

(47m 11s)

So they kept true to the brand.

(47m 11s) Kevin:

That’s incredible

(47m 15s)

The experience they really captured it faithful remake

(47m 16s) Chelsea:

[laughs] Yeah. Which sucks.

(47m 21s)

‘Cause I was considering getting it for Switch.

(47m 22s) Kevin:

Yeah, that is a shame I thought about it too, um

(47m 26s)

There were also toys and like outside the McDonald’s

(47m 30s)

Line, they had a number of toys that I bought

(47m 33s)

they had a couple of action figures because they had several NPCs or characters that were

(47m 39s)

more anthropomorphic

(47m 41s)

versions of the the Neopets right so there’s like this gladiator girl I

(47m 47s)

remember I had a toy that I don’t just thought it was cool a Neopets action

(47m 51s)

figure there was my sister had a fairy I think I in the earth theory I can’t

(47m 56s) Chelsea:

Ah, jealous.

(47m 58s) Kevin:

remember her name and then there was yeah it loosened something like that

(48m 2s) Chelsea:

Oh, illusion or illusion.

(48m 5s) Kevin:

yeah I’m pretty sure that’s what my sister had and it was cool because it

(48m 8s)

It came with like accessories and a little pet pet which was very

(48m 11s)

fun uh yeah that was cool one of my favorite lines was uh the thinkway toys line which one

(48m 19s)

of my favorite toy companies of all time uh here’s my toy nerd coming on uh thinkway toys

(48m 24s)

they were big into uh electronics and robotic toys uh maybe not robotics but they were

(48m 31s)

pretty innovative in the early 2000s uh they did a line of pokemon toys actually uh

(48m 37s) Chelsea:

Oh, are they the ones that you could put in your hand and they would, like, make sound?

(48m 41s) Kevin:

so they could interact with different things uh they could there was like an ash figure that you

(48m 46s)

could put in the ash figure or a pokedex or a battle stadium and they would all interact and

(48m 50s)

make sounds so I think we might be thinking of the same toys it was very cool uh yeah sounds and

(48m 52s) Chelsea:

Oh cool!

(48m 56s) Kevin:

interactivity like that was the big thing and their neopets toys actually very similar so

(49m 2s)

they were basically just hard plastic models of the neopets but they would move around

(49m 7s)

and basically walk and talk and if you put two neopets

(49m 11s)

near each other they would kind of interact with each other which was very cool to see

(49m 15s)

uh you know they were just making random neopet sounds not like actual language but uh you could

(49m 22s)

kind of it felt like they were interacting kind of like in pokopio when two pokemon talk to each

(49m 25s)

other um just two npcs interacting um you know they would emote and move and move their arms

(49m 27s) Chelsea:

Okay.

(49m 31s) Kevin:

or walk around or whatever uh very very cool and we had a few of those actually my sister and i

(49m 38s)

Because Melanie was big in Neopets as well.

(49m 41s)

So we had a few of those and that was very cool to see.

(49m 45s)

Just you know that very early Poochie like robot electronic toys wave.

(49m 51s)

A very very fun time yeah.

(49m 52s) Chelsea:

Yeah, did they have them at, was it Target?

(49m 56s) Kevin:

Always rust whatever.

(49m 58s)

I don’t know what retailers but yeah where I don’t fully remember but wherever.

(50m 2s)

I’ll try to find a picture.

(50m 3s)

Let me see if I can get you a picture of the Neopet Thinkway toys.

(50m 8s)

But yeah that was a big thing.

(50m 9s)

So yeah, the early.

(50m 11s)

2000s, very, very long time for Neopets, but it definitely they even had a TCG.

(50m 20s)

I never played it, but I know they had a TCG I had.

(50m 23s) Chelsea:

Yeah, they still have it in the game.

(50m 25s) Kevin:

It’s yeah, they do, so it’s interesting because they I think you could get the McDonald’s

(50m 32s)

toys would give you some some like individual cards or whatnot, so I never played the deck,

(50m 38s)

but I had a few cards lying around, and what’s interesting…

(50m 41s)

they had a new TCG as well.

(50m 44s)

Like, right now, it’s active.

(50m 46s)

They’re making new decks and card packs for it.

(50m 49s)

Yeah, and I’ll get to it, but…

(50m 52s)

Before that, because…

(50m 54s)

The reason we’re talking about Neopets at all,

(50m 56s)

there’s been this big push, which I’ll get to,

(50m 58s)

but before that, we need to talk about the sell

(51m 1s)

of the Neopets brand to Nickelodeon.

(51m 4s)

Yeah, because…

(51m 6s)

It was doing great, but it fell off.

(51m 9s)

It was kind of a fad sort of situation.

(51m 11s)

Like, you know, they all can’t make it and yeah, Neopets.

(51m 14s) Chelsea:

They were cannibalized.

(51m 17s) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah, they just couldn’t keep the momentum and eventually they decided to sell the brand to Nickelodeon.

(51m 24s)

Which was making a big push for online content. That’s when the Monkey Quest stuff if anyone knows that brand.

(51m 30s)

That’s a brand for Calvin that he knows, but yeah, they were doing a lot of online stuff.

(51m 34s)

And so they acquired Neopets. Now on the one hand it sucks because now you have big Corpo involved, right?

(51m 41s)

But on the other hand, that’s a big vehicle and a big brand to push Neopets.

(51m 47s)

Unfortunately, Nickelodeon did not do that. I think it’s fair to say they did basically nothing with the brand other than just trying to

(51m 55s)

leech off what was there.

(51m 57s) Chelsea:

No, we got exposed to immersive advertising. So thanks, Neopets.

(51m 59s) Kevin:

We did. You’re right. I forgot. How could I forget?

(52m 2s) Chelsea:

The original immersive advertising.

(52m 4s) Kevin:

I forgot. You could go to the movie theater to watch an ad and get a thousand Neopoints every day or whatever.

(52m 10s)

whatever that was.

(52m 11s)

That’s right, that’s their big country.

(52m 12s)

Should definitely when a lot of the advertising in the website started in general like right now. I’ll be frankly. It’s it’s awful

(52m 20s)

It’s horrendous if you don’t you know, we’ll still talk about the premium, but the ads on the website is insane

(52m 26s)

The you’re just a barrage. It’s just ad vomit all over the the borders of the website

(52m 33s)

It really is and that’s and that’s I think

(52m 33s) Chelsea:

No, it’s unplayable.

(52m 37s) Kevin:

Nickelodeon’s biggest contribution

(52m 40s)

Yeah, they tried a few

(52m 41s) Chelsea:

I would say so, yep.

(52m 42s) Kevin:

things. There was a game called Key Quest for a while, which was basically this board game that

(52m 47s)

you could play with multiple people. That was kind of fun, and you could get great prizes from it. I

(52m 51s)

played it a little bit, but it didn’t last terribly long. And yeah, Neopets kind of just lingered on

(52m 58s)

in a kind of zombie state under Nickelodeon. Now, it was relatively recently sold off the brand.

(53m 8s)

They sold it off to, I don’t remember who, but a private group basically.

(53m 12s)

And I don’t remember all the full details of this, but basically at this point, they’re free.

(53m 18s)

They are free from the Nickelodeon overlords.

(53m 21s)

They are trying to make a comeback.

(53m 24s)

From what I remember reading, some of the people who bought the brand were genuine fans of the the Neopets site from, you know,

(53m 31s)

back in the day. So they had a genuine effort to

(53m 35s)

work on the brand and the website and modernize it. And it’s a work in progress. Let’s say that. They’re pushing it.

(53m 42s) Chelsea:

There are like half of the web pages are still the old version of Neopets.

(53m 42s) Kevin:

Mm hmm.

(53m 46s) Chelsea:

I don’t know if that only happens with Premium, but you’ll be redirected to some things that are from the original banners and stuff.

(53m 53s) Kevin:

Yeah, no, no, it’s not premium. I see it too. Yeah, it’s a real

(53m 58s)

mishmash of old and new in different parts of the website. It’s really funny to see.

(54m 5s)

You get the crisp, clean artwork, and then you get some, you know, pre-2000 scribbles, basically.

(54m 14s)

It’s very, very funny.

(54m 16s) Chelsea:

Do we want to get into the NFTs?

(54m 17s) Kevin:

Oh, that happened, didn’t it? Go, go ahead, tell the…

(54m 21s) Chelsea:

No, it did not last very long. Basically, they wanted to get into the NFT markets, bless you.

(54m 23s) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah, but that’s… I didn’t even see them, but I can imagine.

(54m 30s) Chelsea:

And they were hideous.

(54m 36s)

They were very, very ugly and it was stolen assets from other artists, like fan artists, not even from the official web.

(54m 40s) Kevin:

Well, of course, that’s what NFT is.

(54m 42s) Chelsea:

Yeah, not even from the official website.

(54m 46s)

So the biggest website, like I mentioned before, Jellyneo, had this huge campaign of “Stop NFTs, don’t do it.”

(54m 53s)

Eventually, they wanted to make it all into the metaverse and have it be this whole immersive thing.

(54m 59s)

It all got cancelled and they said, “Okay, we hear you, we’re sorry.”

(55m 3s)

This was a few years ago now, but now they’re really trying to salvage the fanbase they have left.

(55m 6s) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah, and I think they’re making a genuine effort they’re introducing a lot into the website

(55m 13s)

They did a new plot that’s lasted like a year. So they did an event in New York and an actual IRL event

(55m 21s) Chelsea:

It looks so fun!

(55m 22s) Kevin:

Yeah, it’s it’s it’s cool

(55m 26s)

Yeah

(55m 28s)

So overall like

(55m 30s)

It’s neopets still in rough shape Chelsea. Tell me about the premium because I I need to do

(55m 36s)

I still want to try neopets. I think it’s worth a month from what you’ve told me. Tell me how glorious the

(55m 42s) Chelsea:

Yeah, I was very conflicted, but I realized, you know, I’ve been playing this game for however many years, I can give them 12 bucks a month.

(55m 49s)

So, price monthly is $7.95 USD, or $70 USD annually.

(55m 56s)

So for me, that’s $11 Canadian, $103 annually.

(56m 1s)

There are no ads!

(56m 3s)

No ads, it is like a different game.

(56m 6s)

Um…

(56m 7s) Kevin:

It’s that sounds like the problem

(56m 9s) Chelsea:

Yeah, so I personally think they should have a tier-

(56m 12s)

It’s like you pay $2 a month for no ads, and then you don’t get any of the additional premium features.

(56m 18s)

But they don’t have tiers like that.

(56m 20s)

So you have no ads, you got a free species change that is only accessed once every 365 days.

(56m 27s)

So you can take one of your existing pets, or you can make a new pet, and you can change that into any species.

(56m 35s)

Including the restricted ones. I think there’s one exception, and that one is based on how long you’ve been a member of Neopets.

(56m 42s)

So you can do the restricted one. So that’s how I got my Psybunny this time.

(56m 48s)

There’s a premium toolbar, so with easy access to the Shop Wizard. So for people who don’t know, the Shop Wizard is

(56m 56s)

this little furry guy that you can type in an item, and he’ll give you people that are selling the item.

(57m 3s)

But with the

(57m 4s)

regular Shop Wizard, it doesn’t show you the cheapest one by default.

(57m 8s)

It’ll just show you ones that are available in a random part of the bazaar.

(57m 12s)

But if you use the Super Shop Wizard, it shows you the lowest by default.

(57m 16s)

So you could be saving tons of Neopoints by using the Super Shop Wizard.

(57m 22s)

Let’s see. So that makes up- yeah, he has a jump jump. It makes a huge difference.

(57m 22s) Kevin:

Yeah, he’s a jub-jub. Yeah, that’s a Zed.

(57m 28s) Chelsea:

There are premium only Neoboards, which I’m not crazy about. I don’t really care about the Neoboards, to be honest.

(57m 35s) Kevin:

I’m scared to know what they’re like in 2026.

(57m 37s) Chelsea:

They’re very censored.

(57m 40s)

Like very to the point

(57m 41s) Kevin:

Oh. Really, wow.

(57m 42s) Chelsea:

Where you can’t even speak properly

(57m 45s)

Like you can’t even you can’t say cucumber. You can’t say grape

(57m 49s)

Because all of these things inherently have these words in them

(57m 50s) Kevin:

What? Oh, yes, that.

(57m 53s) Chelsea:

So people just go around and there’s it has its own slang in that world people get around it

(58m 1s)

Yeah, oh

(58m 1s) Kevin:

saying because it was the wild west back in the day, you know, the early internet days.

(58m 3s) Chelsea:

Yeah, I know they

(58m 5s)

There was a time a few years ago

(58m 7s)

I think where someone hacked into it and everyone was swearing.

(58m 12s)

And it was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.

(58m 15s)

There’s some YouTube videos of how the Neoboards looked during that time and it was hilarious.

(58m 19s)

So what else is there? There’s additional random events.

(58m 21s)

So, for people that don’t know, you can just be randomly doing your thing and then a notification will pop up at the top of your page that says “Something has happened!”

(58m 31s)

And usually it’s something good, sometimes you get robbed.

(58m 35s)

Or your pet gets sick. But with the Premium, I find that I’ve been getting more map pieces given to me.

(58m 42s)

Because there are secret maps in the game for the Forgotten Shore and the Lab and it’s a whole different- yeah, so you can get those that way.

(58m 51s)

Sorry, I’m just going through all of them here.

(58m 53s)

There’s the Premium Neo deck, which I don’t care about. I never cared about the trading cards in the game.

(58m 59s)

Some of them are expensive though, like millions of Neo points.

(59m 2s) Kevin:

Yeah, yeah.

(59m 2s) Chelsea:

There’s the Wheel of Starlight, which is- throughout the- it is really cool.

(59m 7s) Kevin:

It sounds so cool.

(59m 9s) Chelsea:

So with the other parts of the map, there is the…

(59m 13s)

And that’s basically just, you spin a wheel, kind of like Wheel of Fortune, you can get something…

(59m 17s) Kevin:

A lot of gambling

(59m 18s) Chelsea:

Yeah, a lot of gambling!

(59m 20s)

There’s the Wheel of Monotony, which I think is several hours the wheel spins.

(59m 24s)

There’s the Wheel of Knowledge, which is useless.

(59m 27s)

There’s the Wheel of Extravagance, which is 100,000 Neopoints to spin, and you usually don’t get anything crazy.

(59m 32s)

But for the Wheel of Starlight, you can get retired items this way.

(59m 37s)

And you can get, yeah, so you can get the retired books, you can get retired stuff.

(59m 37s) Kevin:

Oh my goodness, that’s insane.

(59m 42s) Chelsea:

animals, I got a drake egg that way. Yeah, so for other people that may have not played as much,

(59m 49s)

a drake is a restricted species. It looks like a little drake, and it’s adorable, but you have to

(59m 54s)

get it from an egg. And it’s difficult to get one. But I was super lucky because in my first week of

(59m 59s)

premium, I got a marbled drake egg. So not only was it a regular drake, it had a rare color pattern.

(1h 7s)

So that made my whole month that made it worth it. Usually it’s pretty good. I don’t think I’ve

(1h 12s)

ever gotten anything bad from the Whale of Starlight. You can do Space Fairy vending machine tokens,

(1h 19s)

which I don’t really care about the… again, gambling, I don’t care about the vending machines.

(1h 23s)

You have to get these special tokens that you put in, and you can either get really good or

(1h 30s)

absolute garbage or nothing. And then there are premium scratch cards you get once a week

(1h 35s)

from the Space Fairy as well. And that one is a guaranteed win. And then…

(1h 42s)

I’ve had decent luck with that.

(1h 45s)

For people that care about the game submission score, you can submit– without premium you

(1h 50s)

can submit your score three times for neopoints, but for premium you can do four times.

(1h 56s)

So if you’re first starting out, that’s a good way to work up your neopoints in your

(1h 1m)

account.

(1h 1m 1s)

And just everything just runs so much better.

(1h 1m 4s)

So if you plan to spend any amount of time, even like ten minutes a day, I would say it’s

(1h 1m 5s) Kevin:

without 800 ads.

(1h 1m 12s) Chelsea:

the premium membership.

(1h 1m 15s) Kevin:

It sure sounds like it. That’s that’s a lot of value. So

(1h 1m 19s)

Like, you know what overall this sounds like a better way of monetizing than nfts or all the nonsense

(1h 1m 27s)

they’re doing

(1h 1m 28s)

that sounds reasonable if you’re

(1h 1m 31s)

Serious about neopets and one try a month, you know, at least a month trial of eight bucks is not bad

(1h 1m 35s) Chelsea:

Yeah, I try for a month

(1h 1m 37s)

Because there is another currency. There is another currency in Neopets called neocash

(1h 1m 37s) Kevin:

Yeah, I’ll give a shot

(1h 1m 40s)

Yeah

(1h 1m 41s) Chelsea:

Some items can only be yeah, some items can only be used with neocash which is real currency

(1h 1m 42s) Kevin:

The premium

(1h 1m 46s) Chelsea:

I don’t like care about those a lot of that is related to like pet armor and stuff that I’m just not really worried about

(1h 1m 49s) Kevin:

Yeah

(1h 1m 53s) Chelsea:

So that’s never been worth it for me. But no premium overall. I don’t have a lot of subscriptions for games. So I don’t mind

(1h 2m 1s)

Paying it, but yeah, if for someone who even wants to spend ten to

(1h 2m 5s)

fifteen minutes a day doing anything, I highly recommend the premium because it makes it

(1h 2m 10s)

unfair to, yeah, honestly, try it for one month and tell me how different it is.

(1h 2m 12s) Kevin:

me. I will I open up my page right now and I see 1, 2, 3, 4,

(1h 2m 23s)

5 ads on the screen. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, yeah, I

(1h 2m 25s) Chelsea:

Yeah, and they follow you down your screen as you’re scrolling, they follow you, or they’ll be on top of things that you’re trying to do.

(1h 2m 31s)

Or you’ll wait for the ads to load before you can do anything, so it’s crazy.

(1h 2m 36s)

They have to make their money somewhere, but you are bombarded with ads.

(1h 2m 42s) Kevin:

like they’re trying to make money and I want them to succeed.

(1h 2m 47s)

I don’t know if it’s the there’s a better route, but they’re

(1h 2m 50s)

trying it’s better than the NFT days or whatever Nick was doing.

(1h 2m 55s) Chelsea:

Yeah, the MNFTs, and, sigh just crazy.

(1h 3m) Kevin:

Oh, good times. Oh, Neopets. I still love you. I’ll still check in. I’ll still play, especially

(1h 3m 12s) Chelsea:

Do you want me to talk about the black market?

(1h 3m 14s) Kevin:

Yeah, yes, tell me about yes, I forgot about that tells about the black

(1h 3m 17s) Chelsea:

Huge, huge thing on Neopets.

(1h 3m 21s)

Huge thing.

(1h 3m 22s)

So back, I think it was early 2000s,

(1h 3m 25s)

they were called unconverted pets.

(1h 3m 27s)

So before the website was updated,

(1h 3m 30s)

there was a different art style for older Neopets

(1h 3m 33s)

called unconverted pets.

(1h 3m 35s)

And then pets made after a certain date

(1h 3m 38s)

had a different art style, the more modern art style,

(1h 3m 40s)

but a lot of people preferred the.

(1h 3m 42s)

old art style, so people would actually pay real life money to other accounts to have

(1h 3m 49s)

them be traded or put them in the pound and go through a chain of people to get it back

(1h 3m 53s)

to this person.

(1h 3m 55s)

So if you ever had an old account, it’s probably been pillaged and all of your old pets have

(1h 4m 1s)

been sold for real money.

(1h 4m 3s)

There was one hacker, there was one hacker who I think he was responsible for 49% or

(1h 4m 12s)

ridiculously high number of password breaches.

(1h 4m 13s) Kevin:

That’s insane!

(1h 4m 15s) Chelsea:

Like billions upon billions upon billions of Neopoints.

(1h 4m 19s)

Crazy.

(1h 4m 21s)

And then there’s always the plots, like the annual, I guess it’s kind of like the Olympics

(1h 4m 25s)

in Neopets, it’s called the Altador Cup, with different teams.

(1h 4m 30s)

And there was this huge conspiracy that it was just done by bots and hackers because

(1h 4m 35s)

the scores, the top scores was like so-and-so team one, so-and-so team two, with the same

(1h 4m 40s)

username, just different number I think.

(1h 4m 42s)

end. So it was totally rigged. In July 22, it was announced that 69 million accounts had been

(1h 4m 50s)

compromised. So crazy that it’s yeah, so when I pay for my membership, I use PayPal. They are not

(1h 5m) Kevin:

Yeah, no that sounds like a good idea

(1h 5m) Chelsea:

getting my card. They are not getting my card information.

(1h 5m 3s) Kevin:

That sounds like a very good idea, I don’t think I’ve ever given them money directly, so that’s why I don’t think I was

(1h 5m 10s)

Affected by the data breaches even though I probably was caught up in it

(1h 5m 14s) Chelsea:

Yeah, so I had a few childhood accounts, and I guarantee they are gone, because I had some of the older pets.

(1h 5m 20s)

And, oh, people take it so seriously.

(1h 5m 24s)

There was one team member for Neopets that had an unconverted pet, but it was made after the conversion date,

(1h 5m 32s)

so people were just losing their mind, calling out the staff member.

(1h 5m 36s)

So they changed it back, and then they changed it to keeping him unconverted,

(1h 5m 40s)

but they put his date of creation as the first day Neopets was ever created.

(1h 5m 44s)

I personally don’t care if the staff have their own custom pets, but there is so much that people take way too seriously.

(1h 6m 3s) Kevin:

That shenanigans, wow.

(1h 6m 9s) Chelsea:

And yeah, there’s times where pets have been hijacked from other people’s homes.

(1h 6m 14s)

and put in the pound, and basically people will make a trading chain to get up to a rarer pet.

(1h 6m 19s)

And then if one person in the chain reports it, they basically do the whole chain in reverse.

(1h 6m 25s)

So people that were involved in a scheme may not have even known that they were in one until they get their pet back.

(1h 6m 30s)

And it’s just, there is so much that goes on.

(1h 6m 35s)

It is crazy.

(1h 6m 36s) Kevin:

Wild that’s a lot of shenanigans. Oh

(1h 6m 38s) Chelsea:

A lot.

(1h 6m 41s) Kevin:

Man hats off to the Neopets like the team in the mods because they’ve had to put up a lot with a lot

(1h 6m 48s) Chelsea:

Yeah.

(1h 6m 48s) Kevin:

fun fact Chrissy

(1h 6m 50s)

Tegan Tegan, I’m not sure how you pronounce her the

(1h 6m 52s) Chelsea:

Yeah.

(1h 6m 54s) Kevin:

She used to be a moderator

(1h 6m 54s) Chelsea:

Yeah.

(1h 6m 56s)

Yeah, ‘cause John Legend was, like, the new face of Neopets for a while.

(1h 7m 2s)

And I’m like, what are we doing? This is where all the money’s going to?

(1h 7m 2s) Kevin:

Yes. Oh, that’s. Yeah, same. Yeah, I’m still I’m still going to be on the ride along for

(1h 7m 7s) Chelsea:

Celebrity endorsements.

(1h 7m 8s)

Anyway, despite all of this, I am- this game is very dear to my heart and it makes me happy.

(1h 7m 19s) Kevin:

whatever they bring our way. I’m like I said, I do think even with all the nonsense we’ve

(1h 7m 25s)

talked about, I think the game is in the best spot it’s been since 2000s probably.

(1h 7m 33s)

Before Nick, it feels hopeful, optimistic. Will it deliver? I can’t say. But keeping

(1h 7m 40s)

my fingers crossed. OK, is there anything else you wanted to add?

(1h 7m 44s) Chelsea:

I will very, very briefly mention this, so Adam Powell was the original creator of Neopets

(1h 7m 50s)

and he went in the official Neopets discord and people basically went after him because

(1h 7m 59s)

he was really touting the NFT thing and a new game called Dragons or clears throat

(1h 8m 5s)

excuse me, something like that, and there’s photos of him flipping off the camera proving

(1h 8m 12s)

that it’s him.

(1h 8m 14s)

saying that if you’re not getting with NFTs then you don’t understand how the world works

(1h 8m 18s)

and then people were calling him out and like trolling him and one of his there’s a whole

(1h 8m 23s)

song made because one of the lines that he says before he got kicked out of the discord

(1h 8m 27s)

was I hope you live forever in poverty and the official discord so people have made like

(1h 8m 30s) Kevin:

Oh my goodness!

(1h 8m 34s) Chelsea:

t-shirts saying it and songs it’s so funny the discourse that has come yeah so um I think

(1h 8m 40s) Kevin:

Oh, that’s incredible.

(1h 8m 44s) Chelsea:

he’s no longer doing any of that but there were times where he was going into people’s

(1h 8m 50s)

discords and development pages basically saying oh I’m rich I I don’t need any of this like

(1h 8m 58s)

y’all just hate on neopets but anyway it was so crazy just to kind of it was really sad

(1h 9m 4s)

so I hope he’s in a better place now but he was going after anybody who would say anything

(1h 9m 7s)

about NFTs so I mean I guess he made his money and then he had enough time to be looking

(1h 9m 9s) Kevin:

Wow, wow, that’s so sad.

(1h 9m 14s) Chelsea:

for for things like that yeah

(1h 9m 17s) Kevin:

Oh, man, because, well, you know, what a vision he had if–

(1h 9m 25s) Chelsea:

I know. But we’re in a better place now, I think, with the team that’s there. With their independence.

(1h 9m 33s) Kevin:

• Yeah, fingers crossed.

(1h 9m 35s)

I haven’t heard them talk about AIs,

(1h 9m 37s)

so we’re safe right now.

(1h 9m 39s) Chelsea:

Yes, there are also two spin-off games. Sorry, I’ll just mention these quickly

(1h 9m 39s) Kevin:

[laughs]

(1h 9m 41s)

• Okay.

(1h 9m 44s) Chelsea:

There’s two mobile games what is called Tales of Dracardia and one is Fairy Fragments

(1h 9m 49s)

So I haven’t played Tales of Dracardia very much

(1h 9m 52s)

It looks like it’s like a building game like you develop the land kind of thing

(1h 9m 57s)

and then Fairy Fragments is like a match three type of game and

(1h 10m 1s)

If you link them both to your Neopets account you get rewards in your Neopets account like neo points and rare items and stuff

(1h 10m 9s)

So there is kind of the incentive, but I find Fairy Fragments is actually quite fun

(1h 10m 10s) Kevin:

Huh, oh, I’m, yeah, I do enjoy Good Mansion.

(1h 10m 13s) Chelsea:

I thought it was gonna be like Fairy Bubbles, but it’s not

(1h 10m 17s)

It is enjoyable

(1h 10m 20s)

Yeah, it’s actually quite fun

(1h 10m 22s)

Yeah, so they’re in the 21st century now with their companion ops

(1h 10m 27s) Kevin:

kind of hats that have a foot in the 21st century.

(1h 10m 30s) Chelsea:

Yes

(1h 10m 31s)

Right, but no it’s a huge expansive world and again. There’s no pressure to play a certain way

(1h 10m 36s)

I don’t know anyone who plays it the same way.

(1h 10m 39s)

There’s so many different things you can explore or prioritize.

(1h 10m 44s)

Yes, there’s stamps. Yep, there’s the stamps, the avatars that you can use on the neoboards,

(1h 10m 50s)

the books. There’s just so much. No one has the same experience.

(1h 11m 1s) Kevin:

But I may check it out. We’ll see yeah

(1h 11m 1s) Chelsea:

Yeah, yeah, just another way for them to get your data

(1h 11m 5s) Kevin:

That yeah, and look actual cottagecore find

(1h 11m 8s) Chelsea:

There you go exactly

(1h 11m 11s) Kevin:

Okay, okay any other thoughts or comments or should we call it a day there

(1h 11m 18s)

Okay, that’s all I think I’ve got to say as well, okay

Outro

(1h 11m 25s) Kevin:

Anything else you want to plug or shout out Chelsea

(1h 11m 25s) Chelsea:

We did it!

(1h 11m 28s)

I’m shouting out the fact that we finished this episode

(1h 11m 31s)

because it has been weeks in the making.

(1h 11m 31s) Kevin:

It’s still

(1h 11m 34s)

Yeah, it’s and it to the last minute filled with foibles. Um, oh goodness. I’m sorry

(1h 11m 41s)

Yeah, we’re about to make you go through

(1h 11m 46s)

Okay, but that said I don’t have much else to say

(1h 11m 52s)

So other than thank you, Al. Thank you listeners. Thank you Chelsea for joining us

(1h 11m 58s)

Check out the

(1h 12m 1s)

Podcasts on tumblr and blue sky at THS plot

(1h 12m 5s)

Go to harvest season club to see that everything directly all our show notes links all that good stuff

(1h 12m 12s)

Drop some feedback. Tell us your favorite neopet or

(1h 12m 17s)

pet pet or something

(1h 12m 19s)

Tell us your dream

(1h 12m 20s) Chelsea:

Has your account been pillaged?

(1h 12m 22s) Kevin:

As you let us know if you are in a class-action lawsuit, I don’t know if there is one but

(1h 12m 26s) Chelsea:

Yeah, would not surprise me. You may be titled to financial compensation.

(1h 12m 31s) Kevin:

Yeah

(1h 12m 33s)

Exactly don’t reach us out to us about it expecting it, but let us know anyways, cuz that’d be dope

(1h 12m 41s)

You can also go to patreon.com

(1h 12m 44s)

THS pod to see all the good stuff we have including the slack

(1h 12m 51s)

Where you can get some a little behind the scenes some threads you can everyone hangs out we talk

(1h 12m 59s)

There’s

(1h 13m 1s)

Many

(1h 13m 2s)

Dark secrets in that slack the the cat between the hosts the cat between me Cody and Al about the draft every week

(1h 13m 11s)

We’re just in dismal disarray over all our draft

(1h 13m 16s)

Or you can also get access to the greenhouse

(1h 13m 20s)

Yes, here’s our weekly promise of we’re gonna make a bunch of greenhouses that we will deliver maybe one day, but not here yet

(1h 13m 28s)

We’ll get that

(1h 13m 31s)

That’s it’s on the list. All right, and until next time dearest listener, thank you for joining us again, but until next time

(1h 13m 39s) Chelsea:

Have a good Harv-

(1h 13m 39s) Kevin:

Have a good harvest

(1h 13m 43s) Theme Tune:

The Harvest Season is created by Al McKinley, with support from our patrons including our

(1h 13m 51s)

pro farmers Kevin, Stuart and Elisa. Our art is done by Micah the Brave and our music is

(1h 13m 57s)

done by Nick Burgess. Feel free to visit our website harvestseason.club for show notes

(1h 14m 3s)

and links to things we discussed in this episode.

(1h 14m 15s) Chelsea:

And we’re back.

(1h 14m 16s) Kevin:

I’ll see have you been recording locally

(1h 14m 20s) Chelsea:

On my voice recorder for myself.

(1h 14m 24s) Kevin:

I’ll take that. I forgot to hit record on the last

(1h 14m 29s) Chelsea:

No you didn’t.

(1h 14m 38s)

I only have my side on the voice recorder.

(1h 14m 40s) Kevin:

I took I have my side. I have local recording. That’s okay. We can work with that

(1h 14m 43s) Chelsea:

Okay.

(1h 14m 46s)

Okay.

(1h 14m 46s)

Sorry, Al.

(1h 14m 46s) Kevin:

Oh good

(1h 14m 47s) Chelsea:

[laughs]

(1h 14m 48s)

[clap]

(1h 14m 50s)

[laughs]

(1h 14m 51s)

[squeak]

(1h 14m 52s) Kevin:

All right, we have the last portion going let’s screw the time we’ll just go okay

(1h 14m 56s) Chelsea:

Al, you can fire us.

(1h 15m)

[sniffles]

(1h 15m 1s)

[laughs]

(1h 15m 2s)

It’s the Neopets curse.

---

Made with Transcriptionist