Episode 35

Felicia and Ryon play Herc's Adventures.

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Herc's Adventures
Platform	PlayStation
Published	LucasArts, 1997
Credits
Hosts	Felicia Day Ryon Day
Director	Sean Becker
Executive producers	Felicia Day Sheri Bryant
Editing	Brett Houston
Graphics	Steven Sprinkles
Music	Jason Charles Miller
Production assistant	Annie Liu
Stats (as of January 12, 2020)
First aired	February 24, 2014
Duration	15:43
Views	145,988
Likes	3,856
Comments	444

Quotes

Felicia: "I really like me. I'm kinda like a Judy Jetson kinda bitch."

Ryon: "I don't see us being very heroic right now. That's all I gotta tell ya."

Felicia: "Well, we just killed a cyclops, we've killed a bunch of—"

Ryon: "We're killing all of the sheep."

Felicia, looking at Herc's top-heavy proportions: "Jesus. God, you have tiny— Your dick is like a fucking thumbnail. You get smaller as you go down."

Ryon: "Hercules is hung like a light switch."

Felicia: "If you were a Greek god, which one would you wanna be?"

Ryon: "Oh god, I don't know, man. I mean, Zeus ran the joint, right? And then there was that mellow guy who was the volcano god who just sat around making weapons all the time."

Felicia: "Oh, that was Hephaestus, yeah."

Ryon: "Or Vulcan if you're into the Romans."

Felicia: "I'm sorry, I kinda wanna be Aphrodite. I mean, I would say Artemis and you go out and shoot things. I wouldn't want to kill any animals."

Ryon: "Aphrodite is like the Kim Kardashian of Greek mythology."

Felicia: "She kinda is."

Ryon: "In ancient Greece, it would have been like, 'Have you see that new Aphrodite sex tape?' And then she would have made a career for herself all of a sudden."

Ryon: "Nothing's more satisfying than a beat-em-up game, really."

Felicia: "Well also, I really would want to kill a skeleton in real life. You know how satisfying that crunch would be? Crunch."

Ryon: "In what other game can you think of can you throw houses at skeletons?"

Ryon: "The hardest enemy in the game is a starving villager."

Ryon: "Look! Look at her!"

Felicia: "Why's she got a gun!? What kind of anachronistic bullshit is that?"

Ryon: "This is not authentic."

Sign: "Beware big boar!"

Felicia, trying to read sign: "'Beware bee-oh boars.' 'Bee-oh boars'?"

Ryon laughs

Felicia, laughing: "They got stinky bits? They got stinky bits?"

Ryon, impersonating Atlanta: "'Ouch!' She says ouch kinda like she likes it."

Felicia: "Yeah. Well, she is a virgin goddess."

Ryon, impersonating Atlanta: "'Ouch! Hurts good! Hurts so good!'"

Felicia: "You know what I don't understand? What did they wear for underwear back then?"

Ryon: "I think they all free-balled it."

Felicia: "We're going to Hera. We're going to Hera."

Ryon: "Something tells me she's a total B."

Felicia: "What, Hera? Well, Zeus fucked around on her a lot, and I would be a B too."

Felicia: "This is intominable."

Ryon: "'Intominable'?"

Felicia: "Whatever the fuck that word is."

Ryon: "Untominable! I can't tominelerate this! Intomineleratable!"

Ryon, as Felicia dodges vomiting enemies in the underworld: "Ugh, they ate the Harry Potter jelly beans."

Ryon, reading: "'You must be dead too.' He's trying to pick you up. He's gonna neg you next. He's like, 'You call that bow shooting?'"

Ryon: "This is the biggest train wreck of a game that we've ever played before. I pronounce this game—"

Felicia, laughing: "I hate it! I went from loving this game so much to I'm hating life!"

Felicia: "I'm so angry right now. If you gave me a kitten I'd be like fuck off, kitten!"

Ryon: "Is this worse than Guts? Do you think this is as bad as Guts?"

Felicia: "Oh, I don't know. That's hard."

Ryon: "Guts still has the crown."

Felicia: "Guts might still have the crown."

Felicia: "Oh god, there's so many skeletons!! It's like, it's such a fuck-you, like, 'Hey, you wanna enjoy a video game? I'll show you how not to do that.'"

Ryon: "Now Hercules doesn't have that baggage to haul around. He's gonna get some work done."

Ryon: "This is actually the Greek myth of Sisyphus we're playing through I think."

Felicia: "We want to make a parable. A video game parable of Sisyphus."

Ryon: "Oh, he's some math dude. Nerd. Get outta here."

Felicia: "Listen, sometimes we hate games because we're not good at them. This one with the whole 'Oh, you're dead? Here, let me stick some more fingers up your butt.' The mechanic of resurrecting you and making you fight through the death zone—"

Ryon: "Just to use another life. Just to use another life."

Felicia: "—just to use another life, because you don't have quite enough health to survive much farther after you get through the Hades area."

Cue points

0:00	"This week" preview
0:08	Opening theme
0:17	Host intro
0:58	Game begins
9:55	"The Word of the Week: interminable"
11:39	"A Few Minutes Ago"
11:48	"And now"
14:29	Outro
15:33	End card/promo
15:40	Closing theme
15:43	End video

Trivia

• There are a number of uncensored curses in this episode.

Gallery

• 

  Felicia and Ryon introducing the episode

• 

  The Herc's Adventures CD case

• 

  Felicia remarking on Herc's bizarre proportions

• 

  Felicia misreading the sign as "B.O. boar"

• 

  Felicia's interesting T-shirt

• 

  Felicia's rage is growing

• 

  Word of the week: interminable, not intominable

• 

  Felicia's hair begins to reflect her rage levels

Commentary

Rocketsoup (wiki curator)

This is another one of those episodes that's interesting from a video game history perspective as well as for the entertainment value. Sometimes the only way to know something doesn't work is to try it, which this game does with its death mechanics. The concept of ratcheting up the punishment each time you die until you run out of continues sounds interesting on paper, but clearly it makes for a punishing game that becomes more and more unenjoyable the longer you play it. Each death puts you farther back in the underworld, which makes you fight through more enemies to escape, which leaves you with less health when you make it out. Given that you are usually further along in the game each time you die, you're returning to a tougher part of the game than your last death with less health than your last death, virtually guaranteeing an ever-diminishing lifespan for your player until you run out of continues. Contrast this to many modern games that adjust the difficulty to become easier when it senses you are struggling.

External links

• Herc's Adventures - Retro Let's Play: Co-Optitude Ep 35 on YouTube
• Herc's Adventures on Wikipedia

References

• Hercules on Wikipedia - the character Ryon plays
• Atlanta on Wikipedia - the character Felicia plays
• Judy Jetson on Wikipedia
• Hephaestus on Wikipedia
• Aphrodite on Wikipedia
• Artemis on Wikipedia
• Kim Kardashian on Wikipedia
• Hera on Wikipedia
• Interminable on Merriam-Webster
• Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans on Harry Potter Wiki
  • In the bonus content video from Episode 36, they try various Bertie Bott's beans. Although that episode aired after this one, it may have been recorded before this one, or they sampled some of the beans off-camera beforehand.
• Negging on Wikipedia
• Sisyphus on Wikipedia
• TorontoGal80 on YouTube - a long-time community member and moderator who first caught the Days' attention from her kind comments on their videos, which they acknowledge at the end of this video

Social media

• Felicia's tweet
• Geek & Sundry's tweet
• Felicia's Facebook post
• Geek & Sundry's Facebook post