Episode 929: James Jones – Critiquing Neanderthal Art – Radio Free Nintendo

I’m gonna level with you. That aurochs? Yeah, not the greatest. If we’re talking about cave art, you know the kind that we usually think of—like what you’d find at Montignac-Lascaux—it’s typically from the Magdalenian era. That’s just a fancy way of saying it’s done by modern humans somewhere between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago. Neanderthals? Sure, they might’ve had a go at cave doodling too, some speculation there. We’ve only really found some stuff like that in Spain, actually older art predating when Cro-Magnons showed up. But their art was more like handprints and dots, less about detailed animal sketches. Naturally, being old means less survived. Makes sense, right?

Let’s be honest, their art wasn’t exactly… groundbreaking.

By the way, this is me winging it, didn’t bother to fact-check anything here—except how to spell those fancy names. So, if this isn’t spot on, well… fact-checkers can do their thing. Picture me pointing at them all tauntingly.

So you got modern James here, being the critic. Not the brow-heavy, beret-wearing James of old. Think of it like Hot Tub Time Machine, but… actually, like, funny.

Moving on—Jon, yeah, he managed to snag a Switch 2. Straight from bestbuy.com, LLC’s loving arms. Figured we’d let him ramble about it and dive into Mario Kart World. Everyone with a Switch 2 is on this game—I mean, come on, how can you not? But, let me tell you, it’s like a shell tsunami there. Picture Jon, in his living room, just getting pummeled with red shells. Oddly satisfying to watch.

Oh, and there’s a new Splatoon single-player thing on the horizon.

Why does this lead to so much randomness? Beats me. This show, man. Go figure.

We took a breather for sanity, but, yeah—back to the grind. Guillaume, bless him, insists you try F-Zero GX on the NSO Expansion for Switch 2. I wouldn’t, though, mostly because of his alarming embrace of virtual carnage. He’s also into Valfaris, another Switch game, all guns blazing, big baddies, the whole shebang.

Greg dropped some thoughts on the Switch 2’s update for Splatoon 3, all about that HDR pop and ultra-smooth framerate. Seriously, they should call it “super-stable,” but no one’s asking me to do Nintendo’s marketing. Not that I haven’t done it before…

Ahem.

I’m here too, trying out Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time on the new Switch. Dealing with time thieves is kind of my jam—kids, managers, inspectors—you name it. But a child time thief? New territory.

Uh, right, where was I?

Anyway, still in the early stages of the game, poking around the tutorial mostly. Hopefully, I’ll have more to say next week unless… you know, something sidetracks me.

Feel free to submit any ancient doodles.