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

Most of the cave art we think of, particularly the art around Montignac-Lascaux, are Magdalenian culture – that is to say painted by modern humans dated to between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago. That isn’t to say there weren’t Neanderthal artists, drawing on caves, at some point prior to their extinction ~40,000 years ago. However, we only really have direct evidence of that in Spain – art predating Cro-Magnon arrival in Europe. However their art was less anatomical drawing of animals and more handprints, dots, and the repeated use of a ladder motif. It’s also much older, so its survival is going to inherently be more spotty than their later successors.

To summarize, their art blew cheeks.

Also, this is off the dome, and I refuse to look anything in the above up (excepting how to spell Magdalenian and Montignac-Lascaux) – fact check THIS! You can imagine where I am tauntingly pointing to suggest fact checkers “do their job.”

Fully modern James is the critic, not a James with a pronounced brow-ridge and a beret. Just envision Hot Tub Time Machine, but actually funny.

THIS WEEK Jon has his Switch 2, lovingly delivered from the corporate arms of bestbuy.com, LLC. As such, we let him give some early console thoughts and lead our deep dive into Mario Kart World. We, and presumably every Switch 2 owner on Earth, have been playing this game. Boy, does it feel like you can get just wrecked by shell-after shell-after shell. Just imagine, Jon in his living room, getting decimated by a cavalcade of red shells. It’s weirdly calming.

Also a new Splatoon single player game got announced.

Somehow – this results in a bunch of other stuff. I don’t understand this show either.

We take a break to preserve our mental health, but alas we must resume. And resume we do. Guillaume makes an impassioned case that you should try F-Zero GX, now on the NSO Expansion Pack service on Switch 2. This is a path I do not advocate, mostly because of the murderousness he’s embraced. Honestly, it’s about what you’d expect from him. To sate his bloodlust, he’s also been playing Switch game Valfaris – a 2D platform shooter that is all about big guns, big enemies, and big violence.

Greg took a look at the Switch 2-focused patch for Splatoon 3 that just came out. He has some thoughts on the extra pop of HDR, and the super-stable framerate that only Switch 2 can offer. They don’t call it “super-stable framerate,” but they should. I’m doing Nintendo’s marketing work for them.

Again.

Lastly James, your esteemed author and artisan, has been playing the Switch 2 version of Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time. I’ve dealt with many time thieves: children, auditors, management types, inspectors but I’ve never dealt with a child time thief.

Wait… ANYWAY. I’d really just started the game at the time of recording so my impressions are basically just the tutorial. Hopefully I’ll be much further on when we record next week. Should be a given, unless I run into… well you know.

Submit your Paleolithic drawings here.