Look!  Up in the sky!  It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  No, it’s… it’s… a giant multi-colored, winged whale with a kaleidoscopic paisley pattern all over it, that’s for some reason named the Wind Fish!  Come on, how could you not see that?

For this one, we’re headed back all the way to the GameBoy, and checking in on everyone’s favorite green-robed (in the COLOR version), pointy-hatted, jar-smashing, rupee-stealing hero, LINK!  He’s in need of some awakening, and who better to do it than Chris and Katie?  Nobody, that’s who!  Katie on some retro-OG hardware (the new Nintendo Game & Watch), Chris trying out the remaster on Switch.  Time to go to… NOT Hyrule, but rather Koholint Island, and try to save the world, yet again!

Time to collect some instruments, play some music, fight some bosses, crack some eggs, meet up with a whale-fish, and in general, just Link the heck out of this thing!

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“Bonk.  Bonk.  Bonk.”  What’s that, you ask?  Is it fate, come knocking?  Is it a raven, rapping, rapping at your chamber door?  Why no, in fact, it’s COMMANDER KEEN!  More specifically, Commander Keen constantly slamming his (helmeted) head into the top of whatever was above him, as Hosts Chris and Katie pogo sticked their way through the levels of this 1991 classic, inflicting only a minor amount of CTE upon our dashing hero.

From the creators of Doom, Wolfenstein, and Quake, comes this 2D side-scrolling adventure loaded with candy, strange monsters, and a surprising level of difficulty… and without it, perhaps those other world-changing titles would have never come into our game libraries, so… we have to respect our elders!

Drop in, give it a listen, and get all sorts of fun background, find out just how well our intrepid video gaming hosts fared while collecting candy bars, jawbreakers, chewing gum, and everything else your parents told you not to eat at that age… WHAT REBELS!

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SALSAAAA!!!  It’s in everyone’s top-5 favorite dips for tortilla chips, and it’s the very poorly-translated name of one of the lead characters in this episode’s game, FINAL FANTASY V!  We continue our grand tour of the Finals Fantasy, and this is the very last one that will come WITHOUT a rose segment… VI and onward, and Hosts Chris and Katie have actually played them before… what a novel concept!

This one was a struggle… not to beat (though neither did), but rather, to figure out how to pronounce all the names.  Galuf, really?  And we were one step away from naming the main hero Guacamole, after some of the other poor translations.  Listen in and see why!

Spoiler alert, this was a great time for everyone, it had more depth than any of the prior games, the music… well, the music existed, and overall, it was a lot of fun!

Also, check out the PIXEL REMASTER of the game, which came out just last week!  They’re really well-done, and the better it does, the more remakes they’ll put out, and we like them!

QUESOOOOOO…

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What’s this? An episode of Games We Grew Up With… with NO rose-tinted glasses segment? With only HALF of the hosting crew?

Yes, my dear friends, your wishes have been granted! It’s Host Katie, accompanied by Host Katie, with a dash of Host Katie for good measure, talking about Jak, Jak, and Jak again… because it’s JAK 3 TIME!

With this new format, it’s more of a “quick-hit review” of a game, just chatting about it… no rose section, less about the publisher, and just “Hey, I played this game recently, here’s my thoughts!”, and we decided to break it in with the end of the core Jak trilogy.

So pour yourself a tall glass of your favorite beverage of choice, dim the lights, sit back, relax, and enjoy listening about FLUT FLUTS and PRECURSORS and BETRAYAL and AWKWARD LOVE TRIANGLES and… of course… the star of the trilogy, the man himself, the myth, the legend… DAXTER!

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It’s that time again!  Time to dive back into the archives and pull out another classic title to frustrate one, the other, or both of our hosts!

This time it’s fire-blasting, boost-jumping, dragon-saving, key-fetching, and platform-gliding with everyone’s favorite winged protagonist, Spyro the Dragon!  Back to platforming, back to the PS1, and with the added bonus of Host Katie’s favorite element, flying levels!  (Note: refer back to episode 12, Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat, for more detail on just how much she loves flying in video games!)

Insomniac Games brings us this one, and this one launched a great series of games, including a recent remaster that one host played, while the other stuck to the original.  Different?  Better?  You’ll have to listen in to find out!  One is DEFINITELY worse with loading screens though…

Hop in, reignite, float over, whatever way you want to say it, give it a listen and maybe find a copy to dust off and toss into your system of choice!

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It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  It’s… a giant baby?  Come to crush us?  As we try to save our neighbors from giant worms, roaming zombies, and 6-foot-tall ants climbing over the hedge maze that we really shouldn’t have put into the backyard in the first place?  I know, I know, everyone loves a first-person maze (particularly Host Chris), but maybe we should have thought about the zombie infestation in the neighborhood FIRST!

This time around it’s a LucasArts classic from 1993, where Chris and Katie take over as Zeke and Julie, saving their neighbors and neighborhood from all of the crazy, creepy-crawly, brain-eat-y monsters that have taken over!  They might even grab a burger along the way from their neighbor who, against all logic, is still grillin’ up a storm!

Hop along for the ride, and let’s find out just how good Zombies Ate My Neighbors really is!

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MEIN LEBEN!  It’s the start of year 2 (Season 2?  Are we doing that?) of the show, and what better way to kick off such a grand occasion than killing a bunch of Nazi scum, and destroying Mecha-Hitler with WOLFENSTEIN 3D, right?

It’s time to go back to DOS, it’s time for some Shareware, and it’s time for Host Chris to share some of the great stories he just finished reading in Masters of Doom, about the game’s developer, id Software!

Mazes, hidden push-walls, low-quality sound effects, dog food, a chain gun, and mostly, feeling shame at choosing the “Can I Play, Daddy?” difficulty level.  Let’s do it!

HOT DOG!

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Happy Birthday to us… happy birthday to us… happy birthday, dear podcast… happy birthday to us!

It’s episode 26!  It’s episode ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!  It’s a COMBO episode!  It’s a SPECIAL GUEST STAR episode!  It’s an EXTRA LARGE episode!  Everything’s coming up Milhouse today…

SONIC!  THE HEDGEHOG!  TWICE!  And also Tails, I guess… if we have to (sorry, Katie!).  In this episode, we have our great friend Tom from the awesome “Will Run For…” Podcast joining us, sharing his insights and thoughts, and agreeing that the underwater drowning music is the worst thing EVER!

It’s been a great year, we’ve loved every moment of it, and we’re looking forward to more episodes coming over the summer.  For now though, it’s all about zoom zoom zoom!  And after you’re done listening to this episode, go find Will Run For… on your favorite podcasting platform, and check them out!  It’s great fun, and they’re super entertaining.  Even if, like Host Katie, you claim to hate running (I’ll tell you a secret though… her 5K and 10K PRs from this year beg to differ…)  So, give ’em a listen, give them a 5-star rating to make Guest Host Tom run 5 miles, and tell them that GWGW sent you!

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It’s time!  Final (final, final, final) Fantasy again!  Maybe they should have named the series The Neverending Story.  That’s not taken, right?

Final Fantasy IV!  Where, unlike the previous games, you have to… fetch the four elemental crystals?  Deal with a sad backstory involving orphans?  Fly in an airship that Cid gives you?  Hmm, there has to be something new… oh right, ATB!  You get to attack less often than the enemies!  Well, as they say, repetition doesn’t spoil the prayer.  Still fun, still exciting, and still a classic Final Fantasy experience!

Listen in as Chris and Katie break down the details, walk through the plot, and talk about how it felt to go through this game for the very first time!

You spoony bard!

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I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that…  err, wait, wrong AI!  This time it’s Guilty Spark, Cortana, along with the Flood, the Covenant, and everything else from 2001’s OTHER evil-space-computer-themed action adventure, Halo: Combat Evolved!

This comes after the 24-hour birthday stream for Host Chris, during which the two hosts co-opped their way through the entire campaign in one giant (exhausted) marathon.

Listen in and hear the trials, tribulations, caffeine, and fun of having everyone from the show in the same place since before our first episode!

“Chief, we need to jump now!”

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