Which way should we go now? I’ll give you a hint… straight to the “Play” button on this episode! Chris and Katie are checking into the haunted mansion of The 7th Guest for PC & Mac, and trying to puzzle (literally) their way back out again!

Cake slices, lettered tin cans, first-person mazes, flipping photos, and a whole lot of dumb luck play into this classic that helped to popularize the CD-ROM drive back in the early ’90s… does it live up? Are the puzzles still hard? Or, as Stauf, the mansion’s owner might say, will we all be dead by the time they solve this?

Hit the button, listen to the episode, and find out just how spooky things can get in 28-year-old badly-made FMVs! Otherwise… we’re going to have to start again!

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It’s a (fat) bird!  It’s a (pink) plane!  No, it’s KIRBY!  And he’s a SUPER STAR!  Here for an appearance in the final Super Nintendo game before the switch to Nintendo 64, in an 8-in-1 side-scrolling & platforming adventure, inhaling enemies and exhaling pure, raw, fluffy, pink power!

Hosts Chris and Katie hop back in time and dig deep into their memory banks for this one, and at least one of them made it just about through the whole thing (two guesses who…) – but both had a lot of fun!  Cutters, plasma, floating, Grommet Races, and a debate about whether tomatoes are, in fact, fruits… this one has it all!

Flap your wings, hit your A buttons, do whatever you like, and join us for another adventure in dreamland!

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Round 21… PLAY!  We’re headed to Japan!  And Brazil!  And Thailand!  And, apparently, the U.S.S.R.!  Why?  Because it’s Street Fighter II time, and we’re flying all around the world to fun fight locales, dragon punches, yoga fires, and tiger knees!

Across the arcade, Sega Genesis, and Super Nintendo, this game showed up across a LOT of systems, and defined the 90s for a lot of kids growing up with fighting games.  Not to mention, an AMAZING(ly bad) movie featuring the talents of Raul Julia, and Jean-Claude Van Damme hamming it up for an hour and 40 minutes.

A new Trope of the Day, a frustrated Host Katie calling the computer a cheater, countries that no longer exist, and a small detour into a former game developer’s thigh fetish… this episode’s got it all!

HADOUKEN!

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Like blind hogs looking for acorns, we’re back to look for the best Final Fantasy games!  This time, it’s Final Fantasy 3… no, not THAT Final Fantasy 3, the OTHER one!  The one that only came out in Japan originally, and only came out on the DS in North America.  And you know what?  It was pretty fun!  It’s too bad we didn’t get a chance to play it when it first came out.

Join us as we work through saving the world with a bunch of teenagers who were told to do so by… a crystal?  Sure, why not!  Floating continents, frozen time, ancient evils, old people with parrots on their shoulders, and dogs with 9 heads.  None of it makes sense, except when you’re Square, building a Final Fantasy game!

Kweh!  Fat chocobo says hop on and take a ride!  Or listen!

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Let’s a-go!  This time we’re hitting the gas pedals on our 100cc karts and racing our way into 1997 and the game that took the Nintendo 64 by storm, Mario Kart 64!  Hosts Chris and Katie hop in (both with Toad, they’re definitely siblings!) to join the Mario crew racing through Kalimari Desert, Koopa Troopa Beach, Wario Stadium, and of course, Rainbow Road!

Drifting, drafting, blue-shell-ing, and failing miserably at finding the shortcuts through the tracks… it’s racing mayhem, and all that childhood frustration re-lived all over again… but with a shiny cup thrown up by an oversized Cheep Cheep at the end of it all, and doesn’t that make it all better?

Jump in the passenger seat (of this one-seater kart?) and give it a listen, and remember all the hilarity and fun that came from this game, and some of its anti-frustration features along the way!

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It’s time to go back to the past!  Err… back to the future!  Or… oh who cares, it’s BACK TO THE JAK!  Chris and Katie are jumping into the pools of Dark Eco, picking up Precursor Orbs, and figuring out what’s new and exciting with the second iteration of the Jak & Daxter series.

Taking a giant roll-jump forward from the first game in the series, Jak 2 adds flying cars, hoverboards, guns, time travel, politics, angry guards, and… let’s just say some new voices pop up!

So hop into the speeder, take a listen, and enjoy a breakdown of a game that (spoilers) broke Host Chris down pretty well too!

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“Do a barrel roll!”  This episode, our intrepid hosts are hopping into the cockpit again for some classic space combat from 1997 with STAR FOX 64.  In doing so, they answer some of the world’s burning questions like: What’s the difference between a barrel roll and an aileron roll?  What really makes something an aircraft?  And most importantly, what are “space meters”?

Chris and Katie take a deep dive into this rails shooter, trying to make their way to the planet Venom to fight and defeat Andross.  Along the way, they get frustrated at the AI of their teammates, learn a bit about Leeroy Jenkins, and remember just how annoying the Nintendo 64’s controller could be (especially with the Rumble Pak in!)

Take a listen, reminisce about the ’90s when flapping cartoon mouths were the pinnacle of graphical achievement, and enjoy!

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GIMMEYOURWALLET!  We’re stealin’ cars, throwin’ molotov cocktails, and… turnin’ gangsters into hot dogs?  Well, it’s GRAND THEFT AUTO 2, what do you expect?!?

Hosts Chris and Katie are hopping into the driver’s seat and rolling back the odometers of their memories to check out this top-down, crazy, violent, tank-driving classic that helped spawn an era of open-world sandbox games, even outside of its hugely successful franchise.

Listen in and find out… can Katie drive a stolen car better than she flew a plane in Chuck Yeager?  Was Chris able to buckle down and finish all 3 zones?  Was everything as good as the two of them remembered?  Spoiler alert: No, no, and… shhh, sorry, that last one you really have to check the episode out to learn!

Slam, baby.

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A big episode number calls for a big classic game… SUPER MARIO BROS!  In this episode, Hosts Chris and Katie drop down the warp tube allllllll the way back to 1985, and give the OG of classic console games a run-through for the first time since it was near-new!

Hundreds of tries on the last level for Katie, a surprise knockoff Mini console for Chris; this episode came with all sorts of surprises, on top of a HUGE hit of nostalgia, a deep dive down a cultural phenomenon that changed the face of video games forever, and learning that the fine motor skills of adulthood are very helpful when playing old games!

How did it hold up?  How much fun was it for the hosts to try again, and (kinda) succeed?  Did they beat the game?  Did they get emotionally broken down?  Listen in and see!

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It’s a very special NEW EPISODE DAY!

Check out the first episode of our new bonus series, “Chris’s Tech Talk”! In these episodes, Host Chris will be joined by various guests to talk about the technology that goes into video games, and the challenges that developers face bringing their visions to reality!

For our first installment, Chris is following up our Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat episode with a discussion on flight simulators and the nuts and bolts behind them.

So hop in the audio cockpit and join Chris and his friends, with their 50-plus combined years of professional flight simulator experience, as they dive into what it takes to make a true flight sim, then (predictably) get distracted and forget that they were supposed to be talking about video games as they nerd out about planes!

Let’s kick the low-polygon tires and light the 8-bit fires!

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