PPR 148

 tale as old as time, with a verse that has no clever rhyme—George really hates everything about flying.

Miserable flights aside though, PPR’s Bearded Beast is back from the Nihon, and regales us with stories of his travels, the sights who he took in, and the retro games he stumbled upon in his 10 day trip in Tokyo. Adding on to the conversation, this week’s cast of George, Andrew, and Sean get together to share their thoughts on the latest news, and games that have been inhabiting their consoles.

Sit back as we gab about the Atari 2600+, Nintendo Live, the SG-1000, Starfield, Atari’s purchase of AtariAge, Sony’s price hike on PS+ Plans, Baldur’s Gate 3, Final Fantasy XIV, Action 52, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, PSVR2, WrestleQuest, and a whole lot more.

We have a bunch of reviews coming down the pipeline for Press Pause Radio, and hopefully the final bend for the final steps for the new studio George has been working on the last couple of years. We’re almost there y’all—GET HYPE

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

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QCF: WrestleQuest

sn't it weird how, like Video Games, Pro-Wrestling has had its ups and downs within the Pop Culture Zeitgeist? It's just one of those deals where varying degrees of social stigmas through different generations had just held it back from reaching actual relevance within the mainstream consciousness like it's arguably achieved in today's entertainment climate, and that's because it's so much more than just a "sport" to enjoy. Imagine, for example, a Quarterback running a standard play in a Football game, and the moment they shouted "Hike," they suddenly ran backward toward their own endzone, spiked the ball down to the turf, and then viciously ripped their jersey off only to reveal the other team's jersey underneath it—this is the kind of energy you can expect out of Professional Wrestling. There's no other athletic competition out there like it.

It's a spectacle that's translated very well into the Video Game format, so much so that Wrestling Games are their own little subgenre to play from. Still, it's nearly always a case where developers adapt the rules and conventions of Pro Wrestling into a video game instead of it being the other way around.

Developer Mega Cat Studios pondered that challenge with a JRPG-inspired Turn-based Adventure named WrestleQuest, a colorful fantasy take on the world of Toys and their dreams to make it big in the squared circle. At the core of the concept, any premise can be made into a 16 Bit styled RPG if you have the right systems in place, but WrestleQuest doesn't settle for that and instead delivers one of the finest examples of Ludonarrative Consistency that I have ever experienced. I'm not kidding when I say it's easily one of the best Pro Wrestling games ever released in generations. 

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PPR 147

t sure has been a while now hasn’t it? Well, we made sure to make it count with this new episode as we brought along John Unterseher from Super RPG Friends to round out this week’s table of chuckleheads!

In an effort to talk shop on all of the recent announcements that took place while also trying to keep things Water Cooler with what we’ve been  playing, we mixed it up a bit for this episode. John joins Andrew and George as they discuss which announcements made the most notable impression on us from Summer Gamefest block of announcements they’ve affectionately dubbed to be “Not E3” and then decide to steamroll right into what’s been in their consoles with 2023’s packed release schedule. Announcements of games to come along with games here and now ranging in Super Mario RPG, XDefiant, Project Octopath Traveler 2 , Persona 3 Reload, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Pikmin 4, Super Mario Wonder, Sonic Superstars, Sand Land, Nicholas Cage, Mortal Kombat 1, AEW Fight Forever, and so much more.

So sit down and clean that off-lavender shake off your lip as we bring you Press Pause Radio Episode 147, also—you don’t look so hot, just how much of that shake did you wolf down?

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

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PPR 146

here are some events that we’ve come expect with the certainty of a season change. Whether it’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, The Super Bowl, or The Oscars—these annual institutions have operated for most of our natural-born lives, and won’t go anywhere anytime soon. The Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 for short, used to be one of those long-standing institutions, but has recently seen come rough days the couple of years, and has decidedly skipped out on 2023 altogether.

While writing has been on the wall, the language that E3’s parent company, ESA, has used over the future of the showcase is a little too ambiguous for comfort, and it’s likely that we may not see the event come back in the near future, or ever. Despite it going out with more of a whimper than a bang, there have been a ton of memorable years in Video Gaming where the event hosted some truly historical announcements, cementing moments that still occupy our headspaces to this very day, and we’re going to spend this episode talking about that, and so much more.

Join Andrew and George as they take you on a Post-Mortem of what George called the “Met Gala” of the Video Games Industry as they discuss the up’s and down’s of the yearly trade-show, and all of the notable footnotes it’s had in its run, bizarre pageantry and all.

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

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PPR 145

ANADA INVENTED FOOTBALL! That’s just one of the many things you’ll learn in this new episode of Press Pause Radio—aside from the fact that George also got a Vasectomy, that’s a thing too we guess.

We keep it pretty casual off the heels of the Golden Zonkies and just talk about the latest stuff we’ve all been playing. On tap for this session is Ed, Andrew, and George as they gab on about games like Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, Tetris Effect, Moss, Baby Pac-Man, Wanted: Dead, Horizon Dawn: Forbidden West, Forespoken, Atari 50, Ninja Golf, Blood & Truth, Yggdra Union, and so much more.

So kick up a chair, grab some pretzels, and decompress from a long afternoon of socializing over Sports Ball as we share some thoughts and words over fast-paced start to our 2023 here at Press Pause Radio!

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

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QCF: Wanted:Dead (Playstation 5)

 

 have fond memories of not only playing but also selling what was referred to as a “B” game from my time as a game store employee during the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 era. This type of game, normally an action game would be from a smaller developer and publisher, with a limited budget but always offered entertainment and combat for a lower cost. It was an easy sell for someone looking to play something but didn’t want the larger scope and price of a triple A title. Just some fun games like Stranglehold, Shadows of the Damned and Wet, just to reference a few from the past. For better or worse, Wanted:Dead from Soleil and 110 Industries harkens back to this time in gaming, offering sword-clashing and gun-blazing combat with some corny voice acting and glaring issues in level design and difficulty that might need more than nostalgia to win over most players.

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QCF: Trophy

o matter how many times I’ve seen it, I still think it’s BUCK wild to see a brand new game for the NES get commercially released over 30 years past the system’s prime. The Homebrew scene for these legacy platforms are further bolstered by the flexibility of the Digital Marketplace hosted by every notable name you can think of, like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Valve, or hell, even Atari.

One of the latest releases for the most popular 8-Bit machine is an homage to Mega Man by developer Gradual Games named Trophy, and it’s not only been made available on Cartridge for its original hardware, it’s also available on Switch eShop and Xbox Marketplace via a proprietary NEW Emulator to boot. The technical chops on display are nothing of impressive, as the game seemingly uses every MMC Mapper to push the most out of the system to run it, but the core design of the game hardly does anything to impress beyond the sheer novelty of it being a new Action Shooter you can grab for the NES.

Tophy is certainly no Mega Man, but it isn’t even a Darkwing Duck, or a Krion Conquest, or hell even a Whomp ‘Em—it’s just a another retro game with some bizarrely outdated design by comparison.

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Late to the Party: Sonic Orgins

orgive the clichéd sentiment, but even after 31 years of blazing across all manner of screens, SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog does show any sign of slowing down. Riding the hype train of the recent film’s success at the Box-Office in the same year the little guy turns 31, the folks at SEGA and Sonic Team in collaboration with the talented folks at HeadCannon took to the task of releasing yet another Classic Sonic Collection, Sonic Origins. The collection features Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic CD, and the first re-release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles in over a decade; each one optimized with the same Retro Engine Sonic Mania ran on, enhancing these cult-favorite titles with a sizable HD upgrade for the current generation of gaming.

Despite the number of times some of these titles have been re-released, Sonic Team and company have boasted that this new arrangement will come loaded with more passion and fandom than we’ve seen from the likes of Sonic Jam or Sonic Mega Collection. While some of those claims are founded, I can’t quite help but feel like Sonic Origins struggles to live up to the potential it had, let alone the hype going into the whole thing.

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