PPR 160

re beards still neat? We wonder, mainly because we’re older and less hip—plus we noticed the significant lack of facial hair upon the plastic grimace of Labubus, so shit’s been tripping us up to say the least.

Or maybe it’s all of these heavy-hitter video game releases that are stacking up in October that have got us slipping up because HOO-boy are there some blockbuster titles appearing on shelves this month, and we’re desperately trying to keep up with it all. Join Ed, George, and Andrew as they dish on the latest news of the concerning buyout of EA, Microsoft’s ludicrous price hikes across the market, and the main topic for the episode, what we’ve all been playing in yet another edition of “What’s in your Console?”

The list spans to Borderlands 4, Hollowknight: Silksong, Sonic Wings Reunion, Silent Hill f, Skate, Tokyo Jungle, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Hades II, Persona 3 Aegis, Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5 Royale, Lost Soul Aside, and a ton of Magic: The Gathering talk that’s filled with all of the oogling and speccing you could hope for!

Come for the unqualified cosmetology opinions, stay for the gluttony of software we’re stuffing ourselves with. Shit, we’re not even ready for Ghost of Yōtei, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Ninja Gaiden 4, or… 

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 Presents Ourcade: Nintendo Randomized Tandomizer Part 2!

up everyone?—remember that new video feature we’ve been teasing for the last couple of years? We’re FINALLY doing it; the feature is Ourcade, and it’ll be a special feature where my partner, Val, and I, will stream some games in tandem with one another—specifically games that have had a remaster or remake, where I will be playing the original, and Val will be playing the new version (unless we decide to switch up the roles for certain exceptions.)

Returning to where they last left off, George and Val will be playing some randomized hacks of Nintendo classics! George will be playing a special randomized hack that combines SNES favorites, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid, into one combined experience where not only will various rooms or doorways transition you between Hyrule and Zebes, but integral items from both games will be randomly shuffled from their typical areas in the game. In an even bigger twist, the items can be randomized into the other mashed game, i.e., the hookshot could be held by a Chozo while the Super Missile will be stashed in a treasure chest in some dungeon—shit’s going to be wild. Val, on the other hand, will be playing Pokémon Soul Silver, which will randomize all aspects of Pokémon encounters, from the choice of starters, to the wild encounters, and the teams that various trainers and leaders will have when you run into a challenge—oh, and items will also be randomized too!

May we get the charitble blessing of RNG-esus tongiht and make some HUGE progress for y'all! 

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch at 7:00 PM PST on 09/11/2025 to watch our gameplay of iconic Nintendo titles filtered through randomized chaos! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch Channel, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!

PPR Presents Limelight: Hollow Knight: Silksong

he indie equivalent of Shenmue III and Half-Life 3 is out! The meme is officially dead! Everyone’s favorite chat spam has materialized, and the sequel to the 2017 Metroidvania Sleeper is here!

Hollow Knight: Silksong is FINALLY a thing, and everyone’s kinda freaking out about it. Join George as he dives headfirst into the gloomy, labyrinthine journey that’s sure to be filled with all of the cheap enemy placement and tricky wall-jumps you could ever imagine and then some! The jury is still out on whether or not the wait was worth it, but one thing is for sure—the amount of hype and joy for this release is feverish, and we, for one, cannot wait to see what all of the hullabaloo is all about!

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch at 9:30 PM PST on 09/06/2025 to watch the highly anticipated sequel from Team Cherry! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch channel, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!

PPR 159

verything’s an Ad nowadays (#notanAd) and the constant outpour of late-stage capitalism getting pumped out through our screens and on our pages has objectively reached a point of Ad nauseam (sorry, we just couldn’t resist.)

In all seriousness, though, if there’s one form of entertainment that’s fueled by marketing magic more than any other medium, it’s video games, and there are generations upon generations of material to take a look back at and examine the expansive world of Video Game advertisements via printed ads and broadcast commercials. Join George, Sean, Andrew, and special guest Peter Skerrit as they examine nearly 50 years of promotional material and discuss some of the memorable, or more accurately, psychologically impactful ads that have embedded themselves deep into the minds of these middle-aged game junkies.

From the edgy attack Ads of the 90’s to the arthouse schlock of the late aughts, we’ve got all of the deep cuts for you, as we can’t help but feel nostalgic for the shameless sales pitches of old and the levels of showmanship that Video Game advertisements used to have back then before giving up and paying Geoff Keighley a bunch of money to hock their stuff for them.

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: Elsie

t’s often said that necessity is the mother of invention, and in the case of the dispiriting limbo that Capcom has planted the Blue Bomber in, the iconic robot’s absence has encouraged multiple studios and visionaries to step up and deliver an experience not all too dissimilar to that of the Mega Man effect. With the rare exception of 2018’s Mega Man 11, the super fighting robot has been mainly relegated to nostalgia collections or vanity cameos, and the weight of his “pew-pew” gameplay has been carried on by a variety of indie developments or community efforts.

This new influx of games, however, has also encouraged studios to do more than a superficial spin on the trademark Run’nGun formula, with select titles really showing off the timeless potential of Mega Man-inspired side-scrolling action. One of which is Elsie, an independently developed adventure starring a larger-than-life, mascot-pilled android made by Knight Shift Games and published by Playtonic's new publishing branch, “Playtonic Friends.” As the fourth game to be supported by Playtonic’s offshoot publication label, Elsie offers many familiar dynamics that more resemble the feel of the Mega Man X series than its 8-bit counterpart, only with a Rougelike twist on the setup. While this territory isn’t exactly uncharted with 20XX and 30XX making waves in the subgenre, Elsie sinks its teeth more into the character-driven spectacle its inspiration is famous for, with a side of frenetic bullet action that blends into something like Mega Man X meets SuperGiant Games’ Hades.

I say this with my whole chest and every heavy breath huffed in—words really can’t serve justice to what Knight Shift Games has done with those mechanics—I genuinely believe that Elsie breathes a whole new sense of life into some admittedly fatigued concepts by delivering an immaculate sense of game feel and presentation that I haven’t experienced in years.

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PPR Presents Limelight: Doom: The Dark Ages

025 is jam-packed full of huge releases, but one particular release appears to have come and gone from the gaming water cooler, and that’s DOOM: The Dark Ages.

The latest entry of the modern take on the FPS giant amps the frenzy of DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal by adding even more mobility options, and a Marvel Hero-ass Shield that you bash and parry with, and of course, even more DOOM guy lore to set the latest stage of hell in. George and Andrew will be hosting tonight’s limelight, with George on the sticks and Andrew on the side-cans, where they’ll chop it up on the newest entry of the violent shooter franchise.

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch at 7:00 PM PST on 08/28/2025 to watch the medieval twist of the iconic Rip & Tear gameplay we’ve come to know and love! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch channel, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!

PPR Presents Ourcade: Nintendo Randomized Tandemizer!

o here’s something—remember that new video feature we’ve been teasing for the last couple of years? We’re FINALLY doing it; the feature is Ourcade, and it’ll be a special feature where my partner, Val, and I, will stream some games in tandem with one another—specifically games that have had a remaster or remake, where I will be playing the original, and Val will be playing the new version (unless we decide to switch up the roles for certain exceptions.)

Other times, we might just play games that share a certain theme, which is what we’ll be breaking out in the inaugural episode with! In this debut stream of Ourcade, George and Val will be playing some randomized hacks of Nintendo classics! George will be playing a special randomized hack that combines SNES favorites, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid, into one combined experience where not only will various rooms or doorways transition you between Hyrule and Zebes, but integral items from both games will be randomly shuffled from their typical areas in the game. In an even bigger twist, the items can be randomized into the other mashed game, i.e., the hookshot could be held by a Chozo while the Super Missile will be stashed in a treasure chest in some dungeon—shit’s going to be wild. Val, on the other hand, will be playing Pokémon Soul Silver, which will randomize all aspects of Pokémon encounters, from the choice of starters, to the wild encounters, and the teams that various trainers and leaders will have when you run into a challenge—oh, and items will also be randomized too!

Needless to say, we’re pretty excited (and terrified) about what’s ahead of us for tonight’s stream!

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch at 7:00 PM PST on 08/22/2025 to watch our gameplay of iconic Nintendo titles filtered through randomized chaos! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch Channel, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!

PPR Presents Limelight: Virtual Boy Wario Land

his year makes the Pearl year for the Virtual Boy folks—yeah, that’s right—thirty friggin’ years of the Nintendo misunderstood 3D-enhanced 32-Bit platform. Now, we here at Press Pause Radio are no strangers to romanticizing the goggled little tripod-ass tripoding shitpost of a video game system, but this year just so happens to coincides with the same year we achieved our bog boost in video and audio production. Which means we now have hands on a consolized Virtual Boy that’s been RGB-modded with Furrtek’s Virtual Tap mod and Retro Onyx’s wireless Virtual Boy controller!

So what game are we going to ring in the special occasion with? The obvious one of course! George and Sean are going to get down with Virtual Boy Wario Land, and chop up all of their memories of the platform and its current status in the current pantheon of gaming culture (or they might just sigh a lot, the Virtual Boy just kind of brings it out of them.)

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch at 7:00 PM PST on 08/21/2025 to watch our gameplay of old Nintendo hardware and the weird-ass obscurities stuck on it! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch Channel, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!