This week, I share my thoughts on Byleth being announced as the final Smash Bros DLC character (for now at least), touch on the greatness that is Witcher 3 on the Switch, and I'm finally playing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Oh yeah, and Mark McCue and I talk about a bear that keeps a bird trapped in his backpack. If you just want to hear about that, skip to 14:50. And toss us a follow, pleeeease? We'll follow you back! Twitter - @memberthegame Instagram - @memberthegame I missed out on Ban...
Jan 22, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 81
This week, I touch on the upcoming PS5/XBox wars, how can the Switch stay relevant, Final Fantasy VII remake has been delayed, and I let you know what I've been playing. Then we shift into Rock Band! If you just want to hear about that, skip to 20:10. And toss us a follow, would ya? We'll follow you back! Twitter - @memberthegame Instagram - @memberthegame "Well technically, I don't think Rock Band is considered a 'retro' video game..." I know. I don't care. It's my show and you can listen to th...
Jan 15, 2020•54 min•Ep. 80
Few games are as sure fire slam-dunk first ballot hall of famers as DOOM . It's just one of those series that everybody's played. It's on everything. Everyone knows it. I mean, it's DOOM . Admittedly, I don't have a ton of experience with it. I remember some of my friends playing it when I was a kid, but I didn't spend a ton of time with it until I started playing it on the Super Nintendo. And as much as I was enjoying it then, I had people telling me that was one of the worst versions of it. I ...
Jan 08, 2020•55 min•Ep. 79
When a majority of people think of first-person shooters and the Nintendo 64, Goldeneye 007 probably comes to mind. And while it's unquestionably an iconic video game (we covered it all the way back on episode 11!), Perfect Dark is better. At everything. From the additional weapons, to the insane multi-player options, to the great story telling (Elvis for the win), Perfect Dark was a masterpiece. I'm not sure how well the Nintendo 64 version has aged - that controller is such a monstrosity - but...
Jan 01, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 78
This is what 'Remember The Game?' is all about. Old cartoons, old video games, old video games about old cartoons. So much nostalgic goodness this week. (And the entire 8-bit version of the theme song makes this episode worth downloading on it's own!) So many video games that are based on a popular franchise turn out to be hot garbage (exhibit A: Episode 70 of this show; Ghostbusters), but luckily for all of us 80's kids, Capcom decided to swim against the current and buck that trend. DuckTales ...
Dec 18, 2019•48 min•Ep. 77
I'll never get tired of talking about wrestling video games. The only issue with talking wrestling video games is the fact that there's probably more bad titles than good ones. Lucky for all of us, this is one of the good ones. In fact, it's one of the great ones. WWF Wrestlefest is everything video games should be. It's bright and colourful, the gameplay is addictive, and it's an arcade game. As much as I love vegging out on my couch playing video games on my TV, there's just something special ...
Dec 11, 2019•56 min•Ep. 76
Back in the late 80's, everything the Ninja Turtles touched turned to gold. TV, cereal, toys, movies, music, and of course, video games. The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES (covered on episode 18 of this show!) was pretty good, but the sequel is the one everyone still loves and plays today. Originally released as an arcade game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II blew the first Ninja Turtles game away. Gone was the "puzzle solving/platforming" single game, and in it's place was a c...
Dec 04, 2019•52 min•Ep. 75
I love Mario. And while it hasn't aged all that well, I'm pretty fond of the original Game Boy too. We could play video games anywhere!! So Mario on the Game Boy should have been a match made in heaven. And eventually it was; Super Mario Land 2 is incredible. But Mario's first road trip, Super Mario Land , wasn't quite as good. That's not to say it was bad. Mario is like pizza; even when it's not great, it's still pretty great. This game felt more like a demo for what the Game Boy was capable of...
Nov 27, 2019•55 min•Ep. 74
We're on Twitter and Instagram (And we follow back!) @memberthegame We're also on stupid Facebook: facebook.com/RememberTheGame And most importantly, we're on Patreon. Please consider supporting our show. For $2/month, we give you tons of stuff! Patreon.com/RememberTheGame I have no idea where Metal Gear Solid 2 sits in the history books of gaming. Is a Playstation 2 classic? Forgotten gem? Is it the worst game in the Metal Gear series? The best? Overrated? Underrated? If you look it up online, ...
Nov 20, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 73
I can't believe it took us 72 episodes of the show to cover Mario Kart 64 . I mean, it's Mario Kart freaking 64! If you're listening to this show, you've played this game. I'm a Nintendo fanboy through and through, but the Nintendo 64 is admittedly, not one of my favourite systems. I don't think games from the 64/Playstation era have aged particularly well, and a majority of them just irritate me when I try to play them today. But not this game. The memories I (and I'm sure most of you) have of ...
Nov 13, 2019•47 min•Ep. 72
The original NES controller was a brick. It was practically indestructible. Need proof? Ask anyone that played Ninja Gaiden back in the day. This game was designed to make you want to throw your controller against the wall. You would die and start over, and over, and over, and every time you did, you knew you would inevitably lose and slam your controller against something else. You'd swear (quietly), maybe walk away for a couple hours. But you always came back. And that's the great thing about ...
Nov 06, 2019•46 min•Ep. 71
Oh Ghostbusters ... I love this damned franchise. Ghostbusters and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were my life as a kid. I had the action figures, movies, cartoons, clothes, books, toys, halloween costumes, and of course, video games. This was one of the games I rented over and over again. Pretty well every time my brother and I convinced our Mom to let us rent games for the weekend, Ghostbusters found it's way into the pile. We refused to admit it wasn't good. Well, I'm thirty-five now. And i...
Oct 30, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 70
Over the last 69 (nice) episodes of this podcast, we've stumbled across a couple forgotten franchises, and it's really made me sad that they seem like they're just destined to wallow in the obscurity that is video game history for the rest of time. Franchises like BattleToads , Earthworm Jim , and now, Twisted Metal . When I think OG Playstation, I think of the heavy hitters like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy . But I also think of the Twisted Metal series. I really liked these games. My fon...
Oct 23, 2019•45 min•Ep. 69
I can't believe how many people played this game back in the day. It's awesome, but it's also kinda nerdy, even by video game standards. It's slow, quiet, there's no bad guys (except the ridiculous crime rate that will inevitably plague your city). It doesn't seem like a game kids would be interested in. But man oh man, we were. Almost everyone I knew that had an SNES had Sim City . The fact that it was a launch title for the Super Nintendo probably helps, because after Super Mario World , there...
Oct 16, 2019•49 min•Ep. 68
We all know that Nintendo has this weird hobby of taking their phenomenal catalog of older games and making it as hard as humanly possible to play them. That's precisely what they've done with Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door . It's available on the Gamecube, if you buy a Gamecube, a memory card, and a copy of the game somewhere (which isn't cheap these days). It's also available on...oh wait, that's it. Much like many of the other great Gamecube titles, TTYD has been left in the past. And th...
Oct 09, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 67
Whenever I talk a Genesis game on the show, I feel like I'm doing my part to help re-build the bridge that Nintendo and Sega kids burned down in the 90's. And honestly, I'm really enjoying most of these Sega games. It's like discovering a treasure trove full of retro games that I've had a chance to play, and it's been really fun to try some of the games Genesis kids grew up obsessing over and considering the best that their console of choice had to offer. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is at the top of th...
Oct 02, 2019•51 min•Ep. 66
If you didn't grow up playing the Sega Genesis, is the new mini adaption of it worth your money? That's the question I set out to answer on this week's podcast. Not only did I not own a Sega Genesis, I hardly knew anyone that did. I honestly didn't even realize Sega's little Sonic Station was as popular as it was until I was an adult and started to get into game collecting. I've played the original 3 Sonic games, a little NHL, and some Lion King. When Sega announced the Genesis Mini, I was intri...
Sep 25, 2019•54 min•Ep. 65
Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (Shinobi III moving forward, that title is too long) is what retro gaming is all about. The graphics, the music, the gameplay, the difficulty. It nails it. I played this for the first time in my life almost 26 years after it released, and if you told me it was a retro-inspired indie title that just came out this year, I'd believe you. It seems to me like Shinobi was Sega's answer to Nintendo's Ninja Gaiden series. You play as a bad-ass ninja, running from ...
Sep 18, 2019•42 min•Ep. 64
When I launched this podcast, my idea was for my guests and I to reminisce about the games we played as kids. Both good games, and bad. It's taken 63 episodes, but we're dipping into the really bad end of the pool. Worse than Power Rangers . Worse than Bart's Nightmare or Boy and his Blob . Hell, this is worse than the last fifteen years of The Simpsons . Today, we're talking Virtual Bart . This was one off the few Simpsons video games I never owned as a kid. We rented it a couple of times, and ...
Sep 11, 2019•44 min•Ep. 63
Now, I don't throw around the word "masterpiece" very often. But this game? This game is a masterpiece. It's freaking Resident Evil 4 . Practically a lock to show up on any respectable 'greatest games of all-time' list. Originally released as an "exclusive" for the criminally underrated Nintendo Gamecube, it's been ported to everything over the last fourteen years. Literally everything. There's probably a SNES version of this game now. And that's ok. This game is incredible, and it should be por...
Sep 04, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 62
The fact that we haven't seen a Pokemon Snap re-release, remake, or sequel on smartphones, the Wii U, or the Switch is almost mind-boggling. And then you remember it's Nintendo... We all played this, right?? I remember this being one of the few games I could play with my brother and not fight (much). Pokemon Snap . You're on rails, and you can't die. You just take photos of Pokemon. Might sound silly in 2019, but holy hell this game was a big deal twenty years ago. Outside of the cartoon, we had...
Aug 28, 2019•49 min•Ep. 61
"My name is Adam Blank, and I'm a recovering retro game collector." I love looking at video game collections. I used to love collecting them myself, too. But it can be an expensive hobby. It takes up a lot of space (particularly if you do it like I did and try to collect everything at once). After a couple of years, I had amassed a decent little collection. I was having fun, but I was also spending more money than I should have been. And eventually I realized that I didn't even want to play most...
Aug 21, 2019•56 min•Ep. 60
We're finally making our way into the arcades. Admittedly, I didn't really live near one growing up, so my experience with stand up cabinets is pretty minimal. And while I don't have a ton of playtime under my belt, I know damned well what a big deal Street Fighter II is. *For the record, I used the SNES box art because it fit well in the thumbnail and it was the cleanest art I could find. But we talk a little bit about the arcade, a little home port, a little variation and re-releases; we're al...
Aug 14, 2019•57 min•Ep. 59
Remember when World Championship Wrestling was the hottest thing on the planet? In the late '90s, WCW was giving the WWF the fight of their lives. The nWo(s), Goldberg, Sting, DDP, Raven, Bret Hart, Ric Flair; that wrestling company from down south had one of the most ridiculous rosters in the history of the business. Pro wrestling was white hot. If you weren't watching wrestling on TV, you were playing a wrestling video game. And there wasn't a better option than WCW/nWo Revenge . The THQ/Ninte...
Aug 07, 2019•59 min•Ep. 58
Yep, it's another Simpsons game. At least this is the good one! The Simpsons: Hit & Run is pretty universally considered the best video game adaption of The Simpsons. Sure, you could make an argument for The Simpsons Game that came out on the PS3 and Xbox 360 or the original arcade game. And they're both pretty solid, too. But at the end of the day, Hit & Run is the GOAT. I won't lie, I haven't played this game in fifteen years. When we started covering Simpons game on the show, this was...
Jul 31, 2019•38 min•Ep. 57
**The sound may be a little off on this week's podcast. I suggest using headphones if you can. Sorry about that!** I know, I know. It's Final Fantasy IV . The box says II, and the people that know, know. But the people that don't will be like "what the hell is this?". So we're goin' with Final Fantasy II . If you're not sure why people call it the fourth FF instead of the second, listen to the episode! I love this game. As I type this, I noticed an Instagram comment from @burgerfinger that point...
Jul 24, 2019•53 min•Ep. 56
Look at me, being all topical and professional and stuff. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3 comes out this Friday, so I thought it would be a perfect time to dedicate an episode to one of my favourite games of the last couple generations; the original Marvel: Ultimate Alliance . This game was a follow-up to the two (kick-ass) X-Men Legends games. Taking the initial formula and expanding on it to include characters from all walks of Marvel life, as opposed to just Professor X's team of misfits (and The...
Jul 17, 2019•51 min•Ep. 55
As much as it pains the loyal, completely biased Nintendo fanboy in me to admit, Sega had better sports games than Nintendo. Case in point? NHL '94 . That isn't to say the SNES version is unplayable, but anyone that has tried both would be lying if they said the Nintendo version was superior to the Genesis one. I didn't really play either, at least not when they came out. I was an NHL Stanley Cup kid (sad trombone). I got into the series around NHL '96 , but I've had many opportunities to go bac...
Jul 10, 2019•51 min•Ep. 54
Spider-Man is awesome. Venom is even more awesome. Carnage isn't quite as awesome as either of them, but he's still pretty awesome. So what happens when you take all that awesome and squeeze it into a video game? You get a freaking awesome video game. Worst. Intro. Ever. It's true, though. Maximum Carnage is awesome. It certainly isn't perfect, but it scratches all the basic video game itches. It handles pretty well, it looks sweet, and it's fun to play. The music is really good, and thanks to t...
Jul 03, 2019•50 min•Ep. 53
Super Mario Bros 2 is the oddball of the NES Mario Bros games. Along with Super Mario Sunshine , it's the oddball of the entire Super Mario series. But you know what? I like oddballs.* *I rewrote that about ten times, and that was the least creepy sounding thing I could come up with... I like Super Mario Bros 2 . A lot. I owned Super Mario Bros 1 & 3 as a kid, but never got my hands on the second one. So any chance I had to play it, I jumped all over it. I couldn't wrap my little mind around...
Jun 26, 2019•54 min•Ep. 52
