Press Pause Radio - Podcast

You know, it wasn’t that long ago (almost a full year ago, really) that we were talking about the advent of generative AI and the stupid bullshit it was churning out — its own slop—and it’s truly wild how much this endemic has escalated in our daily lives. Folks aren’t even pretending to cart out some bad-faith “Trolley Problem” to justify their damaging use of the quote-unquote “tool.” Any way, we get into it plenty on this latest show of Press Pause Radio, but as has been tradition throughout the year of 2026, we brought on a friend to record the newest show with us, Jordan Andow, AKA WheelieAverage, co-owner of Analog Stick Gaming.com, Gaming & Tech Editor at The Outerhaven, Co-Founder & Host of Between Levels Podcast alongside FightinCowboy and Sarthe, to join George and Andrew on a huge discussion of the latest news, and what we’ve been spinning or inserting into our dang ol’ dang consoles. In this episode, we gab about the state of Xbox, the Skydance Merger being overseen by everyone’s least-favorite corporate douchebag, Bobby Kottick, and all of the stuff we’ve been playing, which includes Orbitals, Onimusha: Way of the Warrior, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Marvel's Wolverine, Normal Golf Game, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, Kingdom Hearts [I~III] Collection, Final Fantasy XI, Forever Ago, Pokémon Champions, Control Resonant, Star Wars: Zero Company, and a whole lot more! This one is a bit of a Long Boi ™, so be sure you’re set to give this one a listen (because so help us, if we find out you generated an AI summary of this episode, we’ll give you a stiinkin’ swirlie!) Mail us at our new email [email protected], leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, 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 our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

It’s really easy to fall into this rut with Video Games right now. Every podcast episode this year has brought in this frivolous bout of yoga where we try not to take y’all TOO deep into Bummertown™, lest we risk forever remaining within its shitty doom-dome and get gypsy-cursed to forever scroll through Grummz’s feed on Twitter, A Clockwork Orange-style, or some shit. This is why we have found ourselves championing the phrase “Video Games can still be fun, and all you have to do is to keep looking” lately—so much so that we decided to put our money where our mouth is and do a nice little episode where we give our own shotgun course towards Retro Video Games—specifically what games to check out and various methods to check them out. The cast this week is Ed, George, and our special guest, Ten, who is an indie game and indie book reviewer for The Cosmic Circus, and co-host of the Hold On, Let Me Save podcast, where they’ll discuss the various equipment, displays, emulators, and uhhh, games that folks should still boot up to play from the last forty years or so of video games.  So grab your Anbernics and your Steam Decks, and get ready to add a bunch of HAMSTER releases to your wishlist as we do a fun little show to remind everyone that yes, video games rule. No amount of Generative AI and brain-dead corporate greed can ever take that away from any of you—enjoy the show!Mail us at our new email [email protected], leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, 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 our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

Many of us here at Press Pause Radio are old enough to remember edgy video game marketing that threw around slogans like, “Gameplay so REAL that it HURTS,” and, like, I think we’ve arrived at a point where maybe we should pump the brakes on raising the bar for realism and sim-like mechanics in video games… Some exceptions are in order, of course; like, we would be remiss to think about a world where there aren’t any piss mechanics in Video Games, right? Anyway…hey everyone! We’re back after an impromptu break to finish out the summer. We’re here to dish on some of the latest in the world of “vidjya games,” with some thoughts on the Grand Theft Auto VI leaks, Gamescom Opening Night Live impression, and a buttload of entries for our “What’s in your Console” section for this episode of PPR. George and Andrew are joined by a new friend to the show, Josh, from the Still Loading Podcast, who tagged their way into our recording booth after hosting George and an incredible panel of other cool folks on their annual Final Fantasy Draft special for 2026. The roundtable for this cast got together to drop a smorgasbord of games to have a keke™ on, with games like Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX, Splatoon Raiders, RIFTSTORM, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, NieR:Replicant, The Duskbloods Network Test, Actraiser, Beast of Reincarnation, Max Payne, Dragon Hopper, Terranigma, Final Fantasy XI, Sonic Mania for the Sega Dreamcast, and so much more! So be sure to fill up your card on whatever it runs on before you plug us into the AUX, because y’all are in for another jam-packed episode of Press Pause Radio for the ride! Mail us at our new email [email protected], leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, 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 our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

How’s everyone holding up? You know, with uhhh, all the recent news pouring in from Sony regarding their upcoming departure from physical media and Microsoft’s uhhh, well, departure from reality after slaughtering over 1,600 jobs, with more to cut  on the way, in the same week they shared the goal to service over a billion players… Shit sucks, yeah, but there’s still hope to take stock in, like the steadily growing unionization across various game development and media jobs in the industry, and the rapid progression that indie games are making across the video game marketplace, large and small—there really are things to still take joy in! Aside from that, George, Ed, and new friend and guest on this week’s episode, Jake of the Press B to Cancel Podcast, also share their own coping mechanisms to the current state of games, like the never-ending journey to tackle their giant libraries of video games, and the thousands of more retro games they have yet to play thanks to the new translation and emulation efforts being fostered by the gaming enthusiast community at large! So, aside from the news, the panel for this episode of Press Pause Radio have also played an ass-load of games that they want to talk about, like Star Fox (2026), Star Fox 64, Magic: The Gathering-Foundations, 007 First Light, Forza Horizons 6, The Adventure of Little Ralph, Pokémon GO Fest 2026, Mina the Hollower, Mega Man 2, Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle, and much more! So gird your bits and grab your favorite guilty pleasure as Press Pause Radio leads you on a 2-hour-ish journey built with some hope, cope, and a little (or a lot) of edibles to champion you on this hot summer day!

It’s funny how we all used to talk about the summer being the perfect reason to catch up on our backlogs, with the notable drought of marquee game releases until the winter season, when publishers and developers arguably carpet-bomb the quarter with hundreds of game releases aimed at competing for those coveted holiday dollars. Well—that’s not so much the case anymore because the summer is also reserved for some hype-level marketing and promotion towards those aforementioned holiday releases, and we’ve now arrived at the point where players can put their anticipation to the test with interactive previews in the form of public demos they can try out. While there are sprinkles of shadow-dropped slices of games to pick out from their respective studios, Valve has taken it upon themselves to make a whole-ass spectacle called Next Fest, a limited-time event designed to court studios to publish their demos on their platform so that excitable players can, in turn, download and play them on their platform. What makes Steam Next Fest so rad is that it helps bring eyes to games both big and small, and as such, Press Pause Radio got around to playing a giant wave of Next Fest demos, and decided “Hey, we should like, talk, about these right?” So talk they indeed done DID. Join Andrew, George, and Sean as they talk about flavored Seltzer water, Echoes of Aincrad, Magical Blush, Pizza Kidd, the Steam Machine price reveal, ReStory Chill Electronics Repairs, Normal Golf Game, Duskfade, The United States Tick epidemic, and so much more! We've published every demo discussed on the show in our show notes, with links to their respective store pages so you can check them out. So please, go ham on that install button as we present you with another episode of Press Pause Radio! Mail us at our new email [email protected], leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, 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 our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

Like the twisted version of Santa Claus that he is, once a year, Geoff Keighley comes out of his mousehole to host a grand event in Los Angeles that lets developers and publishers show off their up-and-coming games to the public via a broadcast presentation he calls the Summer Game Fest. So, it’s essentially LIKE Electronic Entertainment Expo in all but name, and like E3, the event engulfs the first week of June, and has already convinced other entities like Sony and Microsoft to coordinate the airings of their proprietary presentations around the showcase as well. And we here at Press Pause Radio took it ALL in to talk about it with y’all on this latest episode of the podcast (well, everything except for the Nintendo Direct, since the Big N sort of screwed scheduling-wise on that matter.) This week’s cast sees George, Andrew, and special guest Steve, one of the main hosts for the podcast, Fine Time on Super Pod Network, get together to break down PlayStation’s State of Play, Summer Game Fest, and the Xbox Showcase with their shared impressions and anticipated releases that were teased in the respective events. The discussed games include Mighty Cuphead Adventure, Marvel’s Wolverine, Resident Evil Veronica, God of War Laufey, Final Fantasy VII Revelation, Magician: The Devil’s Deal, Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, Crazy Taxi: World Tour, Stranger Than Heaven, and well, a hell of a lot more. We hope y’all enjoy, and while you’re at it—check out the guys over at Fine Time and their own Summer Game Fest episode when you’re done, OH, and be sure to send them your favorite Jack in the Box menu recommendations too! Mail us at our new email [email protected], leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, 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 our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

One more run right?—Just one more go at it, and this time, things will be different. That’s the allure of the Roguelike genre of video games. It isn’t just one thing to jam through a level filled with beasties and hazards, you also have to improvise your approach with whatever power-ups or drawbacks you’re given, at least long enough to make it to the next area. What was once a hardcore spin on action games has gradually permeated several other genres like Shooters, Metroidvanias, and hell, even Dating Simulators—it’s grown to a point where we’re seeing enough games lightly dabble with the formula to spawn its own subgenre, Rougelite. Realizing just how many games we’ve played under this banner, with Hades, Absolum, Dead Cell, Returnal, and several more, we figured it was high time we took a more earnest look at the category of gameplay, and try to see what makes it tick, and whether or not it’s officially reach the mainstream! Join Andrew and George as they discuss this, plus their thoughts and predictions for what they expect will come out of Summer Game Fest later this week! Mail us at our new email [email protected], leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, 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 our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

The mind sure is a funny thing—one second, you can find yourself tripping over the gradually increasing existential crisis of modern-day living in 2026, and the next, you’ll find yourself thinking about dumb ways to make peeing for a dog way more fun than it should have any right to be! On this week’s episode of Press Pause Radio, we tackle some of the news bits in gaming and our current gaming shelves in another “What’s in your console” edition of the show. Andrew and George are joined by Hugo Award-winning writer and all-around gaming journalist sweetheart, ‪Aidan Moher, who is also ½ of one of the coolest new video game podcasts to hit the web, Fun Factor: a show that takes a retrospective look at retro game magazines that inspired them to be games writers themselves! In this episode, the cast will go over the news of the leaked internal Xbox memo that would rapidly become the “We Are Xbox” state of the union from Microsoft, and the details of the new Steam controller from a leaked review of the device, including its $99 price tag! On the games side of things, we get real weird with it as we discuss OPUS: Prism Peak, Life is Strange, Division 2, Froggy Hates Snow, Returnal, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, Under the Island, Cobra, ZX Spectrum Next, Saros, Pragmata, Mouse: P.I. for Hire, Invincible VS, Quest: Brian's Journey, and so much more! We hope you enjoy our busy bodies of work as we have a whole lot more to cover with y’all in the coming weeks here at Press Pause Radio, oh, and be sure to subscribe to Fun Factor, and buy Aidan’s cool ass book, Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese...Mail us at our new email [email protected], leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, 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 our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

Certain logos instill a sense of wonder and comfort the instant they shimmer onto the screens of our games. The branding of something like the Konami bacon strips or neon-styled letters of SEGA getting shouted out through the speakers invokes a fuzzy feeling of what’s to come. One logo, in particular, carries such weight behind its presence that the moment you hear a certain jingle ringing, you know the blue-and-yellow juggernaut has arrived, accompanied by its trademark chime. After 40 years, Capcom remains a titan in the video game industry, commanding a plethora of software that has defined the medium, with several iconic video games that have made the Japanese video game developer and publisher a veritable household name among consumers and insiders alike. So what’s a dumb Video Game Podcast to do but to try and hash out a casual “Best of” list from Capcom across forty years' worth of hardware? Well, we can’t help but give it the ol’ college try! Longtime friend of the show, Rob Rich of Unwinnable Magazine, joins George and Andrew to do a roundtable discussion of which Capcom games are the cream of the crop for their respective platforms of the era since the company’s inception in 1984. One HUGE caveat, though—the gang was restricted from choosing any MAIN-LINE entries (meaning that spin-off titles are eligible for nomination) from the following series: Mega Man, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Ace Attorney, or Monster Hunter. Needless to say, it made for one helluva chop-up of podcast, and the crew still found time to talk about other shit too, like the difference between saying Happy Easter or Happy Resurrection, and the Toby Fox translation drama for Undertale and Deltarune. We hope y’all enjoy this episode, as we’d love to apply this social experiment to other companies for future shows!  Mail us at our new email [email protected], leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, 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 our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

Wow, sorry about the wait! What was it, four years or so? I don't think we missed much though, wrestling still be wrestling. After a long hiatus, Georgie and Toast got to watching an AEW PPV together and thought it'd be the appropriate time to talk about the graps once again. Revolution 2026 was certainly one for the books, with barely any time to catch a breath while witnessing rivalries ended, blood feuds settled and the prospect of some new challenges. This card was so stacked, we couldn't even finish it in one viewing. We will discuss our thoughts, our technical difficulties and our favorite moments on this episode of House Show. Thanks for listening and thanks for welcoming us back into your lives. We missed you!