Late to the Party: Lost Judgment

eing a Spin-Off from a popular series is hard because you’re either as beloved as Family Matters, or as forgettable as The Cleveland Show—the reception to these ventures is rarely in-between.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s first foray into the Yakuza Universe outside of Kiryu’s story continuity, Judgment, fringes between both ends of that measuring stick. The crux of this weakness fell upon its failure to carve a meaningful identity of its own from the rich source material it pulls from, well, aside from a fickle protagonist who was charming one second and irritatingly cringe-worthy the next at the very least.

Inconsistent delivery aside though, the premise of an Ex-Lawyer turned Private Eye in the world of Kamurcho still carries plenty of merits to re-visit in its own right, especially with mainline Yakuza series shifting into the Turn-Based RPG Genre for the indefinite future. This is where the follow-up sequel to Takayuki Yagami crime-solving caper, Lost Judgement, comes into the grand picture.

The Private Eye’s latest case leads him to the rough streets of Ijincho, and the setting isn’t the only thing that’s new as Lost Judgment is a sequel that boldly builds upon its formula instead of trying to deliver a familiar formula with some forced twists, making for an immensely better experience this time around.

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PPR 140

t’s pretty wild to see how many Video Game properties have been adapted for viewing over playing the last year or so. As James Marsden and Company ride the Box Office Success of “Rachel Adventure” (or Sonic The Hedgehog 2 for you Layman’s out there) we here at Press Pause Radio have been getting utterly swamped with our collective pile of games to play, and when we mean collective pile of games, we mainly mean whatever we can squeeze in between sessions of Elden Ring and Tunic.

While Elden Ring and Tunic DID command a lot of the conversation in this episode—George, Sean, and Andrew still had plenty of other games and news to talk about. In this episode of Press Pause Radio, we discussed the 2022 cancellation of E3, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Fish Plays Twitch, that thing that happened at the Oscars (sigh), Exile “Un-Worked Designs” Hack, Super Mario Sunburn, Miner 2049er, NORCO, Montezuma’s Revenge, Pac-Man, Kirby & The Forgotten Land, Ghostwire Tokyo, and so much more!

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 139

ow more than ever, Online Multiplayer has established itself into a bonafide standard in the Modern Gaming Climate with dedicated servers that operate on a scale that gets bigger by the year, making the term “Massive” a bit redundant in the process.

Even as you read this, there are thousands of players scrambling through the Online landscapes of Elden Ring and Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, titles that are packed with all of the Cooperative and Competitive ventures you can shake a sword or gun at—and yet neither of them fall under the category of MMO.

As we see the “Games as a Service” Model getting used more frequently, we stop to ask the question as to whether or not the genre of Massive Multiplayer Online games is steadily becoming a thing of the past. Granted, the immensely wild success of Final Fantasy XIV certainly says otherwise, and even contemporaries like Elder Scrolls Online and World of Warcraft are still operating at an impressive capacity despite Endwalker’s dominating performance—it’s still enough to make you wonder just how far these titles can go?

Join George Sean, and Andrew as they pore over the timeline of MMORPG’s, covering everything from their humble beginning, to their boom, and soft crash in the late ‘aughts, and so much more. Be sure to brush up on your HIPPA laws, because we’re going to punch down deep for Episode 139 of 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: Phantom Breaker: Omnia

ack in the day I used to attend several conventions a year, where all forms of gaming, anime and related avenues of fandom would occupy a weekend inside the meeting rooms of an unsuspecting hotel. In those game rooms of my past, I recall seeing Phantom Breaker tournaments and casual play amongst the other 2D fighters. Now over a decade later, Rocket Panda Games has teamed up with MAGES to release an updated and streamlined version of the title for the first time in the West. Does Phantom Breaker: Omnia earn a place in today’s crowded field of fighting games? I think to certain groups of players it very well may have a spot.

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PPR 138

echnical issues be damned because Press Pause Radio is stronger than any defective update or worn-out Graphics Card broken that’s crappy enough to try and stop us this late in the GAME.

This week, we decided to keep it chill, and catch everyone up with what we’ve been playing since our Golden Zonkies Special for 2021, along with throwing in our thoughts on the latest Nintendo Direct, and the subsequent Shutdown announcement for the Wii U/3DS eShop to cap it off.

Chairs for the week were Ed, Sean, and George as they gabbed on about Metroid Dread, Tatsujin, PC Denjin, Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker, Animal Crossing New Horizon, Arcade Archives, Phantom Gear, Grapple Dog, Darius Extra Version, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and so much more.

Next Week, we’re going to discuss the current climate of Massive Multiplayer Online Games, their history, and the blurred line between them and the burgeoning “Games as a Service” trend we’ve been seeing in this current generation—see you then!

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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House Show: Debuthausen

s of this recording, pretty much all of the wrestling internet has seen Danhausen's debut in AEW and those fans that have followed his career are through the roof! However, there may be some (Toast included) that may need a Cliff Notes version of his milestones up to this point. We discuss what exactly Danhausen is, as well as his place in the wrestling landscape today. Thank you for listening, hope you enjoy and we will be back with another episode soon!

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PPR Presents The Golden Zonkies: Class Of 2021

e’ve wrapped up the second year of the Pterodactyl, Panini, Pizza Party, or whatever the hell else you prefer to call it and are now slugging into the Junior Year of Covid-19: Omicron Edition. It’s been another tough year for everyone, and the cast of Press Pause Radio is far from excluded to that sentiment; despite the extra hours we’ve all put into our day jobs that have inevitably taken away from some of the Content output we’ve usually put out for PPR, we’re still picking up plenty of steam for all of the fun stuff we have planned for 2022. The studio project George has undertaken a few years ago is nearing completion, which will definitely spell for some fun times for commitment for more Video Content in the near future.

But before we get into that, we’re here to kick-off the New Year with our Annual Golden Zonkies Show to commemorate our favorite titles released in 2021, including our Game of the Year!

In case y’all don’t remember the updated flow from the last couple of years, we have changed up our format and have done away with categories!  Now, bear in mind, we’re still giving our prestigious mark of excellence, a Golden Zonkey, to the games that are deserving of recognition, only, we’re not doing by a respective genre, or category. Instead, we will be giving them out in a personal list format by each of us in the podcast, and we’ll be spending time discussing why we picked the titles we did within a countdown of five. Normally we would have done a roundtable of games that were worth a quick mention from the year, but we decided to mention them in passing instead, along with some not-so-honorable-mentions (we also chose a few more not mentioned on the show to include in the post!) We will then award the “Golden Zonkey of The Year” in a unanimous vote that was similar to the previous format, and conclude the show from there.

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's Sega Saturn Holiday Gift Guide 2021

f the mid-Nineties were anything, they were certainly busy; R&B took over the radio, Pro-Wrestling was finding its edge, and Video Games were transitioning to the third dimension—everything was changing. Even if you grew up at that time, there’s was so much going on that it was easy to get lost in all the noise—and nothing was more overlooked at the time than Sega’s 32-Bit Curio, the Sega Saturn. The system went from Champion to Martyr in just three short years, but has still played host to a handful of genre-defining classics that have garnered a legacy in their own right. The Saturn is currently enjoying a bit of a cult following in its afterlife with spectators and enthusiasts alike—steadily driving its secondhand market into high-dollar territory as a result.

Luckily, you don’t have to have deep-pockets to appreciate the Saturn anymore as this newfound interest in the machine has also inspired a wave of new advancements and peripherals from the Retro Game Community, making the process of hooking the Arcade Powerhouse up into your Modern-day setup an absolute cinch. So much so that we here at Press Pause Radio thought that a buying guide should be in order to commemorate all of these new products for the system!

 I honestly could not think of a better time to Publish a buying guide for the Saturn then the Holiday Season that the console is synonymous for. Aside from launching in the pivotal Holiday month December in Japan, the console has also received a special Christmas-themed System Bundle exclusively in Japan, with one of the most iconic Holiday-themed Video Games in existence, Christmas NiGHTS, a demo of the title with a heavy Yuletide Spin in its presentation. Here are some essential accessories and peripherals to start your journey into the “Real World” of the Sega Saturn.

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