PPR 171

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 Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, 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!

Click to read more ...

PPR 170

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!

Click to read more ...

Play Has Limits: What The End of Physical Media Really Means

Deep down, most of us knew that game companies would eventually double down on their attempts to do away with physical media. Still, seeing such an announcement like the one PlayStation made and knowing what awaits us doesn't make it any easier.

It feels like we've heard the same pro-digital, anti-physical pitches from major video game companies since the early 2010s. PlayStation's boldest announcement on the topic came early Wednesday, when it announced that it plans to completely halt the release of physical video games by 2028. In doing so, the company cites the all-too-famous "response in shifting trends" scapegoat that seeks to appease any would-be business daddy suitors who continue to drive us all closer to an AI-riddled, slop-infested digital rights apocalypse.

The short-short version given to readers on PlayStation's official blog? We all wanted this. Did we, though?

It is true that more recent Sony sales records point toward an abundance of digital sales rather than physical, though the numbers don't differentiate between AAA games, indie titles, or whether something just merely didn't have the option of a physical release to begin with. There are circumstances that either warrant digital-only releases entirely or in which a developer simply cannot afford to publish physical copies like a larger studio can (hence how options such as Fangamer, Limited Run, and Lost In Cult came to be).

Regardless of the circumstances, shuffling through the thousands of comments on the PlayStation announcement blog returns clarity to reality: people still largely hate this move. Meanwhile, scrolling through the otherwise bot-infested trenches of social media paints a similar picture, with droves of folks sharing everything from justifiably critical memes about the ill-conceived move to posting photos of their own collections, possibly in hopes of giving Sony executives some sort of consumer rights jumpscare.

So where we go from here is honestly anyone's guess. It doesn't look great, though, as we continue to have our consumer rights stripped away via the digital marketplace hellscape (the "own nothing, be happy" mantra, as one politician coined in recent years). Between the prices of retro games climbing since the pandemic years and companies sticking with subscriber-based model preferences, actually holding onto what we've got has never felt so good.

Click to read more ...

QCF: Mina the Hollower

The halcyon days of a development house being propped up entirely through the popularity and success of its flagship mascot are long gone, yet Yacht Club Games has managed to do it for a little over twelve years thanks to the charismatic and strong back of the spaded squire, Shovel Knight. After seven games and nearly fifty cameos later, however, Yacht Club has arguably toured the azure star around the block more than Nintendo has with its iconic plumber in that amount of time, and has now set its sights on delivering another larger-than-life world to pour its creative juices into—producing a new hero to support the Yacht Club Games’ masthead.

Following an eight-year development run funded by a million-dollar Kickstarter Campaign, Mina the Hollower is Yacht Club Games’ sophomore release, and another retro-inspired experience that’s engineered around the juxtaposition of multiple gameplay conventions. Like Shovel Knight before it, the Zelda-like, Game Boy Color-minded formula is a zesty melting pot of familiar yet fresh tastes that successfully results in Mina the Hollower delivering a signature flavor in its own right. More importantly, it already feels like the kind of follow-up that proves Yacht Club still knows how to build a standout world around a new hero.

Just because Mina the Hollower is an inventive blend of familiar concepts doesn’t mean it’s good, though, right? I mean, that line of thinking has also led to a slew of disasters like Spaghetti Tacos and whatever the hell that Magnum PI/Murder, She Wrote crossover was. Fortunately, not only does Mina the Hollower deliver a fusion that’s on par with Avacado Toast, it may just be the best damn game to have released in 2026 so far.

Click to read more ...

PPR 169

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 Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, 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!

Click to read more ...

QCF: Mouse P.I. for Hire

Relax, everyone, I solved the case! Troy Baker is the voice actor playing the role of the hardened, fondue-sipping war hero-turned-private-investigator protagonist of this game. I knew I had heard that voice somewhere, so it was a big surprise when I checked my search engine, er, I mean the board of clues, and came to that deduction. Spending hours of time in the world of Mouseburg in Mouse P.I. for Hire as an anthropomorphic mouse detective will make any player feel like they’ve jumped into a noir crime drama.  In the influence of games like Cuphead and the playstyle of Bioshock with big animated set pieces and exploration of a world out of a time capsule, this title has something for every player.

Click to read more ...

PPR 168

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 Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, 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!

Click to read more ...

PPR 167

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 Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, 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!

Click to read more ...