PPR Presents Limelight: Analogue Pocket Adapters in Action

After what’s felt like EONS of waiting, Analogue has FINALLY sent out the remaining Analogue Pocket adapters for their FPGA-engineered portable powerhouse, and we’ve got our hands on a set of the elusive do-hickeys to dive in on with y’all.

Join George as he streams an assortment of GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, Sega GameGear, Atari Lynx, SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color, and TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine/SuperGrafx games off of the Analogue Pocket on August 23rd, 7:30 PM PST! We don’t know what edgy 90’s slogan to end off on? So maybe we should use all of them—like, To be this good, it take PPR, or WARNING: the following may cause chills, dizziness, and shortness of breath or some other goofy dumbass shit like that…

We don’t know, just show up and check it out!

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!

Late to the Party: Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

ou know—some trends just don’t live past their 15 minutes of fame; Zombies? Played out, Vampires? Done to death, & Superheroes? We’re approaching terminal velocity on that can of worms soon, just give it some time. There are, however, some exceptions in Pop Culture that’ll just never NOT be rad as all hell, and one of those things is giant mech-suit robots.

Where mainstays of the genre like Gundam, Macross, and to some loose extent, Transformers have populated the public headspace in the genre, one particular property has commanded an underground yet dedicated peak of fandom in Video Games like no other IP specifically has—Armored Core.

Riding on the wave of new fandom that Dark Souls and Elden Ring have afforded them, FromSoftware unveiled the next entry in their long-dormant series that hasn’t seen a release in well over a decade with Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon and they’re giving it the red-carpet treatment to boot. This new release does ask an interesting question though; where its demanding twitchy-trigger gunplay carved out a modest niche of dedicated fans much like that of the “Soulsborne” series of games, those titles were able to steadily evolve and refine their gameplay hallmarks with the sort of resources that Armored Core has never had the privilege of receiving.

How exactly does Fires of Rubicon close such a long gap between releases without compromising the ardent quirks of its combat and difficulty? Well, it turns out that the answer is a lot easier than you’d think—Fires of Rubicon takes everything Armored Core V did and doubles down on it with all the technical performance the ninth generation of gaming hardware could afford the long-awaited sequel.

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PPR Presents Super Play: A Plumber for All Seasons-Part 1: Spring

here are a ton of Super Mario World hacks out there, sure, but none of them are anything like A Plumber for All Seasons. Hacker Alias White Yoshi Egg delivers a spin on the SNES classic that’s so radical that it plays like a long-lost entry to what could have been a bonafide Super Mario World Trilogy!

Join George and Andrew as they go through the entirety of the adventure, season by season, and show off all the neat shit that’s been packed into this, dare we say, Wonder-esque experience on the Super Nintendo!

PPR Presents Limelight: Har-Fest 2023

ey all, with the incoming flood of “October 31^st Vs November 1^st” memes hitting the timeline, we are vastly approaching the Holidays, and with that, I think it’s time we usher in the first Limelight block in years—aptly titled, Har-Fest Month!

During this month, George will be streaming 6 games to ring in the change of seasons, and will be doing so on the following schedule!

Super Mario Bros. Wonder/Sonic Superstars                                   Friday, November 10^th 9:00 PM PST

Umihara Kuwase/Astal                                                                    Saturday, November 18^th  6:00 PM PST

Super Magnetic Neo/Castlevania: Rondo of Blood                          Friday, November 24^th 9:00 PM PST

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!

Late to the Party: Sonic Orgins

orgive the clichéd sentiment, but even after 31 years of blazing across all manner of screens, SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog does show any sign of slowing down. Riding the hype train of the recent film’s success at the Box-Office in the same year the little guy turns 31, the folks at SEGA and Sonic Team in collaboration with the talented folks at HeadCannon took to the task of releasing yet another Classic Sonic Collection, Sonic Origins. The collection features Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic CD, and the first re-release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles in over a decade; each one optimized with the same Retro Engine Sonic Mania ran on, enhancing these cult-favorite titles with a sizable HD upgrade for the current generation of gaming.

Despite the number of times some of these titles have been re-released, Sonic Team and company have boasted that this new arrangement will come loaded with more passion and fandom than we’ve seen from the likes of Sonic Jam or Sonic Mega Collection. While some of those claims are founded, I can’t quite help but feel like Sonic Origins struggles to live up to the potential it had, let alone the hype going into the whole thing.

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Parallax Pilgrimage: The Timeless Charm of 2.5D Action Video Games

sn’t it just wild what a simple addition or twist can do for a recognized formula? Just look at what tossing in a splash of Lime or Vanilla to a can of Pepsi does for the drink—the same cola base is there, only now it offers a whole new perspective to its taste, and they did this all without completely reinventing the wheel either. It took Pepsi forty years to come up with the idea, while the brilliant minds of the Video Game industry came up with their “Pepsi Lime” moment in thirty-seven with the 2.5D Platformer.

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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'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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